I'm bumping this thread because there has been a somewhat high-profile
incident of misuse of Wikipedia by a corporate entity.
This is not entirely the same as undisclosed paid editing, but it was
certainly a misuse of Wikipedia.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15259400/burger-king-google-home-ad-wiki…
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=773807497&o…
It seems to me that this kind of behavior, and accompanying waste of
Wikimedia volunteers' time, is likely to continue until WMF Legal cracks
down and starts making it financially painful for organizations to misuse
Wikipedia in all their various creative and inappropriate ways.
A quote from
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/clever-burger-king-ad-attempts-to-hijack-g…:
“Burger King saw an opportunity to do something exciting with the emerging
technology of intelligent personal assistant devices,” a Burger King
spokesperson said. I would like for WMF to make Burger King feel that their
misuse of WIkipedia was inappropriate and for WMF to hit them where it
counts -- in their checkbook -- and with enough force that corporations
will decide that messing with Wikipedia is both ethically wrong and
financially not worth the risk. WMF needs to change marketers' thinking
from the idea that messing with Wikipedia is "an opportunity" to "a big
risk." I would like to see WMF Legal get energized about cracking down on
these kinds of situations, and I'd be happy to have WMF make an expensive
example of Burger King to deter misconduct by others.
Pine