The Wikipedia affair
Wikipedia’s accuracy was compared to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and for many topics (e.g. science) it seems to be very reliable. However, I discovered that some "contributors" were modifying Wikipedia on behalf of EXPEDIA. That incident damaged Wikipedia’s accuracy.
If you reach the entry
in Wikipedia for
"EXPEDIA" you will find (sometimes)
a section about "customer Feedback" that says :
"As is common with large internet travel agencies,
some customers have been unsatisfied with various aspects of Expedia.com
products and services. Customer complaints include lost reservations,
erroneous hotel accommodations, poor customer service, and failure to post
negative reviews online at Expedia.com ......'
What is very interesting is that if you check another
day the same entry, the section about "customer feedback" will eventually (misteriously)
dissapear. That means that someone is helping EXPEDIA to delete their
negative aspects from wikipedia.
I had been following that entry for few days and I
noticed that someone (I swear it wasn't me) write that section in Wikipedia
and someone else erase from there. That happened few times in a lapse of one
month.
What is more interesting is that the entry for Orbitz
(although contains a negative section called "controversies" ) was not
erased during the same period of time.
What is even more and more interesting is that
someone in the FLYERTALK
forum (I put the thread there) apparently found out that "The netblock that
the user who is removing the entry is posting from is owned by Expedia (.
I've brought this up on the article's talk page." . He or she put a note in
Wikipedia discussion :
"Anyone notice that 199.3.115.254 who keeps removing
the customer service section is posting from Expedia.com SPRINTLINK
(NET-199-3-115-0-1) 199.3.115.0 - 199.3.115.255
I'm not saying that the section necessarily belongs,
but that removal of uncomplimentary items by someone from the company looks
fishy. -- Alanhwiki 21:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from ""http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Expedia"
Someone, the media or the authorities should
investigates this. I'm not saying EXPEDIA is doing this. But someone on
behalf of EXPEDIA does. My opinion is that people don't help big companies
for free. What's yours ?
After this incident, the customer sections remains
there.
The big questions now are: "how many other companies have been doing the same"? How much can we trust Wikipedia when we look for information about big companies"?
EXPEDIA (not its friends) tried to scam me too but this is a different story but it makes you wonder what kind of people are we dealing with.