We all know that Wikipedia can be subverted – it’s an inevitability of an open platform that some people will seek to abuse it, whether to gain some advantage or just for a laugh. Fortunately, the Wikipedia community has strong mechanisms in place to deal with this, from the famous cry of {citation needed} to the rigorous checks and standards put in place by its hierarchy of editors and admins.

In recent months though, insiders have encountered something altogether more worrying: a concerted attack on the very fabric of Wikipedia by PR companies that have subverted the online encyclopaedia’s editing hierarchy to alter articles on a massive scale – perhaps tens of thousands of them. Wikipedia is the world’s most popular source of cultural, historical and scientific knowledge – if their fears are correct, it’s all-important credibility could be on the line.

The king of these Wikipedia reputation managers is a company called Wiki-PR, who specialise in editing Wikipedia on behalf of their paying clients. The promise on their Twitter profile couldn’t be clearer: “We write it. We manage it. You never worry about Wikipedia again.“ (...)