From the archives
Wikipedia for promotional purposes?
- 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.