MANILA, Philippines – Wikipedia blocked 381 user accounts on Monday, August 31, in its drive to stamp out what they call “black hat editing” practices affecting the neutrality of information posted on Wikipedia.

Black hat editing refers to “the practice of accepting or charging money to promote external interests on Wikipedia without revealing their affiliation, in violation of Wikimedia’s Terms of Use.”

The company not only blocked the 381 accounts, but also deleted 210 articles made by these accounts.

A Wikimedia Foundation blogpost explained that most of the articles were related to businesses, business people, or artists, were generally promotional in nature, and often included biased or skewed information, unattributed material, and potential copyright violations.”

The edits appear similar, such that that the Wikipedia community believes they were perpetrated by a coordinated group.

The Wikipedia editing scam

The Guardian added that a scam also appeared to have been occurring.

“Under the scam,” Guardian’s report explained, “draft entries were initially declined publication because they contained too much promotional content. Those operating the sockpuppet account would then make changes to allow the article acceptable for publication.”

Posing as Wikipedia administrators, they would then charge businesses a fee for publication of the article, while in some situations, a monthly fee was asked to protect entries from changes or deletion.

Additional information regarding the investigation, called Orangemoody after the first identified sockpuppet account, is available on this community page. – Rappler.com