Editing for hire leads to intervention
Last week's announcement of a business offering to create Wikipedia articles on behalf of corporations prompted Jimbo Wales to intervene directly. Amid a debate about the ethics of this practice, Wales blocked the account being used, but later reported that he had reached an agreement with its operator to address the problem.
The incident began with the appearance of a press release from MyWikiBiz.com, a company that identifies itself as a family business run by Gregory Kohs and based in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The press release said the company "authors Wikipedia articles for companies and organizations that presently lack exposure on the world's largest encyclopedia", calculating that some 30,000 or more noteworthy companies are not included. The coverage of business entities in Wikipedia has previously been the subject of some criticism (see archived story).