Over the last few years, a number of minor scandals have come to light concerning wiki editors who were paid by publicity firms to edit articles in Wikipedia. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports, the Wikimedia Foundation has changed the encyclopedia’s terms of use to require that anyone paid to edit an article must disclose that arrangement. This comes only a week after a coalition of major PR firms announced a pledge not to edit their clients’ Wikipedia pages surreptitiously.
This is a good move by Wikipedia; the only thing that surprises me is that it had gone so long without such a requirement in place. It’s not exactly unknown how important it is to have a good writeup in Wikipedia, especially where a lot of money is involved.
