Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

[sashi]

You probably saw that wbm restored the deleted page to draftspace. Granted, there's a bit that's copied from the various webpages one can find online, but absent other evidence, I'll stick with my original assessment: the TOS needs updating if these are current "best practices".

Elsewhere in capitalist-land, it looks like Mr. Bolloré could use a promotional editor. For the moment, he hasn't had too much added about his recent image problem.

In 2018, he is prosecuted by French justice for corruption and in addition to payment of financial penalty, he is liable to be sentenced to ten years in prison.

source

um... liable to be? Does that mean likely to be? (Cf. that's a pretty scry bowling ball you got there M(me). xx.xxx.xx.x)

I think the author you're quoting meant "risks", "carrying a maximum penalty of", etc. by the verb encourir.

As I understand it, Mr. Bolloré is rather litigious when you (to quote Jimmy) "get" facts like this "wrong".

Bwef. ^^

[ericbarbour]

God this is stupid. From all the way back in 2005:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... Ron_Larson

Yet the article continues; after recreation in 2009. Currently around 37k bytes. It was written almost entirely by an SPA. Which also wrote the article about Larson's publishing company, Big Ideas Learning, and diddled other related content. And no one said "boo". His talkpage is full of the usual bot-posted bureaucratic idiocy ("the file you uploaded has been marked for deletion" and other shit).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... ons/Sr1111

So where are those precious little NO PAID EDITING snowflakes now?

[ericbarbour]

Small companies who make specialized products can pull self-advertising on WP with near impunity, as long as they are obscure.

Nice example: Linear Acoustic, entirely the work of Cworth in 2013, who did nothing else on Wikipedia....

Pro-audio companies can pull all kinds of bullshit--very few Wikipedians will even notice them. A competitor of Linear Acoustic is Aphex Systems. Created in 2005 by an IP address, expanded in 2011 by DavidWiener (who added blatant ad copy and did nothing else), shortened by idiot geniuses Binksternet and Drmies, and re-expanded in 2014 by DavidWiener again. (And who is David Wiener? He's a venture capitalist with a massive ego who happens to own Aphex Systems.)

Another competitor is getting miserable treatment on WP, probably because they didn't pay for it: Orban.

One has to ask if Synthfiend is being paid by the companies he's been pumping for years on Wikipedia. Like the "good work" he did for Alesis. Then you could ask why Sluffs followed him around undoing his "good work".

[ericbarbour]

Need more proof that Binksternet is an idiot?

Behringer, courtesy of UliBehringer, RyanAtBehringer, Guitarman987, Will_at_BEHRINGER, Hohan22, and EdatBehringer.

Mr. Knowles saw this happening, and half-heartedly reverted the edits. Some of these obvious Behringer employees were blocked. Yet somehow "mysteriously" the article still looks like ad copy.

Idiocy lives on and on:

(cur | prev) 00:33, 5 December 2009‎ Binksternet (talk | contribs)‎ . . (20,642 bytes) (+1,901)‎ . . (Undid revision 329772844 by EdatBehringer (talk) rv edit warrior) (undo)
(cur | prev) 00:18, 5 December 2009‎ EdatBehringer (talk | contribs)‎ . . (18,741 bytes) (-1,901)‎ . . (→‎Trademark claims: removed because not consistent with Wikipedia policies and guidelines) (undo)
(cur | prev) 22:30, 4 December 2009‎ Binksternet (talk | contribs)‎ . . (20,642 bytes) (+1,901)‎ . . (Undid revision 329748137 by EdatBehringer (talk) Restoring disputed, referenced section.) (undo)
(cur | prev) 22:01, 4 December 2009‎ EdatBehringer (talk | contribs)‎ . . (18,741 bytes) (-1,901)‎ . . (→‎Trademark claims: removed Trademark dispute section as inconsistent with Wikipedia guidelines and policies.) (undo)
(cur | prev) 08:40, 4 December 2009‎ Thedarxide (talk | contribs)‎ . . (20,642 bytes) (+1,901)‎ . . (Reverted 1 edit by EdatBehringer; Rv. (TW)) (undo)
(cur | prev) 23:19, 3 December 2009‎ EdatBehringer (talk | contribs)‎ . . (18,741 bytes) (-1,901)‎ . . (→‎Trademark claims: removed trademark dispute section because violates Wikipedia's guidelines and policies and not neutral unbiased point of view) (undo)

[ericbarbour]

It is very obvious that TSB Bank (United Kingdom) is being controlled by paid editors, especially Cloudbound, who created this article in 2013 and reeks of COI editing on dozens of articles about UK businesses, especially the BBC and various banks....plus one Cordyceps-Zombie.

How did I notice it? Because the business news is full of TSB's horribly bungled transfer of their online banking to servers run by their new Spanish owners. Only a tiny note of this appears in the article. It was a major disaster and TSB management tried to cover it up. And it's being covered up on Wikipedia.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news ... laims.html
https://www.euromoney.com/article/b183z ... fan-at-tsb
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... being-made
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/busi ... 40876.html

[ericbarbour]

Almost forgot about this:

Near the top of people Jimbo tried to kiss up to in the Valley was Tim Draper.
Note the editor Wdraper3.

Also note that all the edits between June 2006 and the end of February 2014 were rev-deleted. That's a LOT of history to simply vanish.
The edit right after that, also noted on the talkpage:

(cur | prev) 23:06, 27 February 2014‎ Justlettersandnumbers (talk | contribs)‎ . . (1,972 bytes) (-5,213)‎ . . (Reverted to revision 55433178 by Charles Matthews: Revert to last clean version before copyvio additions from [http://web.archive.org/web/20060325052047/http://www.dfj.com/team/tim_bio.shtml]; some later edits may need to be redone. (TW))

They can't even cover up the corruption properly. Draper's bio still says nothing about this:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05 ... comments=1

Draper could simply be delusional and utterly devoid of reason, of course. But it's more likely that he's not going to escape liability for pitching this to other investors, and is positioning himself to fend off those charges.

[ericbarbour]

Andrew Mason, cofounder and former CEO of Groupon, has a "colorful history" even by Valley standards.

This WP article shows signs of editing by long-suspected paid editors like Patapsco913 and Soulparadox. Plus a few SPIs that pop up and disappear.

He's not getting his money's worth....

[ericbarbour]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technos_acxel

A shitty and badly-referenced article, which appears to have been written by someone very closely connected to the company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... ions/Pgmlt

[ericbarbour]

Been wondering about N2e. He's either an obsessed fan of "private space travel". And of Wikipedia's "magic".

Or he's being paid to hyper-diddle things like Bigelow Aerospace. Or maybe both.

Speaking of which:
https://www.businessinsider.com/warp-dr ... ?r=US&IR=T

A large share of this money reportedly went to Robert Bigelow — a real-estate mogul who's working to build private space stations through Bigelow Aerospace, is a friend of Reid's, and someone who has funded his own UFO research for years. The billionaire reportedly formed a separate entity, called Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, to secure the government funding and use it to hire 46 researchers and "dozens of other support personnel," KLAS-TV said.

"It's completely crazy talk," Carroll said. "It's not something like, 'Oh, we need better transistors.' This is something that is not anywhere within the realm of feasibility."

[ericbarbour]

Wanna see a perfect example of a "Singulatarian" and "tech nabob" being glorified on Wikipedia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Diamandis

Primary author: an SPA called "Brassfield", who did nothing else.