A Wikipedia scam has swindled dozens of Britons out of money.
The victims were business people and artists seeking to publicise themselves by creating dedicated pages on the online encyclopaedia but found their efforts rejected as ‘promotional material’, which is prohibited.
They were then contacted, apparently by one of the 250,000 volunteers used by Wikipedia to edit and monitor the accuracy of articles, and told for a fee of about £260 their entries could be expertly rewritten to secure a permanent place on the website.
Demanding money in return for inclusion in the online encyclopaedia is against the website’s rules, but some victims claim they were warned they would also have to pay to ‘protect’ their pages, to save them from negative alteration or removal, in a fashion that amounted to ‘blackmail’.
Now Wikipedia has moved to stop the scam. It said that after a two-month investigation it had taken action against a ‘co-ordinated group’ behind the frauds by barring 381 editor accounts and deleting 210 articles that they created.
One business hit by the scam was Hertfordshire-based holiday firm Quality Villas, where manager Dan Thompson had made his own attempts to establish a Wikipedia page. Thompson said he was contacted by someone he assumed worked for Wikipedia and told that, although his initial efforts ‘did not meet Wiki requirements’, they promised to ‘rewrite the content to make it acceptable and publish it’.
Thompson said: ‘Shortly afterwards, a modified version was posted online. The “editor” presented me with a charge of $400 (Raround R5,300) for the work. I duly paid this, then the posting online was deleted again. Maybe I was naive, but I suspect I am not alone.’
Another victim was singer Paul Manners, a former contestant on Britain’s Got Talent.
Although Wikipedia said the entries struck from the website as a result of the investigation were ‘generally promotional in nature’, the businesses and people concerned should be considered ‘victims’.
In a blog produced by the Wikipedia Foundation – which is behind the online encyclopaedia – Ed Erhart and Juliet Barbara said: ‘Although it does not happen often, undisclosed paid advocacy editing may represent a serious conflict of interest. – Daily Mail