The Wikimedia Foundation may be inching toward removing the board seat of its founder Jimmy Wales against his objections, amid a controversy over planned bylaws changes that according to Wales may greatly reduce community influence on the organization and risk "takeover by outside interests who do not understand our values."
As described in detail in last month's Discussion report, on October 7, the Foundation's Board had published a number of proposed bylaw changes for community discussion. These include an increase in the number of Board members from 10 to 16, and removal of the current requirement to hold a regular "community voting" process to fill three of the board seats, in favor of a more vaguely described "community nomination process" determined by the Board. This gave rise to concerns in last month's discussions, which Wales addressed by stating that "I will personally only support a final revision which explicitly includes community voting and I believe it is abundantly clear to everyone on the board that this is mandatory." It appears that he might have been overruled, as the updated bylaws draft posted after that feedback round still omits community voting. However, according to the same update, the item "Remove or change the structure of the Founder seat", previously not part of the proposed changes, was added to the agenda of the subsequent (November 17) meeting of the Board's Governance Committee. (The current bylaws reserve a "Community Founder Trustee Position" for Jimmy Wales on the Board, to which he needs to be reappointed by the Board every three years, with his current term expiring in September 2021. If he is not reappointed, the seat would remain vacant.)
Mike Godwin highlighted the issue earlier this week in the "Wikipedia Weekly" Facebook group, stating – as the former general counsel of WMF responsible for 2008 bylaws change that instituted the Founder seat – it "was designed to give Jimmy Wales a continuing connection to the Foundation and to tie the Board's activities more closely to its history and values ... More than almost any other non-profit enterprise, the Wikimedia Foundation depends on maintaining and honoring its originating culture, of which Jimmy is necessarily a part. In my view, he shouldn't be kicked out of the traditional position before he's ready to go."
WMF chair María Sefidari replied to Godwin that
"This is in response to the community petition to remove the Founder seat at the recent bylaws consultation. While it is not within the scope of the current proposed changes, it was well supported by multiple community members and is something that Jimmy quite calmly has said is open to considering, so it is being acknowledged as something that could well be explored in the future in several possible ways."
With "the community petition", Sefidari appears to refer to a talk page thread started by Liam Wyatt (User:Wittylama) during last month's consultation about the proposed bylaws changes (which up to that point had not included abolishing the Founder's seat). There, Wyatt had argued that "Now that the WMF is a mature organisation, I do not believe it is appropriate any longer for a single individual to have an infinitely-renewable and non-transferrable position on the board." Several other editors agreed, but former board member Sj objected that "Now strikes me as a particularly poor time to dissolve the founder's seat. To the underlying point, I agree that the WMF (specifically the roles of stewarding the brand, and channeling resources and public interest into support for the movement and the projects) is not currently trending towards ultimate control by the community. If anything, community involvement in governance has decreased and the scale of WMF-internal governance has increased, since non-WMF budgets were frozen and the FDC suspended [cf. Signpost coverage]."
In this week's discussion on Facebook, Jimmy Wales stated:
"In the past few years, there have been several crises that have made it increasingly clear to me: the biggest problem on the board is not a lack of professional expertise, but rather a lack of community representation and control. [...]
I am deeply concerned about the tone of some of the latest proposals from some quarters: a reluctance to be firmly clear that community control – in the form of voting and not just some vague "community-sourced board members" language that might mean anything or nothing – is not negotiable.
I believe that we need to be moving in a mildly different direction with the board expansion. I don't want to make a specific proposal but I will say this: rather than an expansion that keeps community in a slight +1 position, I think we need an expansion that gives the community an absolutely dominant role.
[... My] preference is not to step aside until I am sure that the "professional" appointed seats are absolutely always in service to the community, by making sure that their numbers are – relative to the community numbers – reduced.
Removing my voting seat – yes, it's a good idea in the long run, as I am just one person and not that important in the grand scheme of things. But for now, I feel that my role is to represent the moral conscience of the movement and to prevent takeover by outside interests who do not understand our values. So for those who ask when, I would say: when we are safe. And I don't think that's true just yet."
Voting in the Arbitration Committee election began November 24 and will continue until Monday 23:59 UTC, December 7. There are 11 candidates this year running for seven positions on the committee. The candidates with the largest percentage of support votes get a two-year term if more than 60% of those who voted either support or oppose (rather than voting neutral) voted support, but if the percentage of support votes is less than 60% but more than 50%, they are only eligible for a one-year term.
The candidates are Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, Guerillero, Hawkeye7, L235, Maxim, Primefac, Scottywong, and SMcCandlish. You don't need to register for any special process to vote. Any editor who meets the following criteria can vote.
As of about 16:00 UTC Sunday, 1,327 voters had cast their votes. If you change your mind after voting, you can vote again, but only the last vote counts. TonyBallioni withdrew his candidacy today, so you may wish to revisit your vote.
These guides represent the thoughts of their authors. All individually written voter guides are eligible for inclusion. |
"It is widely known that Wikipedia smears and lies about many conservatives (including The Gateway Pundit) and promotes leftist dogma. [...] Only legal action will prevent these far left hacks from censoring truthful news to the public", retorted the owner of The Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog that was deprecated by the Wikipedia community as an unreliable source in 2019, one month before his message. "Wikipedia has been and always will be fake news, and they know it. They believe facts are subject to a democratic process, and the only people with a vote are the bubbled leftists who edit Wikipedia", insisted the editor-in-chief of the far-right website Breitbart News shortly after the Wikipedia community deprecated it in 2018.
Is there any merit to these allegations?
A quick search reveals that media outlets tend to respond negatively when they are deprecated, regardless of their political orientation:
All of these deprecated media outlets accuse the Wikipedia community of having a bias that is opposite to the websites' own political orientations. But there is only one English-language Wikipedia. Deprecation is like a mirror: a source's response to being deprecated reflects its own bias more than it says anything about Wikipedia itself.
Recently, The Critic, a "contrarian conservative" magazine, published an article in October titled "The left-wing bias of Wikipedia", in which two pseudonymous authors who identify as American academics criticized Wikipedia editors for deprecating more right-wing sources than left-wing sources. What does this tell us about Wikipedia and its treatment of American media?
In a highly-cited 2017 report from Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, "Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation", researchers Robert M. Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler examined the United States media landscape in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Using a corpus of 4.5 million Twitter posts, these researchers measured the "candidate valence" of popular websites, which was determined by comparing the likelihood an article was shared by users who also retweeted posts by either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. (Less than 1% of users in the data set retweeted both Trump and Clinton.) On a scale of -1.0 to 1.0, the candidate valence of a website shows how likely the website was to be aligned with Clinton or Trump supporters in 2016, with a score of -1.0 (left) indicating that it was almost exclusively shared by Clinton supporters, and a score of 1.0 (right) indicating that it was almost exclusively shared by Trump supporters.
The Berkman Klein Center report identified Wikipedia as a "center-right" website on the candidate valence scale throughout the 2016 U.S. elections. Wikipedia was quite lonely – among the top 75 websites, there were only 3 sources with a center-right valence in the American media landscape during this time period: Wikipedia, RealClearPolitics, and the National Review. Based on the number of link shares generated by sources across the left–right valence spectrum, far-right and center-left valence sources dominated public discourse, with far-right valence sources obtaining the highest number of link shares, while center-right valence sources received the lowest amount of attention. In particular, The Wall Street Journal, an acclaimed conservative newspaper with a centrist valence, was usurped in popularity by Breitbart News, an Internet-native far-right publication with a far-right valence.
The dearth of center-right sources is confirmed in the current version of Ad Fontes Media's Media Bias Chart, a graph that shows the political bias and reliability of popular English-language publications as reviewed by Ad Fontes analysts. The Media Bias Chart portrays the American media landscape as a bell curve in which centrist sources tend to be most reliable, while an increase in a source's bias is correlated with a decrease in the source's reliability. In the chart, there is a discontinuity in the center-right region, which has a mere sprinkle of sources, while the center-left and far-right regions are much more densely populated.
The Critic uses the Media Bias Chart to point out that Wikipedia deprecates more right-wing sources than left-wing sources in community discussions. This is true, and results from a feature of the American media landscape: among low-quality sources, the most popular websites are right-wing sources. In December 2018, I compiled a table of all sources rated by Ad Fontes as "Nonsense damaging to public discourse", and compared their political bias ratings to their Alexa ranks. Although there were low-quality sources on both ends of the left–right political spectrum, there was no comparison in terms of popularity. Hyper-partisan right-wing sources were considerably more popular than hyper-partisan left-wing sources, with no left-wing equivalent to sources such as Breitbart News, which had an Alexa rank of 253. The most popular hyper-partisan left-wing source with a low reliability score was AlterNet, which was less popular with an Alexa rank of 14,007.
Almost two years have passed since I posted the December 2018 list, so it is time for an update. The following table details all of the sources with a reliability score under 24.0 on the Media Bias Chart, which includes the following categories: "Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info", "Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info", and "Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion":
Source | Status | Overall source reliability | Political bias | Alexa rank | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Gateway Pundit | 14.5 | Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info | 27.8 | Hyper-partisan Right | 521 | |
InfoWars | 12.0 | Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info | 27.5 | Hyper-partisan Right | 2,413 | |
Newsmax | 18.0 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 24.4 | Hyper-partisan Right | 2,621 | |
PJ Media | N/A | 19.6 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 24.4 | Hyper-partisan Right | 6,459 |
RedState | N/A | 21.3 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 25.1 | Hyper-partisan Right | 6,577 |
WorldNetDaily | 18.8 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 24.1 | Hyper-partisan Right | 6,680 | |
The Federalist | N/A | 23.7 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 23.1 | Hyper-partisan Right | 7,308 |
One America News Network | 20.1 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 22.1 | Hyper-partisan Right | 8,430 | |
American Thinker | N/A | 19.3 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 29.4 | Hyper-partisan Right | 11,845 |
Twitchy | N/A | 15.4 | Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info | 22.6 | Hyper-partisan Right | 12,267 |
Palmer Report | N/A | 16.9 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | -27.6 | Hyper-partisan Left | 13,119 |
Before It's News | 4.7 | Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info | 25.8 | Hyper-partisan Right | 15,728 | |
Natural News | 8.3 | Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info | 31.8 | Most Extreme Right | 17,368 | |
American Greatness | N/A | 18.7 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 27.2 | Hyper-partisan Right | 26,521 |
AlterNet | 23.2 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | -20.1 | Hyper-partisan Left | 31,744 | |
The American Spectator | N/A | 20.0 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 25.6 | Hyper-partisan Right | 37,759 |
The Right Scoop | N/A | 20.2 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 23.7 | Hyper-partisan Right | 42,248 |
The Daily Signal | N/A | 20.0 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 22.0 | Hyper-partisan Right | 50,975 |
Big League Politics | N/A | 19.3 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 29.4 | Hyper-partisan Right | 51,674 |
NewsPunch | N/A | 13.9 | Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info | 27.2 | Hyper-partisan Right | 54,839 |
Bill O'Reilly | N/A | 21.4 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 26.9 | Hyper-partisan Right | 55,910 |
LifeZette | N/A | 19.0 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 26.1 | Hyper-partisan Right | 58,147 |
Glenn Beck | N/A | 21.7 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 24.9 | Hyper-partisan Right | 65,138 |
Occupy Democrats | 21.6 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | -25.7 | Hyper-partisan Left | 74,059 | |
Wonkette | N/A | 15.0 | Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info | -29.1 | Hyper-partisan Left | 77,446 |
WorldTruth.TV | N/A | 7.0 | Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info | 11.7 | Skews Right | 78,653 |
Life News | N/A | 23.6 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | 23.6 | Hyper-partisan Right | 96,231 |
Bipartisan Report | N/A | 19.0 | Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion | -24.6 | Hyper-partisan Left | 218,772 |
National Enquirer | 8.8 | Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info | 10.8 | Skews Right | 362,156 |
Among the 29 lowest-reliability sources rated by Ad Fontes Media, 5 are "Hyper-partisan Left", 2 "Skew Right", 21 are "Hyper-partisan Right", and 1 is in the "Most Extreme Right". The Critic disapproves of how Wikipedia has not yet deprecated AlterNet, a website classified as "Hyper-partisan Left", but fails to note that there are six "Hyper-partisan Right" sources that are more popular than AlterNet which have also not yet been deprecated or blacklisted. Over the past decade, the prominence of hyper-partisan right-wing sources has been a key feature of the American media landscape. Considering the lack of popular low-reliability sources in the left, it is hardly surprising that a significant proportion of deprecated sources on Wikipedia are right-wing sources.
Wikipedia editors try to apply the verifiability policy and the reliable sources guideline evenly to all sources, regardless of the sources' political orientation. Although a significant subset of political discourse in American politics centers around content published in low-quality, hyper-partisan right-wing sources, Wikipedia cannot use those sources in most cases because they do not meet the encyclopedia's reliability standards. Wikipedia is a reality-based encyclopedia, which means that false and fabricated information is correctly excluded from Wikipedia, even when it is disproportionally published by media outlets with a particular direction of bias.
As the neutral point of view policy states, "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.[a] Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects."
The lack of high-quality center-right sources is a problem in the American media landscape, and you may be wondering how you can fix this issue. Currently, conservative media outlets have a stronger financial incentive to publish content that is less reliable. Look no further than Newsmax, which recently increased its viewership by a factor of nine after it started publishing baseless claims of fraud regarding the 2020 U.S. elections, with most of the new viewers migrating from the more reliable and less partisan Fox News. This apparent preference for disreputable media is sparking a crisis in American journalism.
To correct the situation, the American public can return to prioritizing high-quality information over partisan misinformation. Specifically, Americans who want to see a more balanced media landscape need to:
As an individual, whether you are a Wikipedia editor or reader, it is unlikely that anything you personally do would make a significant difference to the state of the American media landscape. However, all demographic changes are dependent on individuals taking action to support the changes they want to see. What Wikipedia desperately needs is a larger selection of high-quality conservative sources that represent the underserved population of Americans who align with the center-right. Once those sources are available, Wikipedia editors will be able to use them to rebalance articles that could benefit from more content that reflects a conservative perspective.
And only then can we re-right Wikipedia.
Notes
"The rich are different from you and me—they have more money."[1] Like the rest of us, billionaires are people whose behavior does not necessarily reflect that of others, even among those with similar-sized bank accounts. The only conclusion we can draw about billionaires is that they have more money—and thus more power—than most Wikipedians. They do not appear to edit articles themselves; instead, they pay editors to edit on their orders. In this article, I examine three current or former billionaires who appear to have paid editors and the changes these editors made to related Wikipedia articles. Based purely on Wikipedia edit histories, it is impossible to prove that an editor has been paid to edit for a billionaire, even in cases where the paid editor claims to work for the billionaire. We are nevertheless able to present strong evidence of a paid-editing relationship in at least two of the following cases.
The three main individuals discussed below, Greg Lindberg, Robert T. Brockman, and Robert F. Smith, have all recently had brushes with the law. Lindberg reported to federal prison on October 20, 2020, following his conviction on fraud and bribery charges.[2]
Brockman was indicted on allegations of tax evasion, "the largest U.S. tax case ever against an individual".[3][4] Smith was involved in the same case, but reached a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department following his payment of $139 million to the U.S. Treasury, and is expected to testify against Brockman.
In December 2019, The Wall Street Journal published a report, "How the 1% Scrubs Its Image Online", about five rich people who were believed to be employing Status Labs, the successor of Wiki-PR, to whitewash Wikipedia articles. Their suspected clients included U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Jacob Gottlieb, billionaire financier Kenneth C. Griffin, the fraudulent blood testing company Theranos and its CEO Elizabeth Holmes, and Omeed Malik. According to the Journal, Status Labs created fake news sites to remove negative news about these people from Google searches.
A December 2019 Special Report in The Signpost covered other whitewashing tactics in detail, focusing on Theranos Labs and edits by Status Labs' apparent employee User:Jppcap.
Lindberg's net worth was estimated between $860 million and $1.46 billion after subtracting a loss of $400 million resulting from the legal actions against him. He commissioned this estimate from Berkeley Research Group for an August 2020 legal filing.[5]
He attended Yale University, where in 1991 he started his first business, a healthcare newsletter. He is still the sole owner of this business, now known as Global Growth. By the early 2000s he was worth $12.8 million.[6] In 2013, before he went on a spree of buying insurance companies, Lindberg reported a net worth of $340 million. By 2017 he reported a net worth of $1.7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.[7] Lindberg has sued the WSJ over this and other articles.[2]
The purchase of insurance companies provided Lindberg with much of his cash. Insurance companies typically invest their customers’ premiums in low-risk investments, such as U.S. Treasury bonds, to ensure that they will have money to pay future claims. Lindberg moved many of these safe investments to more risky "affiliated investments" in companies he controlled. While small amounts of affiliated investments, less than 10% of total assets, are fairly common in the insurance industry, companies Lindberg controlled had over 40% affiliated investments, and much higher in some cases, raising questions as to whether he was using these insurance reserves as his own personal piggy bank. In total, his insurance companies made over $2 billion in affiliated loans.[6]
North Carolina law, unlike that in most states, allowed the state insurance commissioner to determine the amount of affiliated investments on a case-by-case basis. As his insurance empire grew, Lindberg became one of the largest political campaign donors in North Carolina, including funding the campaign of Mike Causey's predecessor as insurance commissioner. When Causey was elected to the office in 2017, Lindberg began complaining that the commission's decisions about his company were unfair and asked that the state employee in charge of supervising his company be replaced. Subsequently he asked for a Global Growth employee to be assigned as supervisor. Lindberg then began offering campaign donations to Causey. Causey contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and met with Lindberg, with the meetings secretly videotaped by the FBI.[7][8]
Lindberg was indicted in March 2019 for bribery and wire fraud. He was tried and found guilty in March 2020, and is serving an 84-month sentence.
While Lindberg appears to have paid four editors, only one, User:Mikec85, declared that he was paid by Lindberg, and then only after making 23 edits. Four of those edits reverted edits of mine that removed unsourced statements or fluff, such as a photo taken from Lindberg's website of a preteen Lindberg with a caption beginning "Remember the creativity and limitlessness of youth". On Mikec85's user talk page, he writes:
I can confirm I am a SPA and that I'm a paid editor as I am the webmaster/administrator for www.greglindberg.com. I have the authorization to cite any material from his website. I am paid by a company called Apex International LLC. (bold in the original)
Apex International, a firm Lindberg owns, is something of a jack-of-all-trades in the security business. Besides apparently editing Wikipedia for Lindberg, it was kept busy guarding his many mansions and protecting Lindberg and his family. His ex-wife believes that Apex spied on her after their divorce.[9]
On February 7, 2018, User:Sarah G Eli, later known as Green Beans 721, started Lindberg's Wikipedia page in their user sandbox. Their only previous edits were made the day before—three quick edits to unrelated articles, and three edits to Eli Global, the company Lindberg owned, now known as Global Growth. Green Beans 721 was a single-purpose account (SPA), with nine of their 12 edits made on the two Lindberg-related articles. The original article contained clichés such as calling Lindberg a "bootstrap entrepreneur" and "as a leader, Lindberg focuses on finding and investing in the right people."
The next year, another SPA, User:MT9429, defended Lindberg after an article in The Wall Street Journal reported that Lindberg had diverted $2 billion from insurance company reserves for his own use. MT9429 improperly cited a press release as a reliable source and stated that Lindberg "refuted" the WSJ story, rather than just "disputed" it. I reverted that edit, but they restored the PR source to the article.
Starting in November 2019, User:Mikec85 made 32 edits to the Lindberg article, including one where they presented detailed, though unaudited, financial information based on a single press release. They later admitted that they were an SPA and paid editor. Their final edit, in April 2020, was a request for arbitration against me. It was rejected within a few hours as "premature".
After Lindberg's conviction in March 2020, another SPA, User:Jumpingjacks67, made 17 edits, generally removing information about Lindberg's conviction or adding information on his philanthropic activities, including this series of edits.
The Signpost contacted Lindberg's legal representative requesting comments on this section. He declined to comment on any question of fact.
Robert T. Brockman was the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Reynolds and Reynolds, a major software provider to auto dealers, until this month. He was indicted in October on 39 counts of tax evasion, wire fraud, money laundering, and other offenses, arising in part from the allegation that he hid $2 billion in capital gains income in a series of Caribbean accounts. More than $1 billion in his Swiss bank accounts has been frozen.[10] Prosecutors called this "the largest U.S. tax case ever against an individual".[4][3][11] (Please remember that indictments and allegations are not proof of guilt and that he should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.)
Brockman is publicity-shy and there was no article about him on Wikipedia until I created a redirect from Robert T. Brockman to Reynolds and Reynolds. He may not have hired undeclared paid editors to edit the article about his company, but anonymous editors can be traced by their IP addresses from the Reynolds and Reynolds article to the firm. He or his firm did apparently hire a paid editor, CorporateM, formerly known as Corporate Minion, who declared that he was paid by Reynolds and Reynolds.
Brockman founded Universal Computer Systems in 1970 and the firm has remained privately owned since then. UCS bought Reynolds and Reynolds in 2006 and the combined firm took the name Reynolds and Reynolds.[12][13]
After the buyout, many of Brockman's employees expressed disagreement with the new management's policies. The Reynolds and Reynolds article reflected this "culture clash" in the section Merger issues, which included three solid references—to the Houston Business Journal, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Dayton Business Journal—plus one weaker reference, to Glassdoor.
Working slowly, CorporateM ultimately removed almost all this information. First he accused a couple of editors of edit warring in August 2015. There was no evidence of edit warring, so he may have just wanted to scare newer editors away from the article. Then in February and March 2016, he created a draft to replace the whole article. CorporateM gives an example of how he works in creating draft articles with a client, likely a different client, at his website ethicalwiki.com. "I hammered out the content of the draft with the client over several weeks, sometimes line-by-line or word-by-word."[14]
He then discussed the draft with two well-known Wikipedia administrators. In April 2016 one of the admins replaced the entire article with the draft. Three months later, after 26 edits by CorporateM and four edits by an anonymous editor traceable to Reynolds and Reynolds, the section was gone except for two sentences as a faint reminder.
CorporateM does not violate Wikipedia's paid editing disclosure policy as he declares his paid status on the talk pages of affected articles. He nonetheless remains bound to uphold Wikipedia's other policies and guidelines, including the neutral point of view policy, and the policy prohibiting using Wikipedia for advocacy, promotion, advertising, marketing or public relations. CorporateM does work to get approval from other editors to insert his paid-for text, but that doesn't mean that those editors have the time or expertise to vet every editorial choice CorporateM or his employers make. And sometimes our busy volunteer editors just make abysmal mistakes that they wouldn't have made if a paid editor weren't pushing them to include specific wording.
In September 2012 CorporateM edited his new user page, placing this text at the top of the page: "I consider myself to be a good corporate lapdog and welcome editors who choose to invite me to take the corporate stance on an issue." As long as our policies permit good corporate lapdogs to edit for pay, we'll continue to have problems with billionaires whitewashing our articles. It's time we reconsider those policies or just ban paid editing altogether.
Robert Smith is by all accounts a remarkable person. With a net worth of over $7 billion, he is likely the richest Black person in the U.S.[15] In his 2019 commencement speech at Morehouse College, he promised to pay off the student loans of all Spring 2019 Morehouse graduates, costing him $34 million.
He has also paid $139 million and agreed to forgo a $182 million tax refund to help settle a tax evasion allegation and reach a non-prosecution agreement from the Department of Justice. He is expected to testify in the tax evasion case against Brockman.[15][16] There is some evidence that Smith or his private equity fund Vista Equity Partners paid for editing on Wikipedia's articles on Smith and Vista.
In 1997 Smith started his first private equity fund with Brockman, investing $1 billion as its sole investor. Part of their agreement was that Smith would conceal part of his earnings in an offshore trust. According to Smith’s signed statement to prosecutors, Brockman "presented this unconventional business proposal as a 'take-it-or-leave-it' offer, dictating the unique terms and unorthodox structure to the arrangement. Despite any misgivings, Smith accepted [Brockman’s] offer, viewing it as a unique business opportunity he eagerly wanted to pursue."[15]
User:Lilil399 was an single-purpose account (SPA) with 20 edits focusing on the Robert F. Smith (investor) article they created, two edits to Smith's firm Vista Equity Partners, and two others—later deleted—to create other articles related to the firm. Only their two edits to Mack McLarty had no obvious connection to the firm. Their edits were not blatant advocacy, but low-key updates of Vista's capital, awards, and philanthropy. One edit that stands out was the removal of the fact that Smith's wife had been a Playboy Playmate. Lilil399 did not declare that they were a paid editor.
About a year after Lilil399 stopped editing, User:Johnny.thesn began editing the same articles, adding comparable content in a similar but not identical style. Johnny.thesn is not a classic SPA: they had actively edited pro wrestling articles and the Mack McLarty article for a year before starting to edit the articles on Smith and Vista. For the next 18 months, with the exception of two edits, they edited only articles related to Smith. Johnny.thesn did not declare themself to be a paid editor.
The similarity of the editing of Lilil399 and Johnny.thesn convinces me that both were working for the same person or business. All articles edited by Lilil399 were also edited by Johnny.thesn, including the seemingly unrelated article on Mack McLarty. The type of content they added or deleted from the Vista-related articles was similar. Still, I would be surprised if an administrator blocked them as sockpuppets, since they didn't edit the same articles at the same time, and due to the modest nature of their edits, it's unlikely that they would be blocked for advocacy. Proving paid editing typically requires a bit more for our administrators, who usually have fairly strict evidentiary standards.
The three billionaires described in this article are very different, and each appears to have had a different method of rewriting Wikipedia's articles about himself. Lindberg's paid editors were blunt and aggressive. Brockman's paid editor avoided the limelight as much as possible, but planned the rewrite in advance and took his time. Smith's apparent paid editors were extremely low-key, to the extent that some might not even believe that they were paid editors.
Can Wikipedians stop billionaires from using paid editors to whitewash the articles about them? It was difficult and time-consuming, but in Lindberg's case we did. We might just have been a bit lucky in this case. There was excellent information from a reliable source, The Wall Street Journal, co-written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. While the legal system can seem agonizingly slow, it worked faster than usual in this case. Several unpaid Wikipedians worked together to overcome Lindberg's advantages. Perhaps it was just that Lindberg wildly overestimated his abilities and those of the people he hired. But people who are tempted to edit Wikipedia's articles about themselves should remember: even a billionaire's whitewashing can be stopped and exposed.
Brockman's situation is a bit scarier than Lindberg's. The paid editor declared his conflict of interest and his actions were right in front of our eyes the whole time. It may be that only Brockman's tax case indictment led us to examine the case anew. But with our blinders off and five years' distance providing perspective, it's clear that the Reynolds and Reynolds article was whitewashed. We should never let professed "corporate lapdogs" edit for pay.
Was the editing done for Smith actually a problem? Was it against our rules? The editing itself might seem harmless, but if you agree with me that the editing was paid for, then the editors certainly broke our rules by not declaring that they were paid. Supervision of paid editors, if we want them here at all, is definitely needed in all cases.
What could we have done better? I recommend that other editors finding themselves in the position I was while editing the Lindberg article contact the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard early on. Working together is the only way Wikipedia editors can stop those who attempt to corrupt our articles the same way they try to corrupt public officials. Perhaps we could form a new WikiProject focusing on the biographies of billionaires. There must be a couple of thousand billionaires who are tempted to remove embarrassing bits from time to time.
But did we really do anything about the paid editing in the cases of Brockman and Smith? It seems they got away scot-free. But now their paid editing arrangements have been exposed. With the benefit of hindsight we were able to track their paid edits fairly well. Other billionaires who are tempted to hire paid editors should understand that almost all edits on Wikipedia are permanently saved. Whether it's five, 10, or 20 years later, your edits can be tracked, perhaps by technology that has not yet been developed.
We need to better publicize that we have rules against undisclosed paid editing and self-promotion. The Signpost is not capable of doing this job alone. The Wikimedia Foundation must take an active role in letting billionaires and others know we have rules that must be followed. Flouting our rules has consequences, such as exposure to the general public. We also invite press around the world to expose those who would corrupt Wikipedia.
I hammered out the content of the draft with the client over several weeks, sometimes line-by-line or word-by-word.
Media recognized Wikipedia's role in providing neutrally sourced information to citizens preparing for the U.S. November elections. In particular, Wikipedia's community-based model (versus the top-down control of other social media platforms) was shown as an effective way to forestall potential problems by adding extra protection to elections-related topics. It wasn't all positive, though, with some sources pointing out continuing issues around women's biographies, and potentially politically-motivated vandalism. – B
Reviews and extracts of Wikipedia@20, a thick book of essays about Wikipedia's first twenty years, have started coming out. The essays are written by academics and by Wikipedians and are aimed at the same groups.
The creation, rejection, and disappearance of the Sept. 11 memorial wiki’s content remains an underappreciated cautionary tale about the presumed durability of peer-produced knowledge: This content only persists when it remains integrated with the larger common project rather than being relegated to a smaller and more specialized project. Wikipedia’s peer production model is not immune from "rich get richer" mechanisms.
Meng Wanzhou, Chief Financial Officer of Huawei was detained at the Vancouver airport on December 1, 2018 with the help of a Canada Border Services Agency officer who prepared for an interview with her with an "open-source query" – reading Wikipedia for 5 or 10 minutes. Meng is facing possible extradition to the U.S. and her detention soon became a major international incident. In "Wikipedia was source of security concern questions for Meng: Border officer", The Canadian Press reported on the in-court testimony of Sanjit Dhillon, a CBSA supervisor at Vancouver International Airport.
Before Meng's plane landed, Dhillon said she was flagged in an internal database for an outstanding warrant in her name.
Anticipating her arrival, Dhillon testified he found a Wikipedia page about Huawei that said the company doesn't operate in the United States because of security concerns and that Huawei was suspected of violating U.S. economic sanctions with Iran. [...]
Dhillon asked Meng what she did. She said she was the chief financial officer of a global telecommunications company, he told the court.
He asked where the company did business. When she listed countries without including the United States he asked her why.
"She said we don't sell our products in the United States," Dhillon said.
He asked if there was a reason why and Meng responded she didn't know. Dhillon said he then reframed the question.
"Since she's the chief financial officer of this telecommunications company, I would assume that she would know why her company isn't able to sell its products in one of the most lucrative markets in the world," Dhillon said.
"She was quiet. She didn't respond right away. And eventually she said there was a security concern with the product the U.S. government had."
He testified Meng didn't say what those concerns were.
Dhillon said his questions were based on his own online search and he was not directed by anyone to ask her questions.
The South China Morning Post reported the story similarly, adding the detail that "Dhillon said he spent five to 10 minutes reviewing the Wikipedia article."
Business in Vancouver added that Wikipedia was the only source he used!
The Signpost can confirm that on December 1, 2018 the Huawei article contained a large section about Iran, espionage, and security concerns in the US, consistent with Dhillon's testimony. – S
BBC Two reportedly had an excellent hour-long documentary "Lockdown 1.0 - Following the Science?" airing on November 19 about the UK government's handling of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately those of us outside the UK cannot view the online version due to licensing restrictions.
The Guardian provided a detailed review of the documentary, giving it 4 stars, and surveying the many facts presented, including one about Wikipedia:
"The public may be surprised to hear we were using data from Wikipedia very early on – but it really was the only data publicly available." — Dr. Ian Hall of Manchester University, deputy chair of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling
Several UK tabloids have featured this quote in their reporting on the documentary. – B, S
So, we're doing a bit of a shorter timeframe on the featured content this month because, frankly, last month was a rush to get done in time, since it was meant to be finished and published so soon after the content window closed. Not ideal. Still, Wikipedia creates a lot of great content - Hell, remember when we used to do these weekly? ...Am I the only one? Damn, I feel old. Anyway! It's a bumper crop of fantastic content for your perusal! Trying something new and putting featured pictures between articles and lists to break the content up. Let us know what you think! Anyway, that's it from your friendly Signpost reporter for this week! I mean, month! ...Feeling so very old here. When did I last do these, like five years ago? Ten? Pretty sure I had techniques for doing this back then that made it a lot easier. Ah, well! Still, hope you're all having a great month, and are going to have a great holiday season of avoiding other people and not getting COVID-19!
20 featured articles were promoted this period. Text is from the articles, but often abridged for length.
20 featured pictures (including the ones used for this article's header and footer) were promoted this period.
The Punic Wars, originally nominated as a Good topic by Gog the Mild, has been upgraded into Wikipedia's newest featured topic.
15 featured lists were promoted this period.
The pandemic cancelled Halloween, so instead an even scarier event dominates this report: the American election!
Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Sean Connery | 3,278,571 | It's been a terrible year for James Bond fans, as not only No Time to Die wound up postponed until 2021 due to the pandemic, but death came for the first and still best 007. Proud Scotsman Thomas Sean Connery retired from the film business in an unflattering note with LXG, but thankfully had already left a remarkable filmography behind, where he was a man romancing a thief, Robin Hood, an Immortal, Indiana Jones' father, a submarine captain, a dragon, a spy who escaped from Alcatraz, and, in the role that gave him an Oscar, a cop partner of Elliot Ness who knew how to make use of a corpse. | ||
2 | The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) | 1,918,895 | Netflix continues to release new shows that bring in lots of attention. This time, it's an adaptation of a novel about a chess prodigy who tries to become the world's greatest chess player in the 50s and 60s while struggling with emotional issues and substance abuse. | ||
3 | Sacha Baron Cohen | 1,409,756 | It was a big month for the British actor\comedian, who revived Borat Sagdiyev in #8, released on Prime Video, and played Abbie Hoffman in The Trial of the Chicago 7, released on Netflix. (Man, can't wait for theatrical releases to stabilize so films can stop being relegated to streaming.) | ||
4 | Khabib Nurmagomedov | 1,364,426 | One of the most victorious MMA (Mixed martial arts) fighters retired after his bout with Justin Gaethje, leaving behind a record of 29 wins. | ||
5 | Amy Coney Barrett | 1,336,174 | This judge joined the U.S. Supreme Court after the Senate approved her nomination. | ||
6 | Mirzapur (TV series) | 1,052,322 | India pushing in an entry, a Prime Video show about criminals in Purvanchal, starring Pankaj Tripathi (pictured). | ||
7 | 2016 United States presidential election | 1,045,629 | On the 9th (thanks, Michael Moore), it will be four years since America chose not to elect Hillary Clinton. Soon the election will show if buyer's remorse settled in or if Trump still has enough supporters. | ||
8 | Borat Subsequent Moviefilm | 962,702 | #3 retired Borat Sagdiyev because a hit movie would make the character too recognizable to continue his 'purpose' of showcasing the worst of his interviewees. Well, what a surprise that Borat returned in Prime Video, roaming the pandemic-infested America of "McDonald Trump" with his daughter Tutar and lots of disguises, embarrassing the common citizen and big names such as "Michael Pen-is" and Rudolph Giuliani along the way. | ||
9 | Halloween | 956,670 | It was a year where Jack Skellington would have reason to try to take over Santa Claus' place, as the spooky part of All Hallows' Eve was a pandemic that made people scared to have parties or go trick-or-treating. | ||
10 | Anya Taylor-Joy | 938,936 | An American-Argentine-British actress, already seen this year in The New Mutants (making her actually fight things after being pestered by a witch and a sociopath with multiple personalities), and currently starring in our #2. |
Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2016 United States presidential election | 9,142,304 | The fear of having what put Trump (#6) in the White House repeat itself brought more views to that election that stunned everyone (just see our numbers back in the day!) than whatever was happening in the current one (#4). Pictured: an official ballot from the election. Not all states allow photographs of ballots (for the record, that one's from Wisconsin). | ||
2 | Joe Biden | 8,426,305 | After 3 presidential campaigns, 8 years as VP, and 4 days of vote counting, you have President-Elect Joe Biden. The day he's inaugurated, he'll be the oldest president in history. It's probably appropriate he also landed at #2 here. In contrast to his opponent, #6, and running mate, #5, Biden hasn't yet topped this list since it began to be tabulated in 2013. | ||
3 | United States Electoral College | 8,336,683 | The only college from which you can never graduate. For those not from the United States, and those from the United States, it's an archaic system that means you vote and then other people also vote based on how you voted. The party it advantages has varied from election to election, but right now, it's solidly favoring the Republican Party. Apparently it was designed to empower slave-owners, so it's kind of ironic how it should be installing a Black woman in the coming months. | ||
4 | 2020 United States presidential election | 7,181,141 | Because of an abundance of mail-in ballots due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and a certain soon-to-be-ex-president not wanting them to start counting until after polls closed, this year's election took longer than usual to be called (and to think one of the writers lives in a country where 100% of the vote is electronic, and the counting is over in just one day!). Pictured: The public responds in the streets after Biden was announced President-Elect. | ||
5 | Kamala Harris | 5,636,406 | While she may be the first, she will not be the last woman, woman of color, Black woman, or woman of Asian descent to be vice president. Much less relevant, she's the first Democratic president or vice president from the West Coast.[a] Who knew! | ||
6 | Donald Trump | 3,253,619 | Receiving about 5 million less views than #2... Did I say views? I meant votes. No, make that both. You're Fired! | ||
7 | 2012 United States presidential election | 3,074,994 | The second time #2 got elected as VP. Pictured: President Obama receiving a concession phone call from Mitt Romney hours after polling closed. All of these elections were probably boosted by the prominent links from presidential election page to presidential election page. | ||
8 | 2008 United States presidential election | 2,954,352 | Until this week, the 2008 election saw the highest number of votes for a Presidential ticket in U.S. history, with #16 taking the top spot and #2 as VP. The election was lost by the late John McCain (pictured), a diplomatic moderate Republican from Arizona beloved by his home state, #6's policies and insults towards McCain in recent years may have (along with massive minority turn-out) swung the traditionally red state to turn blue. Not that we're certain; Arizona and neighbor Nevada are still counting. | ||
9 | Sean Connery | 2,339,531 | This recently-deceased legendary Scottish actor is still being remembered. | ||
10 | 2000 United States presidential election | 2,201,274 | This election also notably took a while to decide, based on voting irregularities that have since been long fixed. Pictured: The languishing recount in southern Florida. |
Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Donald Trump | 15,162,676 | Where to begin? At the start of the week that redeemed 2020, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected President and VP of the United States of America. This is a big deal. One of the most notable people who doesn't like that fact is Donald Trump – also the outgoing President, joining a very short list of one-term presidents and starting a new list of one-term presidents who have been impeached – who still, as of writing, refuses to concede (not a necessary step in removal of a president, but a polite one) and demands his legal challenges against nearly every state that voted for Biden be taken seriously. That's hard to do when the man announcing the lawsuits is making his big speech by some flyers out the back of a garage of a landscaping company next to a porn shop in an industrial unit in northeast Philly.
Trump has been popular on Wikipedia for a long time; though he hasn't hit #1 in awhile (after all, nearly everyone knows who he is). He topped the list once in 2015, a whopping nine times in 2016, and twice in 2017. His article is also the second-most popular of all time, trailing only United States. | ||
2 | Kamala Harris | 9,602,086 | |||
3 | Joe Biden | 6,496,836 | |||
4 | 2020 United States presidential election | 3,200,218 | |||
5 | Alex Trebek | 2,626,849 | Trebek, the longstanding host of Jeopardy!, passed away November 8 from pancreatic cancer. Trebek was one of the most popular people on television. On almost any other week, he would almost certainly have been #1 on this list. | ||
6 | Jill Biden | 2,562,638 | Members of the incoming First and Second Families. Doug becomes the first Second Gentleman. (and his first wife would be #28 if this was a Top 30) | ||
7 | Beau Biden | 2,474,577 | |||
8 | Douglas Emhoff | 1,962,545 | |||
9 | The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) | 1,804,738 | Netflix still captivates enough to break up the election families. | ||
10 | Shyamala Gopalan | 1,733,395 | VP-Elect Kamala Harris's mother, who she spoke of in her acceptance speech, about how she who immigrated from India at the age of 19, and sent powerful messages about dreaming to young minority girls around the world. |
Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Donald Trump | 6,387,834 | Donald Trump, in a preposterous fourteenth time getting #1 on this list, has officially become the child we never asked for who throws a temper tantrum whenever he’s told it’s time to put his toys away and go to bed. You'd think people would already know who Trump is and not bother reading his Wikipedia article, but nope. How wonderful.
For those who were comatose for the past few weeks (or for those who don’t live in the United States and can afford not to hear about American politics) Trump still refuses to concede to the real winner (#24) of the recent presidential election (#12). However, for a moment, it seemed as though Our Man in Mar-a-Lago was finally getting past the first stage of grief when he tweeted out a semi-concession to his rival ("He won..."), albeit with yet another baseless accusation of voter fraud ("...because the Election was Rigged,"), only to, for once in his life, actually think about the implications of what he was saying and immediately take it back. The Trump legal team worked overtime last week filing tons of useless lawsuits to try to invalidate as many Biden votes as they could, and, in a turn of events that everyone saw coming, most of them were dismissed from the get-go. As evidenced by the numbers on this list, Trump is doing exactly what he knows how to do best, which is keep his name in the headlines. As tiresome as his shenanigans may be, it’s doubtful that he’ll cease until Joe Biden is inaugurated, but there’s uncertainty surrounding his willingness to even let that happen without things getting ugly. Anyway, here’s a particularly rousing moment from one of his speeches in 2018. | ||
2 | Margaret Thatcher | 2,929,180 | The Crown released its fourth season, now in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and thus boosting the views of some important British women: the ever-controversial Prime Minister known as "Iron Lady" (when she died, "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" entered the charts!), played there by Gillian Anderson, and the ever-beloved Princess known as "People's Princess" (when she died, "Candle in the Wind 1997" dominated the charts), played there by Emma Corrin . | ||
3 | Diana, Princess of Wales | 2,839,941 | |||
4 | Megan is Missing | 2,340,447 | Well, I guess they Found her.
This 2011 found footage horror film about the titular Megan and her friend going titular-ly missing after being (SPOILER!) abducted and killed by a creeper that Megan meets on the internet hasn’t seen much buzz since its release. Even then, its discussion was mostly kept to the internet, where it was lambasted for being rife with continuity errors, exploitation, and clumsy acting, writing, directing, you name it. It was so bad, it even got banned in New Zealand! Then again, so did Mad Max... But recently, like many a forgotten franchise (looking at you, Clone High), the film has been given new life by TikTok users, most of whom seem particularly shaken by its final act. It was enough for the movie’s writer-director-editor Michael Goi to venture onto the platform, where he issued a "warning" telling viewers not to watch it alone or in the dark, which is clearly meant to be an advertisement for the film rather than a deterrent. (He also says that this is the "customary warning" he used to give people before they watched the film despite the warning showing up nowhere in the film itself. As one TikTok comment puts it, "ITS A LITTLE LATE FOR THIS MICHAEL".) All I’ll say is this: if you’re looking for a found footage movie about a teenage girl gone missing, stick to Searching. | ||
5 | Elizabeth II | 2,241,692 | The Crown again, only this time with people born in the royal family. Let's see, there's the show's main character (the Queen from The Favourite), the uncle of her husband who was killed by the IRA (the Hand of the King from Game of Thrones), her sister (the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland), and her son who remains waiting for the throne at the age of 72 (...OK, Josh O'Connor hasn't played another royal yet). | ||
6 | Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma | 2,169,279 | |||
7 | Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon | 2,018,293 | |||
8 | Charles, Prince of Wales | 1,747,672 | |||
9 | The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) | 1,526,501 | It seems like the world won’t stop telling me to watch this show, and as much as I say I don’t have time, I definitely do, I just lack motivation. But I have faith that, once I get around to it, watching it will be worth it. It’s already become one of the top 100 highest-rated shows of all time on IMDb with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and has maintained a spot on the Top 25 for 4 weeks. Who knew people loved chess that much? Well, it might just be that they like watching a show about people playing it. In any case, I would genuinely love to see a series about the guys who play chess at McDonald’s (and trust me, there are plenty). | ||
10 | Anne, Princess Royal | 1,381,775 | British royals again! To wit, #5's only daughter, played in The Crown by Erin Doherty. |
Ten years ago, Kasey Baker was pursuing his master's degree in public administration at Western Carolina University, when he took a policy analysis course that changed his life: It introduced him to Wikipedia editing.
The course was participating in the pilot of what is now known as the Wikipedia Student Program, where professors assign students to edit Wikipedia as a class assignment. Kasey tackled the article on the nuclear energy policy of the United States. Then the Fukushima meltdown happened.
"More than 65,000 characters, hundreds of hours of writing, hundreds of hours debating with fellow Wikipedians later, I was off to the races," Kasey reflects now. "Wikipedia was a jumping off point for my academic career: if it were not for that assignment and those in the community and Wikimedia who helped me blunder though such a massive undertaking, I honestly might have gone a different direction in my career. Looking back, the process of writing an article up to the standards of Wikipedia was just as difficult, rigorous, and rewarding as publishing independent research."
After that first assignment, Kasey was hooked. He volunteered in future terms as a Campus Ambassador, helping the next generation of student editors. Now, as a political science professor, he's taught Wikipedia assignments in many classes. With fellow Wikipedians in his region, he founded the North Carolina Wikimedians user group. He's run many edit-a-thons, and supported countless new editors.
He loves sharing Wikipedia with people throughout academia, encouraging those initially opposed to alter their perceptions of Wikipedia. Kasey even admits one of his hobbies is breaking down teachers' barriers by explaining the positive impacts of teaching students to critically use and improve Wikipedia. Over the last decade, he's shifted from writing articles himself to training others how to write articles. In the time it would take him to research and write one, he points out, he helps 30 students write their own articles.
"Over the 10 years teaching and sharing Wikipedia, I've never once met a student who thought this was a throw-away assignment. It actually has one of the highest engagements of anything I teach, because who doesn't like telling their friends and family 'Look what I wrote on Wikipedia,' and seeing thousands of impressions each month on the page?" Kasey says. "Unlike most college assignments, even with harsh criticism from Wikipedians, students get immediate validation that 'This work matters, I'm proud of what I've done.' That fills a very important void for high school, undergraduates, and even master's/PhD students."
Kasey has a lot to be proud of in his decade of work on Wikipedia, but he points to his work preserving the written and oral history of Holocaust survivors on Wikipedia as the most fulfilling work he's done. Through a series of edit-a-thons, students, faculty, and staff have expanded or created 200 articles, adding more than 600,000 characters to Wikipedia.
"I have even had a Holocaust Survivor speak to me about an article on him that some of my students adopted/expanded, and let me tell you, it is a humbling experience to be told we all are combatting Fascism/Nazism," Kasey says.
Kasey has noticed a change in academia's perception of Wikipedia since he was a student ten years ago. He attributes this in part to the community's rigorous standards, and in part because of what Wikipedia is.
"A lot of it has to do with these pages being a battleground for the history of humanity," he says. "It's never a dull day editing articles here, and that's a good thing in my opinion."
From 5 September to 26 October 2020 I was a Wikipedian at Large on the remote West Coast region of New Zealand. In September I was based in Hokitika, Greymouth, and Westport, and in October in Ōkārito, Franz Josef, Fox Glacier, Reefton, and Arthur's Pass. The project was largely funded by Development West Coast, with additional support or accommodation supplied by Westland District Library, Grey District Library, and Glacier Country Tourism. The brief was to do the following:
I ran over a dozen talks, workshops, and meetups over the six weeks; the Grey District Library has organised two edit-a-thons as a follow-up to these. Seventeen volunteers signed up to assist with the project. Most were working remotely; both from Australia, and from Wellington, Dunedin, and Christchurch in New Zealand. They reported their achievements each day. Prizes were donated by Development West Coast and Friends of Waiuta and given out for the most and best contributions in different areas. Dozens of articles and Wikidata items were created, dozens of articles improved, and numerous Commons categories were cleaned up. For more on the participants and what they achieved, see the final report on the project.
Over 1,000 photos were added to the category Uploads by West Coast Wikipedian at Large in the course of the project. Here are a selection:
In an interview with the Christchurch Press, I mentioned that the Wikipedia coverage of some towns and localities on the West Coast was so incomplete that tourists would be dissuaded from visiting. This led to a TV interview, and my comments were quoted in international reporting of the Hinnosaar et al. 2019 study on the effect of Wikipedia article improvement on visitor numbers. I've subsequently been approached by two NZ tourist organisations wanting to know what they can do to work with Wikipedia.
2020 has seen many difficulties and challenges around the world, but for the WikiCup, it has been an excellent year, with several new entrants to the contest doing exceptionally well. The earlier rounds were dominated by Epicgenius, who achieved 113 good articles during the course of the competition, and the coverage of New York's buildings and other locations improved dramatically! However, the score is reset to zero at the end of each round, and the final round was very productive, with 15 high-scoring featured articles being achieved. The eight finalists also performed 75 reviews of FA candidates, achieved 88 good articles and performed 108 reviews of GA nominations during the last round. The scores achieved by Lee Vilenski and by Gog the Mild this year were nearly three times higher than the score that gave last year's winner first place. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!
Signups have opened for the 2021 competition. To join, click here.
We can't cover everything (and if we did, it'd probably have an awful lot of overlap with the Featured Content report), but just to give a quick sampler of the finalists' contributions in the last round....
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
In a paper titled "The Political Geography of Shoah Knowledge and Awareness, Estimated from the Analysis of Global Library Catalogues and Wikipedia User Statistics"[1] Austrian political scientist Arno Tausch finds a disturbing "global North-South and North-East divide in the library presence of Shoah-related titles", contrasting it with "a more optimistic [trend], based on freely available information on the internet" – namely the availability and popularity of Wikipedia articles about the same topic in multiple languages. For example, the study highlights their pageview numbers in the Farsi, Arabic and Indonesian Wikipedias as "truly a hopeful sign".
The bulk of the paper consists of detailed bibliometric examinations:
"Based on the data of our research project covering 165 library catalogues (54 nationwide union catalogues, 81 national libraries, 16 legislative-assembly libraries, 14 libraries of international organizations) and the OCLC Worldcat, which by itself includes no less than 70,000 libraries in more than 170 countries, we found that there is indeed a huge global gap in Shoah library holdings. Some 69.3% of the global library presence of the leading peer-reviewed journal in the field, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, in principle available to global publics, is encountered in libraries within the geographical distance of less than 1,000 miles from New York City or Brussels. We particularly analyze the lack of Shoah knowledge and awareness in many Muslim and Catholic countries."
The author contrasts this with webometrics, where "we must regard Wikipedia download statistics [i.e. page view data] as a first and very reliable seismograph of global social network trend ... Its 49.3 million articles in almost 300 languages are therefore also a treasure trove for the research on Judaism, Israel, the memory of the victims of the Shoah, and global anti-Semitism. ....[To] estimate whether or not a given language community on Wikipedia has a high or a low relative tendency to seek information on the Shoah", he compares the pageview numbers for the corresponding article with the annual pageview numbers for the entire Wikipedia in that language, or alternatively with "the culturally most neutral article in this context, the Wikipedia article on the encyclopedia Wikipedia itself."
The paper's detailed bibliometric studies contain many observations on particular countries or regions, e.g. "Among the countries holding less than 100 titles in their combined entire countrywide library system, we find countries where considerable numbers of Jews were sent to the Nazi German death camps".
While praising Wikipedia as an information source with more even coverage (across languages or countries), the author still notes that "compared to the presumed size of the Wikipedia user community [i.e. total pageview numbers], the Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, Persian, and French speaking Wikipedia users had a higher tendency to download the main Shoah Wikipedia article. Results for the Wikipedia downloads in Japanese, Turkish, Russian, Chinese, Swedish, Polish, Korean, Ukrainian, Czech, Finnish, English, Indonesian, Arabic, and Dutch (in descending order) were below the trend." The study similarly examines the article about Israel, observing e.g. that "With 844 daily downloads of the Israel article in Persian and 1,254 daily downloads of the Israel article in Arabic, a certain presence of the theme of Israel among Wikipedia audiences in the Middle East has now been achieved."
The article was published in a journal of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a think-tank which (according to the English Wikipedia article about it) "is considered to be politically neo-conservative". That said, few of the author's previous publications appear to have focused on topics related to the Holocaust or the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Libraries and their biases are the main focus of the paper, with the Wikipedia-related results occupying a smaller part. Still, the former are of interest to Wikimedians and Wikipedia researchers as well - for example as evidence for possible risks in GLAM-WIKI collaborations, where the biases and political constraints of such cultural institutions might negatively affect Wikipedia's efforts to achieve a neutral point of view.
Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions, whether reviewing or summarizing newly published research, are always welcome.
From the abstract:[2]
"In this paper we propose Neural wikipedia Quality Monitor (NwQM), a novel deep learning model which accumulates signals from several key information sources such as article text, meta data and images to obtain improved Wikipedia article representation. We present comparison of our approach against a plethora of available solutions and show 8% improvement over state-of-the-art approaches with detailed ablation studies."
From the abstract:[3]
"... we present a publicly available dataset of the history of all the references (more than 55 million) ever used in the English Wikipedia until June 2019. We have applied a new method for identifying and monitoring references in Wikipedia, so that for each reference we can provide data about associated actions: creation, modifications, deletions, and reinsertions. [...] We use the dataset to study the temporal evolution of Wikipedia references as well as users' editing behaviour. We find evidence of a mostly productive and continuous effort to improve the quality of references: (1) there is a persistent increase of reference and document identifiers (DOI, PubMedID, PMC, ISBN, ISSN, ArXiv ID), and (2) most of the reference curation work is done by registered humans (not bots or anonymous editors)."
From the abstract:[4]
"Philosophers of science have long postulated how collective scientific knowledge grows. Empirical validation has been challenging due to limitations in collecting and systematizing large historical records. Here, we capitalize on the largest online encyclopedia to formulate knowledge as growing networks of articles and their hyperlinked inter-relations. We demonstrate that concept networks grow not by expanding from their core but rather by creating and filling knowledge gaps, a process which produces discoveries that are more frequently awarded Nobel prizes than others. Moreover, we operationalize paradigms as network modules to reveal a temporal signature in structural stability across scientific subjects."
From the abstract:[5]
"we catalog the rules describing relational and statistical COVID-19 epidemiological data and implement them in SPARQL, a query language for semantic databases. We demonstrate the efficiency of our methods to evaluate structured information, particularly COVID-19 knowledge in Wikidata, and consequently in collaborative ontologies and knowledge graphs, and we show the advantages and drawbacks of our proposed approach by comparing it to other methods for validation of linked web data."
From the abstract:[6]
"Question Answering systems are generally modelled as a pipeline consisting of a sequence of steps. In such a pipeline, Entity Linking (EL) is often the first step. [...] In this work we present a novel approach to end-to-end EL by applying the popular Pointer Network model, which achieves competitive performance. We demonstrate this in our evaluation over three datasets on the Wikidata Knowledge Graph."
From the abstract:[7]
"This article reports what observable writing activities characterized three Wikipedia articles, archive, design, and writing, over a three-year period from 2012–2014. It then compares these results to writing in these same three articles 10 years earlier, from 2002–2004. Results show that articles were longer and more referenced in 2012–2014. The most frequent written contributions in 2012–2014 were adding and deleting content, followed by vandalizing and reverting vandalism. Ten years earlier, content addition was likewise the most frequent activity, though vandalism and its removal were not found."
When writing about women on Wikipedia, make sure articles do not use sexist language, perpetuate sexist stereotypes or otherwise demonstrate a prejudice against women.
As of June 2019, 16.7% of editors on the English Wikipedia who have declared a gender say they are female.[1] The gender disparity, together with the need for reliable sources, contributes to the gender imbalance of our content; as of March 2020, only 18.27% of our biographies are about women.[2] This page may help to identify the subtle and more obvious ways in which titles, language, images, and linking practices can discriminate against women.
Among editors of the English Wikipedia who specify a gender in their preferences, 115,941 (16.7%) were female and 576,106 male as of 13 June 2019.[1][a]
As of 10 March 2020, the English Wikipedia hosted 1,693,225 biographies, 291,649 (18.27%) of which were about women.[2] As a result of sourcing issues, almost all biographies before 1900 are of men.[5]
In 2009 the percentage of biographies of living persons (BLPs) about women was under 20%, but the numbers have been rising steadily since 2012–2013. As of 5 May 2019, the English Wikipedia hosted 906,720 BLPs, according to figures produced by Andrew Gray using Wikidata. Wikidata identified 697,402 of these as male and 205,117 as female.[b] The percentages of those that specified a gender were 77.06% male and 22.67% female; 0.27% had another gender.[6]
Avoid language that makes female the Other to a male Self.[7]
Researchers have found that Wikipedia articles about women are more likely to contain words such as woman, female and lady, than articles about men are to contain man, male, or gentleman. This suggests that editors write with an assumption of male as the default gender and expect that individuals are assumed to be male unless otherwise stated.[8][9] This tendency is easily countered by removing unnecessary specification of sex or gender. Avoid labelling a Margaret Atwood as a female author or Margaret Thatcher as female politician except in specific sentences or paragraphs in which their gender is explicitly relevant.
Categories are equally susceptible to asymmetric treatment of genders. In April 2013 several media stories noted that editors of the English Wikipedia had begun moving women from Category:American novelists to Category:American women novelists, while leaving men in the main category.[10][11] Labelling a male author as a "writer" and a female author as a "woman writer" presents women as marked—requiring an adjective to differentiate them from a male default.[12] Symmetry of categories has improved since 2013, but where editors encounter an imbalance they should correct it by moving male subjects to explicitly male categories (for as long as the current consensus regarding gendered categories holds).
In most situations, avoid referring to a woman by her first name, which can serve to infantilize her.[c] As a rule, after the initial introduction ("Susan Smith is an Australian anthropologist"), refer to women by their surnames ("Smith is the author of ..."). Here is an example of an editor correcting the inappropriate use of a woman's first name.
First names are sometimes needed for clarity. For example, when writing about a family with the same surname, after the initial introductions they can all be referred to by first names. A first name might also be used when a surname is long and double-barreled, and its repetition would be awkward to read and write. When a decision is made to use first names for editorial reasons, use them for both women and men.
According to Graells-Garrido et al. (2015), the lead is a "good proxy for any potential biases expressed by Wikipedia contributors".[14] The lead may be the only part of an article that is read—especially on mobile devices—so pay close attention to how women are described there. Again, giving women "marked" treatment can convey subtle assumptions to readers.
An article about a woman does not pass the Finkbeiner test if it mentions that "she's the first woman to ...." The test raises awareness of how gender becomes more important than a person's achievements.
Avoid language that places being a woman ahead of the subject's achievements. Opening the lead with "Smith was the first woman to do X", or "Smith was the first female X", immediately defines her in terms of men who have done the same thing, and it can inadvertently imply: "She may not have been a very good X, but at least she was the first woman."[15] When prioritizing that the subject is a "first woman", make sure it really is the only notable thing about her. Otherwise start with her own position or accomplishments, and mention the fact that she is a woman afterwards if it is notable.
For example, as of 10 March 2015, Wikipedia described Russian chemist Anna Volkova solely in terms of four first-woman benchmarks.[16] But the biographies of Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher, as of the same date, began with the positions they held, and only then said that they were the first or only women to have held them.[17]
Infoboxes are an important source of metadata (see DBpedia) and a source of discrimination against women. For example, the word spouse is more likely to appear in a woman's infobox than in a man's.[18]
When writing about a woman who works or has worked as, but is not primarily known for being a model, avoid {{Infobox model}}. It includes parameters for hair and eye colour and previously contained parameters for bust, hip, waist size and weight. The latter were removed in March 2016 following this discussion. If you add an infobox (they are not required), consider using {{Infobox person}} instead.
Wherever possible, avoid defining a notable woman, particularly in the title or first sentence, in terms of her relationships (wife/mother/daughter of). Do not begin a biography with: "Susan Smith is the daughter of historian Frank Smith and wife of actor John Jones. She is known for her work on game theory." An example of the kind of title the Wikipedia community has rejected is Sarah Brown (wife of Gordon Brown).
Researchers have found that Wikipedia articles about women are more likely to discuss their family, romantic relationships, and sexuality, while articles about men are more likely to contain words about cognitive processes and work. This suggests that Wikipedia articles are objectifying women.[19][d] Women's biographies mention marriage and divorce more often than men's biographies do.[21] Biographies that refer to the subject's divorce are 4.4 times more likely to be about a woman on the English Wikipedia. The figures are similar on the German, Russian, Spanish, Italian and French Wikipedias.[e]
[T]he greater frequency and burstiness of words related to cognitive mechanisms in men, as well as the more frequent words related to sexuality in women, may indicate a tendency to objectify women in Wikipedia. ... [M]en are more frequently described with words related to their cognitive processes, while women are more frequently described with words related to sexuality. In the full biography text, the cognitive processes and work concerns categories are more bursty in men biographies, meaning that those aspects of men's lives are more important than others at the individual level."[15]
A woman's relationships are inevitably discussed prominently when essential to her notability, but try to focus on her own notable roles or accomplishments first. For example, consider starting articles about women who were First Lady of the United States, which is a significant role, with "served as First Lady of the United States from [year] to [year]", followed by a brief summary of her achievements, rather than "is/was the wife of President X".
When discussing a woman who is married to a man, write "A is married to B" instead of "A is the wife of B", which casts the male as possessor. Avoid the expression "man and wife", which generalizes the husband and marks the wife. Do not refer to a woman as Mrs. John Smith; when using an old citation that does this, try to find and use the woman's own name, as in: "Susan Smith (cited as Mrs. J. Smith)".
When introducing a woman as the parent of an article subject, avoid the common construction, "Smith was born in 1960 to John Smith and his wife, Susan." Consider whether there is an editorial reason to begin with the father's name. If not, try "Susan Jones and her husband, John Smith" or, if the woman has taken her husband's name, "Susan Smith, née Jones, and her husband, John", or "Susan and John Smith". Where there are several examples of "X and spouse" in an article, alternate the order of male and female names.
The focus on relationships in articles about women affects internal linking and therefore search-engine results. One study found that women on Wikipedia are more linked to men than men are linked to women. When writing an article about a woman, if you include an internal link to an article about a man, consider visiting the latter to check that it includes reciprocal information about the relationship; if it merits mention in the woman's article, it is likely germane to his. Failure to mention the relationship in both can affect search algorithms in a way that discriminates against women.[f]
Use gender-neutral nouns when describing professions and positions: actor, author, aviator, bartender, chair, comedian, firefighter, flight attendant, hero, poet, police officer. Avoid adding gender (female pilot, male nurse) unless the topic requires it.
Do not refer to human beings as a group as man or mankind. Sentences such as "man has difficulty in childbirth" illustrate that these are not inclusive generic terms.[24] Depending on the context, use humanity, humankind, human beings, women and men, or men and women.
Some will set the cart before the horse, as thus: "My mother and my father are both at home", even as though the goodman of the house did wear no breeches, or that the gray mare were the better horse. ... in speaking at the least let us keep a natural order and set the man before the woman for manners' sake.
The order in which groups are introduced—man and woman, male and female, Mr. and Mrs., husband and wife, brother and sister, ladies and gentlemen—has implications for their status, so consider alternating the order as you write.[26]
Do not refer to adult women as girls or ladies,[27] unless using common expressions, proper nouns, or titles that cannot be avoided (e.g., leading lady, lady-in-waiting, ladies' singles, Ladies' Gaelic Football Association, First Lady). The inappropriate use of ladies can be seen in Miss Universe 1956, which on 12 March 2015 said there had been "30 young ladies in the competition", and in Mixer dance, which discussed "the different numbers of men and ladies".[28]
The use of the generic he (masculine pronouns such as he, him, his) is increasingly avoided in sentences that might refer to women and men or girls and boys.[29] Instead of "each student must hand in his assignment", try one of the following.
Nominative (subject) |
Accusative (object) |
Dependent possessive pronoun | Independent possessive pronoun | Reflexive |
---|---|---|---|---|
When I tell someone a joke, they laugh. | When I greet a friend, I hug them. | When someone leaves the library, their book is stamped. | A friend lets me borrow theirs. | Each person drives there themselves (or, nonstandard, themself). |
Avoid using openly sexist sources unless there is a strong editorial reason to use them. For example, do not use pornographic or men's websites and magazines (such as AskMen, Playboy, and Maxim) in the biographies of female actors. Be careful not to include trivia that appeals predominantly to men. A source need not be overtly sexist to set a bad example. For example, most women are underrepresented in certain institutions that are slow to change. Often such institutions can be fine to use as a source for men, but for women, not so much.
Avoid images that objectify women. In particular, do not use pornography images in articles that are not about pornography. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images states that "photographs taken in a pornography context would normally be inappropriate for articles about human anatomy".
Except when the topic is necessarily tied to it (examples: downblouse and upskirt), avoid examples of male-gaze imagery, where women are presented as objects of heterosexual male appreciation.[34] When adding an image of part of a woman's body, consider cropping the image to focus on that body part.
When illustrating articles about women's health and bodies, use authoritative medical images wherever possible.
When writing about women's health, make sure medical claims are sourced according to the medical sourcing guideline, WP:MEDRS. As a rule this means avoiding primary sources, which in this context refers to studies in which the authors participated. Rely instead on peer-reviewed secondary sources that offer an overview of several studies. Secondary sources acceptable for medical claims include review articles (systematic reviews and literature reviews), meta-analyses and medical guidelines.
To find these sources, enter the search term (e.g., "mammography") into the National Institutes of Health search engine PubMed at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/, and select "reviews" from the "article types" menu. A search for review articles on "mammography" brings up this list. Or select "customize", then the article type (e.g., meta-analysis or guideline). To check an article type (e.g., P. M. Otto, C. B. Blecher, "Controversies surrounding screening mammography", Missouri Medicine, 111(5), Sep–Oct 2014), open the drop-down menu "Publication type" under the abstract. In this case, the classification is "Review". When in doubt, ask for help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.
Wilder, Charly (5 July 2013). "Ladies First: German Universities Edit Out Gender Bias", Der Spiegel.
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