[WikiEN-l] Astroturfing -- fabricating your own sources
Fred Bauder
fredbaud at waterwiki.info
Fri Dec 8 17:09:49 UTC 2006
On Dec 8, 2006, at 9:59 AM, Bogdan Giusca wrote:
> Let's suppose we have a small country in a forgotten corner of the
> world.
>
> And let's assume that a local English-language website appeared out
> of nowhere, with no ads, hosted on the same server with official
> government sites (even the same IP!), has obviously the same
> designer and uses the same software with those government sites.
>
> That news source could even disagree with the government on minor
> point, in order to look independent and reliable. The only references
> in the mainstream press (e.g. The Economist) call it an "astroturfing"
> attempt of the government.
>
> Would you call this source "reliable", worthy to be used as for
> references in Wikipedia?
>
> And if there's a wikipedian who really loves this source, who agrees
> almost 100% to it and adds it to dozens of articles, reverting any
> attempt to remove it, what should we do?
The issue should be discussed in terms of it being a reliable source.
Obviously not in your example.
Fred
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