Let's call it the Woodard Effect. Or the North Face Effect.

A look at when people vandalize, manipulate, or otherwise violate Wikipedia's rules in a way that makes them worse than where they started.

There are 343 language versions of Wikipedia. English is the largest of these, with 7,057,521 articles as of writing, while the smallest is Cree (with only 14 articles.)

Of these 343 language Wikipedias, 335 of them had an article about a man named David Woodard. There were only 8 versions of Wikipedia that did not have an article about David Woodard—up until late June of 2025, when an editor named Grnrchst first exposed a “cross-wiki self-promotion campaign” alleging that David Woodard himself was responsible for the majority of these 335 articles. Grnrchst went on to write about this in the Signpost, Wikipedia’s newspaper.

Since August 2025, Woodard’s article on the English Wikipedia has included a section on Woodard’s self-promotion and attempted gaming of Wikipedia. It’s currently titled “Wikipedia promotion campaign” and reads:

In 2025, Wikipedia editors uncovered what was described as the "single largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia's history", in which a network of around 200 sock puppet accounts and numerous proxy IPs created or edited articles in 335 languages to promote Woodard for over a decade. A Wikipedia editor with the username Grnrchst suggested that the accounts were likely to have been operated by Woodard or people close to him.^[27][28] Following an investigation by Grnrchst, who later wrote about their findings in the English Wikipedia's newsletter, The Signpost,^[29] Wikipedia stewards and local communities deleted over 300 articles and banned associated accounts, leaving about 20 editions of the Woodard article intact.^[27][28]

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. You may recall when The North Face attempted to rank at the top of Google by vandalizing Wikipedia.

Their Wikipedia article currently includes this sentence:

In 2019, The North Face faced consumer backlash and apologized after its marketing agency surreptitiously added photos featuring its apparel to Wikipedia articles on popular outdoor destinations.^[20][21]

Here’s an image from the case study The North Face made about this blunder, back in 2019.

While there are is only one sentence on The North Face’s Wikipedia article about their blunder, you can find three full paragraphs about it on the article for Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia, which includes sentences like:

The Wikimedia Foundation condemned the stunt, stating in a press release: "When The North Face exploits the trust you have in Wikipedia to sell you more clothes, you should be angry. Adding content that is solely for commercial promotion goes directly against the policies, purpose and mission of Wikipedia"

And:

The campaign was described as "wildly misguided" and as having "egregiously violated just about every principle you can think about with respect to trying to maintain consumer trust" by Americus Reed, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania in an interview to The New York Times.

Both of these situations lead me to ask one question: was it worth it?

The Streisand Effect of Wikipedia

For the uninitiated, the Streisand Effect is “an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information.” It especially applies to when someone attempts to remove something from the internet in a way that makes the original information far more popular on the internet.

I like the idea of calling this particular phenomenon either the Woodard Effect or The North Face Effect because it mimics the Streisand Effect while having its own characteristics. In both cases, we have someone attempting to game Wikipedia in a way that not only did not work, but ultimately created negative press and affected their Wikipedia presence in a permanent way.

The attempt to control Wikipedia backfired on both David Woodard and The North Face in a way that eclipsed whatever original opportunity they identified.

Ultimately, I think both David Woodard and The North Face should be studied by anyone attempting to control their online narrative. Like the Streisand Effect, these are cautionary tales. And I expect the years will continue to give us more cautionary tales, as it seems that the temptation to edit or control Wikipedia often outweighs the risks.

Going back to my question: was it worth it? My thought is no, unless David Woodard and The North Face disagree. Woodard might, as it seems to have generated some press for him. If Woodard or anyone from The North Face is reading this: why, yes, I would love to interview you!