>>"but they also know that it has their best interests at heart, and is never trying to sell them a product or propagandize them in any way. "
He went on to say
"By the way, I hear the weather is nice in Gibraltar"
Wikipedia has blocked or banned over 250 user accounts as it investigates "suspicious edits and sockpuppetry" – the latter being the use of fictitious identities for the express purpose of bullshitting deceiving readers, usually for commercial or promotional purposes. "It looks like a number of user accounts — perhaps as many …
Its certainly noticeable that many entries covering businesses - its pretty predictable which ones - have a glossy PR look they wouldn't have had even a couple of years ago, and more importantly a complete omission of any controversies, protests or fuckups. You'd think the Gibraltarian sun shone out of their collective arses.
While its always been wise to take wikipedia with a pinch of salt for anything beyond general interest, it does often serve as a good starting point for the basics in an unfamiliar subject and a starting point for further searches, or (more frequently for me) a reminder of a half-remembered past controversy. But it's becoming far less useful for the purpose as more and more corporate reputations are given the bleach 'n' whitewash treatment by the cut & paste online PR and 'reputation management' firms that used to stick to astroturfing Amazon reviews for substandard products. Companies and sometimes business areas that instinct tells you are bound to have a closet full of skeletons somehow - miraculously - just don't. A dig through the edits is often informative and frequently amusing, but it also makes it clear how much effort (and therefore money) is taken to turn toxic waste dumping into gardens of community engagement. And unlike the wider web, doing it rarely seems to invoke any sort of Streisand effect.
It's the wiki, does it matter? Given the esteem in which the wikipedia is generally held - and the often misplaced authority ascribed to it among the wider public - I think it does matter, because censorship of any sort is antithetical to any democracy we may have, and using corporate financial clout and legal muscle to achieve it and suppress fact and opinion is becoming far, far too prevalent on and offline.
@Stilted Banter like ecofeco said, nicely played, but I actually agree with the letter of your post not the spirit. Wiki has been & is a hugely valuable resource to me and I don't understand why people are determined to dis and piss on what IMO is one of the best things on the modern interwebs.
ANY article found to have been edited by one of these PR style firms gets an immediate unremovable tag at the top warning the consumer that a PR firm attempted to modify this page to provide the subject with a biased review.
That sort of thing would automatically put suspicion into the readers mind about that firm (lets face it most of these would be about whitewashing a firm or perhaps tarnished individual) and act as bad PR. Not too many companies would then be willing to risk getting permanently branded as deceitful on the most read encylopedia in the world.