[WikiEN-l] Re: Viral marketing?

[Tim Starling]

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