PR firm accused of editing Wikipedia for government clients; can Wikipedia predict the stock market?

An article published on May 10 on Odwyerpr.com written by Greg Hazley documented a "sparring match" between Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and public relations firm Qorvis partner Matt Lauer. Lauer, who is not related to the Matt Lauer of the US' Today show, disputes Wikipedia's guideline discouraging public relations firms from editing articles on their clients, saying "This inane policy would violate the basic tenets of even the most partisan of small-town newspapers or the most crooked court rooms. This dangerous policy violates the fundamental rules of reporting, of debate, and of discussion." Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Paid editing Wales responded via Twitter, saying "Your complaints are deeply dishonest to the point of being embarrassing."

Lauer's firm, Qorvis, created several sockpuppets to try to "whitewash" the pages of his clients. There was a thread about this on Wales' Wikipedia talk page regarding Qorvis in February which referenced a sockpuppet investigation into the matter. When it was confirmed, Wales suggested to Lauer that his clients should fire him for his misuse of Wikipedia.

A previous article in the Daily Dot detailed some of Wikipedia's "voluminous" evidence against Qorvis—though Lauer denies that it is true—and continued to slam Lauer:

The O'Dwyer article concludes with a comment from Wales stating that in his experience, which he describes as "comprehensive", people who are paid representatives are bad editors who insert biased information and that they do it because "that is what paid advocates do." Still, despite Wales' strong words, Wikipedia's conflict of interest and paid editing guidelines are purposely vague, and attempts to strengthen or weaken them have faced strong resistance.

A report conducted by researchers at the Warwick Business School has concluded that a trading strategy based on the frequency of views would have yielded up to a 141 per cent improvement over a random strategy. IT Business of Canada wrote about the report. Their article commented that:

The report found that using Wikipedia from late 2007 to 2012 may have "provided some insight" into how the market was going to perform, but said that no such relationship exists between views of Wikipedia articles on actors and filmmakers.

The report can be viewed in its entirety via Nature.com here.

• Australian bookmaker and COI: The Wikipedia article on Tom Waterhouse, who is described there as a fourth-generation bookmaker and businessman, came into the public spotlight this week after the Age, an Australian newspaper, published an article detailing his staff's alleged involvement. While Waterhouse is quoted as saying that "I've only asked them to make sure [the content] abides by what is legal," the newspaper detailed efforts by several editors to remove well-referenced information.
• Citation needed: boingboing.net published a brief blurb regarding the Wikipedia article entitled citation needed which, ironically, does not have any ^{[citation needed]} tags.
• Rachel Johnson factual error: A brief article in the London Evening Standard commented that Rachel Johnson's Wikipedia page had a factual error and that, when she tried to correct it herself, she received a rebuke from administrator Orangemike. The error has now been fixed after the implementation of a reliable source. Mike commented to The Signpost that he was not contacted by the paper prior to their running the story and that he left the "usual warning" about conflicts of interest.
• Wikipedian featured: The Oregonian published a feature on Wikipedian Jason Moore, who lives in Oregon. On Wikipedia, he is known as Another Believer. (Editor's note: Jason gave the Signpost permission to disclose his real name.)
• Track Wikipedia edits live: TheAtlanticCities.com released an article announcing the creation of a live map tracking from where in the world Wikipedia edits come. The map, which can be viewed here was designed by two programmers and uses geographic locations of IP addresses to generate its data.
• Basketball player called "faggot" on Wikipedia: The Huffington Post published an article with a screenshot of this diff before the revision was deleted. The revision showed an edit that read, "He just revealed he is a faggot!" The Huffington Post obtained the screenshot from Queerty.com, which in turn received it from an "eagle-eyed reader".

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• User Another Believer was a recent recepient of the Editor of the Week Award. ```Buster Seven Talk 04:27, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm a bit surprised to see the Rachel Johnson problem being described as a "minor mistake", and that Johnson's own coverage of the issue wasn't mentioned. The mistake she removed included vandalism claiming that she had never completed her degree. She also made some other innocuous updates, [1], but the vandalism that was a genuine problem, and had sat in the article for over a month. [2]. It wasn't corrected until five days later, when an IP used Johnson's article as the source. [3] OrangeMike erred in reinserting the vandalism, and using a templated warning that wasn't really appropriate on her talk page. While Johnson's edits weren't fully in keeping with the COI policy, and thus warranted a talk page message, they were NPOV, and removing vandalism is specifically permitted under the policy. - Bilby (talk) 04:51, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Bilby, I had the same suspicion when I read that snippet and was about to dig into the diffs and now see your clarification - thanks for posting! I am also very keen to see the content of that "templated warning" and specifically, I would like to know if it directs such users to our "ombudsman" or some other venue where they can post their request for corrections. It's not fair that only people who have a public forum are able to force "Wikipedia" to move, and that others not so fortunate to be able to air their grief in a public arena must wait patiently for weeks, months or years until their "talk page message" is read and acted upon. Jane (talk) 06:18, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The warning is here. The difficulty is that it is mostly a warning against creating an autobiography, which doesn't apply. About half way through it mentions suggesting changes on a talk page, which is the only point that was relevant. The problem is that the standard warning for biographical COI edits seems to be directed at creating pages, rather than making edits. This is one of those cases where a personal comment would have been more useful than the template, because the template is too generic. - Bilby (talk) 06:32, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that too! Though I can sympathize with Orange Mike's desire to use a template for such COI violations as personal messages take much more energy when on recent-edit-patrol, I do think that such a template should go to some basic COI landing page where the user can look up where to go for help. I noticed for example, that the term "talk page" isn't even explained in that template. Jane (talk) 09:05, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I think "whose is described" should be corrected to "who is described." --Hispalois (talk) 05:34, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed it. From Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/About, "post-publication edits such as grammatical and spelling corrections to articles are welcome" -- John of Reading (talk) 07:09, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hatnote Recent Changes Map

The Hatnote Recent Changes Map (Hatnote Recent Changes Map) reminded me of Wikipediavision (WikipediaVision (beta)).

—Wavelength (talk) 19:17, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]