Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Good, bad, biased, paid or what-have-you. There's an endless supply.
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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by ericbarbour » Mon Aug 08, 2022 2:35 am

I keep seeing this crap in WP content about audiophile companies.

Sucker bet: DCsounds is almost certainly an employee of Acoustic Sounds, one of those disgusting "audiophile puristic" record pressing companies. Did nothing on Wikipedia but pump Acoustic Sounds and anything else to do with owner Chad Kassem.

And the article about one of Kassem's biggest competitors, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, stinks of paid editing.

Look at ANY WP article about any maker of audiophile gear, recordings, whatever. You will see plenty of undisguised COI editing.

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by badmachine » Mon Aug 08, 2022 5:24 am

despite no wikipedia article, Kassem runs a media empire of at least four companies:

*Analogue Productions
... is a division of Acoustic Sounds, Inc. founded by music entrepreneur Chad Kassem in Salina, Kansas, United States in 1992.
last human edit was in April 2014.

*Acoustic Sounds, Inc.
... The business is owned and operated by Chad Kassem and as of 2016 employed 98 people.
last substantial edit was in January 2020.

*Quality Record Pressings
... is a vinyl record pressing plant launched by music entrepreneur Chad Kassem in Salina, Kansas, United States in 2011.
last substantial edit was in August 2013

*Blue Heaven Studios
... a division of Acoustic Sounds, Inc., founded by music entrepreneur Chad Kassem ...
last substantial edit was in November 2013

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Aug 17, 2022 9:23 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moog_Guitar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... aconman113

I'm connected on Facebook to Paul Vo, the inventor of the Moog Guitar thing. Perhaps I should ask him if he knows someone called Baconman113?

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by badmachine » Thu Aug 25, 2022 5:02 pm

there's an interesting Wikipediocracy thread on Darin Pastor that says his article was probably created by Pastor himself after an indictment that says:
From September 2013, through March 2017, approximately 95 investors purchased Capstone stock in private placement offerings for approximately $19,000,000. During that time, in furtherance of the conspiracy, Pastor and Johnson fraudulently represented to investors and potential investors that Pastor had substantial personal wealth, and that Capstone was engaged in lucrative investments, such as gold, equity, and livestock deals, which would generate enormous profits for the investors. Pastor and Johnson maintained an online Wikipedia page for Pastor that misrepresented his net worth, and in soliciting investments in Capstone, encouraged potential investors to research Pastor online. Pastor actually had a negligible net worth and was millions of dollars in debt.
whoever created the article asked in 2014 to change their name from KCDPR to D_PASTOR2014.

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Aug 25, 2022 7:38 pm

badmachine wrote:
Thu Aug 25, 2022 5:02 pm
there's an interesting Wikipediocracy thread on Darin Pastor that says his article was probably created by Pastor himself
This is a very rare case of Wikipedia being successfully used to commit major investment fraud. Probably rare. Maybe. We will never know how often this actually happens, because Wikipedia is set up for and encourages BLP abuse of this exact sort. (I tried to find cases like this ten years ago--and got exactly nowhere, because unless it ends up in a media scandal, there's no way to be sure it actually worked in committing fraud. "Security thru obscurity".)

And when it does happen, WP insiders often go to considerable effort to cover it up. I'm surprise an admin haven't vanished all the history of the Pastor article--fifteen years ago, if there was a case like this, total deletion was almost guaranteed to happen.

THEY KNEW IT WAS HAPPENING. In 2015 Red Pen Of Doom, that legendary little shit, editwarred with Pastor's socks. Fucking morons.
curprev 22:53, 11 February 2015‎ TheRedPenOfDoom talk contribs‎ 11,820 bytes −1,529‎ →‎Capstone Financial Group, Inc. (CAPP): inappropriately sourced self promotional hoo ho undo
curprev 00:29, 11 February 2015‎ HighInBC talk contribs‎ 13,349 bytes +19‎ please don't argue with the automated bots, this is a non cvontreversial change undo
curprev 00:06, 11 February 2015‎ Trigger449 talk contribs‎ 13,330 bytes +1,528‎ Undid revision 646570349 by TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) undo
curprev 00:00, 11 February 2015‎ Trigger449 talk contribs‎ 11,802 bytes −19‎ Undid revision 646572693 by AnomieBOT (talk) NO CONFLICT OF INTEREST EXISTS. Look at the article before the most recent changes & then after them. NOTHING CHANGED, just fixed dead links. undo
curprev 23:55, 10 February 2015‎ AnomieBOT talk contribs‎ m 11,821 bytes +19‎ Dating maintenance tags: {{Conflict of interest}} undo
curprev 23:35, 10 February 2015‎ TheRedPenOfDoom talk contribs‎ 11,802 bytes −1,528‎ Undid revision 646570214 by D Pastor2014 (talk) what is needed is a reliable third party source and presentation in a neutral manner undo
curprev 23:34, 10 February 2015‎ D Pastor2014 talk contribs‎ 13,330 bytes +1,528‎ Undid revision 646569641 by TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) Happy to make any corrections needed. Please specify what has to be corrected. undo
curprev 23:29, 10 February 2015‎ TheRedPenOfDoom talk contribs‎ 11,802 bytes −1,528‎ Undid revision 646569478 by D Pastor2014 (talk) the content is inappropriately sourced no matter who is trying to insert it undo
curprev 23:28, 10 February 2015‎ D Pastor2014 talk contribs‎ 13,330 bytes +1,528‎ Undid revision 646568061 by TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) This is not Darin Pastor making these changes. No conflict of interest exists. undo
curprev 23:16, 10 February 2015‎ TheRedPenOfDoom talk contribs‎ 11,802 bytes +25‎ No edit summary undo
curprev 23:16, 10 February 2015‎ TheRedPenOfDoom talk contribs‎ 11,777 bytes −1,528‎ self sourced self promotional hoo ha undo
Good quotes in the thread (which died out too soon). For once, Tarantino justified his existence.
Yeah I did due diligence, I googled him and checked out his wiki page....
I'm surprised that LC&F hasn't got a Wikipedia article. Obviously financial malpractice isn't as interesting as the latest nerdy television series.
Don't bet on this ever happening. Section 230 makes a great lawsuit umbrella.
With the tiniest bit of luck, some greedy bastard of a lawyer (“but I repeat myself…”) will figure out a way to hold the WMF partly responsible.

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Aug 25, 2022 8:20 pm

I might also note the shitshow currently on BLPN about Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of corrupt Azeri "president for life" Ilhan Aliyev.

Because HE is a notorious dictator and oligarch, HIS Wikipedia article is more honest and uncomplementary. But Leyla is paying someone to heel HER article, probably separately, and she's been getting away with it since it was created in 2011. And as usual, "good Wikipedians" are picking up and dropping the ball over and over again. The article grows and shrinks repeatedly as the paid editors expand it and random deletionists shrink it. No one keeps track (except Leyla I guess) and no one cares.

Consider how it looked last year. Daddy bought them for the girls! Or, maybe they don't actually exist? Who knows? Don't ask Wikipedia!
Leyla together with her sister own number of banks in Azerbaijan. She is listed as ultimate owner of Pasha Bank,[9] Kapital Bank,[10] Xalq Bank[11] as per their IFRS reporting and ExpressBank according to records collected by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by ericbarbour » Tue Sep 13, 2022 7:44 pm

Today I stumbled over yet ANOTHER editor fiddling with Las Vegas casino articles in a manner which is questionable. A Jurassic Park fanboy who diddles Las Vegas articles as a "sideline".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AJFU

Why do I say this? Because AJFU absolutely HATES the Aztec Inn, a very minor, old, run-down hotel/casino on the worst part of the Strip. Most such places usually don't get or deserve a Wikipedia article. But the Aztec Inn's owners had a stupid dispute with the late Bob Stupak, builder of the gigantic Strat resort across the street from the Aztec. Over a parking lot. (Stupak was a "local legend". Went around bragging about his 9th-grade education and his success in spite of it. Compared himself to Donald Trump many times. The street at that corner is now called "Bob Stupak Avenue". Vegas is even more crass and corrupt than you might realize.) And since 2016 AJFU has gone to considerable lengths to use Wikipedia as a defamation platform, making the Aztec's article as negative as possible. While also editing the Strat's article, adding only positives. A LOT of them.

You may remember my past comments on WR and Wikipediocracy about "Vegaswikian", an administrator who openly controlled the WP content for McCarran International Airport, the Las Vegas Strip, and various major Las Vegas properties. I never saw Vegaswikian add unpleasant or negative information to any of the Vegas-related articles he monitored. In 2015 Vegaswikian abruptly disappeared and was desysopped. (AJFU showed up in September 2014, around the time of the Rawson-Neal scandal. How "convenient".)

As I said on WPO in October 2014, just a few months before he disappeared:
"Vegaswikian is responsible for Rawson-Neal Hospital, a pathetically short article with little detail for the only public psychiatric hospital in the state of Nevada and one of that city's biggest recent embarrassments. The two Sacramento Bee reporters who broke the story were finalists for a Pulitzer Prize this year. You won't find a link to their story series on Wikipedia. Nor will you find anything comparable about Rawson-Neal in Las Vegas news media, which is typical of that town. Rawson-Neal, and the now-closed county clinic that preceded it, were famous for being the "dumping grounds" for tourists who had breakdowns in casinos while gambling, a subject the casinos would like very much to keep quiet. This explains why Rawson-Neal was also "dumping" discharged patients in other cities, a commonplace and time-honored practice in Western cities."
Years after Vegaswikian disappeared, an IP address added a long section about the scandal. And THIS time, Vegaswikian wasn't there to revert it. Yet it's still a shit article.

Is AJFU just Vegaswikian's sockpuppet? Are these people being paid by someone in Vegas business circles to heel Wikipedia? You're not supposed to ask questions, you're supposed to feel the Wiki-Luv!

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by wexter » Tue Sep 13, 2022 11:55 pm

Went around bragging about his 9th-grade education and his success in spite of it.
There are tons of "Flair" buttons, the same kind of "Flair" a worker has at "Chuck-E-Cheese"
I can't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_E._Cheese
--This user suffers from OCD (Obsessive–compulsive disorder)
--Is 28 years old
--Did not finish high school
--Has 109 IQ
--Is a fanboy of all sorts of tripe, cartoons, sponge bob
--as EB mentioned "a likely sock from another mother," perhaps he was writing about "home sweet home;"
"the only public psychiatric hospital in the state of Nevada"
I give him an "L" for Loser!

What is the required minimum IQ for being a Wikipedia editor? (0 to 80?)

Image


I see your 109, and raise 25 to 32 points depending on the test
Wikipedia - "Barely competent and paranoid. There’s a hell of a combination."

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by ericbarbour » Sun Nov 13, 2022 4:34 am

In re. the dispute between soundtrack producer Mick Gordon and his employer until recently, id Software:

Normally I would leave this for others to comment on. But since Mick is a Metasonix owner (there is a Reddit/r/doom thread with photo) and did USE our products on the DOOM Eternal game's soundtrack, it deserves some comment here.

The whole story was utterly beyond belief--unless you have seen similar "hijinks" elsewhere in the entertainment business, which I have. It's, sadly, an old and common story. Mick was basically harassed, threatened, and then screwed over by an id Software executive named Marty Stratton. And after DOOM Eternal was announced, delayed, and finally released in 2020 (with a poorly assembled OST album included), Stratton pulled the ultimate backstab--posting a statement on Reddit claiming it was all Mick's fault. The result was thousands of DOOM loving rageboys making hysterical death threats against Mick, his family, and anyone else involved---other than Stratton himself. Mick asked the Reddit moderator to delete the thread, and he did--but restored it a few days later, apparently after legal threats were made by Stratton and id Software. Someone at id offered Mick a "six figure" payment if he'd shut up and accept a lifetime gag order but leave the Reddit post visible. Charming!

Three days ago, Mick finally had enough, and posted a long report on Medium, telling what really happened. Complete with evidence and timestamps to verify his timeline of events. Warning, it is VERY long, and very disturbing. Needless to say, now the angry Redditors are backpedalling.
https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full- ... b27ce#7f12

Another charming revelation: Mick won industry awards for his work on DOOM Eternal. And he didn't know he'd won those awards, because Stratton intercepted them and stuck them in a cabinet at id Software's headquarters. (id is in Texas and Mick lives in Australia.)

(The important Wikipedia sidenote: since 2010, Stratton has had a Wikipedia biography. I suspect he paid someone to post it on Wikipedia (that editor, who appeared to be a clear paid editor and a gaming nerd, was later banned for strange reasons). Thanks partly to the current shitstorm over Mick's report, NOW the Stratton article is nominated for deletion. TWELVE YEARS LATER.)

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Re: Paid Editing on WP is permissible

Post by ericbarbour » Tue Nov 15, 2022 2:50 am

Ever heard of nicotinamide riboside? You should have, because since creation in 2014, its Wikipedia article has been the focal point of a very small but nasty editwar. Probably-paid editors versus resident shrieking cranks like Jytdog and Headbomb. No one's really "right" and no one wins.

Good example is Micronutrition.
His interest in enzymes and co-enzymes seems less academic and a bit more "economically based".

Not mentioned (yet): this charming story.
https://scitechdaily.com/warning-popula ... etastasis/

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