This article was first published 15 years ago on August 22, 2005, eight months after The Signpost was founded. It may be the first Signpost article about paid editing, but certainly hasn't been the last. An earlier article, Outside groups targeting Wikipedia spur fears about bias, published February 7, 2005, a month after The Signpost's first issue raised similar questions about conflict-of-interest editing and canvassing.–S

Twice recently, television organizations have been accused of attempting to use Wikipedia for promotional purposes. The BBC recently added articles on Jamie Kane and Boy*d Upp, a fictional character and band existing in a BBC alternate-reality game. In another incident, G4's Attack of the Show program, to commemorate an appearance by Jimbo Wales, created User:Attackoftheshow, a user page which was used primarily as a sandbox for interested viewers to edit, raising questions over whether the usage was permissable or not.

Jamie Kane

On August 12, a new user created an article about Jamie Kane, asserting that the fictional star of a boy band was real. The article was quickly tagged for speedy deletion, then taken to VfD. Uncle G and other editors changed the article, expanding it and making note that the band was fictional. The VfD subsequently failed, though a series of unsigned and unregistered users attempted to vote.

Later, an article on the fictional band, Boy*d Upp, was created by an IP address inside the BBC, assumed to be a BBC employee. This article was also tagged for VfD, and was deleted, then redirected to Jamie Kane. BBC confirmed that an employee had written the article, but denied that it was meant to promote the game:

"The first posting was simply a case of a fan of the game getting into the spirit of alternative reality a little too much. The follow up posting was made by a fan of the game who happens to work in the BBC (where we've been beta-testing for the last month). This was unauthorized and made without the knowledge of anyone in the Jamie Kane Team or BBC Marketing. To confirm: the BBC would never use Wikipedia as a marketing tool."

Attack of the Show

On August 16, G4 aired an interview with Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales. They created a user page for the show, where viewers could edit as they pleased. Vandalism ensued, and just a day after the episode aired, and over 1200 edits after the page was created, the page was protected. As of press time, the page is still protected to deal with vandalism.

Tony Sidaway protected the page immediately after it was created, but Jimbo unprotected it and instructed administrators to leave it open, because he had already talked with G4, and authorized the move.

Issues with using Wikipedia for marketing

From Wikipedia's point of view:

• if it successfully draws people's attention to the product, then it's highly likely that editors will notice it; once the editors get there they can begin to deal with it
• if the article is accurate, then it's possibly a legitimate article
• if it's not wiki-worthy, then the editing process will make it so, or delete it

From the marketers point of view the Wikipedia is a difficult choice:

• if the article is biased, then the Wikipedia's editors will balance it (it seems reasonable not to expect the marketers to much enjoy that balancing)
• in any case, once they've placed it in Wikipedia, the marketers will have lost control of it, and from their point of view it is totally a loose cannon. Again, they probably won't like that much.

Possibility of marketing spam in the future?

This raises the legitimate question of whether marketing spam may be a problem in the future. While this is a common occurrence on Special:Newpages patrol, a more confusing type of spamming such as the Jamie Kane articles may occur, where many users may be confused over whether the article's content is real, fake, or even vanity. Perhaps what is most reassuring is that all three pages were quickly found and taken care of. Nevertheless, this is a problem that may occur again in the near future.