[WikiEN-l] Dodgy diplomacy articles - COI nest?

[Charles Matthews]

A blog post by Benjamin Mako Hill

http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/the-institute-for-cultural-diplomacy-and-wikipedia

alerted me to some COI editing that has been going on, rather
blatantly. The deletion debate associated with the [[Institute for
Cultural Diplomacy]] speaks for itself, and I see some cleanup going
on now. But how far does the issue stretch?

For example [[Colin Evans]] links to [[Freelance Diplomacy]], which is
questionably referenced; and itself is questionably referenced, with
links that look to me as if they are gaming our notability criteria.
(Easy to do with enough money ...)

Looking around at some of the accounts involved suggested to me that
some problem editors may be active in this whole area. I think we
should be concerned.

Charles