Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Good, bad, biased, paid or what-have-you. There's an endless supply.
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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Mar 30, 2017 2:44 am

Consider the notorious "Center For Medical Progress", which consists of two cranks with a mail drop in Irvine, who go around the country trying to "prove" that Planned Parenthood is an evil criminal mafia killing babies and selling their parts. Figures they would be based in Orange County. Their "press releases" are classics of shrieking arrogance.
http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/

Mr. Daleiden has one of the most unbalanced Twitter accounts I've ever seen. What a twat. He's like a right-wing ignorant David Gorski. More autistic screeching.
https://twitter.com/daviddaleiden

After they successfully scared the media and Congress into poking at Planned Parenthood in 2015, USA Today actually gave Mr. Daleiden column space to rant.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2 ... /79154292/

Unfortunately he and his "fellow employee" are now both on criminal trial for recording private conversations. Oopsie.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201 ... blication/

I am completely amazed at the pointlessness of all that. And wonder; who's footing the bills? As usual, the related Wikipedia articles condemn them repeatedly but tell us nothing about where the CMP gets its support. Generally true for articles about anti-abortion types.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cente ... l_Progress
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Daleiden

Here's the funniest part: this "Center For Medical Progress" is often confused with another "Center For Medical Progress", that is part of the Manhattan Institute. We know damn well who funds the Manhattan Institute: Scaife, Olin, Bradley and Simon Foundations. The cream of the East Coast moneyed right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan ... y_Research

Surely you remember Bill Simon, Nixon's treasury secretary and one of the fathers of "leveraged buyouts". A gigantic asshole IMO. Notorious for abusing his own children "according to the standards of free thought and free markets". And HIS Wikipedia article is being controlled by the usual fuckheads from the Von Mises Institute, like Srich32977 and a succession of SPIs and socks....in fact, they fiddle with all the articles related to these "mainstream" conservative or "libertarian" groups. But the CMP in California apparently has no connection to the East Coast right. Apparently. Still like to know who's footing the bills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Simon

And speaking of right-wing foundations, I wonder who this is. Lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... /Monarch87
"Hi, I’m Alyssa Settefrati, a Communications Specialist at the John Templeton Foundation."

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Mar 30, 2017 3:03 am

Top kek, as the nerds say these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rescue_(Kansas)#Wikipedia_advisory
The following message appeared on Operation Rescue's website:

lnformation about Operation Rescue and Troy Newman found on Wikipedia is inaccurate and should be ignored. It should also be noted that numerous independent blog sites found on the Internet have no accountability and should not be trusted as a source of accurate information about Operation Rescue. If anyone has any questions about us, please contact us directly.[33]

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Apr 06, 2017 8:36 pm

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

almost entirely the work of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Worthywords

Who is unquestionably author Lynn Hamilton. Right there on her userpage:
I am, occasionally, paid to edit Wikipedia. I am currently working for the University of South Florida on articles to be titled "The National Academy of Inventors," "Florida Inventors Hall of Fame," "Technology and Innovation" (Journal), and "Paul R. Sanberg." On behalf of Alex Skatell, I am writing an article to be titled "Alex Skatell." Also Brooke de Lench on the Brooke de Lench article and Omar last name unknown on the Adnan Chilwan article and the Dubai Islamic Bank article and the Independent Journal Review article for Alex Skatell. Also working on "Polarion software" for the Polarion Software people and Marc Detmers. Also now working on the "David Lozeau" article for Calavera Company. Now cleaning up the "Mark Lee (British author)" article for Mark Lee (British author). Now working on the "Jack Storms" article for Vivian Storms. Currently working on "PROMIS Clinics" and "Withersdane Hall" for those respective companies. Now working on an article to be titled "Salvi, Schostock, and Pritchard" for the company of the same name, which is closely watching the Clifford Law Offices article for any unequal treatment, and will shortly be cleaning up the "Patrick Salvi" article for Patrick Salvi. Now working on an article titled "Avi Tuschman" for Avi Tuschman. Also updating the Wye College article for accuracy on behalf of Promis Clinics.

"AND I'm caching a little code here in case I need it later: Elton John, Patsy Palmer, and Paul Roberts.[1]

"If you feel that this disclosure is insufficient or lacks seriousness, you can (if you have not done so already) consult this list: articles created Everything above "Herakut" was commissioned except for the Citizens Rights Watch article and it seems I have a conflict of interest there as well because I'm named as helping to launch the thing even though my contribution was really slim and, as far as I can see, entirely unsuccessful.

Which accomplished nothing for her; in July 2015 she was permabanned. After more than SIX YEARS of editing. After being complained about on the COI Noticeboard a few times. Many of the articles she created were AFDed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ng_cleanup

By the by, in 2013 Lynn wrote a book called "CLAY-FOOT TITAN: AN AGENDA FOR IMPROVING WIKIPEDIA"....a book that no one appears to have bought.

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Re: Paid Editing

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:24 pm

For an example of a sad little short article that attracts incredible amounts of questionable edit traffic (some unquestionably paid), let me recommend Bijan (designer). It was created in 2006 by someone who appears to work in the fragrance business; that doesn't surprise because Bijan's best-known product was his men's cologne.

After that it was the regular target of editing chunks by IP addresses and SPAs that did little or nothing else on Wikipedia. Known paid editors like Patapsco913 have messed with it, and it goes on today, even though Bijan himself died in 2011. What I recall was that Bijan had an epically-huge ego and his main store on Rodeo Drive was constantly hyped as one of the highest-priced boutiques "in the world". They tried to sell all kinds of fashion, accessories, home furnishings, etc--all at nosebleed prices. The Iranian expat community in LA regarded him as a "hero" or somesuch. Even though very few of them could afford his products.

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Re: Paid Editing

Post by ericbarbour » Wed May 03, 2017 3:57 am

Babby don't frigth back:

https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/0 ... o-forever/

"Things only got worse under CEO Marissa Mayer, a well-respected Google exec brought in to save the self-destructive company. Between 2012 and 2014, she killed 30 out of the 40 companies she acquired and pitched weird ideas like re-creating Yahoo's old homepage model for mobile. Under her leadership, the company also designed a custom tool for searching user e-mails at the behest of US intelligence—a move that led then-Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos to quit. Earlier this year, Mayer admitted that another state actor had also breached Yahoo's databases, exposing over a billion people's personal information."

Funny how these kind of reports tend to ignore how the popular websites originated. The Internet was not built by its users, it was built by exploitative little shits like Zuckerberg and Larry'n'Sergey. Almost every one of them started as pirates, using campus or company computer resources to get started and not paying for bandwidth. Meanwhile, the much vaunted users are merely the product. This kind of shit attitude might yet drive the whole thing into the ground.

Not mentioned: how Yahoo started in 1994. As a primitive web directory started by two extremely snotty Stanford students named Jerry Yang and David Filo. They ran it on a Stanford server, collecting millions of users and talking to venture capitalists while taking full advantage of the school's free server capacity. And lying about it to their faculty advisors. A few years later, Larry Page and Sergey Brin did similar things to start Google.

(You will also note that this is not mentioned on their Wikipedia biographies, both of which are rather short and detail-free for articles about major Internet innovators. I suspect paid editing. For an Internet billionaire, it's truly amazing how short Filo's biography is.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Yang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Filo

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Re: Paid Editing

Post by ericbarbour » Sat May 06, 2017 7:21 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzio_20mm_rifle

Pathetic catalog-page article with inadequate sourcing. Created in 2010 by Warmonger15, who did nothing else on Wikipedia.

How many giant $11,000 sniper rifles do they expect to sell with a Wikipedia article?

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Re: Paid Editing

Post by ericbarbour » Sun May 07, 2017 1:49 am

He's an old customer of mine so I should not diss him, but this could not be more obvious or sillier:

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

Why is this not tagged as "reading like an advertisement"?

The great bulk of it was written in 2006 by an IP address, 205.147.32.157. Which also worked on articles about two of Rhett's clients, Mariah Carey and Kelly Clarkson.

If you do a geolocate on that IP address, it says the hostname is "mach28.rhettlaw-dsl.digilink.net". It's Rhett Lawrence's home DSL connection.

Maybe Rhett's dog did it?

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Re: Paid Editing

Post by ericbarbour » Tue May 09, 2017 12:52 am

This is a developing story so you get some forewarning of a possible editwar over a corporate article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICON_Aircraft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICON_A5

Created and expanded from 2009 to 2015 by an SPA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... ortoVeloce

Later cleaned up by the notorious light-aircraft fan Ahunt, who at least tries to keep articles reasonably neutral. He's created and edited thousands of articles about various light, ultralight and hang-glider aircraft. Paid? Beats me.

Why post this now, since the ICON article hasn't been edited at all since March? Because it soon will be--one of their A5 seaplanes, with two employees aboard, crashed today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gujFdn5Woe4
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/2 ... 130068.php
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

ICON isn't famous for their aircraft (yet). But they are sorta famous for their Silicon Valley connections, and for their bizarre and highly restrictive sales terms. I can easily picture their shithead investors (including Miss Digerati herself Esther Dyson, whose article has been "cleaned" for her by Christopher Locke and some Wikipedia insiders, looky there's another Wikipedia connection to that stupid Cluetrain Manifesto thing!) demanding that any buyer must sign and abide by a contract that basically says ICON can't be sued by an owner for liability. Owners can't even "disparage" the company or its products. This is an obvious result of the lawsuit frenzy of the 1980s that almost destroyed the American general-aviation business. Whether it's legally enforceable or not will be an "interesting court case" someday.

As the article says:
In April 2016 the ICON A5 purchaser's agreement was made public and was noted by the aviation media as containing many controversial elements not usually found in aircraft purchase agreements. These include contractually-required pilot training, maintenance, agreements not to sue, and a camera and recorder to monitor pilot behavior, that is owned by the manufacturer but must be maintained by the owner. Owners also must agree to be "supportive" of the company. In the case of a resale, future owners are required to sign the same agreement or face penalties. There are indications that a number of A5 position holders have canceled their purchases based on the wording of the agreement.[21][22]


It's only a matter of time before someone inserts the crash into the ICON article, and I fully expect a paid editor will show up and try to remove it.

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Re: Paid Editing

Post by ericbarbour » Wed May 10, 2017 1:16 am

Ahunt added the Lake Berryessa accident to the A5 article today. Anyone wanna wager on how long it will take for someone to remove it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =774802307

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Re: Paid Editing

Post by ericbarbour » Wed May 10, 2017 8:42 pm

Pointed out to me on Facebook, by Alison Cassidy of all people: the ongoing attempt to sterilize the biography of far-right Irish political figure Justin Barrett. Just today someone called "Irelandwatch" kept trying to make him look like a poor little victim of far-left violence.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =779566257
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =779661369

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... elandwatch

She also adds
It's endemic right now. Check out all the socks that are involved. There's a whole raft of articles involved including Justin Barrett (no relation), Youth Defence, anything about abortion in Ireland or the 8th amendment, or Savita Halappanavar, or the National Party, or Muintir na hÉirinn, etc.

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