Wikipedia page on Emotional Intelligence

Today I copied this from the Wikipedia page. It is a good example of what has happened with the term "Emotional Intelligence". As you can see, the Wikipedia article has turned into an advertisement for Travis Bradberry and his products.

Defining emotional intelligence

The distinction between intelligence and knowledge in the area of cognition (i.e. IQ) is very clear, where generally, psychological research demonstrates that IQ is a reliable measure of cognitive capacity, and is stable over time. In the area of emotion (i.e. EQ) the distinction between intelligence and knowledge is murky. Current definitions of EQ are inconsistent about what it measures: some (such as Bradberry and Greaves 2005) say that EQ is dynamic, and can be learned or increased; whereas others (such as Mayer) say that EQ is stable, and cannot be increased.

Measures of Emotional Intelligence

Some researchers believe EI is a cognitive ability just as is IQ (eg, Mayer & Salovey, 2000), others believe it is a combination of perceived abilities and traits (e.g., Schutte et al. 1998), while others consider it a skill that can be measured( such as Bradberry and Greaves 2005). These opposing views have inspired separate domains of inventories.

Self-report measures of EQ

Self-report measures of EI include the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal by Bradberry and Greaves, which can be taken online via a passcode included in their book (2005c), as a self-scoring booklet, or as an online 360-degree assessment. The Emotional Intelligence Appraisal measures the four EQ skills from Daniel Goleman's model:

Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social Awareness
Relationship Management

The references to Bradberry take you to this advertisment site http://www.eiquickbook.com, as you can see below:

The three references in Wikipedia to Bradberry take you directly to this advertisement for his "EI Quickbook" Then if you follow the link to Travis's business site, TalentSmart you get this page

On that page you don't learn anything about who they are at TalentSmart. Instead it has a picture of Ken Blanchard and a lot of impressive looking logos.

Here is the first time Bradberry was mentioned in the Wikipedia page, July 26, 2005

A reference was added to the bibliography and a link was put to his business' web page TalentSmart. Later a link was put to the Quick Book advertising page and as of today, Feb 17, 2006 the reference and the links are still on the Wikipedia page.

What this tells me is that the editors at Wikipedia, and the public users who may also edit the pages, can not be completely trusted to keep the page clean.

By the way, the user was from IP 69.228.100.138 and it was the only edit made from that IP address anywhere on Wikipedia according to this link. Thus we can't learn anything about who originally added the information, or why it was added.