Identity / Profiles / Trust

The Register points to the "makeover" Phorm has been giving itself on Wikipedia:

Phorm has admitted that it deleted key factual parts of the Wikipedia article about the huge controversy fired by its advertising profiling deals with BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse.

The tracking and ad targeting firm said in an email: "We wanted to clarify a number of inaccuracies in the Wikipedia entry on Phorm."

As El Reg notes, this desperate want has led to practices which are actually violations of Wikipedia practice, never mind telling porkies....

The spokesman said Phorm's PR team had not been aware of Wikipedia's policy on conflicts of interest. Among many other rules they violated, it states: "Producing promotional articles for Wikipedia on behalf of clients is strictly prohibited."

A BT representative meanwhile wrote in an email: "I don't see anything wrong with correcting Wikipedia articles about your own company or services."

However, the edits made by Phorm included silencing factual primary information, that has been acknowledged as correct by the parties involved.

I thought Wikipaedia was also violated if you wrote about yourself on it - clearly Corporates think they run on different rules?

This was fairly high profile, given Phorms' prior form, but one wonders how Wikipedia will deal with the daily drip drip drip of PR attacks. In the great fight between enthusiastic amateurs vs paid professionals, at some point amateurs usually run out of time, money or energy. One can only hope Clay Shirky is right, and enough Everybody's continue to come along to put things right.

Update - friend pointed me to this article with video debates on Wikipedia, including arch chatterati hate figure Andrew Keen Addresses some of the issues covered above.