22 ms·

A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

748 points by yasp 8y ago

yasp 8y ago
See also: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-c...
nwah1 8y ago
I'm confused as to why this is newsworthy? Are we operating on the assumption that the 303 more prolific wikipedians are somehow all without a personal ideology? If the rules he's using are being followed correctly, and if the information he is posting is well-sourced, then your only other course of action would be to petition to change wikipedia's rules.
- codezero 8y ago
  I think one of the arguments is this isn’t an individual but a group or agency with an agenda and resources to bend Wikipedia to a specific narrative.
  - burfog 8y ago
    A group is made of individuals. They would normally have one account per person. Multiple accounts per person is more likely than multiple people per account. Bending wikipedia has been going on for ages, not even counting the paid editing that you seem to presume. The famous example, where Jimmy Wales had to step in, was pedophiles putting a positive spin on their sort of activity. A much tamer example is feral cats; the article minimizes any harm (wildlife loss, contamination, etc.) due to the people obsessed with the subject matter. Most controversial subjects on wikipedia get a positive spin. It's simply a matter of who is most obsessed with the subject matter.
- k1m 8y ago
  There's a clear conflict of interest which Wikipedia is refusing to act on.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    I feel like we're missing the context here. Why is wikipedia ignoring it?
    - k1m 8y ago
      That's a mystery to me too. Initially when the complaints were made on Twitter (by some of Cross' targets), Jimmy Wales dismissed them, asking for diffs. Now that we've provided diffs and shown the scale of his efforts and the clear conflict of interest, we've heard nothing more. We're hoping the more exposure this story gets the more pressure it will put on them to act. But so far it's not looking hopeful. See how one editor was shut down when he tried to raise the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:KalHolmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:KalHolmann
      - TimTheTinker 8y ago
        I suspect Jimmy Wales and his associates are keeping mum because they realize this is because of a fundamental (perhaps intractable) weakness of the Wikipedia platform — NPOV is an impossible standard to maintain without a highly active network of trusted reviewers under a central authority. Even then, many small changes over a long period are a viable attack vector.
    - mjw1007 8y ago
      The admin who summarily closed the conflict-of-interest report explains his motivation as follows: « You can't amass 130,000 edits, as Philip Cross has, without being reasonably committed to Wikipedia. You'd be noticed if you were an agenda account with that many edits. And being attacked by RT and George Galloway is a reasonably reliable indicator that you are doing something right. » ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG ) This doesn't inspire much confidence in me, because obviously it _has_ been widely noticed that "Philip Cross" is an agenda account (and it seems it was noticed already almost a decade ago: http://neilclark66.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/wally-of-week-philip-cross.html http://neilclark66.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/wally-of-week-phil... )
- ajross 8y ago
  > Are we operating on the assumption that the 303 more prolific wikipedians are somehow all without a personal ideology? Absent evidence, yes. Are you operating on the assumption that wrongdoing is only actionable if everyone else is proven innocent?
- Jasper_ 8y ago
  Us internet denizens got upset when librarians complained that Wikipedia was inaccurate compared to encyclopedias. We celebrated the "new information economy" of crowdsourcing and open-access information. I think this crowd should be incredibly concerned to hear that there's clear propaganda and power wars on these websites. It's very newsworthy. > If the rules he's using are being followed correctly, and if the information he is posting is well-sourced, then your only other course of action would be to petition to change wikipedia's rules. He's removing well-sourced information that's counter to his claims.
- gpvos 8y ago
  Have you read the article? Well-sourced information is being removed and badly-sourced information added, and that's only the beginning.
- kizer 8y ago
  If the rules he's using are being followed correctly, and if the information he is posting is well-sourced, then your only other course of action would be to petition to change wikipedia's rules. "Well-sourced" is not the only criterion. I could edit a page, citing credible sources, and still distort it by including implicit, one-sided interpretations of those sources results/contents. Also, if the rules do not have, in short, "be objective", then yes, we should petition to change wikipedia's rules.
  - klez 8y ago
    > I could edit a page, citing credible sources, and still distort it by including implicit, one-sided interpretations of those sources results/contents. As an example of this, at a certain point John Perry Barlow was indicated as being against net neutrality. The source for the claim was his declaration of independence of the cyberspace because it claimed he didn't want government intervention in the net. As far as I know, this isn't "being against net neutrality" and I never read anything by JPB advocating against it. So yes, someone can always cite something and twist its meaning to fit a particular agenda.
    - nwah1 8y ago
      “Telecom regulations give a lot of leverage to organizations whether governmental or corporate to close down the right to know. My long experience says as soon as you give government the authority to impose regulations on the Internet you are doing something to frustrate the right to know. People tend to presume on theoretical grounds a little right minded regulation will help people build beneficial architectures and organizations. I do not think there is anything to support that theory. Every time I have seen any sort of regulation of the Internet the results have been mayhem. Declaring the Internet and the telephone network to be the same thing is like declaring a Buick and a symphony to be the same thing because they both make noise.” - John Perry Barlow http://calinnovates.org/category/issues/platform-access/net-neutrality/ http://calinnovates.org/category/issues/platform-access/net-...
      - klez 8y ago
zero_intp 8y ago
seems like a fairly obvious ops campaign by some interested group. I would think that many state organizations would want long term reputable editors to craft their messages.
- deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago
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throwaway_98554 8y ago
Judging by the time card, I would bet multiple individuals are using this account. And they're probably getting paid to do it.
- burfog 8y ago
  I conclude the opposite. He takes nights off, but doesn't take weekends off. This isn't employment. It's an obsession. He managed to tick off some people who have the opposite political opinion. Those people also edit wikipedia with a personal agenda, and they are unhappy to be up against effective opposition.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    The purpose of wikipedia, at least in the abstract, is to present NPOV information. You don't achieve that by having people with opposite political opinions war with each other.
- throwaway1982x 8y ago
  I also conclude the opposite. The time card looks very much like any time card of a single individual's regular internet use - showing the sleep pattern/circadian rhythm of a single person averaged over a long period of time.
- bhouston 8y ago
  Many wikipedians are obsessive types. Also why would multiple people pretend to be one. Groups are more effective than individuals on Wikipedia.
  - throwaway_98554 8y ago
    Because many people would get upset if "my-political-party" was hiring team of editors to change the wiki articles. And if they are indeed getting paid, the organisation might have an important turnover. By using a single account (or multiple shared accounts; I doubt there's only one), you keep the 'prestige' you have built. Your 1 week old new recruit can edit texts left and right while most people think it's a legit old wikipedians tidying stuff up.
whack 8y ago
This is extremely concerning. Phillip Cross was easily caught because he was running his mouth on twitter, and was blatantly making one-sided edits from his single account. Imagine if a country like Russia makes an orchestrated effort to achieve similar goals, using an army of fake-wikipedia-profiles. They could easily turn Wikipedia into a platform for disseminating propaganda. In fact, I'd be surprised if they haven't done so already. https://www.vox.com/2018/2/16/17020974/mueller-indictment-internet-research-agency https://www.vox.com/2018/2/16/17020974/mueller-indictment-in...
- k1m 8y ago
  Wikipedia, however, appear to be trying to protect him. Please see one Wikipedia editor's efforts to flag his behaviour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:KalHolmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:KalHolmann
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Exactly what is it we're supposed to be looking at here? And what does "Wikipedia", as an entity, mean in your comment?
    - k1m 8y ago
      It's not that long. Did you read it? One Wikipedia editor is trying to highlight the problem of Cross' edits and have him marked as having a conflict of interest on certain articles. The Wikipedia admin (or superiour, I'm not familiar with the Wikipedia hierarchy) shuts him down very rudely and doesn't appear to want to address the issue at all. Leaving the editor to give up: "Forgive me for concluding that Wikipedia is circling its wagons around Philip Cross...I know when the deck is stacked against me."
      - TwoBit 8y ago
        Maybe that editor is Philip Cross?
      - Kim_Bruning 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
roywiggins 8y ago
"Anti-war" doesn't sound like a particularly descriptive adjective for the apparent targets here. They are not anti-war campaigners per se, they seem to be sitting in the Russia-sympathetic zone of discourse. I'm not saying that to discredit them (I might, but I won't), but calling them anti-war rather obscures the problems people might have with them. That doesn't mean that a "one-man" effort to shepherd their Wikipedia entries isn't notable or concerning but let's not pretend these guys are pacifists.
- bushin 8y ago
  This seems closer to the truth, otherwise why sputnik and rt would care.
  - strainer 8y ago
    These notable persons (Craig Murray, David Edwards, George Galloway etc) who are reporting their personal biographies being edited unfairly on Wikipedia, are in fact well known as prominent humanitarian and anti-war activists and writers. For strategic reasons at least -- Russia's foreign commercial news stations are also of late "sympathetic" to anti-war and progressive themes (such as arms reduction and peaceful conflict resolution). Opinions may differ here about the nature of Russia's support for those subjects, but that is a very orthogonal concern. I don't know of any substantiated connections between the persons involved here and the Russian government or media. They certainly are "anti war" in the popular sense of the term.
    - bushin 8y ago
      I googled Galloway and he has young Stalin on his twitter profile pic. Never before had Stirlitz been so close to failure.
      - strainer 8y ago
        Sure Galloway has a soft spot for Stalin - obviously he considers him misunderstood - history written by the victors and all that. I wouldn't know. But the issue here is how does such an eccentricity significantly connect him to the modern Russian government or media? And also the others, as is being suggested - as a group.
rectang 8y ago
Cross's modus operandi seems to be many small edits which accumulate to produce a large negative effect, at odds with Wikipedia's principle of "neutral point of view". It's an example of operating within the letter of the rules but not their spirit.
- unreal37 8y ago
  I bet that if you changed 1 word per day on a page, after 2 or 3 years, you've successfully modified the tone of an article that cannot be easily reverted.
joering2 8y ago
Wikipedia been disappointing for a while. I had few years run when every year I got Jimmy email, I did donated $10 cause they gave me tons of info. Just recent year or so, every single article is locked for edition and by different reason (which really doesn't matter). After spending some time you clearly see "clans" of wiki editors fighting with others, removing their content and clearly having agenda, whether it is to continue discredit some individuals, or keep others record unfairly "clean". Here are all the locks they use as pretex to forbid you from adding your own content, aka supposedly "wikipedia is build by anyone willing to donate their time". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy#full https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy#fu...
- cooper12 8y ago
  It's not hard at all to be able to edit these articles once you make an account and takes a bare minimum of effort. See one of my earlier comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582767
JoshMnem 8y ago
The Wikipedia editing process is broken. Wiki-lawyering is used to shut down the collaborative editing process, even when not on political topics often by people who don't know much about the topic that they are editing. I don't trust Wikipedia content and tend to examine the Talk pages (sometimes even the Talk page histories) on controversial articles.
- noobermin 8y ago
  Wikipedia is useful for looking up technical info that there is no conflict over. It is not a good source for diving into a top-level controversial topic as those articles are long and have many places for people to stump and push for their ideas. The more specific a topic (think, a specific author associated with an ideology vs. the page for the ideology) the better. I think I've just adopted these mental heuristics automatically due to this.
  - Jasper_ 8y ago
    > Wikipedia is useful for looking up technical info that there is no conflict over. Even this isn't true. As a former contributor to the Linux desktop community, false information about projects and codebases I had runs rampant on Wikipedia. One Wikipedia editor with more time on his hands than any of us [0] devotes his time to maintaining those articles, despite self-admittedly having little topical knowledge [1]. Trying to correct these things quickly caused me to spiral down into edit wars I wasn't that interested in winning, and tomes of naming policy after policy. To get something incorrect on Wikipedia, you just have to be persistent and cast your WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:DEMOCRACY, etc. spells at the right time. Anybody interested in correcting the record will eventually tire out and have to go back to doing the work... [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ScotXW https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ScotXW [1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2013-November/013970.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2013-No...
    - tptacek 8y ago
      If it's "rampant" on Wikipedia, you should have no trouble pointing out examples. So, respectfully, I'd ask that to support your argument with evidence, you do that. I had trouble editing technical topics I was familiar with, too, and found it incredibly aggravating. I'd write demonstrably true, helpful, factual content about something only to have it struck for lack of sourcing. It took awhile to get through my head the model of the project, which included as a basic premise that I, as an editor, am not a valid source. I came to the project knowing that, of course, but didn't realize viscerally how much of the technical writing I do implicitly relied on my own experience and understanding as a sort of "source". On articles that WP'ians pay attention to, you won't get away with doing that. You'll have to tie claims to a secondary source (you usually can't just point to source code, because then you're doing interpretation, which is a form of original research) both for the claim itself and, sometimes, for the noteworthiness of the claim. The best way to metabolize this is to realize that Wikipedia isn't the Hitchhiker's Guide; it's an encyclopedia, which means the project has explicitly opted-in to some limitations as a tradeoff to accomplish other things. (Some articles also just have possessive editors; there is dysfunction everywhere, and WP is no exception).
mistrial9 8y ago
regarding general participation in English Wikipedia -- the last three or four edits I made to Wikipedia articles I found interesting, were summarily reverted. Why try ?
- jakobegger 8y ago
  Same here. I realised that many articles are watched over by obsessive editors that immediately revert edits for whatever reason. Makes it hard for occasional editors and newcomers.
- testplzignore 8y ago
  If you've got any diffs of the edits that you'd like to share, I (and probably others) would be happy to take a look and start an edit war to make things right :)
- mappu 8y ago
  Counter-anecdote: I have had a perfectly pleasant experience with making a range of edits, big and small (one new article, some new sections, half a dozen typo-fixes and reverted vandalism, etc). What reasons were you given for the reversion?
- mikedilger 8y ago
  I've had the same experience, edits reverted with no explanation.
- mormegil 8y ago
  If you'd shown them, we could try to say. This way, this is an empty claim.
always_good 8y ago
My friends and I had a shameful game in uni where we competed to see who could make the most egregious edits to wikipedia without getting reverted. What was surprising was just how easy it was. We started with minor edits in small articles, just adding our own name to some list of notable achievers. Then, due to competition, we would add an entire paragraph that fabricated an event. Like adding ourself as a conquistador of some made-up novohispano population in some made-up location. Imagine how compromised wikipedia must be by people with agendas more lofty than uni students passing some time. Hell, just the other day I removed "See Also: Donald Trump" from one of the major fallacy articles. The history showed that the scathing political commentary was up there for over 8 months and nobody cared.
- tptacek 8y ago
  "Shameful" is a good word for it. Stuff like this is a major reason --- maybe the major reason --- behind most of the limitations of the Wikipedia platform. It is, for instance, the primary cause of "deletionism": marginal articles are difficult to police, and so the project has to establish a notability cut-off so it can constrain the problem at least to articles where there are sources to tie claims to. I'm not saying you should feel bad about yourself, but it's good if people can recognize what WP is up against.
  - yarrel 8y ago
    You are confusing edits with articles. Deletionists tend to confuse their personal ignorance (often of a website called "Google" [yes I know how notability works, no that's not an argument against not bothering to even trivially check whether an article can be improved rather than deleted]) with a mandate to sabotage Wikipedia. People who remove cruft from articles, rather than speedy deleting articles that aren't about Pokemon, are not deletionists and should not be invoked as human shields for deletionists.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      No, you've misunderstood my argument. The problem is that it's difficult for editors to remove "cruft" on articles about marginal topics, because there are so few (usually: zero) reliable sources to draw from. You can't start from a premise that "cruft" can be removed without removing classes of articles; that begs the question that deletionists answer.
tomtimtall 8y ago
Wikipedia should maintain 3 separate threads for all these polarizing individuals and organizations. Obliviously biased for, obviously biased against, and the the idealt neutral statement of facts(with no facts removerførsel because they play negative or positive, they can be dismissed or remover In the biased sections only.
- cooper12 8y ago
  And now you have three times as many problems...
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  There is frequently a "Controversies" section. Also the Talk page and revision history.
jarym 8y ago
Next time Jimmy pesters me for a donation I'll be contacting him and citing this as a reason why I won't.
- TwoBit 8y ago
  Why don't we start a big "don't contribute to Wikipedia campaign". Can we start one of those "fund me" campaigns and use the proceeds to battle this?
  - Qwertie 8y ago
    Do you have a proposal for an alternative place to contribute to?
  - TheForumTroll 8y ago
    How about starting something and then write an Wikipedia article about it?
Kim_Bruning 8y ago
This appears to be a bit longer running: https://sputniknews.com/amp/analysis/201805161064505256-cross-galloway-wikipedia-obsession/ https://sputniknews.com/amp/analysis/201805161064505256-cros... (note: Sputnik news seems to be associated with the Russian government).
wybiral 8y ago
"ditch Wikipedia" seems a bit melodramatic. Nobody should rely on Wikipedia as the sole source of any information, but it can be a useful starting point and usually has enough references to back it up. People need to be more careful about examining the source of claims in general. Including what is shared with them on social media, YouTube videos, news articles, etc. But that doesn't mean those mediums are no longer useful.
- reccanti 8y ago
  If anything, it seems like more of a reason to get more active and involved with Wikipedia. Otherwise, people like this will get more and more control over the site
- lemagedurage 8y ago
  "ditch Wikipedia" seems a bit melodramatic. Definitely, if they call for ditching Wikipedia over a single contributor in the title of the article, how much are they exaggerating about other things?
lkrubner 8y ago
This part: “We pulled in the dates from his user contributions page and found that Cross had not had a single day off from editing the site in almost 5 years!” Makes me think that this is an account shared by many people. Since we don’t know who this person is, there is a chance that this person is really a whole organization.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  There are a lot of obsessive people on Wikipedia. Back in the days when I was an active editor, I was regularly embroiled in edit wars with somebody who had odd but extremely firm opinions about the romanization of Okinawan (not a political topic even in Japan) and what appeared to be 24/7 ability to enforce them. I suspect quite a few of those shut-in "hikikomori" types are top Wikipedia editors... All that said, checking the manual of style in question today, I'm positively surprised to see the weirdness is gone. This is a strength of Wikipedia: over time entropy of opinion tends to decrease, even though it may take years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Japan-related_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Japa...
  - hackandtrip 8y ago
    Is it good, though? I'm all about reducing entropy about facts, but what about opinion or more delicate subject? The power on propaganda, on making a new truth, is so big.
- cooper12 8y ago
  It's not hard to make an edit a day. It's a daily activity for editors like me to come home and wind down by quickly going through our watchlists and reverting any vandalism. I have 11k articles on mine and I wouldn't even say I'm a prolific editor. It takes me only a few minutes and thanks to things like ORES (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES), most of the suspicious edits are highlighted already.
brudgers 8y ago
In the early 1990's, I picked up a complete with the bookcase 1957 Encyclopedia Britannica at a yard sale for $15. Over the next decade and more it was a useful resource for historical topics in the days before the internet became what it is today...the basic scholarship of the Roman Empire, Ming vases and Howe trusses has been pretty stable for a long time. On the other hand, social and political topics usually tended to an editorial bias long past expiration even twenty years ago...let's say the phrase "spinning in his grave" is particularly appropriate for many of those Britannica authors and editors given today's events when "today" is taken literally. Wikipedia is like any other encyclopedia, human endeavor with shortcomings, biases, and failings. It should be taken with a grain of salt where warranted, trusted as canonical elsewhere, and constitute one among many sources in other cases. For me, at least there is the relatively high degree of transparency that allows people to independently research the claims of this article theirself should they choose. That's not the case with Google's search results and those probably have more a role in my ordinary decisions than Wikipedia. None of which is to say that this is good. Only that for me, it is a corner case...contemporary politics is an area of Wikipedia where I expect political gerrymandering and biased reporting simply due to the size of the attack surface, the nature of politics and the stakes at stake.
4bpp 8y ago
> ‘Philip Cross’ has edited @georgegalloway ‘s wikipedia page over 1800 times. This, and many other political arguments I have seen on it before, really makes me think that Wikipedia would benefit from a policy where a sufficient number of individual complaints against a user who has passed some threshold of number of edits to a single article (say 100) would be automatic grounds to block the user from further edits to the article, regardless of fault. I understand that this sort of obsessiveness is also an important asset to Wikipedia (and so they are understandably reluctant to set up obstructions to what it considers its "10x editors"), but in my eyes this pattern of personal crusading and article ownership causes damage to its utility as a source on any contentious topic far in excess of the damage it would suffer even in the worst case of every single editor that has put more than 1000 edits into any single article quitting.
- unreal37 8y ago
  1800 edits on a single page in only a few years is essentially a sickness. I'm not a doctor, but that should be classified as obsession.
  - dpwm 8y ago
    If indeed it is one individual. With the intensity of edits it would not be at all surprising if this editor was in fact more than one individual masquerading behind a single account.
    - justonepost 8y ago
      What possible benefit would accrue from doing something like that?
      - neffy 8y ago
        Look at who get's the favourable edits, and figure out their agenda? A stipend for the editor is small change to some of the financial types.
      - 8y ago
varjag 8y ago
On one hand, some shady Wikipedia vigilante. On the other, a bunch of Russia-backed war crime deniers. Quite a moral dilemma!
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Sorry, could you unpack and clarify that?
  - varjag 8y ago
    From the fine article: > Tim Hayward is one of the group of academics (his colleague Paul McKeigue is another) who set up the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media – or if you prefer the Times description, Apologists for Assad. The group’s questioning over whether it could be definitively concluded that the Syrian regime was responsible for the Ghouta chemical attack last month (they have also queried the Novichok attack of the Skripals) is apparently what provoked their pillorying in the Thunderer. > The RT piece opens with: A mystery online figure called Philip Cross is targeting anti-war and non-mainstream UK figures by prolifically editing their Wikipedia pages – to the point that George Galloway is offering a reward to see him unmasked.
gaius 8y ago
We could have had the Encyclopedia Britannica still. But the people voted with their wallets and now we have... this.
- JdeBP 8y ago
  We do still have the Britannica. * https://www.britannica.com/new-articles https://www.britannica.com/new-articles
- code_duck 8y ago
  How do we know Britannica wouldn’t employ someone such as this to write parts of their encyclopedia?
amiga-workbench 8y ago
There was a similar pattern of behaviour with articles concerning Gamergate, Wikipedia's rules regarding first hand sources meant that only the slanted reporting of journalists who had a lot to lose in the exchange could be referenced as a source. The information up there now is a less than complete picture.
sqldba 8y ago
This is why I never donate to Wikipedia when they beg for money. That organisation has long been rotten from the top down.
- varjag 8y ago
  Can stop visiting them too, to complete your climb to the moral high ground.
hollander 8y ago
So would this mean Encyclopedia Brittanica becomes relevant again?
emodendroket 8y ago
This stuff is happening everywhere on Wikipedia, sometimes obviously, and sometimes with more subtlety.
trynumber9 8y ago
I've been conducting a similar campaign, on WikiWikiWeb, against anyone that maligns functional programming. No one seems to mind though.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  well you have the advantage of being on the right side of history on this one
Swissindo 8y ago
Id.wikipedia.org Thank you
unreal37 8y ago
As someone who's regularly donated to Wikipedia every year, this is concerting. I can't trust Wikipedia. I'm shocked actually.
- throwaway59928 8y ago
  Actually you can’t trust this article. It’s an anonymous attack piece by an apparently pro-Russian person or group.
  - scrumption 8y ago
    Thank you for your deep insight, detailed analysis and surfeit of evidence, Mr. Throwaway Account, sir!
CharlesMerriam2 8y ago
We used to moderate supports of the Wiki Foundation (4 figures a year) and dropped in recent years. It does seem rudderless.
pulse7 8y ago
Maybe these editor(s) are paid Public Relations of some "war investors".
hapnin 8y ago
Early on, I tried to join in the Wikipedia community. After a couple of years of on-again, off-again BS on the part of those with admin powers, I bailed. Wikipedia is like a weird cult of powermad accountants.
bijection 8y ago
Why is FiveFilters taking such interest in this particular anonymous Wikipedia editor? This doesn't look like simply an honest piece of investigative journalism, given how far FiveFilters seems to be going to promote this story (https://twitter.com/fivefilters/ https://twitter.com/fivefilters/). Why doesn't the article disclose the relationship between FiveFilters and Media Lens? The FiveFilters blog (http://blog.fivefilters.org/ http://blog.fivefilters.org/) mentions Media Lens three times (they've built tools for viewing Media Lens articles) and explicitly thanks Media Lens for making their content go viral. There's a lot that doesn't quite add up.
- k1m 8y ago
  We're a huge fan of Media Lens. They do great work. But we're not Wikipedia. We don't need to live up to the standards they set themselves. We don't run an encyclopedia that pretends to be neutral.
  - crazydoggers 8y ago
    By huge fan you mean “are”. (Look at parents posts) How did this garbage get on Wikipedia? Fivefilters and MediaLens are part of the whole anti media propaganda outfits. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/02/fuller https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/02/fuller
    - k1m 8y ago
      No, we are not Media Lens.
- wybiral 8y ago
  They seem more like Putin-aligned propaganda relays than "investigative journalism".
paulpauper 8y ago
Okay what about editors with a left-wing agenda/bias and who abuse their powers. I'm sure there are some within the top 300.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  You should find them, and write articles about them, rather than just assuming they exist.
wybiral 8y ago
It's weird to see articles like this without a publish date or author attributed to them.
- megous 8y ago
  It's not just article. It's specifically created anonymous website just for this single page on top of nearlyfreespeech.net.
crazydoggers 8y ago
Please hacker news... use your skeptical nature and research inclination to understand where this junk is coming from. This is a propaganda outfit. I have a suspicion HN is getting played here... upvotes and downvotes seem suspicious on these comments. Some info on who Media Lens and FiveFilters are... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/02/fuller https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/02/fuller
- endorphone 8y ago
  Pointing the spotlight on someone in this manner could of course be agenda driven, but the source is irrelevant -- the actions of the individual are the antithesis of what Wikipedia is supposed to be about. His actions indict him fully, and for his own health he should really find other pursuits.
- k1m 8y ago
  There's no mention of us in that article and we didn't exist in 2006. As for Media Lens, I googled the author's name and Media Lens and this article came up. Might be interesting too: http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2006/449-maelstrom-of-vitriol-the-bbc-smears-media-lens.html http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2006/449...
- PrimHelios 8y ago
  I mean, you can actually see the edits the guy makes. Why would FiveFilters falsely defend Media Lens - a conservative organization - while attacking a wiki editor who is extremely pro-war? Your argument really only makes sense if the editor is liberal and attacking Media Lens and FiveFilters.
  - crazydoggers 8y ago
    Their issue with the editor is that he cares about sources... so whenever these anti media outfits want to post unsubstantial claims in Wikipedia, he has a problem with that (as he should). This is propaganda war at its finest. Make it look like conservatives and liberals agree with your points... then gloss over actual facts with hand waving. Most people won’t dig deep enough to find out the truth. These guys just want to control the narrative and generate public opinion that we should doubt our journalistic institutions. And if we stop caring about journalism and hard facts and the importance of sources, then our democracy is going to have real issues. Their ties with Russian propaganda outfits should also be troubling. Do a little googling and you’ll see a host of pro Russian conspiracy stuff from these “agencies”.
_-_throwaway 8y ago
Some of these Wikipedia 'editors' can go sodomize themselves. Pages deleted/redirected for something being 'non-notable' or having 'no historical significance'. And then when you try to kindly disagree, you're presented with some politically colored Wikimedia rules and such according to which editor has performed their censorship. How do you even determine what is notable? It may be notable to me. Why some punk editor needs to go remove content just because they feel otherwise with very little to do to appeal. Like why would someone remove entry for an emulator (http://atariage.com/forums/topic/278839-non-notable-say-what/ http://atariage.com/forums/topic/278839-non-notable-say-what... )? Or why do they do that for entries for companies that went bankrupt or got acquired? Or to many of these articles about topics such as WW2 where e.g. this editor ( https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=216 https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=216 ) has been waging his own holy war. I stopped donating Wikipedia 2-3 years a go among these reasons. I guess next xmas when Jimmy or whatever from Wikipedia emails me to beg for contributions, I should reply to him pointer to this thread. Throwaway account. edit: engrish
- tonyztan 8y ago
  > "How do you even determine what is notable?" See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
justonepost 8y ago
Yes, it just means it is working. There are a lot of anti-war people on Wikipedia. I am personally very very anti war, a pacifist even. But I appreciate the intellectual integrity of being challenged. When I was first challenged with the arcane rules of Wikipedia I was a little frustrated. But then I realized I could just learn those arcane rules and use them myself. After that it was amazing how many of my edits were able to get through.
- cooper12 8y ago
  Let's stop pretending any of these rules are "arcane". Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. Right there in the sidebar in plain view, the first option is "Help": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents. Everything you need to know to edit is there. You can also just Google "Wikipedia how to edit" and plenty of hits will come up. It's not hard at all. You sound no better than someone who bitches about some open source project when they didn't even do basic due diligence and RTFM.
  - yongjik 8y ago
    How can it be considered not arcane when it contains gems like "Wikipedia:Be bold" and "Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point". In other words, when I'm skirting a rule, I'm "being bold". When you claim your edit did not violate some rule any more than my edit did, you're "disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point". If these issues are resolved by reasonable folks, it may still work, but Wikipedia is not a democracy and issues are frequently not resolved by reasonable folks.
    - cooper12 8y ago
      What is nuance and actually reading what these titles say? It's all written out for you and there's no contradiction. Also, no one actually uses the disrupt point like that.
      - hexane360 8y ago
cyphar 8y ago
My experience with Wikipedia's editing is that there doesn't seem to be any unified concept of editors should act, nor does there appear to be any type of non-reactive review process for changes. While I think that Wikipedia's "anyone can edit" mantra sounds very nice it results in people changing articles out of their personal interest, and nobody notices for a long time. For instance, I recently discovered that the article on Comodo[1] didn't mention any of their controversies (something that is quite important given their history and significance). After I mentioned this there was an edit war and the controversies were eventually restored, but it definitely worries me that a single contributor removed a large portion of an article without any checks in place (the edit description was just that "controversies are not encyclopedic" -- whatever that is supposed to mean). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comodo_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comodo_Group
mirimir 8y ago
I don't trust Wikipedia for anything political. I mainly rely on it for purely factual stuff. Basic geographical information, for example. I look at technical stuff, but only as an introduction.
Idontknowmyuser 8y ago
I'm not that involved in wikipedia, but I do recall his name. It came up during a discussion on reddit about aljazeera documentary "the lobby"[1]. He was accused of actively censoring any mention of the incident from the "Israel lobby in the United Kingdom"[2] wikipedia page. [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby/ https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Kin...
chris_wot 8y ago
It’s interesting, I edited the Salim Mehajer article and provided extensive citations, yet I got banned. This guy makes thousands of edits and continues with impunity? Wikipedia is rotten.
notahacker 8y ago
I've interacted with Philip Cross many times (UK politics Wikipedia is a very small place) and found him perfectly reasonable and his edits usually well justified. Needless to say, an anonymous critic launching a campaign complete with website and Twitter account against him for allegedly being unfair to conspiracy-mongering figures like Craig Murray and George Galloway and genocide denial specialist Neil Clark and too nice to two Jewish journalists (one considerably more outspokenly pro-Israel than the other) isn't about to change my mind...
- k1m 8y ago
  Why don't you engage with the substance of the criticism rather than who's made it. He's made over a hundred thousand edits on Wikipedia in almost 15 years. I'm sure some of them are well justified. We're highlighting the ones that aren't and in which he has a serious conflict of interest.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    To be brutally honest, the fact he's made over a hundred thousand edits on Wikipedia and the examples you choose to highlight of alleged bias include following WP policies and removing an unsourced claim about a libel suit from a biography underlies the fact that beyond Galloway et al moaning about it and Murray actually suggesting he's part of a government ' “cyber-war” op aiming to defend the “official” narrative against alternative news media', there's not a terrible amount of substance to the criticism. I'm pretty sure I've sided against him (and many other editors) in talk page disagreements over more substantial issues of possible bias than that. Similarly the screenshot suggesting that despite obviously politically disagreeing with them he apparently contributed the majority of the very fair and balanced introduction to the MediaLens article would be a point in his favour for anyone interested in the substance of the encyclopedia rather than going down the Murray rabbit hole . Admiring a figure is not a prerequisite for writing articles on them. Sure, he has political opinions and wears them on his sleeve, but that applies to pretty much everybody else involved in political Wikipedia.
    - k1m 8y ago
Grue3 8y ago
> RT piece > Sputnik Pretty much discredits the entire article.
infinity1 8y ago
This article makes me sad. Sad it has so many upvotes for a blatant piece of manipulative propaganda. Sad that hn has been the bated. For those that don’t follow British politics, these politicians are oddly pro Russian. I would like to see the reverse analysis, of pro Russian trolls’ edits on Wikipedia.
- TheForumTroll 8y ago
  What has pro-russian to do with anything? Even if they are or were Nazi sympathizers that doesn't change the fact that Wikipedia is being gamed by someone with an agenda. 1700+ days of edits without pause? It is clearly a group behind that account.
nneonneo 8y ago
I'll preface this with noting that I did my own research into both sides prior to writing this. I don't have a horse in this race one way or another. Something is not right here. This is not the first attempt to discredit a major organization - fivefilters previously ran a campaign against The Guardian (http://theguardian.fivefilters.org/ http://theguardian.fivefilters.org/), with much the same kind of conspiratorial tone that I detect in the page on Wikipedia. The fivefilters folks seem to be surprised that this user is spending so much time editing their favorite articles. The articles in question have had quite a history of "interesting" editors pop by. Look for example at the page on Oliver Kamm. The fivefilters folks allege that Philip Cross is suppressing information about a pending court case. The edit history (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oliver_Kamm&offset=&limit=500&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oliver_Kamm&offse...) shows something much different: - 05/01, 86.63.4.158 adds some information about this "court case", which is really just a crowdfunding request for pending legal action (sourced to a blog). This user gets reverted several times by Cross for adding poorly sourced material. - 05/01, User:Leftworks1 re-adds it, and gets into a revert war with Cross, User:ScrapIronIV, and User:Cullen328 (all of whom are reverting the poorly sourced stuff). This user has only ever edited the Kamm article. - 05/02, several IP address editors, in quick succession, attempt to re-add that section. Three established editors revert. Protection is added to prevent anonymous users from editing. - 05/04, protection expires and a pile of anonymous IPs start to add the material again. Total of 12+ attempts. - 05/07, Leftworks1 comes back and attempts to add the court case material again. Protection is added back. - 05/09, the article is edited several times by User:Ubli9917, User:Ubli4351, User:Ther7514, User:Ifit8488, all of which are accounts created 05/05, who have made exactly 10 edits to unrelated accounts (to gain autoconfirmation), and who then promptly tried to add the court case to the Kamm article. So what this reveals is that a number of sockpuppet accounts, anonymous IPs, and such have been trying to push unsourced crap through onto Wikipedia, and Philip Cross (and others) have been trying to get it removed. This gets played out on other pages, too. Just look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Leftworks1/Archive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investiga... While Philip Cross might have a certain bias in his choice of articles, I can't help but view this particular fivefilters article as a very biased attack on an established editor who happened to step on some toes. His Wikipedia opponents, apparently tired of fighting him with sockpuppets and normal edit procedures, have taken to an external medium to decry him. Wikipedia has many layers of dispute resolution, but other than an AN/I posting by a largely uninvolved user, the aggrieved opponents of Philip Cross appear not to have attempted any form of real dispute resolution. Until they provide evidence that they have attempted to work within Wikipedia to solve their editorial dispute, I would not pay this fivefilters article any heed.
maboo 8y ago
here is the editor's wikipedia page: https://everipedia.org/wiki/philip-cross-wikipedian/ https://everipedia.org/wiki/philip-cross-wikipedian/
EdiX 8y ago
Behavior like this is very prevalent in gamergate-adjacent wikipedia pages. For example the OAPI page [1] claims that OAPI is a non-profit organization and any attempts at amending it to clarify that it's not incorporated, only exists as a wordpress blog and hasn't done anything in 3 years (including updating said blog), gets reverted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Abuse_Prevention_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Abuse_Prevention_Initia...
some_random 8y ago
This is hardly the only problem with Wikipedia, the assumed infallibility of sources is one I've run into several times before. I've seen some pretty bad faith editors justify their edits by dumping piles of sources that were flat out wrong or using suspect sources to push some sort of political bias. Not to mention editors adding crappy sources in good faith, or the classic xkcd citogenesis phenomenon. https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/

748 points by yasp 8y ago

yasp 8y ago

See also: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-c...

nwah1 8y ago

I'm confused as to why this is newsworthy? Are we operating on the assumption that the 303 more prolific wikipedians are somehow all without a personal ideology? If the rules he's using are being followed correctly, and if the information he is posting is well-sourced, then your only other course of action would be to petition to change wikipedia's rules.

codezero 8y ago
I think one of the arguments is this isn’t an individual but a group or agency with an agenda and resources to bend Wikipedia to a specific narrative.
- burfog 8y ago
  A group is made of individuals. They would normally have one account per person. Multiple accounts per person is more likely than multiple people per account. Bending wikipedia has been going on for ages, not even counting the paid editing that you seem to presume. The famous example, where Jimmy Wales had to step in, was pedophiles putting a positive spin on their sort of activity. A much tamer example is feral cats; the article minimizes any harm (wildlife loss, contamination, etc.) due to the people obsessed with the subject matter. Most controversial subjects on wikipedia get a positive spin. It's simply a matter of who is most obsessed with the subject matter.
k1m 8y ago
There's a clear conflict of interest which Wikipedia is refusing to act on.
- noobermin 8y ago
  I feel like we're missing the context here. Why is wikipedia ignoring it?
  - k1m 8y ago
    That's a mystery to me too. Initially when the complaints were made on Twitter (by some of Cross' targets), Jimmy Wales dismissed them, asking for diffs. Now that we've provided diffs and shown the scale of his efforts and the clear conflict of interest, we've heard nothing more. We're hoping the more exposure this story gets the more pressure it will put on them to act. But so far it's not looking hopeful. See how one editor was shut down when he tried to raise the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:KalHolmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:KalHolmann
    - TimTheTinker 8y ago
      I suspect Jimmy Wales and his associates are keeping mum because they realize this is because of a fundamental (perhaps intractable) weakness of the Wikipedia platform — NPOV is an impossible standard to maintain without a highly active network of trusted reviewers under a central authority. Even then, many small changes over a long period are a viable attack vector.
  - mjw1007 8y ago
    The admin who summarily closed the conflict-of-interest report explains his motivation as follows: « You can't amass 130,000 edits, as Philip Cross has, without being reasonably committed to Wikipedia. You'd be noticed if you were an agenda account with that many edits. And being attacked by RT and George Galloway is a reasonably reliable indicator that you are doing something right. » ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG ) This doesn't inspire much confidence in me, because obviously it _has_ been widely noticed that "Philip Cross" is an agenda account (and it seems it was noticed already almost a decade ago: http://neilclark66.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/wally-of-week-philip-cross.html http://neilclark66.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/wally-of-week-phil... )
ajross 8y ago
> Are we operating on the assumption that the 303 more prolific wikipedians are somehow all without a personal ideology? Absent evidence, yes. Are you operating on the assumption that wrongdoing is only actionable if everyone else is proven innocent?
Jasper_ 8y ago
Us internet denizens got upset when librarians complained that Wikipedia was inaccurate compared to encyclopedias. We celebrated the "new information economy" of crowdsourcing and open-access information. I think this crowd should be incredibly concerned to hear that there's clear propaganda and power wars on these websites. It's very newsworthy. > If the rules he's using are being followed correctly, and if the information he is posting is well-sourced, then your only other course of action would be to petition to change wikipedia's rules. He's removing well-sourced information that's counter to his claims.
gpvos 8y ago
Have you read the article? Well-sourced information is being removed and badly-sourced information added, and that's only the beginning.
kizer 8y ago
If the rules he's using are being followed correctly, and if the information he is posting is well-sourced, then your only other course of action would be to petition to change wikipedia's rules. "Well-sourced" is not the only criterion. I could edit a page, citing credible sources, and still distort it by including implicit, one-sided interpretations of those sources results/contents. Also, if the rules do not have, in short, "be objective", then yes, we should petition to change wikipedia's rules.
- klez 8y ago
  > I could edit a page, citing credible sources, and still distort it by including implicit, one-sided interpretations of those sources results/contents. As an example of this, at a certain point John Perry Barlow was indicated as being against net neutrality. The source for the claim was his declaration of independence of the cyberspace because it claimed he didn't want government intervention in the net. As far as I know, this isn't "being against net neutrality" and I never read anything by JPB advocating against it. So yes, someone can always cite something and twist its meaning to fit a particular agenda.
  - nwah1 8y ago
    “Telecom regulations give a lot of leverage to organizations whether governmental or corporate to close down the right to know. My long experience says as soon as you give government the authority to impose regulations on the Internet you are doing something to frustrate the right to know. People tend to presume on theoretical grounds a little right minded regulation will help people build beneficial architectures and organizations. I do not think there is anything to support that theory. Every time I have seen any sort of regulation of the Internet the results have been mayhem. Declaring the Internet and the telephone network to be the same thing is like declaring a Buick and a symphony to be the same thing because they both make noise.” - John Perry Barlow http://calinnovates.org/category/issues/platform-access/net-neutrality/ http://calinnovates.org/category/issues/platform-access/net-...
    - klez 8y ago

zero_intp 8y ago

seems like a fairly obvious ops campaign by some interested group. I would think that many state organizations would want long term reputable editors to craft their messages.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

throwaway_98554 8y ago

Judging by the time card, I would bet multiple individuals are using this account. And they're probably getting paid to do it.

burfog 8y ago
I conclude the opposite. He takes nights off, but doesn't take weekends off. This isn't employment. It's an obsession. He managed to tick off some people who have the opposite political opinion. Those people also edit wikipedia with a personal agenda, and they are unhappy to be up against effective opposition.
- noobermin 8y ago
  The purpose of wikipedia, at least in the abstract, is to present NPOV information. You don't achieve that by having people with opposite political opinions war with each other.
throwaway1982x 8y ago
I also conclude the opposite. The time card looks very much like any time card of a single individual's regular internet use - showing the sleep pattern/circadian rhythm of a single person averaged over a long period of time.
bhouston 8y ago
Many wikipedians are obsessive types. Also why would multiple people pretend to be one. Groups are more effective than individuals on Wikipedia.
- throwaway_98554 8y ago
  Because many people would get upset if "my-political-party" was hiring team of editors to change the wiki articles. And if they are indeed getting paid, the organisation might have an important turnover. By using a single account (or multiple shared accounts; I doubt there's only one), you keep the 'prestige' you have built. Your 1 week old new recruit can edit texts left and right while most people think it's a legit old wikipedians tidying stuff up.

whack 8y ago

This is extremely concerning. Phillip Cross was easily caught because he was running his mouth on twitter, and was blatantly making one-sided edits from his single account. Imagine if a country like Russia makes an orchestrated effort to achieve similar goals, using an army of fake-wikipedia-profiles. They could easily turn Wikipedia into a platform for disseminating propaganda. In fact, I'd be surprised if they haven't done so already. https://www.vox.com/2018/2/16/17020974/mueller-indictment-internet-research-agency https://www.vox.com/2018/2/16/17020974/mueller-indictment-in...

k1m 8y ago
Wikipedia, however, appear to be trying to protect him. Please see one Wikipedia editor's efforts to flag his behaviour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:KalHolmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:KalHolmann
- tptacek 8y ago
  Exactly what is it we're supposed to be looking at here? And what does "Wikipedia", as an entity, mean in your comment?
  - k1m 8y ago
    It's not that long. Did you read it? One Wikipedia editor is trying to highlight the problem of Cross' edits and have him marked as having a conflict of interest on certain articles. The Wikipedia admin (or superiour, I'm not familiar with the Wikipedia hierarchy) shuts him down very rudely and doesn't appear to want to address the issue at all. Leaving the editor to give up: "Forgive me for concluding that Wikipedia is circling its wagons around Philip Cross...I know when the deck is stacked against me."
    - TwoBit 8y ago
      Maybe that editor is Philip Cross?
    - Kim_Bruning 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

roywiggins 8y ago

"Anti-war" doesn't sound like a particularly descriptive adjective for the apparent targets here. They are not anti-war campaigners per se, they seem to be sitting in the Russia-sympathetic zone of discourse. I'm not saying that to discredit them (I might, but I won't), but calling them anti-war rather obscures the problems people might have with them. That doesn't mean that a "one-man" effort to shepherd their Wikipedia entries isn't notable or concerning but let's not pretend these guys are pacifists.

bushin 8y ago
This seems closer to the truth, otherwise why sputnik and rt would care.
- strainer 8y ago
  These notable persons (Craig Murray, David Edwards, George Galloway etc) who are reporting their personal biographies being edited unfairly on Wikipedia, are in fact well known as prominent humanitarian and anti-war activists and writers. For strategic reasons at least -- Russia's foreign commercial news stations are also of late "sympathetic" to anti-war and progressive themes (such as arms reduction and peaceful conflict resolution). Opinions may differ here about the nature of Russia's support for those subjects, but that is a very orthogonal concern. I don't know of any substantiated connections between the persons involved here and the Russian government or media. They certainly are "anti war" in the popular sense of the term.
  - bushin 8y ago
    I googled Galloway and he has young Stalin on his twitter profile pic. Never before had Stirlitz been so close to failure.
    - strainer 8y ago
      Sure Galloway has a soft spot for Stalin - obviously he considers him misunderstood - history written by the victors and all that. I wouldn't know. But the issue here is how does such an eccentricity significantly connect him to the modern Russian government or media? And also the others, as is being suggested - as a group.

rectang 8y ago

Cross's modus operandi seems to be many small edits which accumulate to produce a large negative effect, at odds with Wikipedia's principle of "neutral point of view". It's an example of operating within the letter of the rules but not their spirit.

unreal37 8y ago
I bet that if you changed 1 word per day on a page, after 2 or 3 years, you've successfully modified the tone of an article that cannot be easily reverted.

joering2 8y ago

Wikipedia been disappointing for a while. I had few years run when every year I got Jimmy email, I did donated $10 cause they gave me tons of info. Just recent year or so, every single article is locked for edition and by different reason (which really doesn't matter). After spending some time you clearly see "clans" of wiki editors fighting with others, removing their content and clearly having agenda, whether it is to continue discredit some individuals, or keep others record unfairly "clean". Here are all the locks they use as pretex to forbid you from adding your own content, aka supposedly "wikipedia is build by anyone willing to donate their time". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy#full https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy#fu...

cooper12 8y ago
It's not hard at all to be able to edit these articles once you make an account and takes a bare minimum of effort. See one of my earlier comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582767

JoshMnem 8y ago

The Wikipedia editing process is broken. Wiki-lawyering is used to shut down the collaborative editing process, even when not on political topics often by people who don't know much about the topic that they are editing. I don't trust Wikipedia content and tend to examine the Talk pages (sometimes even the Talk page histories) on controversial articles.

noobermin 8y ago
Wikipedia is useful for looking up technical info that there is no conflict over. It is not a good source for diving into a top-level controversial topic as those articles are long and have many places for people to stump and push for their ideas. The more specific a topic (think, a specific author associated with an ideology vs. the page for the ideology) the better. I think I've just adopted these mental heuristics automatically due to this.
- Jasper_ 8y ago
  > Wikipedia is useful for looking up technical info that there is no conflict over. Even this isn't true. As a former contributor to the Linux desktop community, false information about projects and codebases I had runs rampant on Wikipedia. One Wikipedia editor with more time on his hands than any of us [0] devotes his time to maintaining those articles, despite self-admittedly having little topical knowledge [1]. Trying to correct these things quickly caused me to spiral down into edit wars I wasn't that interested in winning, and tomes of naming policy after policy. To get something incorrect on Wikipedia, you just have to be persistent and cast your WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:DEMOCRACY, etc. spells at the right time. Anybody interested in correcting the record will eventually tire out and have to go back to doing the work... [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ScotXW https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ScotXW [1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2013-November/013970.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2013-No...
  - tptacek 8y ago
    If it's "rampant" on Wikipedia, you should have no trouble pointing out examples. So, respectfully, I'd ask that to support your argument with evidence, you do that. I had trouble editing technical topics I was familiar with, too, and found it incredibly aggravating. I'd write demonstrably true, helpful, factual content about something only to have it struck for lack of sourcing. It took awhile to get through my head the model of the project, which included as a basic premise that I, as an editor, am not a valid source. I came to the project knowing that, of course, but didn't realize viscerally how much of the technical writing I do implicitly relied on my own experience and understanding as a sort of "source". On articles that WP'ians pay attention to, you won't get away with doing that. You'll have to tie claims to a secondary source (you usually can't just point to source code, because then you're doing interpretation, which is a form of original research) both for the claim itself and, sometimes, for the noteworthiness of the claim. The best way to metabolize this is to realize that Wikipedia isn't the Hitchhiker's Guide; it's an encyclopedia, which means the project has explicitly opted-in to some limitations as a tradeoff to accomplish other things. (Some articles also just have possessive editors; there is dysfunction everywhere, and WP is no exception).

mistrial9 8y ago

regarding general participation in English Wikipedia -- the last three or four edits I made to Wikipedia articles I found interesting, were summarily reverted. Why try ?

jakobegger 8y ago
Same here. I realised that many articles are watched over by obsessive editors that immediately revert edits for whatever reason. Makes it hard for occasional editors and newcomers.
testplzignore 8y ago
If you've got any diffs of the edits that you'd like to share, I (and probably others) would be happy to take a look and start an edit war to make things right :)
mappu 8y ago
Counter-anecdote: I have had a perfectly pleasant experience with making a range of edits, big and small (one new article, some new sections, half a dozen typo-fixes and reverted vandalism, etc). What reasons were you given for the reversion?
mikedilger 8y ago
I've had the same experience, edits reverted with no explanation.
mormegil 8y ago
If you'd shown them, we could try to say. This way, this is an empty claim.

always_good 8y ago

My friends and I had a shameful game in uni where we competed to see who could make the most egregious edits to wikipedia without getting reverted. What was surprising was just how easy it was. We started with minor edits in small articles, just adding our own name to some list of notable achievers. Then, due to competition, we would add an entire paragraph that fabricated an event. Like adding ourself as a conquistador of some made-up novohispano population in some made-up location. Imagine how compromised wikipedia must be by people with agendas more lofty than uni students passing some time. Hell, just the other day I removed "See Also: Donald Trump" from one of the major fallacy articles. The history showed that the scathing political commentary was up there for over 8 months and nobody cared.

tptacek 8y ago
"Shameful" is a good word for it. Stuff like this is a major reason --- maybe the major reason --- behind most of the limitations of the Wikipedia platform. It is, for instance, the primary cause of "deletionism": marginal articles are difficult to police, and so the project has to establish a notability cut-off so it can constrain the problem at least to articles where there are sources to tie claims to. I'm not saying you should feel bad about yourself, but it's good if people can recognize what WP is up against.
- yarrel 8y ago
  You are confusing edits with articles. Deletionists tend to confuse their personal ignorance (often of a website called "Google" [yes I know how notability works, no that's not an argument against not bothering to even trivially check whether an article can be improved rather than deleted]) with a mandate to sabotage Wikipedia. People who remove cruft from articles, rather than speedy deleting articles that aren't about Pokemon, are not deletionists and should not be invoked as human shields for deletionists.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    No, you've misunderstood my argument. The problem is that it's difficult for editors to remove "cruft" on articles about marginal topics, because there are so few (usually: zero) reliable sources to draw from. You can't start from a premise that "cruft" can be removed without removing classes of articles; that begs the question that deletionists answer.

tomtimtall 8y ago

Wikipedia should maintain 3 separate threads for all these polarizing individuals and organizations. Obliviously biased for, obviously biased against, and the the idealt neutral statement of facts(with no facts removerførsel because they play negative or positive, they can be dismissed or remover In the biased sections only.

cooper12 8y ago
And now you have three times as many problems...
dredmorbius 8y ago
There is frequently a "Controversies" section. Also the Talk page and revision history.

jarym 8y ago

Next time Jimmy pesters me for a donation I'll be contacting him and citing this as a reason why I won't.

TwoBit 8y ago
Why don't we start a big "don't contribute to Wikipedia campaign". Can we start one of those "fund me" campaigns and use the proceeds to battle this?
- Qwertie 8y ago
  Do you have a proposal for an alternative place to contribute to?
- TheForumTroll 8y ago
  How about starting something and then write an Wikipedia article about it?

Kim_Bruning 8y ago

This appears to be a bit longer running: https://sputniknews.com/amp/analysis/201805161064505256-cross-galloway-wikipedia-obsession/ https://sputniknews.com/amp/analysis/201805161064505256-cros... (note: Sputnik news seems to be associated with the Russian government).

wybiral 8y ago

"ditch Wikipedia" seems a bit melodramatic. Nobody should rely on Wikipedia as the sole source of any information, but it can be a useful starting point and usually has enough references to back it up. People need to be more careful about examining the source of claims in general. Including what is shared with them on social media, YouTube videos, news articles, etc. But that doesn't mean those mediums are no longer useful.

reccanti 8y ago
If anything, it seems like more of a reason to get more active and involved with Wikipedia. Otherwise, people like this will get more and more control over the site
lemagedurage 8y ago
"ditch Wikipedia" seems a bit melodramatic. Definitely, if they call for ditching Wikipedia over a single contributor in the title of the article, how much are they exaggerating about other things?

lkrubner 8y ago

This part: “We pulled in the dates from his user contributions page and found that Cross had not had a single day off from editing the site in almost 5 years!” Makes me think that this is an account shared by many people. Since we don’t know who this person is, there is a chance that this person is really a whole organization.

jpatokal 8y ago
There are a lot of obsessive people on Wikipedia. Back in the days when I was an active editor, I was regularly embroiled in edit wars with somebody who had odd but extremely firm opinions about the romanization of Okinawan (not a political topic even in Japan) and what appeared to be 24/7 ability to enforce them. I suspect quite a few of those shut-in "hikikomori" types are top Wikipedia editors... All that said, checking the manual of style in question today, I'm positively surprised to see the weirdness is gone. This is a strength of Wikipedia: over time entropy of opinion tends to decrease, even though it may take years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Japan-related_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Japa...
- hackandtrip 8y ago
  Is it good, though? I'm all about reducing entropy about facts, but what about opinion or more delicate subject? The power on propaganda, on making a new truth, is so big.
cooper12 8y ago
It's not hard to make an edit a day. It's a daily activity for editors like me to come home and wind down by quickly going through our watchlists and reverting any vandalism. I have 11k articles on mine and I wouldn't even say I'm a prolific editor. It takes me only a few minutes and thanks to things like ORES (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES), most of the suspicious edits are highlighted already.

brudgers 8y ago

In the early 1990's, I picked up a complete with the bookcase 1957 Encyclopedia Britannica at a yard sale for $15. Over the next decade and more it was a useful resource for historical topics in the days before the internet became what it is today...the basic scholarship of the Roman Empire, Ming vases and Howe trusses has been pretty stable for a long time. On the other hand, social and political topics usually tended to an editorial bias long past expiration even twenty years ago...let's say the phrase "spinning in his grave" is particularly appropriate for many of those Britannica authors and editors given today's events when "today" is taken literally. Wikipedia is like any other encyclopedia, human endeavor with shortcomings, biases, and failings. It should be taken with a grain of salt where warranted, trusted as canonical elsewhere, and constitute one among many sources in other cases. For me, at least there is the relatively high degree of transparency that allows people to independently research the claims of this article theirself should they choose. That's not the case with Google's search results and those probably have more a role in my ordinary decisions than Wikipedia. None of which is to say that this is good. Only that for me, it is a corner case...contemporary politics is an area of Wikipedia where I expect political gerrymandering and biased reporting simply due to the size of the attack surface, the nature of politics and the stakes at stake.

4bpp 8y ago

> ‘Philip Cross’ has edited @georgegalloway ‘s wikipedia page over 1800 times. This, and many other political arguments I have seen on it before, really makes me think that Wikipedia would benefit from a policy where a sufficient number of individual complaints against a user who has passed some threshold of number of edits to a single article (say 100) would be automatic grounds to block the user from further edits to the article, regardless of fault. I understand that this sort of obsessiveness is also an important asset to Wikipedia (and so they are understandably reluctant to set up obstructions to what it considers its "10x editors"), but in my eyes this pattern of personal crusading and article ownership causes damage to its utility as a source on any contentious topic far in excess of the damage it would suffer even in the worst case of every single editor that has put more than 1000 edits into any single article quitting.

unreal37 8y ago
1800 edits on a single page in only a few years is essentially a sickness. I'm not a doctor, but that should be classified as obsession.
- dpwm 8y ago
  If indeed it is one individual. With the intensity of edits it would not be at all surprising if this editor was in fact more than one individual masquerading behind a single account.
  - justonepost 8y ago
    What possible benefit would accrue from doing something like that?
    - neffy 8y ago
      Look at who get's the favourable edits, and figure out their agenda? A stipend for the editor is small change to some of the financial types.
    - 8y ago

varjag 8y ago

On one hand, some shady Wikipedia vigilante. On the other, a bunch of Russia-backed war crime deniers. Quite a moral dilemma!

dredmorbius 8y ago
Sorry, could you unpack and clarify that?
- varjag 8y ago
  From the fine article: > Tim Hayward is one of the group of academics (his colleague Paul McKeigue is another) who set up the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media – or if you prefer the Times description, Apologists for Assad. The group’s questioning over whether it could be definitively concluded that the Syrian regime was responsible for the Ghouta chemical attack last month (they have also queried the Novichok attack of the Skripals) is apparently what provoked their pillorying in the Thunderer. > The RT piece opens with: A mystery online figure called Philip Cross is targeting anti-war and non-mainstream UK figures by prolifically editing their Wikipedia pages – to the point that George Galloway is offering a reward to see him unmasked.

gaius 8y ago

We could have had the Encyclopedia Britannica still. But the people voted with their wallets and now we have... this.

JdeBP 8y ago
We do still have the Britannica. * https://www.britannica.com/new-articles https://www.britannica.com/new-articles
code_duck 8y ago
How do we know Britannica wouldn’t employ someone such as this to write parts of their encyclopedia?

amiga-workbench 8y ago

There was a similar pattern of behaviour with articles concerning Gamergate, Wikipedia's rules regarding first hand sources meant that only the slanted reporting of journalists who had a lot to lose in the exchange could be referenced as a source. The information up there now is a less than complete picture.

sqldba 8y ago

This is why I never donate to Wikipedia when they beg for money. That organisation has long been rotten from the top down.

varjag 8y ago
Can stop visiting them too, to complete your climb to the moral high ground.

hollander 8y ago

So would this mean Encyclopedia Brittanica becomes relevant again?

emodendroket 8y ago

This stuff is happening everywhere on Wikipedia, sometimes obviously, and sometimes with more subtlety.

trynumber9 8y ago

I've been conducting a similar campaign, on WikiWikiWeb, against anyone that maligns functional programming. No one seems to mind though.

Barrin92 8y ago
well you have the advantage of being on the right side of history on this one

Swissindo 8y ago

Id.wikipedia.org Thank you

unreal37 8y ago

As someone who's regularly donated to Wikipedia every year, this is concerting. I can't trust Wikipedia. I'm shocked actually.

throwaway59928 8y ago
Actually you can’t trust this article. It’s an anonymous attack piece by an apparently pro-Russian person or group.
- scrumption 8y ago
  Thank you for your deep insight, detailed analysis and surfeit of evidence, Mr. Throwaway Account, sir!

CharlesMerriam2 8y ago

We used to moderate supports of the Wiki Foundation (4 figures a year) and dropped in recent years. It does seem rudderless.

pulse7 8y ago

Maybe these editor(s) are paid Public Relations of some "war investors".

hapnin 8y ago

Early on, I tried to join in the Wikipedia community. After a couple of years of on-again, off-again BS on the part of those with admin powers, I bailed. Wikipedia is like a weird cult of powermad accountants.

bijection 8y ago

Why is FiveFilters taking such interest in this particular anonymous Wikipedia editor? This doesn't look like simply an honest piece of investigative journalism, given how far FiveFilters seems to be going to promote this story (https://twitter.com/fivefilters/ https://twitter.com/fivefilters/). Why doesn't the article disclose the relationship between FiveFilters and Media Lens? The FiveFilters blog (http://blog.fivefilters.org/ http://blog.fivefilters.org/) mentions Media Lens three times (they've built tools for viewing Media Lens articles) and explicitly thanks Media Lens for making their content go viral. There's a lot that doesn't quite add up.

k1m 8y ago
We're a huge fan of Media Lens. They do great work. But we're not Wikipedia. We don't need to live up to the standards they set themselves. We don't run an encyclopedia that pretends to be neutral.
- crazydoggers 8y ago
  By huge fan you mean “are”. (Look at parents posts) How did this garbage get on Wikipedia? Fivefilters and MediaLens are part of the whole anti media propaganda outfits. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/02/fuller https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/02/fuller
  - k1m 8y ago
    No, we are not Media Lens.
wybiral 8y ago
They seem more like Putin-aligned propaganda relays than "investigative journalism".

paulpauper 8y ago

Okay what about editors with a left-wing agenda/bias and who abuse their powers. I'm sure there are some within the top 300.

pessimizer 8y ago
You should find them, and write articles about them, rather than just assuming they exist.

wybiral 8y ago

It's weird to see articles like this without a publish date or author attributed to them.

megous 8y ago
It's not just article. It's specifically created anonymous website just for this single page on top of nearlyfreespeech.net.

crazydoggers 8y ago

Please hacker news... use your skeptical nature and research inclination to understand where this junk is coming from. This is a propaganda outfit. I have a suspicion HN is getting played here... upvotes and downvotes seem suspicious on these comments. Some info on who Media Lens and FiveFilters are... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/02/fuller https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/02/fuller

endorphone 8y ago
Pointing the spotlight on someone in this manner could of course be agenda driven, but the source is irrelevant -- the actions of the individual are the antithesis of what Wikipedia is supposed to be about. His actions indict him fully, and for his own health he should really find other pursuits.
k1m 8y ago
There's no mention of us in that article and we didn't exist in 2006. As for Media Lens, I googled the author's name and Media Lens and this article came up. Might be interesting too: http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2006/449-maelstrom-of-vitriol-the-bbc-smears-media-lens.html http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2006/449...
PrimHelios 8y ago
I mean, you can actually see the edits the guy makes. Why would FiveFilters falsely defend Media Lens - a conservative organization - while attacking a wiki editor who is extremely pro-war? Your argument really only makes sense if the editor is liberal and attacking Media Lens and FiveFilters.
- crazydoggers 8y ago
  Their issue with the editor is that he cares about sources... so whenever these anti media outfits want to post unsubstantial claims in Wikipedia, he has a problem with that (as he should). This is propaganda war at its finest. Make it look like conservatives and liberals agree with your points... then gloss over actual facts with hand waving. Most people won’t dig deep enough to find out the truth. These guys just want to control the narrative and generate public opinion that we should doubt our journalistic institutions. And if we stop caring about journalism and hard facts and the importance of sources, then our democracy is going to have real issues. Their ties with Russian propaganda outfits should also be troubling. Do a little googling and you’ll see a host of pro Russian conspiracy stuff from these “agencies”.

_-_throwaway 8y ago

Some of these Wikipedia 'editors' can go sodomize themselves. Pages deleted/redirected for something being 'non-notable' or having 'no historical significance'. And then when you try to kindly disagree, you're presented with some politically colored Wikimedia rules and such according to which editor has performed their censorship. How do you even determine what is notable? It may be notable to me. Why some punk editor needs to go remove content just because they feel otherwise with very little to do to appeal. Like why would someone remove entry for an emulator (http://atariage.com/forums/topic/278839-non-notable-say-what/ http://atariage.com/forums/topic/278839-non-notable-say-what... )? Or why do they do that for entries for companies that went bankrupt or got acquired? Or to many of these articles about topics such as WW2 where e.g. this editor ( https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=216 https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=216 ) has been waging his own holy war. I stopped donating Wikipedia 2-3 years a go among these reasons. I guess next xmas when Jimmy or whatever from Wikipedia emails me to beg for contributions, I should reply to him pointer to this thread. Throwaway account. edit: engrish

tonyztan 8y ago
> "How do you even determine what is notable?" See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

justonepost 8y ago

Yes, it just means it is working. There are a lot of anti-war people on Wikipedia. I am personally very very anti war, a pacifist even. But I appreciate the intellectual integrity of being challenged. When I was first challenged with the arcane rules of Wikipedia I was a little frustrated. But then I realized I could just learn those arcane rules and use them myself. After that it was amazing how many of my edits were able to get through.

cooper12 8y ago
Let's stop pretending any of these rules are "arcane". Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. Right there in the sidebar in plain view, the first option is "Help": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents. Everything you need to know to edit is there. You can also just Google "Wikipedia how to edit" and plenty of hits will come up. It's not hard at all. You sound no better than someone who bitches about some open source project when they didn't even do basic due diligence and RTFM.
- yongjik 8y ago
  How can it be considered not arcane when it contains gems like "Wikipedia:Be bold" and "Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point". In other words, when I'm skirting a rule, I'm "being bold". When you claim your edit did not violate some rule any more than my edit did, you're "disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point". If these issues are resolved by reasonable folks, it may still work, but Wikipedia is not a democracy and issues are frequently not resolved by reasonable folks.
  - cooper12 8y ago
    What is nuance and actually reading what these titles say? It's all written out for you and there's no contradiction. Also, no one actually uses the disrupt point like that.
    - hexane360 8y ago

cyphar 8y ago

My experience with Wikipedia's editing is that there doesn't seem to be any unified concept of editors should act, nor does there appear to be any type of non-reactive review process for changes. While I think that Wikipedia's "anyone can edit" mantra sounds very nice it results in people changing articles out of their personal interest, and nobody notices for a long time. For instance, I recently discovered that the article on Comodo[1] didn't mention any of their controversies (something that is quite important given their history and significance). After I mentioned this there was an edit war and the controversies were eventually restored, but it definitely worries me that a single contributor removed a large portion of an article without any checks in place (the edit description was just that "controversies are not encyclopedic" -- whatever that is supposed to mean). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comodo_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comodo_Group

mirimir 8y ago

I don't trust Wikipedia for anything political. I mainly rely on it for purely factual stuff. Basic geographical information, for example. I look at technical stuff, but only as an introduction.

Idontknowmyuser 8y ago

I'm not that involved in wikipedia, but I do recall his name. It came up during a discussion on reddit about aljazeera documentary "the lobby"[1]. He was accused of actively censoring any mention of the incident from the "Israel lobby in the United Kingdom"[2] wikipedia page. [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby/ https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Kin...

chris_wot 8y ago

It’s interesting, I edited the Salim Mehajer article and provided extensive citations, yet I got banned. This guy makes thousands of edits and continues with impunity? Wikipedia is rotten.

notahacker 8y ago

I've interacted with Philip Cross many times (UK politics Wikipedia is a very small place) and found him perfectly reasonable and his edits usually well justified. Needless to say, an anonymous critic launching a campaign complete with website and Twitter account against him for allegedly being unfair to conspiracy-mongering figures like Craig Murray and George Galloway and genocide denial specialist Neil Clark and too nice to two Jewish journalists (one considerably more outspokenly pro-Israel than the other) isn't about to change my mind...

k1m 8y ago
Why don't you engage with the substance of the criticism rather than who's made it. He's made over a hundred thousand edits on Wikipedia in almost 15 years. I'm sure some of them are well justified. We're highlighting the ones that aren't and in which he has a serious conflict of interest.
- notahacker 8y ago
  To be brutally honest, the fact he's made over a hundred thousand edits on Wikipedia and the examples you choose to highlight of alleged bias include following WP policies and removing an unsourced claim about a libel suit from a biography underlies the fact that beyond Galloway et al moaning about it and Murray actually suggesting he's part of a government ' “cyber-war” op aiming to defend the “official” narrative against alternative news media', there's not a terrible amount of substance to the criticism. I'm pretty sure I've sided against him (and many other editors) in talk page disagreements over more substantial issues of possible bias than that. Similarly the screenshot suggesting that despite obviously politically disagreeing with them he apparently contributed the majority of the very fair and balanced introduction to the MediaLens article would be a point in his favour for anyone interested in the substance of the encyclopedia rather than going down the Murray rabbit hole . Admiring a figure is not a prerequisite for writing articles on them. Sure, he has political opinions and wears them on his sleeve, but that applies to pretty much everybody else involved in political Wikipedia.
  - k1m 8y ago

Grue3 8y ago

> RT piece > Sputnik Pretty much discredits the entire article.

infinity1 8y ago

This article makes me sad. Sad it has so many upvotes for a blatant piece of manipulative propaganda. Sad that hn has been the bated. For those that don’t follow British politics, these politicians are oddly pro Russian. I would like to see the reverse analysis, of pro Russian trolls’ edits on Wikipedia.

TheForumTroll 8y ago
What has pro-russian to do with anything? Even if they are or were Nazi sympathizers that doesn't change the fact that Wikipedia is being gamed by someone with an agenda. 1700+ days of edits without pause? It is clearly a group behind that account.

nneonneo 8y ago

I'll preface this with noting that I did my own research into both sides prior to writing this. I don't have a horse in this race one way or another. Something is not right here. This is not the first attempt to discredit a major organization - fivefilters previously ran a campaign against The Guardian (http://theguardian.fivefilters.org/ http://theguardian.fivefilters.org/), with much the same kind of conspiratorial tone that I detect in the page on Wikipedia. The fivefilters folks seem to be surprised that this user is spending so much time editing their favorite articles. The articles in question have had quite a history of "interesting" editors pop by. Look for example at the page on Oliver Kamm. The fivefilters folks allege that Philip Cross is suppressing information about a pending court case. The edit history (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oliver_Kamm&offset=&limit=500&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oliver_Kamm&offse...) shows something much different: - 05/01, 86.63.4.158 adds some information about this "court case", which is really just a crowdfunding request for pending legal action (sourced to a blog). This user gets reverted several times by Cross for adding poorly sourced material. - 05/01, User:Leftworks1 re-adds it, and gets into a revert war with Cross, User:ScrapIronIV, and User:Cullen328 (all of whom are reverting the poorly sourced stuff). This user has only ever edited the Kamm article. - 05/02, several IP address editors, in quick succession, attempt to re-add that section. Three established editors revert. Protection is added to prevent anonymous users from editing. - 05/04, protection expires and a pile of anonymous IPs start to add the material again. Total of 12+ attempts. - 05/07, Leftworks1 comes back and attempts to add the court case material again. Protection is added back. - 05/09, the article is edited several times by User:Ubli9917, User:Ubli4351, User:Ther7514, User:Ifit8488, all of which are accounts created 05/05, who have made exactly 10 edits to unrelated accounts (to gain autoconfirmation), and who then promptly tried to add the court case to the Kamm article. So what this reveals is that a number of sockpuppet accounts, anonymous IPs, and such have been trying to push unsourced crap through onto Wikipedia, and Philip Cross (and others) have been trying to get it removed. This gets played out on other pages, too. Just look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Leftworks1/Archive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investiga... While Philip Cross might have a certain bias in his choice of articles, I can't help but view this particular fivefilters article as a very biased attack on an established editor who happened to step on some toes. His Wikipedia opponents, apparently tired of fighting him with sockpuppets and normal edit procedures, have taken to an external medium to decry him. Wikipedia has many layers of dispute resolution, but other than an AN/I posting by a largely uninvolved user, the aggrieved opponents of Philip Cross appear not to have attempted any form of real dispute resolution. Until they provide evidence that they have attempted to work within Wikipedia to solve their editorial dispute, I would not pay this fivefilters article any heed.

maboo 8y ago

here is the editor's wikipedia page: https://everipedia.org/wiki/philip-cross-wikipedian/ https://everipedia.org/wiki/philip-cross-wikipedian/

EdiX 8y ago

Behavior like this is very prevalent in gamergate-adjacent wikipedia pages. For example the OAPI page [1] claims that OAPI is a non-profit organization and any attempts at amending it to clarify that it's not incorporated, only exists as a wordpress blog and hasn't done anything in 3 years (including updating said blog), gets reverted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Abuse_Prevention_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Abuse_Prevention_Initia...

some_random 8y ago

This is hardly the only problem with Wikipedia, the assumed infallibility of sources is one I've run into several times before. I've seen some pretty bad faith editors justify their edits by dumping piles of sources that were flat out wrong or using suspect sources to push some sort of political bias. Not to mention editors adding crappy sources in good faith, or the classic xkcd citogenesis phenomenon. https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/