IBM Employees Caught Editing Wikipedia 112
An anonymous reader writes "Corporate employees editing Wikipedia articles about themselves or their employers sometimes commit major violations of Wikipedia's "bright line" against paid editing, devised by Jimbo Wales himself, to prevent 'COI' editing. (Consider the recent flap over the firm Wiki-PR's activities, for example.) Yet the Wikipediocracy website, run by critics of Wikipedia management, has just published an article about IBM employees editing Wikipedia articles. Not only is such editing apparently commonplace, it's being badly done as well. And most bizarrely, one of the IBM employees is a Wikipedia administrator, who is married to another Wikipedia administrator. She works on the Watson project, which uses online databases to build its AI system....including the full text of Wikipedia." Reading about edit wars is also far more informative (if less entertaining) than reading the edit wars themselves.
CN (Score:4, Funny)
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Well... "meta" is "beta" with an 'M'.
Fuck Meta?
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The "new look" is great for those who prefer whitespace to content. But, of course, why would anyone be browsing /. if they really cared about content so perhaps there's at least some logic to the new layout facet of Beta.
And, no, I won't contribute to the spam by saying "fuck beta" as that would probably cause me to lose Karma.
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Or the rest of us can stick with Classic and filter out the 'fuck beta' meme until you fucktards stop spamming the board.
BTW, I like the new look. It looks a lot like their mobile browser page. I can't wait until the mentally challenged stop posting 'fuck beta' and go back to beating their wives and molesting their kids.
-1 Flamebait.
Oh, well - Downmod me all you like. The new Beta will prevent your puerile attempts at censorship. Mwa-ha-ha-ha...
TheAgriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people browse the web while they are working. I can understand that there could be a conflict of interest when people are editing topics which are biographies of themselves or their own employers. But as long as they are not deleting facts they don't like and are adding actual information that other people may not have easy access to I do not see how that is a problem.
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But as long as they are not deleting facts they don't like...
That's exactly what they're doing.
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Are they deleting facts they don't like or opinions they don't like? Editorializing can be subtle, for people who know what to look for. Or it can be in your face if you aren't so clueless as to be able to see it.
Re:TheAgriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gun (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that's not what the article accuses them of. The article mainly accuses them of editing badly.
For those who didn't RTFA, here's the high points:
* IBM was huge in computing, so why is it so poorly represented (in terms of article count, total kB of text, and editing quality) on Wikipedia, the self-appointed online repository of all human knowledge?
* people at IBM seem to be editing IBM-related articles, but not in any kind of organized way. (The article actually chastises them for FAILING to have any kind of organized method.) Mostly it's people editing articles about themselves or things that they have worked on.
* The person who worked on the Watson project is and admin on Wikkipedia, married to another editor and edited Wikipedia articles while on the job for IBM. (Almost as if she were passionate about it or something... and working on a project where her computer barfed up nonsense when it parsed a really poorly written article....)
* the three shadiest things that they mention are 1) a guy who created an article about an IBM award/title he won; 2) an editing fight about the relevance of a book that linked IBM to the third Reich (which went through the usual Wikipedia channels and ended up in favor of keeping the article); and 3) The guy who started BASH.org (and who happens to be at IBM) arguing that the page was relevant and should be kept (again, usual Wikipedia channels, this time not in BASH.org's favor)
So basically what we have here are the notions that: ...or for that matter any article, no matter what they happen to find odd if they found it while at work.
* even relatively obscure people probably shouldn't edit articles about themselves to avoid bias (which strikes me as silly for biasing things hard in the other direction)
* that IBM needs to tackle Wikipedia in an organized way to make up for the lack of interest by anyone outside the industry in preserving this huge chuck of history...
* unless it stays away altogether, because they already have a huge company history page on their website.
* and that IBM-ers should not touch the articles that they are most likely to have specific knowledge on...
*
like most fights on and about Wikipedia, this is a tempest in a teapot by people who do a poor job articulating whether the collaborative encyclopedia of all human knowledge is actually suppose to be any of those things and why.
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Dude. If I have a biography which includes the date or birth, family names, and work history do you want anything more factual than that?
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Well, they can replace the lawyers. It will feel the same, no soul or the like...
Wikipedia is utterly broken anyway. (Score:5, Insightful)
What matters is transparency. You can't prohibit people with bias from editing the truth in a "truth by democracy" project - you can only hint strongly to them that they need to better hide their true identity. But you could, if you wanted to put an ounce of scholarly rigour into Wikipedia, make it so that people reveal their biases. There is nothing wrong with IBM employees contributing toward an article on IBM, as long as everyone knows that the perspective is that of an IBM employee - similarly, there's nothing wrong with someone who has invested time and emotion into some political view or war or comic book, as long as they are clear on their opinions.
The first worst thing about Wikipedia is that editing it is about a tenth as productive as editing just about any other online resource, because you have to continually fight to maintain high standards. The second worst thing is that it tries to pretend that you can eliminate biased people, rather than acknowledge that bias exists and tackle how to be open about it.
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So long as what people are adding is verifiable, who cares who they are? The only way to bias a Wikipedia article while remaining verifiable is to delete stuff, and that's where the wars tend to happen.
Re:Wikipedia is utterly broken anyway. (Score:4, Insightful)
So long as what people are adding is verifiable, who cares who they are?
Well, in my opinion, the only way to really fix Wikipedia would be to allow expert help -- and in many cases, that may actually benefit from having someone with intimate knowledge of something.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia policies discourage experts from contributing (sometimes by official policy, sometimes just by the attitude of frequent editors). It's really more like the Wild West... with some bizarre lawyer-like class running everything.
The only way to bias a Wikipedia article while remaining verifiable is to delete stuff, and that's where the wars tend to happen.
That's not true at all. The "verifiability" requirement is probably one of the most broken elements of Wikipedia, next to the "notability" criterion. Not that facts shouldn't be verifiable: of course they should be, and of course reputable sources should be used. However,
Verifiable != True
Nor should we think that verifiability is some sort of useful proxy for truth. There an important reason why people tend to swear in legal proceedings to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
Stating "facts" without context is useless. I can tell you that the "deadly chemical" X has been found in a number of snack foods, for example. But what does that mean? Normally, people don't actually mention things unless they are notable, so the fact that I mention this seems to mean that there must be a greater significance. It seems to imply that someone put that chemical in snack foods, or that the manufacturer used contaminated ingredients, or that the manufacturer didn't do adequate screening and quality testing, or something else bad.
But what if I now add the facts: "Chemical X occurs naturally in soil, groundwater, and most food items at a rate of 10 ppb. In the snack foods in question, chemical X had a concentration of 0.02 ppb."
Now, all of those implications seem way off-base, no? Not only did we make an incorrect assumption from a true statement, but we actually assumed the opposite of what is true: apparently, whatever the manufacturer is doing, they are actually producing a safer-than-average product. But the concentration is still non-zero, as it is in almost all food products.
You see this sort of thing on Wikipedia all the time from people with agendas, and from people who are just ignorant of the larger context.
Particularly in low-profile articles on obscure topics (like the humanities), you'll often see citations and quotations from scholarship that is 50 years old and from a book that isn't even on the topic of the article. Yes, it was "published" in a "reliable source" perhaps even in a book by a major university press, so it meets quite high standards of "verifiability," but it's not particularly representative of scholarship or what most people know to be true.
Someone with an agenda on a topic can really skew things this way. An article has citations to 5 scientific articles published in credible journals claiming X -- well, it looks like X is true. But almost every area of knowledge has some disagreement. What if there are actually 100 articles on the same topic that claim not-X, but they just don't happen to be in Wikipedia? The only person who becomes aware of this is the rare Wikipedia editor who does a search of the scholarly literature in some obscure field. Otherwise, articles can exist for years claiming things that are obviously not true. (In fact, given the propensity for scholars to exaggerate claims and implications in their own research, it's quite easy to even find 5 articles that don't even have data to prove X, but nevertheless assert X to be true in their discussion sections... while there might be 25 articles actually on topic out there which refute X.)
So yeah, there are loads of ways to skew an article by providing "verifiable facts" from "v
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Wikipedia is fundamentally broken without some sort of mechanism for expert review
As anyone who has every been near a university will tell you, an encyclopaedia is not a primary source, at best it is a pointer to them. Primary sources are not facts and science does not claim to be the truth, it only claims to strive for it. Technically "facts" do not even exist outside of an axiomatic system such as maths.
All this adds up to "life is messy", best to keep an open mind but not so open that your brains fall out.
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Re:Truth and verifiability (Score:1)
Actually verifiability, and * not * truth, is what you want in an encyclopedia.
The Truth(TM) can be changed and disputed, or slanted by a writer who claims to be "an expert" ----- or maybe in some fantasy world, all experts will agree, get it right, and never slant or cover up findings to suit their desired findings, or modify them under pressure from employers or peers.
Clueless readers can always be misled, fringe views will generally be excluded, but otherwise - forget it. Oh, and experts generally want t
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There are actually Wikipedia policies to address exactly the kind of example problem you give here, such as the Undue Weight policy. Just because an assertion is verifiable doesn't automatically warrant its inclusion in an article, if including it would bias the article in some way, by making the verifiable assertion seem more important or significant than it actually is, which is what is happening in your example.
Another such policy is the one on Synthesis. You can't take a bunch of verifiable assertions a
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"What matters is transparency. You can't prohibit people with bias from editing the truth in a "truth by democracy" project..."
I agree. I think the prohibition policy has gone a tad too far. Everyone in the end is biased, as he or she changes the topics he or she is interested in changing. I won't change topics I don't care or have an opinion. After all, I am not alone in these edits, that's what other users and editors are for in a community project.
I guess Obama cannot work on editing an article in Wikipe
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...The second worst thing is that it tries to pretend that you can eliminate biased people, rather than acknowledge that bias exists and tackle how to be open about it.
Doesn't the fact that Wikipedia "tries to pretend that you can eliminate biased people" necessarily include that they "acknowledge that bias exists"? Full disclosure: my bias is that I love Wikipedia (and send them money every year).
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You send money to a "non-profit" tax-exempt organization that (according to their own Form 990's) can only muster spending about 52% of donors' money on actual program services, with the rest going into wasteful overhead and a "rainy day" slush fund that earns about 1% interest per year? Such a pitiful waste of money that the Wikimedia Foundation really does not need.
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I grew up with a set of 1961 World Books, which were then replaced by a brand new 1977 set. I think I'm not "obviously" too young, but I'll accept your compliment regardless. Your point is a bit misguided, because the Wikimedia Foundation is a tax-exempt non-profit with a duty of care to wisely spend the tax-deductible money that donors send their way, on the assumption that the money will be spend to help preserve and improve the free encyclopedia. Right now, very little of the dollars are even being sp
Funny idea (Score:2, Funny)
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Those aren't fake, and Hitler is really pissed about Beta.
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And risk making Adolf Freaking Hitler a sympathetic figure???
The problem is? (Score:2)
The brief article outlines that some IBM employees are major Wikipedians; some other IBM employees have edited IBM Wikipedia articles; IBM's Wikipedia articles are bad, but they are not a neutrality issue; he author thinks that some anonymous editors might be IBM employees but doesn't show as such.
I'm not sure where the problem is arising here. If Wikipedia had a blanket ban about people in IBM being senior members, or IBM people editing IBM articles. Of all the problems to highlight on Wikipedia this is on
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They should stop everyone who works (for money, fame, bitcoin, flooz, notoriety, et whatever) from editing wikipedia. That's the only way people will stop writing silly, pointless articles like this.
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Rise of the Planet of the Neckbeards!
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You can't prevent all bias. (Score:3)
There is only so much bias you can remove from certain articles. Especially when this is a massive crowd sourced project. In all honesty, I trust the large amount of people who frequent these articles to help keep astroturfing to a minimum. You'd think by now, people would be good at critically looking at a piece of information and being able to identify the bias of the writer.
On a completely random side note, the value wikipedia provides for FREE is immense. Trust me, it is one of the best resources we have and the citations can help me find other details and continue reading if I so wish. If I was forced to go back in time to the 1500s and could only take one thing, I'd take this http://www.good.is/posts/wikip... [www.good.is]
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If I was forced to go back in time to the 1500s and could only take one thing, I'd take...
...a time machine.
Experts in subject (Score:4)
I get how there's going to be bias, but I think it is OK for someone to write an article about themselves to start it. Or in a company's case, to correct factual errors or give a history of the company.
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This is just another hit piece of Slashdot.
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Oh the irony of being unable to edit my post
>This is just another /insert tech company name here hit piece on Slashdot.
Wikipedia needs MORE paid editors (Score:4, Interesting)
Just like with the Linux kernel, it's a high time the Wikipedia community gave up the futile resistance to paid editing. It's already happening, and denying it is only embarrassing with "revelations" like this IBM case. What goes to the whole Wiki-PR debacle, turns out all the company was doing was correcting errors, libel and defamation [businessinsider.com] that anonymous Wikipedia editors hiding behind pseudonyms and IP addresses have been adding to Wikipedia.
As it stands, Wikipedia is essentially an anarchy where anyone can publish all sorts of lies and propaganda, and companies like Wiki-PR are needed so that those, who are damaged by misinformation that anonymous Wikipedia editors publish, can hire neutral editors to fight the anonymous hoaxers. Wikipedia's own volunteer community has been since long overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of vandalism and biased information added every minute, and only the most obvious cases of misinformation and fraud are ever caught. But instead of celebrating the work that Wiki-PR was doing for the people and companies who have fallen victim to the terror of Wikipedia misinformation, the company behind Wikipedia instead chose to demonized Wiki-PR to media and threatened to sue them.
What's really worrying, is that Google gives Wikipedia a "boost" in its search rankings. So for example, any hoaxer can easily use Wikipedia to publish misinformation about people, products and companies that they don't like. Then anyone searching Google for the name of the person, product or company are immediately served the Wikipedia page on the subject. This page is often full of misinformation and propaganda, while those concerned (like the employees of the said company or the person being defamed himself) are forbidden from correcting the article. Previously, Wikipedia admins were satisfied with just banning those fighting the misinformation under the "conflict of interest" doctrine. But now, the company behind Wikipedia has demonstrated that they are ready to sue you if you want to correct the lies that are being distributed through their platform.
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I'm not sure if you were going for irony, but this post sounds like the average promotional article on Wikipedia. I would flag this as POV lacking reliable sources (the one link you provide is merely paraphrasing the claims from the primary source).
ANYONE can delete unsourced or improperly sourced material. There is absolutely no rule against a company (and especially a person, because biographies are held to the strictest levels of verification on WP) editing their own articles to remove unsourced claims.
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ANYONE can delete unsourced or improperly sourced material.
"Yes, welcome to delete the false information that we're publishing about you/your company. Oh, you work for that company? Let the ban hammer sing!" COI (Conflict Of Interest), i.e. someone editing an article where they have a stake at play, often means in practice that the user is banned within microseconds, if there are any anonymous editors with differing opinions. The guideline page [wikipedia.org] itself says "Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes
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You made the argument that Wikipedia is an "anarchy". Now you're saying they have too many rules. Which is it?
At what point do you think in a real-world anarchy would be overtaken by the power-hungry, nihilistic individuals seeking to establish an aristocracy of the competent [wikipedia.org], and be turned into a walled garden of the like-minded only? But wait.. did I just describe Wikipedia? No way...
March of the 50-Cent Army (Score:4, Interesting)
So how about propaganda-style editing backed by PR operations with sovereign backing [wikipedia.org]? For instance, articles involving China, where the 50-cent army runs rampant over the more obscure topics (in contrast, popular and well-known topics are usually well-defended, so only subtle alterations tend to get through).
It's not just Wikipedia -- they're likely present on any western media forums considered high-traffic or influential in the realms of policy (for instance, The Economist's comment sections), where they crap up threads and start flamewars to disrupt topics critical of the PRC. It's hard to distinguish them from posters which may merely be jingoistic bozos, but their abundance and stubborn persistence is unusual, compared with topics about any other nation.
Edit, but disclose (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I would not like to lose my freedom of expression to express my views on, say, finite element analysis or mesh generation just because I work for a company making commercial products in that area. But if I ever edit the wiki article of my employer, I would make damn sure everyone knows my background so that my biases conscious or unconscious are corrected.
Re:Edit, but disclose (Score:5, Informative)
This is pretty much IBM's policy. We're allowed to post about IBM, provided what we post is:
1. Non confidential (I can't tell you about the time machine we're building in the basement in Austin)
2. Not damaging (I am not allowed to be defamatory, for example - although I will say all of HP's employees who are black with yellow polka dots are habitual liars)
3. Clearly stated to be the opinion of a specific IBM employee, rather than the IBM corporation
It would be silly not to let IBM employees, for example, post about mainframes. A lot of the world's mainframe expertise is at IBM.
Disclaimer: I am an IBM employee, but these are my own opinions. They do not reflect the opinions of the IBM corporation in any way, shape, or form. Considering that IBM is not a natural person, I'm not sure if it even has opinions, beyond "money coming in good, money going out bad".
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I am a HP employee who is black with yellow polka dots you insensitive clod.
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You win.
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I don't know specifically about the 401(k), but frankly I don't care either. I don't put money in it - all the retail investments that are available will depreciate when as the baby boomers attempt to retire and realize the demographics don't support it.
Note: My opinion, obviously not IBM's.
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I would agree. While Autobiographical information is often one sided, it does often have far more information then someone else would have.
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I have long used the analogy that Wikipedia is like asking experts in a particular field. For the most part, you'll get accurate information representing the current state of the art. Sometimes, you'll stumble across an expert with bad data, or a conflict of interest, or another factor leading to him giving you incorrect information. You, as the reader, should expect this and seek verification of any questionable claims, but for obtaining a general understanding of an area of study, Wikipedia is good enough
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Unfortunately, most experts have jobs. Worse, their jobs are often in the same field they're an expert on!
Anything an expert might say is biased original research.
Wikipedia editing is only for out-of-work journalists, school children, and neckbeards. Nobody else can be trusted.
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Mistake, Nobody else has so much time to revert articles, or maintain bots to do so, to support their bias. I gave up on wikipedia a long time ago, when instead of fixing the errors i made, all my edits were reversed.
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I rarely edit the pages anymore either. Instead I just join the conversation on the talk page.
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More like experts are prone to writing what they know, rather than what they have handy sources for. (I've done it, although not in my profession.) Presumably an expert could find sources for what they write, but it's not something they typically think of right off.
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That's also more or less the actual Wikipedia policy, despite what the summary implies. There is no prohibition on people who are paid money also editing Wikipedia. In fact Wikipedia actively encourages it in some cases, such as trying to recruit more museum and library staff to contribute to Wikipedia.
What is generally prohibited is: 1) taking money to write promotional articles or "clean" articles on behalf of their subject, like Wiki-PR was doing; or 2) making edits on an article where you have a clear C
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COI isn't against policy, it is simply discouraged. I've participated in a number of policy discussions (as an admin) and tried to initiate a number of policy initiatives on the subject matter, but there is no consensus. Disclosure is a good idea, but in no way, shape or form is it required by policy. Knowingly adding bad material or inaccurate material (regardless of COI) is still prohibited.
Non-story (Score:2)
In this article, I see a long list of IBM employees editing (often badly) articles about IBM. But the so-called "bright-line" rule appears to apply to people specifically being paid to edit Wikipedia. There's no evidence that IBM as a company even has any idea these employees are doing this, and none of them work for IBM PR or Marketing. (I really doubt IBM has any engineers with "sockpuppet Wikipedia" on their list of job responsibilities.)
I'm pretty sure just about every large company has interested em
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It's also badly researched and factually incorrect, at least one of the so called IBM employees does not appear to have ever been an IBM employee.
Any idiot can submit content to developer works.
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Which one are you talking about, H0p3? Which of the "so called IBM employees" doesn't appear to have ever been an IBM employee. At Wikipediocracy, they will quickly correct or retract incorrect info in a blog post, unlike the spotty record on Wikipedia.
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I commented on the article/blog/bullshit itself.
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And, we learn that the person in question was never "so called" as an employee of IBM. The blog post was factual, and you appear to have a reading comprehension issue.
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But the so-called "bright-line" rule appears to apply to people specifically being paid to edit Wikipedia. ...and there's no rule against doing so, as long as they aren't doing at the direction of their employer.
This is where you are wrong. If you quiz Jimmy Wales, who imagines himself the Sole Founder of Wikipedia, his "bright line rule" also applies to employees of companies seeking to edit about their own employer or about their competitors. They are not supposed to touch the article directly at all -- they are supposed to suggest their edits on the Talk page of the article. Now, that being said, most Wikipedians in good standing think this is a bizarre and unworkable rule that the Soul Founder dreamed up (an
Huh? (Score:2)
From the Wikipedia page on this rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... [wikipedia.org]
"Q: What constitutes paid advocacy?
A: Receiving a payment to promote the interests of a client or employer, as happens in the public relations industry and in the communications departments of many kinds of organizations, is a form of paid advocacy. The reason for doing this is generally to maintain a certain point of view about the client in the eyes of the public."
Front-line employees editing Wikipedia in their downtime or personal tim
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Sirwired, are you saying that a paid employee of a company that writes about that company on Wikipedia is not a "paid advocate"? How about a junior copywriter in the public relations department? How about a senior vice president for marketing? I think you're on a slippery slope when you try to make an exception for "front-line employees". Jimbo has clearly said, "The idea that we should ever accept paid advocates directly editing Wikipedia is not ever going to be ok. Consider this to be policy as of rig
Then why doesn't the rule say that? (Score:2)
The rule says "paid advocates", not "any employee". If the rule was meant to cover all employees, it would say so. It doesn't.
Yes, most employees in a marketing or PR dept. probably qualify as "paid advocates"; I never implied they weren't. When I said "front-line employees" I meant people like engineers, support reps, developers, service reps, etc.
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It's not a rule. It's not a policy. It's not even a guideline. It's just something that Jimmy Wales calls a "rule" and therefore many minions who follow him believe it is. If you follow the talk page of Jimbo Wales, you would see that he frowns nearly as "frownily" on employees who edit about their employer as he does on "paid advocates" who write perfectly neutral, factual, sourced content about their clients. If you think that I'm vouching for the sanctity of this "rule" of Jimbo's, then you've compl
provenance (Score:3)
let people perform whatever edits they want, but track the provenance of *everything*. let readers select some function of provenance as a rendering option, with the default being provenance of a pretty high standard of quality and non-conflicted-interest. letting people attach endorsements or upvotes is a pretty valuable kind of metadata anyway.
the problem seems to be the very idea that wikipedia should present a single, canonical version. absolutes are only found in faith, not the real world...
I'll say it again then (Score:2)
Garbage (Score:2)
The interest in Power Computing products is mainly due to Apple’s use of PowerPC processors in its products in the 1990s, not due to the Wikipedians’ interest in IBM.
Interest in the power architecture has nothing to do with the fact that it's in millions of XBOX 360 and PS3 game consoles... it's really all about some products that Apple hasn't sold in 25 years.
And people wonder why nobody RTFA?
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Apple used PowerPC from 1994 to 2006, fwiw.
What's wrong with it? (Score:2)
Disagree with wikipedia's snub of first hand info. Who better to know facts, sometimes, than the people who work at a given place?
I worked for a small volunteer group which eventually got a wikipedia page. A lot of it was bullshit because it was posted by people who were not actually involved and had no idea what the hell they were talking about. The org in question existed before most people had internet access, and even before you could just go get a .com domain name. Those early years have NO citabl
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What's wrong is that Wikipedia is big on verifiability, and first-hand accounts aren't verifiable. If you write an article about your old organization, and get it published by someplace halfway reputable, that information is verifiable and can be used in a Wikipedia article.
Wikipedia isn't the source of truth. It's a summary (often an extremely good one) that refers to verifiable sources. It's real easy to lose sight of that.
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After posting some useful corrections, Wikipedia crapped all over it, you know, because there are no citations for stuff that happened before the WWW was open for general public use. And a lot of it happened offline in meatspace. Even if there were online elements, all the early stuff was on servers that no longer exist.
Publish an article on the org's website. Then you can cite that article. Done. Finito. Have a nice day.
What Else Can IBM'rs do in Rochester? (Score:2)
Watchmen? (Score:1)
Who watches the Watchmen?
The encyclopedia of the unemployed.. (Score:1)
Paid editing is fine (Score:1)
I WONDER..... (Score:1)