In an effort to provide content that meets high editorial requirements, volunteer editors on the English version of Wikipedia have banned almost 400 user accounts for producing fake or promotional articles and making changes to existing posts, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind the user-editable online encyclopedia, revealed in a blog post on its website.
Specifically, Wikimedia has announced the editors removed 381 accounts that were doing what they call an "undisclosed paid advocacy." Additionally, after a few weeks of investigation, editors also deleted 210 posts produced by these malicious or "black hat" authors.
"Most of these articles, which were related to businesses, business people, or artists, were generally promotional in nature, and often included biased or skewed information, unattributed material, and potential copyright violations," the company said in its post. "The edits made by the sockpuppets are similar enough that the community believes they were perpetrated by one coordinated group."
Wikimedia, however, did not specify in the article who is behind the attack. A spokesperson said it is a "little preliminary" for them to say at this time.
At this point, Wikipedia's community of volunteers is still examining the alterations created by the group to find out if other pages should also be ditched or edited.
The foundation said the volunteers are regularly making edits to Wikipedia to ensure the quality of the pages. These editors add reliable sources, broaden articles, unveil new topics, cover news, include images, fix errors as well as handle conflicts of interest.
In a bid to make Wikipedia a reliable and unbiased online resource, Wikipedia's volunteers in October 2013 also banned many accounts that were connected with Wiki-PR, a consulting firm. Reports say Wikipedia during the time sent a "cease-and-desist" letter to Wiki-PR. The firm reportedly promoted its capacity to help article subjects land on the Google search result's top spot.
Meanwhile, Wikimedia pointed out in the blog post that not all paid editing is a breach to Wikipedia's guidelines. It noted a lot of staff members in universities and museums around the globe edit Wikipedia pages by unveiling their organizations. It also reported many public relations companies have signed an agreement to adhere to the paid editing policies of Wikipedia.
It also added that editing in Wikipedia is totally free. However, editorial guidelines should be followed.
