What to do if you want to raise money for the repair of Failure, and only Wikipedia is at hand

The dream of any PR specialist and marketer is to place an article about your company on Wikipedia, because this is both credibility and high search results, and therefore more attention from potential customers.

But writing a Wikipedia article is only half the story, you also need to prevent it from being deleted, which in case you are a small startup or a novice blogger can be difficult.

The requirements of Wikipedia are clear - this is a network encyclopedia, the uniqueness of the material is important for it, and most importantly its importance for the wiki community, so if you are not linked to a “meaningful” website, then information about your company or person is not needed for the encyclopedia.

Here's what Wikipedia rules say about it:

“The subject is significant if it is described by multiple non-trivial publications of authoritative and independent sources. All objects must have a minimum level of required significance in order for an article about them to be included in Wikipedia. This requirement includes the need for a sufficient number of sources for writing a verifiable and encyclopedic article. An article that does not meet the criteria of significance may be put up for deletion. ”

Most little-known companies after deleting information about them from Wikipedia begin to restore the page in the same way or start endless disputes, thereby only worsening the situation and incurring the wrath of the community.

But if there is a demand, then there will be a supply.

Therefore, some PR agencies offer services for creating and supporting Wikipedia articles, the most honest write so: we will write unique material for your company, format it for the desired format, check it for the requirements for Wikipedia articles and wait for it to be checked and published.

You won’t live honestly in the PR services market, because the terms of use of Wikipedia do not allow for the concealment of information about affiliation in the case when a participant receives a reward for his contribution to the encyclopedia, and paid edits in articles in order to promote companies, products and services in the vast majority of projects strongly discouraged or even lead to account blocking.

Such refinements to the terms of use were introduced in 2013 after a scandal with the American company Wiki-PR, which put this type of business on stream.

It all started with the fact that information about the services provided by Wiki-PR, leaked to the press. In the course of the investigation, it turned out that the company’s employees posted custom articles on their customers ’business on various resources, and then referred to them on Wikipedia, thereby creating the appearance of significance. There weren’t too many sites with custom materials, but links to them appeared in a wide variety of wiki articles.

As a result of the investigation, an official letter was sent to the company with a request to stop the violations, and 250 accounts of its employees were permanently blocked.

What Wiki-PR has definitely achieved is its own fame. This incident was honored with an entire Wikipedia article. Wiki-PR exists to this day, but now it positions itself as a consulting company helping its customers find a common language with the wiki community.
However, Wiki-PR found many followers. Including in our country.

For example, the resource wikiadm.org, on the main page of which it is directly stated that they write articles for Wikipedia on a reimbursable basis.

They are not shy about declaring that Wikipedia administrators are among their employees:

“We have been successfully creating Wikipedia articles for over nine years. Our team consists of resource administrators, patrolling and simply editors who know how to write an article directly for Wikipedia. Almost everyone is involved in the work on the order: the editors completely write and fill out the article, the patrolmen check the box confirming that the article complies with all the rules of the encyclopedia, and administrators do not allow others to delete the article. Together we made tens of thousands of edits, wrote hundreds of articles, and not a single one has yet been deleted. ”

The fact that such activity directly violates the terms of use of Wikipedia, they, naturally, are modestly silent.

And here is the case when they are presented not just by administrators, but by Wikipedia itself, or rather its business unit: wikipedia.msk.ru. In the signature of her employees it means: WIKIPEDIA FOR BUSINESS.

What will Wikipedia itself say to this? The fact that it is a non-profit organization and does not have any business units.

“Wikimedia projects are edited and supported by tens of thousands of volunteers who are not paid for their work. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects operate in the non-profit organization mode - and this is the only case of the presence of a non-profit organization among the most visited sites in the world. ”

This means that people offering services on behalf of: wikipedia.msk.ru knowingly provide potential customers with false data, posing as representatives of a non-existent organization, and also illegally use the registered trademark of a non-profit organization.

Let's try to figure out who is behind this business.

The resource itself is not of particular interest, it is redirected to Wikipedia, but the mail server is actively used to send letters to potential customers.
So we received a letter from alex@wikipedia.msk.ru from a certain Alexei Borodin, who introduced himself as deputy editor-in-chief of the non-existent organization WIKIPEDIA FOR BUSINESS and offered to post an article on Wikipedia for a modest 9,000 rubles. At the same time, Alexey said that the article will be protected from editing by third parties, and its removal will be possible only at the request of the customer.

We expressed interest, after which Alex sent us the details for a bank transfer.

It was proposed to transfer money to the account of the company registered in the fall of 2018. Among the activities of the organization were: the activities of advertising agencies; advice on business and management; rent and management of own or leased residential real estate; the provision of accounting services, financial audits, tax advice; and even taxi activities.
Legal address - apartment in Moscow Domodedovo.

A bit strange for Wikipedia, don’t you?

A quick search on the network showed that the general director of this LLC apparently does not directly relate to the financial and economic activities of the company. Well, on the face are signs of a one-day firm.

Meanwhile, Alexey continued to send us letters, persistently persuading us to pay for the services as soon as possible. At the same time, he resorted to the argument “if you don’t pay now, the offer will become unavailable”, which is so fond of using, for example, fraudulent online stores.

We decided to dig deeper and see who, in addition to Alexei, uses mail in the wikipedia.msk.ru domain. It quickly became clear that we were not alone. Our partners also received offers to post articles on Wikipedia. Only now they came from gleb@wikipedia.msk.ru and were signed by the name of the chief editor of WIKIPEDIA FOR BUSINESS Gleb Arkhangelsky.

We did not begin to find out whether the chief editor Gleb Arkhangelsky is related to the time management guru Gleb Arkhangelsky.



But, as you see, such a question does not only torment us.

What conclusion can be drawn from this story? Crooks hiding behind big names were enough at all times. Before accepting a tempting offer and trusting a representative of a large international organization, you should carefully check your counterparty. Indeed, in this case, you risk not only money, your reputation is at stake, and it is much more difficult to restore it than to write an article for Wikipedia.

We asked Vitaly Andreev, a leading expert analyst at Infosecurity, to comment on our mini-investigation. He agreed with our findings:

“The situation is pretty standard. Every day, hundreds of domain names that are consonant with the names of well-known brands are registered on the network. They can be used in various fraudulent schemes to create phishing resources or, as in this case, to carry out mailing lists.

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