Wikipedia has banned a massive 381 editors after finding that these accounts were created to promote brands in return for being paid by companies.

A blog post by Wikipedia details the fact that it has been investigating for months in an attempt to find and delete the accounts created to create bogus articles to get cash.

The accounts, called "sock puppet" accounts, that were banned by Wikipedia's "CheckUser" team had been active between the months of April and August. However, the nature of the edits that were made suggests that the scam had been continuing for a long time, according to the post.

"During the course of this investigation, evidence has been identified that this group is editing for profit (i.e., that they are paid editors). Only a few of the accounts have made any disclosure related to paid editing, and those which did failed to make complete disclosures," says the post by Wikipedia. "The investigation began in early July. Many functionaries have participated in the investigation and identification of accounts, as well as the review of articles created by the accounts."

The way that it worked is that the accounts would create a draft of an article, populating it with promotional material. They would then contact their victims, the subjects of the article, and ask for a fee in order to publish the article, often posing as established Wikipedia editors. To keep the article from being edited or taken down, the scammers would often request monthly fees of around $30.

Of course, it's important to mention that paid editing is nothing new for Wikipedia. Wikimedia, the owner of Wikipedia, has been trying to stamp it out of practice for years, although in some cases it has tried to work with PR agencies. A number of PR agencies have even signed an agreement to abide by Wikipedia's practices. The real issue for Wikipedia is when the editing is being done in secret.

Wikipedia is currently encouraging users to review and fix articles created by scammers, with the hope that these articles will be fixed in as short an amount of time as possible. Wikipedia also encouraged editors to "be kind to subjects" of the articles, as they, too, were victims of the scam. 

Via: Motherboard