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There are deliberate distortions in Wikipedia especially in regards to the national surveillance state. Companies should be aware that they might be paying for

There are deliberate distortions in Wikipedia especially in regards to the national surveillance state. Companies should be aware that they might be paying for misinformation and disinformation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28808516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28808516 https://www.thecanary.co/discovery/analysis-discovery/2018/05/23/the-philip-cross-scandal-how-wikipedia-is-being-used-against-left-wing-journalists/ https://www.thecanary.co/discovery/analysis-discovery/2018/0... https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-44495696 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-44495696

RogerSamson 5y ago
I am currently researching an long-term editor/abuser who has a rather colorful history. He runs a couple of attack websites targeting universities both in the US and Switzerland. These are current revisions to a past couple of websites which still appear as sources in numerous articles on Wikipedia. He supposedly volunteered at one of the universities before he was dropped because he lied about his credentials. He ran in the 2018 Italian elections. His political party was suggested by some Italian and American sources as a fraud. He had tried for several years to inject articles and tidbits about the party into Wikipedia. The sources which negatively reported on his political party have often been attacked by him. He managed to get one online newspaper's article removed from en-wiki and it-wiki. He appeared to do this for SEO impact to push up sources which are good about him and hide those which are not. He recently tried to incorporate a dating website promoting himself and his search for a wife. He tried to present the site as a "mirror" of Wikipedia. He used to run a service to circumvent anti-plagiarism tools like Turnitin. He did this while volunteering at the university mentioned above. There are several places where his service and his LinkedIn stories come up in the history of Wikipedia articles. He wrote a book about Second Life and a couple of faux academic articles. He tried several times to integrate his book as a source on it-wiki. The faux academic articles were uploaded to Commons, and they were even cited in a few legit academic publications. He operated a school in Second Life. He created articles about the school on Wikipedia, and one of the faux academic articles was about it. These were eventually discovered and removed. He also created several articles about himself on en-wiki, it-wiki, simple-wiki, and ja-wiki. These have all been removed because several of his accounts had been blocked for sockpuppetry. The story grows crazier the I dig deeper.
- RNCTX 5y ago
  Is this something you're doing specific to wikipedia abuses? If so, there was also a bit about them in the latest Radio War Nerd podcast episode about the continued propaganda edits related to the US Civil War and various confederate army officers. I suspect if you got into white supremacist tropes that constantly (try to) edit wikipedia you could get an article into book-length... https://player.fm/series/war-nerd-radio-subscriber-feed-2633026/radio-war-nerd-ep-300-the-us-civil-war-part-3-first-battle-of-bull-run https://player.fm/series/war-nerd-radio-subscriber-feed-2633...

RogerSamson 5y ago

I am currently researching an long-term editor/abuser who has a rather colorful history. He runs a couple of attack websites targeting universities both in the US and Switzerland. These are current revisions to a past couple of websites which still appear as sources in numerous articles on Wikipedia. He supposedly volunteered at one of the universities before he was dropped because he lied about his credentials. He ran in the 2018 Italian elections. His political party was suggested by some Italian and American sources as a fraud. He had tried for several years to inject articles and tidbits about the party into Wikipedia. The sources which negatively reported on his political party have often been attacked by him. He managed to get one online newspaper's article removed from en-wiki and it-wiki. He appeared to do this for SEO impact to push up sources which are good about him and hide those which are not. He recently tried to incorporate a dating website promoting himself and his search for a wife. He tried to present the site as a "mirror" of Wikipedia. He used to run a service to circumvent anti-plagiarism tools like Turnitin. He did this while volunteering at the university mentioned above. There are several places where his service and his LinkedIn stories come up in the history of Wikipedia articles. He wrote a book about Second Life and a couple of faux academic articles. He tried several times to integrate his book as a source on it-wiki. The faux academic articles were uploaded to Commons, and they were even cited in a few legit academic publications. He operated a school in Second Life. He created articles about the school on Wikipedia, and one of the faux academic articles was about it. These were eventually discovered and removed. He also created several articles about himself on en-wiki, it-wiki, simple-wiki, and ja-wiki. These have all been removed because several of his accounts had been blocked for sockpuppetry. The story grows crazier the I dig deeper.

RNCTX 5y ago
Is this something you're doing specific to wikipedia abuses? If so, there was also a bit about them in the latest Radio War Nerd podcast episode about the continued propaganda edits related to the US Civil War and various confederate army officers. I suspect if you got into white supremacist tropes that constantly (try to) edit wikipedia you could get an article into book-length... https://player.fm/series/war-nerd-radio-subscriber-feed-2633026/radio-war-nerd-ep-300-the-us-civil-war-part-3-first-battle-of-bull-run https://player.fm/series/war-nerd-radio-subscriber-feed-2633...