"The hijacking of Wikipedia by groups is horrifying to us all."
Once Wikipedia became one of the more popular sites on the internet, people started to understand just how important and influential the information on-site could become. It didn't take long for many of them to realize that the best way to ensure their idea of what should be written was to find others who agreed with that idea and were willing to aid the cause. Grouping up on Wikipedia is especially effective given two key facets of the site: edit warring and consensus.
Because it's against policy to personally revert a page to a previous form more than a few times a day, it helps to have other editors on your side. If you're in danger of breaking this stipulation against edit warring, you can just call in a friend or two to continue in your stead. If your opposition is a single editor than either your version will stay up for at the very least the next day, or that editor will break the rule themselves allowing you to report them for edit warring.
Better yet, having the illusion of a neutral consensus on an issue can dissuade opponents from even attempting to edit war in the first place. Consensus is the driving force behind Wikipedia - both that of sources and that of editors involved with articles. Manufacturing consensus is the most reliable way to actually change contentious and controversial articles. Users have done this for years using sockpuppets, but the facade can be difficult to maintain. Meanwhile, group warfare has the dual benefits of being much easier to utilize, and much more difficult to prosecute against. Even in cases where mounds of evidence overwhelmingly show collaboration (tag teaming, canvassing, etc), groups have managed to escape with only simple admonishments, and gone on their merry way.
WikiProjects
Even though Wikipedia does make some effort to curtail these practices, many aspects of the site seem to almost encourage the idea. There are, after all, groupings of editors with "similar interests" nearly everywhere you look. Every single country (and just about every large city) seems to have a group, called a WikiProject, which focuses on improving areas of Wikipedia related to it. As expected, many topical issues have projects as well.
The official stance on WikiProjects seems to be that they are helpful when promoting ideas which don't receive enough weight on the site, while unhelpful when popular but regional ideas become even more prominent. Note, for example, this prominent US-based editor bemoaning the apparent distaste for the American WikiProject:
"Based on community consensus against supporting WikiProject United States and a growing consensus that my editing is no longer needed or wanted here I have decided to end my activities on Wikipedia. I have changed my life priorities to spend less time editing and spending more time with my kids. I have removed my email address and I will be scrambling my password so I cannot log in."The argument being, of course, that Wikipedia is already too Anglo-American centric as it is.
Usually this is all quite innocuous, but on more controversial topics - and especially nationalistic ones - you tend to see the same exact same type of behavior as mentioned above. In fact, many editors who are parts of these groups have regularly and openly canvassed on their project pages, disturbing fellow members enough to file reports themselves. This type of activity has promoted the use of terms like 'cabal' and 'mafia' to refer to various groups editors believe to be acting with malicious intent.
PR campaigning
"This seems like honest people allowing baddies into a party with the plan of keeping an eye on them, fixing what they break, prosecuting them, booting them after they're caught, and keeping the door open for more."
The most recent outcry over groups belongs to the subject of public relations groups and their involvement in Wikipedia. This was mostly in reaction to the creation of a facebook group named Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement, or CREWE for short, and specifically the fact that Wiki founder Jimbo Wales actually gave them the time of day. CREWE's mission is to provide a forum for cooperation between corporate PR representatives who are paid to edit Wikipedia, and the site itself. I'm sure you wouldn't be able to guess that there's some history here with PR reps not being trusted to neutrally edit Wiki articles they may have a conflict of interest (COI) in. I'm sure you also can't imagine why that is.
The official wiki policy is surprising to many, as they learn that having a COI does not actually prevent one from editing those articles. It can certainly dissuade doing so from an ethical user's point of view, but usually it only serves the purpose of editors who admit a COI being watched more closely when they make edits or suggest ideas. As you can imagine, this makes announcing you have a COI, well, a conflict of interest. So instead of doing that, these paid PR reps typically did what any other user with a similar modus operandi would do - stay anonymous and push for their point of view to be adopted the best they could.
In another twist, it turns out some Wikipedia regulars actually support this idea of collaboration. Enough that they've made - you guessed it - a WikiProject based on the idea. It's called WikiProject Cooperation, and I do have to admit that the overview of the project is written out quite nicely. There's even a current peer review project going on with an employee of Cracker Barrel working to improve that particular Wiki page here. It all may seem sudden, but this type of thing has been a long time coming, given the power Wikipedia holds. For just a minor example, consider when your average netizen happens upon the Ben and Jerry's article and reads the very first sentence: "Ben & Jerry's is an American ice cream company, a division of the British-Dutch Unilever conglomerate, that manufactures ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet, and ice cream novelty products." (emphasis mine). If you still thought the company was owned by Ben and Jerry, the guys who started it in 1978 with only a $12,000 investment, your entire perception of the brand has changed before even getting to the grit of the article. This is exactly the type of thing the actual owners of the company are trying to avoid when they market the product the same way it was marketed before they bought it out.
The example of market branding is a common one, and something I would not hesitate to suggest might be contested in the future by corporate representatives playing nice. When all is said and done though, the question of whether this new type of 'ethical' approach is better or worse than what previously occurred on Wikipedia is a difficult one to answer. Notably, separate Wiki groups like PAIDWATCH (interestingly enough not a WikiProject) have stepped up to voice heavy opposition. Which side public support rallies behind remains to be seen. At the very least, all of this brings up some very troubling issues given the role of money and lobbying in nearly every area of public life these days. Wikipedia long believed it could bring information, and power, to the average person, but the power it holds in its own hands is daring to become an obstacle to that very idea.
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