User:Hans Adler/PE study


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On 6 December 2011, The Independent reported about a sting operation conducted by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, in which journalists posed as representatives of the Uzbek government and secretly recorded discussions with the London-based public relations agency Bell Pottinger Group. According to the Independent, they learned that Bell Pottinger "has a team which 'sorts' negative Wikipedia coverage of clients". Part of the recording of a 20 July 2011 meeting with David Wilson (chairman of Bell Pottinger Public Relations), Tim Collins (managing director of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs) and Sir David Richmond (ex-diplomat working for Bell Pottinger Sans Frontières) can be watched in the first half of a Vimeo video:


 * Reporter:The President is not particularly happy with his Wikipedia entry, or the Uzbek government's Wikipedia entry. You did mention earlier that there might be ways to, would that be something which we could deal with?
 * David Wilson:Yeah.
 * Reporter:OK.
 * Tim Collins:We've got all sorts of dark arts. I told him he couldn't put it in the written presentation because it's embarrassing if it gets out, he's so good at it.
 * [cut]
 * David Wilson:We had a client come to us last year called Dahabshiil, which is the biggest money transfer business in the Horn of Africa. The problem was when you did a Google search, the entire first 5, 10 pages, just about everything about them was about a former employee that was holed up in Guantanamo Bay. Within 3months you could look through the first 20 pages of Google, whereafter there wasn't a mention of it, and that's just through, actually, good SEO, search engine optimisation.
 * [cut]
 * Tim Collins:We've obviously got people who work in our business who've got connections with the Liberal Democrats and Labour, but we do pride ourselves on the strength of our connections with the Conservative Party.
 * [cut]
 * Tim Collins:And from my own point of view, I've been working with people like Steve Hilton and David Cameron and George Osborne for 20 years plus.
 * [cut]
 * Tim Collins:As I say, Ed Llewellyn is the Prime Minister's chief of staff, he was my deputy in central office for a long time, Steve Hilton was my deputy in a different capacity, in a different way, I mean I know all these people, there is not a problem about getting messages through to them.
 * [cut]
 * Reporter:What do you think about William Hague?
 * Tim Collins:I think Cameron listens to him a lot.
 * Reporter:Is he on your speed dial?
 * Tim Collins:Who William?
 * Reporter:Yeah.
 * Tim Collins:I wouldn't quite say he's on my speed dial, but my ...
 * Reporter:You can get hold of him?
 * Tim Collins:I can get hold of him and I talk to him.

The second half of the video is taken from an earlier meeting that does not mention Wikipedia:


 * Reporter:So what have you done for Sri Lanka, for instance?
 * David Wilson:Inside the UK, we've added some critical dialogue at governmental level. We've added some balance outside of a couple of media channels, so the Times and Channel 4 are particularly staunch in their opposition...
 * [cut]
 * David Wilson:We wrote President Rajapaska's speech to the UN, last year, which was very well received.
 * [cut]
 * David Wilson:You know, it went, it went a long way to taking the country where they needed to go. Fundamentally, though, they've set up a thing called the peace and reconciliation commission, which has got one fundamental flaw in it, in its remit on investigating what has gone on in the past, try and bury the past. And, and unfortunately because that is the case, media like Channel 4 and the Times find that the whole peace and reconciliation commission is flawed.

This is our chance to analyse how an influential lobbying company has been using or more likely abusing Wikipedia's processes.

Article: Bell Pottinger Group
My starting point was the article on the company itself. The following is an essentially complete list of edits that help the company appear in a good light. Of course not all such edits will have been made on behalf of the company. Edits are particularly likely to be innocent in the case of editors with a huge edit count and editors who came to the article in the course of wikignoming work.


 * 2006-10: Kdickins (SPA) creates the article.
 * Steel (admin) correctly declines a DB-spam.


 * 2006-11:62.189.228.102 (static Verison customer near Guildford) tweaks link to parent company.


 * 2007-07:Neale Monks slaps fact tags on unsourced negative information.
 * 2007-09 Neale Monks removes See also link to company founder (a controversial figure) as redundant.


 * 2008-09:Slaine1 (SPA) adds spam and removes negative information.


 * 2009-07:93.96.157.205 (BeThere customer near London) adds positive information and tweaks parent company name.
 * 2009-10:TreveX softens negative information and sources it to a PR news report.


 * 2009-12:Amackee adds spam.
 * 62.189.228.102 (see above) tweaks previous edit.


 * 2010-03:188.220.237.195 (BeThere DSL customer near Bath) removes justified advertising template.
 * Rjwilmsi tweaks spam.


 * 2010-04:Diginerd84 adds infobox and tweaks spam.
 * 2010-05:Rich257 wikifies spam.
 * 2010-10:86.176.254.170 (BT customer) adds another client and mentions Belarus and Iran as former clients. (Other account activity: Indifferent edit to Christopher Booker, a climate sceptic.)


 * 2011-02:JustAGal makes minor cleanup of spam.
 * 2011-03:94.172.115.60 (Virgin customer near Woking) removes Bahrain as customer.
 * Diginerd84 (correctly) removes Iran as former customer per "incorrect reference"


 * 2011-04:Flowanda correctly removes "dead unnecessary link".
 * Hurdygurley makes mildly positive edits + wikifies.

Among the most promising leads is clearly the activity of, who started editing the article shortly after its creation and edited it again 3 years later. Using WikiStalk, I identified articles that had been edited by at least two of the editors that appear in the above list. Initially there were thousands of them, but that was mostly due to the significant overlap between Rjwilmsi (550,000 edits) and JustAGal (90,000 edits). After removing Rjwilmsi as a likely red herring, things became much clearer. For certain pairs of editors the overlap consisted entirely of innocuous edits to articles on a large variety of subjects, although in some cases I felt a need to take a closer look to verify this.

Editor: 109.231.203.194

 * Undeleted edits: 63.
 * Deleted edits: 1 (2%).
 * Editing times: Mon–Fri 8–18 (no exceptions).

is registered to Bell Pottinger as a customer of Exponential-e Ltd. It was mentioned here.
 * Standard Life
 * Melanoma
 * Melanocytic nevus
 * ICT Group (Russia)
 * Big Hole
 * Internal Communications
 * Jonny Vegas
 * Alexander Nesis
 * LBG
 * Chime Communications (United Kingdom)
 * Yota
 * Michael Ancram
 * Dave Courtney
 * Moletest
 * Richard Hamilton (artist) ‎
 * Talk:Mytrah Energy
 * KSK Energy Ventures Limited
 * The Prostate Centre

Editor: 62.189.228.102
is a Verizon customer with an IP address that appears to have been static for at least 7 years. The IP (currently) geolocates to Guildford, a town in the London commuter belt. The IP has a very specific interest in Henry Staunton, which it shares with Hs97jhs (29+2 edits), an account with similar habits. This is likely not a Bell Pottinger employee, but appears to be closely related.
 * Undeleted edits: 139 between August 2004 and November 2010.
 * Deleted edits: 7 (5%).
 * Editing times: Mon–Fri 9–18. (Rare early or overtime, no weekend or night editing at all.)

Edits possibly connected to Bell Pottinger:
 * Bell Pottinger Group – See above.
 * Standard Life – Adds/updates boring company data and spam.
 * Paramount Group – Adds sources one day after a Diginerd84 edit.
 * Open Leader Research (company)
 * Robert Ayling – Purges article of negative information.
 * Dubai Aerospace Enterprise – substantial rewrite.

Editor: Diginerd84
Practically all edits by appear to be related to Bell Pottinger and its clients.
 * Undeleted edits: 255 between July 2009 and March 2010.
 * Deleted edits: 13 (5%).
 * Editing times: Mon–Fri 7–17 (Exceptions: 5% evening or early morning edits; 4% weekend edits.)


 * Some edits to give cover, including a fake user page.
 * Currencies Direct – Creates. Strange sequence: advert tag added, Indian IP adds weird spam, Diginerd84 removes spam+tag.
 * Common Purpose UK – Cleans up and removes tags. (Article was created by, and editor keeping American office hours.)
 * Central Bank of Sri Lanka – Minor update.
 * Paramount Group – Rewrite/expansion and removes advert tag.
 * Marauder (vehicle) – Copy edit, use by Azerbaijan army.
 * Maverick (internal security vehicle) – Extensive edit.
 * Matador (mine protected vehicle) – Extensive edit.
 * Bruce Craig – Creates. Later expands and removes tags.
 * Ian Mills – Creates.
 * Bell Pottinger Group.
 * Bath Rugby
 * Henk Rottinghuis – Creates.
 * Julia Middleton – Vast expansion, removes notability tag.
 * Robert Peston – Adds praise of Julia Middleton.
 * International Federation for Equestiran Sports – Mentions Henk Rottinghuis.
 * Princess Haya bint Al Hussein – Mentions Henk Rottinghuis.
 * Brian Menell – Rewrites, expands, removes BLP unsourced tag.

Editor: Biggleswiki

 * Undeleted edits: 368 between November 2010 and December 2010.
 * Deleted edits: 31 (8%).
 * Editing times: Mon–Fri 8–17 (Exceptions: 13% evening or early morning edits; no weekend edits.)

has a fanciful user page which gives a name, residence, occupation and full date of birth. Very early on it was edited by the Bell Pottinger IP. 

Editor: Smythej

 * Undeleted edits: 8 in June/July 2011 (except 1 in October 2011).
 * Deleted edits: 0 (0%).
 * Editing times: Mon-Fri 9-17. (Exception: 1 edit Saturday afternoon.)


 * Draft articles in user space of.
 * Mopani Copper Mine
 * Rupiah Banda

Editor: Charlesstewart99

 * Undeleted edits: 6 on 10 October 2011.
 * Deleted edits: 3 (33%).
 * Editing times: Early Monday afternoon.


 * Arkadiy Abramovich

Editor: GBSewnlim

 * Undeleted edits: 5 on 25/26 October 2011.
 * Deleted edits: 0 (0%).
 * Editing times: Tue, Wed 8–16.

user page says: "I'm a 34 year old Engish Graduate and Politics Lecturer."


 * Jonny Sandelson

Editor: Ejbsnow

 * Undeleted edits: 7 on 27 October 2011.
 * Deleted edits: 0 (0%).
 * Editing times: Thu late afternoon.

asked for unblock, which was declined by Jimbo "pending outcome of Bell Pottinger investigation".


 * TINCO Investments Ltd

Editor: Pipsster

 * Undeleted edits: 41 in October/November 2011.
 * Deleted edits: 0 (0%).
 * Editing times: Early weekday afternoons.


 * Paul Polman
 * ‎Ravi kailas (11 edits 17-21 October)
 * Mytrah Energy