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points by cmiles8 1 day ago | 0 comments

It’s a not very well kept secret that many of these pages for less-than-notable people were created by the person themselves or their “publicist.”

[–] beedeebeedee 1 day ago

I can confirm this. I am not proud of it because, not only does it break Wikipedia policy but was unethical and done for an unethical person, but one of the first tasks I was given at my first salaried job was to make a wikipedia page for the boss (he said that his publicist told him to get one done). The safeguards at Wikipedia almost held, but he had me battle the editors for weeks until it finally got done. I left a couple months later because he kept doing (and asking me do) unethical things, and wish I had the wisdom and courage then to have said no and quit on day one.

[–] jacobolus 1 day ago

You might consider revisiting this on Wikipedia. It's probably not too late to remove the boss's promotional page.

[–] beng-nl 11 hours ago

How about, instead of removing it, this primary source piece of character witness story is added :-)

[–] ksndoenxoen 8 hours ago

Indeed, it’s always good to have unproven and unprovable anecdotes added to Wikipedia. Even better if there’s no source or names involved.

[–] randycupertino 1 day ago

My company has an entire PR team to get our execs in 30 under 30 and 40 under 40 as well as update their wiki pages!

[–] qingcharles 9 hours ago

I know one chap who was absolutely not notable when he paid to have his made, but I won't out him because he rode the Hollywood meat grinder all the way to the top.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50295556