I just read an interesting article about the way people " wiki hack" for online marketing, and I have to say it's a lot more involved than I ever though.
Quote:
|
The number of stories, depth of detail, and actual examples (which I obviously can't share without betraying a lot of trust), including the stories I've recounted above, paint a fairly dark picture of what's actually happening at Wikipedia.
|
- People "build" trusted accounts, and then sell them to SEOs.
- People add links even after they went nofollow in spite of a vote by Wikipedian editors not to. Since the entire site is mirrored, people figure they'll get links from some other site and lots of splogs.
- People add links to syphon traffic.
- People edit articles, making small grammar corrections, to build those trusted accounts to sell.
- People add negative info about their competitor, and then when that person or company tries to have it removed they look villainous.
The article points out all kinds of other nefarious goings on. I'm not writing this here to encourage people to go off on some black hat spamming spree, but because I think it can make for good discussion. And, also, because it frankly scares the **** out of me that I used to rely on the information I'd find on Wikipedia. |
