This is a story of two real Wikipedians: myself, and a real live non-automated Wikipedia conflict of interest volunteer response team member with the username “331dot.” It’s also the story of a fake Wikipedian who recently tried to scam me with the promise of a Wikipedia article. The fake Wikipedian used some clever tricks, though the biggest trick of all was to play on the intellectual vanity of an academic, an oldie but truly a goodie.
I tell the story to warn fellow academic egotists about the scam, yes, but also to illustrate some truths about Wikipedia I wish were more widely known. Most of all, I tell the story to express my deep gratitude to 331dot and to the conflict of interest volunteer response team on which 331dot serves.
The story begins with an email I received on March 12, 2026:
Dear Professor Campbell
I hope this note finds you well. I am writing because I came across your distinguished career in educational innovation and technology, including your leadership as *Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Student Success at Virginia Commonwealth University* and senior roles at *Virginia Tech, Baylor University, and other institutions*. Your work in *teaching and learning technologies*, along with *international keynotes, advisory board service for organizations like the New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE, and recognition as one of the “Top 50 Innovators in Education in 2012”*, reflects a significant academic and scholarly impact beyond internal university listings.
I wanted to ask if you would be interested in having a Wikipedia page summarizing your career and contributions, drafted using publicly available sources.
Thank you for considering this, and I would be glad to provide more information if you are interested.
Best regards,
Matthew Lewis
Wikipedia Editor
I will confess to a real endorphin rush, a high that unfortunately lasted only a second or two, the time it took to come to my senses.
Why was my high so brief? Because I’ve worked in and with Wikipedia for over twenty years and I know something about the platform and its culture. I’ve worked with Wiki Education to help my students work effectively in Wikipedia and thus gain expertise in research while contributing to the public good, pedagogical goals complicated by the rise of AI, but that’s another story. I’m also well aware of the notability requirement for articles, especially biographical articles.
I also know there’s no such title as “Wikipedia Editor,” unless it means “anyone who’s edited a Wikipedia article,” in which case I have that title, many of my students have that title, millions of human beings have that title, etc.
So the scammer has made two typically safe assumptions here: professors are reliably vulnerable to intellectual and professional flattery, and professors don’t know much about Wikipedia. (If there’s a third assumption, it might be that even though professors publicly dismiss Wikipedia, privately they’d love to see themselves profiled there.)
Now that the blush of pleasant self-regard had passed, I thought it might be interesting to try a trick of my own, borrowed from friends who’d perfected the art of chatting with spam callers until the exasperated spammers hung up. Why not ask “Editor Lewis” some questions that would make me look discerning while giving him the opportunity to dig himself in deeper? And, next day, that’s what I did:
Dear Mr. Lewis,
Thank you for your email and flattering inquiry. Since you have offered to provide more information, would you please let me know your Wikipedia username and provide some examples of your editing work for Wikipedia?
With thanks,
Gardner Campbell
But this was not quite the clever trick I had imagined, as “Editor Lewis” had a response ready for deployment, one I received very quickly:
Dear Gardner,
Thank you for your thoughtful message.
Regarding your question about a Wikipedia username, editors who work on biographical entries often do not maintain a single publicly identifiable account connected to their professional work. Wikipedia is designed to be a *neutral, non-promotional platform*, and to preserve that neutrality many editors intentionally avoid maintaining public records that link their editorial work to a personal or commercial identity.
Because of this, the focus of my work is primarily on the *research, structuring, and drafting of the article according to Wikipedia’s sourcing and neutrality guidelines*, rather than maintaining a public editing profile.
However, I would be happy to share *examples of Wikipedia pages I have recently worked on* so you can see the type of structure and sourcing used in academic biographies:
Stephen C. Stearns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Stephen_C._Stearns Patrick D. Barnes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Patrick_D._Barnes Peter Abell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Peter_Abell If you would like, I can also explain the process I follow for preparing an article and what information would be helpful to begin.
With best regards,
Matthew Lewis
Wikipedia Editor
So much BS in one unctuous reply! Suddenly “Matthew” and I are chums on a first-name basis. My message is “thoughtful” and ol’ Matt is sure grateful. Best of all, Matt doesn’t have a username on his edits because, he says, that would be against Wikipedia’s neutrality guidelines. This is a superficially plausible argument that is laughable to anyone who’s ever actually edited Wikipedia and understands that usernames come with registered accounts and registered accounts are there for accountability that supports Wikipedia’s neutrality guidelines. In fact, for many controversial or potentially controversial articles (including BLPs, “biographies of living persons”), a registered account and username are required to be able to edit the articles.
Since Matt (may I call you Matt?) has no username for his biographical editing work, I also, and conveniently for him, have no way to see what he has contributed (if anything) to the three biographies he linked to. I can, however, see that these are truly notable academics, a fact that I’m sure Matt hoped would continue to flatter me by demonstrating his high esteem for my work. What good company I’d be in!
The schmooze continues, with an “if you would like” that leads me to the next step, an explanation of his process and the information he’d find helpful to begin. I can only imagine that the “explanation” would have included the first awkward, embarrassed, modestly head-ducking mention of some payment he’d require. Also, the mention of “helpful information” was a bright red flag, given his earlier assurance that everything he needed was publicly available. But hey, he sends his best regards.
Enough of waltzing with Matthew. At this point I’m getting fed up with the Eddie Haskell strategies (actually more like restaurant servers complimenting me on my menu choices) as well as my own assumptions about my cleverness. So I googled some keywords from the scam emails and quickly found all my suspicions confirmed … on a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Scam_warning. Thankfully, I had not shared my Wikipedia password with dear Matthew, nor had I clicked on any links (besides the article links, which fortunately were real) or opened any files he’d sent me. Following the Wikipedia page’s instructions, I reported the scam.
As you will see from the email thread below, this “offer” is almost certainly a scam. I have edited Wikipedia for many years, and I know very well there is no professional title of “Wikipedia Editor,” nor is there any conflict between having a public username (i.e., an account on Wikipedia) and Wikipedia’s policies on sourcing and neutrality.
My strong hunch is that, were I to continue the correspondence with “Matthew Lewis,” I would soon be told of the fee he charges for his “professional work.”
Academic vanity is usually a sure bet, but in this case I am an academic familiar enough with Wikipedia to smell a rat.
With all best wishes,
Gardner Campbell
Having made many scam reports on other platforms, usually exercises in futility (I’m looking at you, Facebook), I expected at best an automated reply, or more likely, no response at all. Instead, to my wonder and delight, I heard from a real, live Wikipedian, one who’s volunteered time and energy not only to policing these scams but also to responding to people who report these scams–and responding in ways that were truly helpful and encouraging (i.e., without a salutation of “dear professor fool”):
Dear Gardner Campbell,
Thank you for reporting this. There are many paid editing companies out there that look through recently-declined drafts, or contact people with public careers and contact information (like professors or academics) to send this kind of solicitation. Very few of them comply with Wikipedia’s paid-editing policies, most are outright scams, and none are endorsed by Wikipedia, no matter what they may say. Feel free to ignore future emails like this, and we recommend marking them as spam.
As you seem to be aware, there is no way to know if the work they offered as examples of their work is actually by them. Their response to your inquiry about their account made me laugh. They don’t use a single account so they can edit and abandon the account before they are questioned about being a paid editor. It’s not promoting themselves to admit to being a paid editor- it’s a Terms of Use requirement for editing Wikipedia. They don’t want any stigma even though as long as they disclose paid editing, there is no issue.
As you also seem to be aware, you should stop communicating with this person.
Sincerely,
331dot
The conflict of interest volunteer response team
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English Wikipedia conflict of interest volunteer response team
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committe e/Conflict_of_interest_reports
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Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and responses are not to be considered an official statement of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation.
In a word: wow.
331dot writes beautifully, treats me with respect (probably more than I deserve in this case!), and teaches me things I didn’t know. I had no idea there was a paid-editor policy or that solicitations like these were so widespread (or where the fish were most likely to bite). I didn’t know there was a conflict of interest volunteer-response team for Wikipedia. And looking at 331dot’s User Page on Wikipedia, I learned of a volunteer whose work is committed, effective, and well-respected by fellow Wikipedians. Best of all, I could tell the email was not simply a form letter (or AI-slop) because of a refreshingly human sentence that has made me a 331dot fan-for-life: “Their response to your inquiry about their account made me laugh.”