Netshops has been banned from Wikipedia

A bit about Wikipedia. Wikipedia is literally an open book. It can be written and edited by anyone on the internet. It can be a great resource for information but ONLY if everyone using it is being honest and abides by Wikipedia's policies. If individuals (or companies in this case) are only using Wiki to further their own agenda, Wikipedia becomes less of a valid resource.

Back to Netshops being banned from Wiki. This isn't news for any of the older employees. That bit of information made the rounds about the office back in late September/early October '06. Apparently they had been banned for spam linking - linking articles to Netshops sites to try and increase their own organic search rankings via external links.

I've been looking for proof of this since I was laid off. Its one thing to hear about it at work through the grapevine - quite another to write about it on a blog about Netshops and their questionable ethics.

Luckily, one of my readers did the legwork for me. Thank you!

A bit of info and then the screen caps. Netshops main IP address is 66.37.239.14 - anyone with a halfway decent hit counter on their web page can figure this info out.

Here are a couple of screen captures of Netshops' activities on Wiki



Wiki Netshops user talk



Netshops Spam

And here is a list of all the changes made by Netshops to various articles on Wikipedia. Notice a pattern?

Unfortunately, the ban was for a 6 month period and Netshops will soon be able to edit posts on Wikipedia again. (Well, from the company IP that is. They've been editing it even over the past 6 months, but it has been from employee's homes or other networks.) I wonder how quickly they'll go back to their old tricks?