Wikipedia Accuses PR Firm of Slanting Entries

The foundation that runs Wikipedia is calling out a PR firm that it believes is in the business of biasing Wikipedia entries for its clients. Its first hint? The firm is called "Wiki-PR." The Wikimedia Foundation sent a "cease and desist" letter to the firm, ordering it to stop editing pages, after discovering at least 300 "sock puppet" accounts tracing back to it, a spokesperson tells the Independent. It also accused the firm of "meat puppetry," which is to say using fake accounts to argue your point in online discussions.

Wikipedia first announced that it was looking into the potential sock-puppetry-for-cash scheme last month, in the wake of this Daily Dot article, which dubbed Wiki-PR "Wikipedia's biggest sockpuppet army." On its website, Wiki-PR touts itself as "the easy way to accurately tell your story on Wikipedia," offering services including page creation, page monitoring, and "crisis editing." A spokesman for the company said that "Wiki-PR is working with the Wikimedia Foundation and its counsel to sort this out." (More Wikipedia stories.)