This might be of interest to some: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/13/bbc_punks_wikipedia_.html - Wikipedia articles (now VfDed) about a fictional popstar being added as part of a viral marketing campaign. It raises the not unreasonable question - how many of these are out there already?
On 14/08/05, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
This might be of interest to some: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/13/bbc_punks_wikipedia_.html - Wikipedia articles (now VfDed) about a fictional popstar being added as part of a viral marketing campaign.
The talk pages of the articles concerned do a pretty good job of dimissing the notion that this was some sort of viral marketing campaign - more a series of honest mistakes.
Dan
Still, someone wrote into boingboing with the following:
"I can't say who I am, but I do work at a company that uses Wikipedia as a key part of online marketing strategies. That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or "leaks" embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it (evil laugh).
On the other side, I love it from an academia/sociological standpoint, and I don't necessarily have a problem with it used as a viral marketing tool. After all, marketing is a form of information, with just a different end point in mind (consuming rather than learning)."
How well can wikipedia protect itself against this unfamiliar sort of systemic bias?
--------------------- Ben Yates Wikipedia Blog -- http://wikip.blogspot.com
On 8/15/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/08/05, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
This might be of interest to some: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/13/bbc_punks_wikipedia_.html - Wikipedia articles (now VfDed) about a fictional popstar being added as part of a viral marketing campaign.
The talk pages of the articles concerned do a pretty good job of dimissing the notion that this was some sort of viral marketing campaign - more a series of honest mistakes.
Dan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Ben Yates wrote:
Still, someone wrote into boingboing with the following:
"I can't say who I am, but I do work at a company that uses Wikipedia as a key part of online marketing strategies. That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or "leaks" embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it (evil laugh).
On the other side, I love it from an academia/sociological standpoint, and I don't necessarily have a problem with it used as a viral marketing tool. After all, marketing is a form of information, with just a different end point in mind (consuming rather than learning)."
How well can wikipedia protect itself against this unfamiliar sort of systemic bias?
Quite easily...
Take off every Zig! You know what you doing. Move Zig. For great justice.
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
Ben Yates stated for the record:
Still, someone wrote into boingboing with the following:
"I can't say who I am, but I do work at a company that uses Wikipedia as a key part of online marketing strategies. That includes planting of viral information in entries...."
How well can wikipedia protect itself against this unfamiliar sort of systemic bias?
Check, delete, publicize, ban, lather, rinse, repeat.
On 15/08/05, Ben Yates bluephonic@gmail.com wrote:
Still, someone wrote into boingboing with the following:
"I can't say who I am, but I do work at a company that uses Wikipedia as a key part of online marketing strategies. That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or "leaks" embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it (evil laugh).
On the other side, I love it from an academia/sociological standpoint, and I don't necessarily have a problem with it used as a viral marketing tool. After all, marketing is a form of information, with just a different end point in mind (consuming rather than learning)."
How well can wikipedia protect itself against this unfamiliar sort of systemic bias?
Doubt it's even true. Some tiny article hidden in the depths which gets four visitors a month (ie new page patrollers!) probably isn't the best way to promote a product/whatever...
Dan
Ben Yates wrote:
Still, someone wrote into boingboing with the following:
"I can't say who I am, but I do work at a company that uses Wikipedia as a key part of online marketing strategies. That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or "leaks" embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it (evil laugh).
On the other side, I love it from an academia/sociological standpoint, and I don't necessarily have a problem with it used as a viral marketing tool. After all, marketing is a form of information, with just a different end point in mind (consuming rather than learning)."
How well can wikipedia protect itself against this unfamiliar sort of systemic bias?
Craig Hubley predicted this kind of thing years ago, and suggested that the response should be retaliation. For example, a policy that all favourable articles about products should be rewritten with a negative bias.
Of course, this (and for that matter, almost all of Craig's other ideas) would be completely unacceptable to the Wikipedia community, I just thought it was an interesting point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Spam&oldid=1348455
-- Tim Starling
On 8/15/05, Ben Yates bluephonic@gmail.com wrote:
How well can wikipedia protect itself against this unfamiliar sort of systemic bias?
Not well, but it doesn't matter much. If it is information about something somebody cares or knows about, interested people will see it and verify it or change it and so forth. If it is not something someone cares about, then it hardly matters, except when people gloat about how they "gamed Wikipedia" by doing something nobody noticed.
It's not worth getting any more flustered about that sort of thing than it is the occasional journalist or whomever who adds deliberate misinformation to a page about some obscure Tsar and then says, "Ha, Wikipedia couldn't demarcate truth and fiction for a whole week!" The people who think that every page of Wikipedia will be accurate 100% of the time and that 100% of all errors (deliberate or accidental) will be caught are the same people who probably 1. don't understand the point of Wikipedia anyway, 2. wouldn't like that point even if they understood it.
In reality, if Wikipedia proves useful and reliable enough for most people, it will be used and enjoyed. Such has been demonstrated adequately so far and will continue to be in the future. If a few people want to misuse Wikipedia, so be it. Not even the hard sciences can protect against deliberate fraud.
FF
Dan Grey stated for the record:
On 14/08/05, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
This might be of interest to some: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/13/bbc_punks_wikipedia_.html - Wikipedia articles (now VfDed) about a fictional popstar being added as part of a viral marketing campaign.
The talk pages of the articles concerned do a pretty good job of dimissing the notion that this was some sort of viral marketing campaign - more a series of honest mistakes.
If it could be shown to the satisfaction of the ArbComm that it was an organized campaign, I would be in favor of a month-long block on the entire address space of the organizers, ''pour encourager les autres''. We are not a blank billboard, and their graffiti is not welcome.
On 15/08/05, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
If it could be shown to the satisfaction of the ArbComm that it was an organized campaign, I would be in favor of a month-long block on the entire address space of the organizers, ''pour encourager les autres''. We are not a blank billboard, and their graffiti is not welcome.
Probably a waste of time - any PR company that fancies trying their luck isn't going to consult past arbcom cases, and won't care if they get blocked anyway.
Dan
Dan Grey wrote:
Probably a waste of time - any PR company that fancies trying their luck isn't going to consult past arbcom cases, and won't care if they get blocked anyway.
They probably will care if I mock them mercilessly in the press, though.
Well, some of them will. Big companies would be quite unhappy to end up looking so annoying. But very small companies might be willing to get negative press; at least it is attention.
--Jimbo
On 8/15/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Dan Grey wrote:
Probably a waste of time - any PR company that fancies trying their luck isn't going to consult past arbcom cases, and won't care if they get blocked anyway.
They probably will care if I mock them mercilessly in the press, though.
Well, some of them will. Big companies would be quite unhappy to end up looking so annoying. But very small companies might be willing to get negative press; at least it is attention.
--Jimbo
Even better: savage their *clients* for choosing such a daft PR firm, where appropriate.
On 8/16/05, Michael Turley michael.turley@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/15/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Dan Grey wrote:
Probably a waste of time - any PR company that fancies trying their luck isn't going to consult past arbcom cases, and won't care if they get blocked anyway.
They probably will care if I mock them mercilessly in the press, though.
Well, some of them will. Big companies would be quite unhappy to end up looking so annoying. But very small companies might be willing to get negative press; at least it is attention.
--Jimbo
Even better: savage their *clients* for choosing such a daft PR firm, where appropriate.
Better yet, issue a fatwah.
The whole point of viral marketing is to get people talking about it. Having the founder of Wikipedia jump up and down over Ford or Nike or the BBC merely sends a message to the little guys that it's worth trying.
The comparison with graffiti is apposite. The people who tag walls and subway carriages want attention. Offering it to them is counter-productive. The best strategy is to paint over it as soon as possible rather than call a press conference.
Sean Barrett (sean@epoptic.org) [050816 01:34]:
If it could be shown to the satisfaction of the ArbComm that it was an organized campaign, I would be in favor of a month-long block on the entire address space of the organizers, ''pour encourager les autres''. We are not a blank billboard, and their graffiti is not welcome.
The latest case being the BBC, it would be well above AC level ;-)
- d.
David Gerard stated for the record:
Sean Barrett (sean@epoptic.org) [050816 01:34]:
If it could be shown to the satisfaction of the ArbComm that it was an organized campaign, I would be in favor of a month-long block on the entire address space of the organizers, ''pour encourager les autres''. We are not a blank billboard, and their graffiti is not welcome.
The latest case being the BBC, it would be well above AC level ;-)
I knew that we were talking about the Beeb as I wrote my original. If we had proof that the BBC was deliberately and as a matter of corporate strategy introducing falsehoods into Wikipedia (and fiction presented as fact is falsehood), then I would be eager to block them and shout it from the rooftops.
We don't put up with vandalism. We should put up with corporate-planned and -sponsored vandalism even less.
But unlike some, I'll wait for proof before going to war. ;->
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Sean Barrett wrote:
David Gerard stated for the record:
The latest case being the BBC, it would be well above AC level ;-)
I knew that we were talking about the Beeb as I wrote my original. If we had proof that the BBC was deliberately and as a matter of corporate strategy introducing falsehoods into Wikipedia (and fiction presented as fact is falsehood), then I would be eager to block them and shout it from the rooftops.
We don't put up with vandalism. We should put up with corporate-planned and -sponsored vandalism even less.
But unlike some, I'll wait for proof before going to war. ;->
I'd assume that a body corporate like the BBC would have its own range of IP adddresses. If they will hold us to ransom, we could quite easily block their entire IP range from editing, consequences be damned; better yet, encourage people (read: slashdot users) to DDoS BBC until they cease and desist.
Remember, it's our site, we make the rules.
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
Alphax (alphasigmax@gmail.com) [050816 17:55]:
I'd assume that a body corporate like the BBC would have its own range of IP adddresses. If they will hold us to ransom, we could quite easily block their entire IP range from editing, consequences be damned; better yet, encourage people (read: slashdot users) to DDoS BBC until they cease and desist. Remember, it's our site, we make the rules.
Y'know, diplomacy does have a lot going for it as a first option.
- d.
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David Gerard wrote:
Alphax (alphasigmax@gmail.com) [050816 17:55]:
I'd assume that a body corporate like the BBC would have its own range of IP adddresses. If they will hold us to ransom, we could quite easily block their entire IP range from editing, consequences be damned; better yet, encourage people (read: slashdot users) to DDoS BBC until they cease and desist. Remember, it's our site, we make the rules.
Y'know, diplomacy does have a lot going for it as a first option.
In the last 2 days 5 sites have been picked up by Google Alerts as being about the viral marketing campaign. The first summary was:
Someone has apparently abused collaborative reference site Wikipedia in a viral marketing campaign for a BBC online alternate reality game.
then:
Yesterday, the BBC Alternate Reality Game, Jamie Kane and the presumed viral marketing use of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, hit ...
I haven't read the stories, but some nutter in the marketing department will probably not respond to diplomacy. And meanwhile, we, the community, have to put up with this crap. We don't go and abuse their services, do we?? People need to learn that Wikipedia has power far beyond deleting and blocking.
For one thing, we have NPOV, and your remarks on its power are fondly remembered :)
For another, we have plenty of users who would gladly go out of their way to defend us.
DDoS has been remarkably effective in changing corporate minds in the past. Look at the case of eToy.
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
Alphax wrote:
DDoS has been remarkably effective in changing corporate minds in the past. Look at the case of eToy.
This (Wikipedia endorsing a DDoS) will never happen, so its pointless to argue about, but I just wanted to go on the record saying I am totally against it. This isn't the wild west. Block their IP range if absolutely necessary, but DDoSing them is insane.
- Ryan Delaney
On 16/08/05, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:>
This (Wikipedia endorsing a DDoS) will never happen, so its pointless to argue about, but I just wanted to go on the record saying I am totally against it. This isn't the wild west. Block their IP range if absolutely necessary, but DDoSing them is insane.
And couldn't happen. Remember - the BBC was serving 10Gb a *second* on the morning of July 7. Slashdot's influence is so small it doesn't even produce a noticeable blip in our requests per second.
Jimbo pretty much hits the nail on the head - for a small PR firm, the hullabaloo would be great for them, and far more effective than if their "viral" campaign had gone unnoticed.
However if you want to start entertaining the idea of range-blocking the BBC or other big company - which would make the news wires, I'd imagine - you need a very high level of proof, or you're going to look stupid in front the world. Not good for image (but would sure drive WP a lot of traffic :-) ).
I believe the Jamie Kane article was started by a username. It may be possible to get the devs to find out the IP address assoicated with that name (I believe the last-used IP for that address is recorded, but nothing more). If that IP resolves to the BBC... well, that's something. But the BBC has some 20,000+ employees and it could still all be a co-incidence, albeit a suspicious one.
Dan
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Dan Grey wrote:
On 16/08/05, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:>
This (Wikipedia endorsing a DDoS) will never happen, so its pointless to argue about, but I just wanted to go on the record saying I am totally against it. This isn't the wild west. Block their IP range if absolutely necessary, but DDoSing them is insane.
And couldn't happen. Remember - the BBC was serving 10Gb a *second* on the morning of July 7. Slashdot's influence is so small it doesn't even produce a noticeable blip in our requests per second.
How much do the combined Wikimedia servers serve? What would happen if all the Wikimedia sites were redirected to the BBC for a day?
Jimbo pretty much hits the nail on the head - for a small PR firm, the hullabaloo would be great for them, and far more effective than if their "viral" campaign had gone unnoticed.
It's like [[WP:BEANS]] - now that someone has tried, everyone else will too.
However if you want to start entertaining the idea of range-blocking the BBC or other big company - which would make the news wires, I'd imagine - you need a very high level of proof, or you're going to look stupid in front the world. Not good for image (but would sure drive WP a lot of traffic :-) ).
They are abusing our site for corporate gain! Surely we have every right to block them! They at least owe us an apology for misusing our resources like this.
I believe the Jamie Kane article was started by a username. It may be possible to get the devs to find out the IP address assoicated with that name (I believe the last-used IP for that address is recorded, but nothing more). If that IP resolves to the BBC... well, that's something. But the BBC has some 20,000+ employees and it could still all be a co-incidence, albeit a suspicious one.
Well, if they want to violate [[WP:POINT]], we can disrupt them back. To quote [[meta:Bash]]: You can, however, disrupt Encarta to make a point. I don't see why the same shouldn't hold for anyone who corporate entities who do the same to us.
Besides, if the BBC has 20,000+ employees on their side, how many more users do we have on *our* side? With the powers of Wikipedia and Slashdot combined...
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
On 16/08/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
How much do the combined Wikimedia servers serve? What would happen if all the Wikimedia sites were redirected to the BBC for a day?
I don't think the new colo has a traffic meter, but before the June 7 move peak was about 120Mb/s, around 1/100th of the BBC's peak, so we'd have no effect whatsoever. (In terms of traffic, we get about half: http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=640&h=480&r=6m&y=r&u=wikipe... . Bear in mind the BBC has much more multimedia on their site than us, hence the disproportionally high data flow for them.)
It's like [[WP:BEANS]] - now that someone has tried, everyone else will too.
I don't know. One incident is news worthy. A second is "Already been done. Goodbye" from the point of view of the media.
They are abusing our site for corporate gain! Surely we have every right to block them! They at least owe us an apology for misusing our resources like this.
Our top priority has to be coming away from this without harming our - or Jimbo's personal - reputation. Making big claims which could hit the media without a high level of proof wouldn't be a Good Thing.
Well, if they want to violate [[WP:POINT]], we can disrupt them back. To quote [[meta:Bash]]: You can, however, disrupt Encarta to make a point. I don't see why the same shouldn't hold for anyone who corporate entities who do the same to us.
Besides, if the BBC has 20,000+ employees on their side, how many more users do we have on *our* side? With the powers of Wikipedia and Slashdot combined...
Remember we only have a few hundred active editors on any one day. The BBC's web infrastructure is extremely powerful - our is nothing in comparison, and in turn /. is nothing compared to us!
Anyway two wrongs don't make a right.
Dan
On 16/08/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:(In terms of traffic, we get about half:
http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=640&h=480&r=6m&y=r&u=wikipe...
More interesting graph (24 months vs 6):
http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=640&h=480&r=24m&y=r&u=wikip...
Dan
How much do the combined Wikimedia servers serve? What would happen if all the Wikimedia sites were redirected to the BBC for a day?
sod all cheack out their alexa rank
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=med...
They run along with everthing else a news site. After spet 11 they have learned. The bad publictly for wikipedia would bite big time.
They are abusing our site for corporate gain! Surely we have every right to block them! They at least owe us an apology for misusing our resources like this.
Doubtful. Remember with the exception of a few spin off enterprizes the BBC is non profit makeing.
Well, if they want to violate [[WP:POINT]], we can disrupt them back. To quote [[meta:Bash]]: You can, however, disrupt Encarta to make a point. I don't see why the same shouldn't hold for anyone who corporate entities who do the same to us.
Besides, if the BBC has 20,000+ employees on their side, how many more users do we have on *our* side? With the powers of Wikipedia and Slashdot combined...
Not a significant number since the BCC is one of the planets most respected news organisations. They are the number 1 site in the uk. You'd get almost no supporters and I doubt they would even notice any such "attack".
Alphax wrote:
How much do the combined Wikimedia servers serve?
About 250 Mbps peak:
http://noc.wikimedia.org/trafstats/trafstats-weekly.png
What would happen if all the Wikimedia sites were redirected to the BBC for a day?
The BBC would let out a cheer. We would lose a lot of traffic. That's not the best way to conduct a DDoS.
Ryan Delaney wrote:
Block their IP range if absolutely necessary, but DDoSing them is insane.
I don't see what good blocking their IP range would do, since the article in question ([[Jamie Kane]]) was not created from a BBC netblock. [[Boy*d Upp]] was, but the author has apologized and stated that he was acting on his own behalf.
Wikipedians regularly spammed the village pump with gmail invites when that little craze was at its height, so I find it surprising that there has been such a negative response against viral marketing. Especially when it wasn't anything of the kind, it was just speculation and rumour.
-- Tim Starling
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Tim Starling wrote:
Alphax wrote:
How much do the combined Wikimedia servers serve?
About 250 Mbps peak:
http://noc.wikimedia.org/trafstats/trafstats-weekly.png
What would happen if all the Wikimedia sites were redirected to the BBC for a day?
The BBC would let out a cheer. We would lose a lot of traffic. That's not the best way to conduct a DDoS.
Don't you dare cloud my opinions with facts!
Ryan Delaney wrote:
Block their IP range if absolutely necessary, but DDoSing them is insane.
I don't see what good blocking their IP range would do, since the article in question ([[Jamie Kane]]) was not created from a BBC netblock. [[Boy*d Upp]] was, but the author has apologized and stated that he was acting on his own behalf.
Wikipedians regularly spammed the village pump with gmail invites when that little craze was at its height, so I find it surprising that there has been such a negative response against viral marketing. Especially when it wasn't anything of the kind, it was just speculation and rumour.
Yes, but you're taking the universe out of context... Did you expect mere proof to sway my opinion?
Handy Hint: Save money on booze by drinking cold tea instead of whiskey. To simulate a hangover next morning, drink a thimblefull of dishwashing liquid and repeatedly bang your head against the wall.
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
Alphax wrote:
They are abusing our site for corporate gain! Surely we have every right to block them! They at least owe us an apology for misusing our resources like this.
I think you might want to followup on how the story played out. There's basically zero chance in my opinion that this was an intentional thing by the BBC itself.
Remember, we know a lot of people at the BBC. They are fans of Wikipedia. They *get it* at the BBC about the Internet in a way that I have found very rare in my now numerous talks to people at media companies.
--Jimbo
On 8/16/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
I haven't read the stories, but some nutter in the marketing department will probably not respond to diplomacy. And meanwhile, we, the community, have to put up with this crap. We don't go and abuse their services, do we?? People need to learn that Wikipedia has power far beyond deleting and blocking.
Just quietly, but if you were looking at people NOT to make made at you, the BBC and other large mass media organisations would be top of the list.
The sensible thing to do would be to talk it over behind the scenes, rather than start calling hostile press conferences and mobilising the troops to conduct illegal operations.
David Gerard wrote:
I'd assume that a body corporate like the BBC would have its own range of IP adddresses. If they will hold us to ransom, we could quite easily block their entire IP range from editing, consequences be damned; better yet, encourage people (read: slashdot users) to DDoS BBC until they cease and desist. Remember, it's our site, we make the rules.
Y'know, diplomacy does have a lot going for it as a first option.
Indeed. And I worked at the BBC with Angela for 2 weeks last fall and met and spoke to a total number of people in the hundreds. I think it is safe to say of the BBC as an organization that they know about Wikipedia, they love Wikipedia, and they aren't the sort of idiots who would try a viral marketing campaign relying on Wikipedia.
Bright people, and friendly. Like Wikipedians. :-)
--Jimbo