[WikiEN-l] Astroturfing -- fabricating your own sources

Fri Dec 8 17:09:49 UTC 2006

On Dec 8, 2006, at 9:59 AM, Bogdan Giusca wrote:

> Let's suppose we have a small country in a forgotten corner of the  
> world.
>
> And let's assume that a local English-language website appeared out
> of nowhere, with no ads, hosted on the same server with official
> government sites (even the same IP!), has obviously the same
> designer and uses the same software with those government sites.
>
> That news source could even disagree with the government on minor
> point, in order to look independent and reliable. The only references
> in the mainstream press (e.g. The Economist) call it an "astroturfing"
> attempt of the government.
>
> Would you call this source "reliable", worthy to be used as for
> references in Wikipedia?
>
> And if there's a wikipedian who really loves this source, who agrees
> almost 100% to it and adds it to dozens of articles, reverting any
> attempt to remove it, what should we do?

The issue should be discussed in terms of it being a reliable source.  
Obviously not in your example.

Fred