Previous |
Next |
January 24, 2007, 04:30 PM ET
Wikipedia Blocks a Pay-for-Play Scheme
Ask almost any Wikipedia diehard how the site avoids becoming a morass of news releases and hit pieces, and they will give credit to the encyclopedia's "neutral point of view" policy -- one of a select few precepts that Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has called "nonnegotiable." The policy states, bluntly, that debates over contentious issues are "described, represented, and characterized, but not engaged in" by writers for the site.
That language seems to rule out any article that could come across as a personal advocacy piece. But Gregory Kohs, a market researcher from Pennsylvania, decided to test Wikipedia's resistance to perceived conflicts of interest last year: He started MyWikiBiz, a service that offered to write Wikipedia entries for businesses for under $100 a pop.
Mr. Kohs said he intended to keep his articles objective and well sourced, but the pay-for-play scheme didn't sit well with Mr. Wales. After some wrangling, the chief Wikipedian decided to shut Mr. Kohs out from the site, according to the Associated Press.
Mr. Kohs says he was hard done by, and he notes that Wikipedia has its own Reward Board -- a page on which Wikipedians can offer money or gifts to other authors willing to firm up specific articles.
But it's hard to feel too bad for MyWikiBiz. Most of the posts to Wikipedia's Reward Board simply offer to trade work on one article for similar work on another piece. And the proposed trades that do involve money, like a standing offer of $55 to anyone who can elevate entries about Lithuania to "featured article" status, seem pretty altruistic. If the encyclopedia is serious about gaining acceptance from academe, surely it has a vested interest in dissuading companies from paying to improve their presence on the site. --Brock Read
Categories: Research, Company-Watch
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.