Known for having a media director that obsessively stalks critics, Overstock.com’s IP address range has now been banned from editing on Wikipedia.
Longtime Wikipedia staffer, David Gerard, posted this on the Administrators’ Noticeboard Tuesday afternoon:
“I’ve just blocked 65.116.112.0/21, which is an IP range (a) owned by Overstock.com (b) widely used by them for spamming, COI editing and attempted intimidation of administrators dealing with them. I strongly suggest against unblocking this range under any circumstances”
Wikipedia and Overstock.com’s Director of Social Media, Judd Bagley have had a long battle. Bagley has earned near legend status on Wikipedia as an agenda pusher, vandal and stalker.
Wikipedia has been known to ban PR firms and entire countries, so banning a company is not so unusual. Gary Weiss explains on his blog:
It’s fairly unusual, though not unprecedented (see comments), for an entire company to be declared persona non grata by Wikipedia. That requires an unusual degree of sleaziness, which is of course Overstock.com’s primary export to the civilized world.
With the advent of the wikiscanner, anonymous edits are going to become a thing of the past. Companies who have been using Wikipedia to misinform will have to rethink their strategy. We now can easily find out who they are.
from tech.blorge
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