Then, almost every year, cases of adjusting Wikipedia in favour of companies, businessmen and politicians became known. Microsoft paid programmer Rick Jelliff for editing Wikipedia articles about the company's products, including Office Open XML.
The Church of Scientology tried to correct the neutral point of view in its favour. A huge discussion was started. Many IP addresses have been blocked. 5,000 advertising edits were made to the Australian Department of Defence.
In 2009, an administrator on the English Wikipedia who was paid for editing articles about politicians was exposed and blocked. And two years later, in 2011, the British media reported the existence of an anonymous troublemaker in the field of PR and reputation management on Wikipedia.
In 2012, it was reported that both Obama's and McCain's election headquarters were making ambiguous changes to the articles.
In March 2012, the Bureau of Investigation found that members of the British Parliament or members of Parliament had made almost 10,000 committed changes to Wikipedia, and articles about one of six deputies were edited from Parliament)))
In 2013, a scandal erupted with a Wiki PR company that built a huge bot farm of accounts on Wikipedia and provided its paid change services to more than 1,000 customers. The team included many Wikipedia administrators.
In 2014, Wikimedia Foundation employee Sarah Stirch was fired for presenting that she edited Wikipedia for royalties.
In May 2019, the marketing agency Leo Burnett Worldwide admitted that they deliberately replaced Wikipedia photos of popular tourist destinations with similar ones which clearly showed products and logo of The North Face. And a little later that year, dozens of experienced accounts of hidden paid editors ("dolls") were found in Russian and Ukrainian Wikipedias, coordinating their edits.
The column was prepared by the editorial team of WikiBusines.
WikiBusines is your troubleshooter on Wikipedia.