A sock puppet uses fictitious names to praise his or her work, attack others' works or otherwise be deceitful. The internet makes this practice, which goes back a few hundred years, more readily accessible and easier to avoid detection.
Sure, there's always IP addresses to determine the same user pretending to be different people. But there are ways to avoid that detection for savvy internet users as well. One could simply use different internet cafes or access online services that support secrecy by covering your actual IP with theirs.
So, according to a flurry of recent articles, both mainstream and computer geek oriented, Wikipedia is undergoing a major sock puppet clean-up. So far, 250 accounts have been discovered as posers who either attack Wiki articles by editing them, since anyone can edit a Wiki article, or deleting them or who are paid to promote specific services and businesses.
It's been called the largest sock puppet investigation in history by thedailydot.com. Wikipedia's open forum does invite sock puppetry. Wikipedia members are those who have contributed (without pay) a certain amount of articles. They are entrusted with policing Wiki articles, since anyone can contribute and edit an article at anytime.
There is a loosely assembled group of long-standing members who can call the shots, and apparently they are paid as administrators under non-profit status guidelines. But almost all the content and editing is gratis.
As a result of this worldwide encyclopedic information free-for-all, Wikipedia is the sixth most used website in the world with half a billion users and articles in several languages, over a million of which are in English.
Although often handy for some quick, detailed geographic or basic science information, when it comes to natural health solutions, Wikipedia is extremely biased.
