Wikipedia wars

[Al-khiyal]

August 15, 2007 -- Editing your own entry on Wikipedia is usually the province of vain celebrities keen for some good PR. But a new website has uncovered dozens of companies that have been editing the site in order to improve their public image.

The Wikipedia Scanner, which trawls the backwaters of the popular online encyclopaedia, has unearthed a catalogue of organisations massaging entries, including the CIA and the Labour party.

Workers operating on CIA computers have been spotted editing entries including the biography of former presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, while unnamed individuals inside the Vatican have worked on entries about Catholic saints - and Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams.

Meanwhile, an anonymous surfer from Labour's Millbank headquarters excised a section about Labour Students which referred to "careerist MPs" and criticisms that the party's student movement was no longer seen as radical.

And somebody from a computer traced to Democrat HQ edited a page on conservative American radio host Rush Limbaugh, calling him "idiotic", "ridiculous" and labelling his 20 million listeners as "legally retarded".

But the biggest culprit that the Scanner claims to have discovered is Diebold, a supplier of voting machines, which it says has made huge alterations to entries about its involvement in the controversial "hanging chad" election in the US in 2000. The company was criticised in the wake of the disputed results, but edits made by its employees on Wikipedia have included the removal of 15 paragraphs detailing the allegations.

"In August 2003 Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold, announced that he had been a top fundraiser for George W Bush ..." the deleted text read. "When assailed by critics for the conflict of interest ... he vowed to lower his political profile."

The change, made two years ago, was quickly reversed and the culprit warned off for "vandalism". A Diebold official was not available for comment.

It is not the first time people have been found editing their own Wikipedia entries, which is considered a breach of etiquette on the site. Last year some US Congressional staff were found to be removing information they deemed unsavoury from the profiles of the politicians they worked for, and this year computer group Microsoft back-pedalled after it was revealed to have offered money to experts to "correct" entries about it on the site.

The Scanner, built by Virgil Griffith, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, works by comparing 5.3m edits made on the encyclopaedia against the internet addresses of more than 2m companies or individuals.

Companies and party aides cast censorious eye over Wikipedia

[Al-khiyal]

December 6, 2007 -- Wikipedia is frequently touted as a marvel of collaboration, a model of peer production. But it may be more instructive as a laboratory of pathologies of social interaction. While perhaps - like sausages- it's better not to see the product being made, any familiarity with how Wikipedia operates should give rise to enormous scepticism about its alleged example of harmonious collective action.

Wikipedia's success has led to many sites focused on its foibles. One such site, the Wikipedia Review, was the locus of much investigation into the "EssJay" scandal in which a highly ranked administrator falsified academic degrees and lied to the New Yorker. It also mocks Jimmy Wales's repeated denial of co-founder status to former employee and Wikipedia creator Larry Sanger - now running rival site citizendium.org - by dubbing Wales the "Sole Flounder".

The combination of feuds and relentless focus on negatives associated with Wikipedia creates an obsession by some devoted Wikipedians about the evils visited upon them. Tensions can also be intensified by the fact that since Wikipedia supports accounts with no identity verification, nobody can ever be sure if a pseudonymous user's opinion is sincere or a sham. You could in theory have several such accounts (called "sock puppets"), and operate them to give the impression of having several supporters for one viewpoint. Abusing this facility is against policy, though preventing it is difficult.

This toxic mix of paranoia, fear of infiltrators and a social system where status can be acquired by fighting off threats (real or imagined) exploded recently into a governance scandal familiar to any observer of bureaucratic politics. A prominent Wikipedia administrator unilaterally revoked the account of a highly regarded contributor. When questioned, the response claimed the evidence was too sensitive to be released to the public, but had been vetted at the highest levels. Shortly after, the administrator reversed the action, apologising and citing new information. The end of the matter? No. It had barely begun.

The secret dossier was leaked, and turned out to be a deeply flawed quasi-profiling purportedly establishing the suspected contributor as, paraphrased, a sleeper agent for an enemy cell (that is, from Wikipedia Review) bent on disruption. Yet official actions were taken to stop the leak from being posted in Wikipedia discussion under the pretext of "policy and violating copyright".

Of course, the material was immediately available on Wikipedia Review and another site, Wikitruth.info, thus giving those sites redeeming value, whatever their flaws.

Jimmy Wales himself was none too pleased. Although he preaches that Wikipedia is built on trust and love, he can be notably unloving to those untrusting of his pronouncements. One long-time editor who posted the leaked evidence was said by Wales to be trolling (being deliberately disruptive): "He knew he was trolling, and I doubt if he will last much longer at Wikipedia because of it". A formal attempt was made to virtually ban that editor, which narrowly failed. The administrator stepped down, and quasi-judicial proceedings ended with several admonishments.

It's not that Wikipedia participants are expected to transcend humanity. Rather, it's that looking beyond the rosy marketing picture reveals little but bureaucracy implemented poorly - including fiefdoms, cliques and sycophancy to the charismatic leader.

For all Jimmy Wales's self-promotion regarding his supposed ability to build good communities, it's apparent his skill is instead in knowing how to sell a dysfunctional community effectively. One subtext of the Wikipedia hype is that businesses can harvest an eager pool of free labour, disposable volunteers who will donate effort for the sheer joy of it. The fantasy is somewhat akin to Santa's workshop, where little elves work happily away for wages of a glass of milk and a cookie. Whereas the reality is closer to an exploitative cult running on sweatshop labour.

Inside, Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop

[Al-khiyal]

December 9, 2007 -- The academic world has been sceptical of Wikipedia since its launch in 2001. Now the controversial website is suspicious of academics, following a scandal in which a world-renowned computer scientist has been banned from editing the online collaborative encyclopaedia.

Carl Hewitt, associate professor emeritus in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is alleged to have disrupted Wikipedia for more than two years by using it for self-promotion, tampering with his own biography and manipulating computer science articles to inflate the importance of his own research. Senior academics in his field say the changes he made have rendered some entries in effect useless.

Administrators have claimed that his 'disruptive' activities were 'hurting Wikipedia'. Hewitt was found to be citing his own work in articles where it was not relevant, obscuring points of view at odds with his own theories, and editing his biography to promote his forthcoming public appearances.

Even though Hewitt has more than four decades of academic work and numerous plaudits behind him, his contribution to Wikipedia was seen as so damaging that one administrator involved in an arbitration concluded: 'I do not believe Wikipedia would be improved by allowing Carl to edit articles on computer science, physics and mathematics.'

In his defence, Hewitt claims on a Wikipedia talk page he is being 'censored' and 'harassed' by Wikipedia administrators and users. He has requested that his biography be deleted from the encyclopaedia, blaming 'repeated vandalism' for making it 'continually inaccurate' so that it 'significantly misrepresents both me and my work.' An arbitration committee has rejected his request, and his biography stands with Hewitt powerless to change it.

The banning of Hewitt shows that the academic community is in fact actively involved in editing Wikipedia, but may be no more reliable and trustworthy than any other group of users. As users prepare to redraft the computer science articles without Hewitt's input, no one is sure why a world-class expert would go to such extremes to promote himself. 'Hewitt may have a legitimate complaint about the lack of recognition that his work has received,' said Kowalski. 'It's a pity he couldn't find a better way to achieve it.'

Wikipedia ban for disruptive professor

[Al-khiyal]

Fury of a woman scorned – on Wikipedia

March 4, 2008 -- It was a boy meets girl story for the web 2.0 generation. But when it all turned sour the recriminations resounded through the blogosphere while the dirty laundry was put up for sale on eBay.

She was Rachel Marsden, 33, the Canadian right-wing political pundit used to airing the tangles of her personal life online. He was Jimmy Wales, 41, the co-founder of Wikipedia, the web encyclopaedia that aims to provide up-to-date “user-generated” information.

On Saturday Ms Marsden logged on to discover that her own particular affair had also been updated. She had been dumped on Wikipedia.

Mr Wales posted a statement on the site noting that: “I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden.”

In response Ms Marsden did what any self-respecting scorned cyber-pundit would do. She dug out the shirt and jumper that her former lover had worn during what was apparently their only night together and put them up for sale on eBay. “Hi, my name is Rachel and my (now ex) boyfriend, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, just broke up with me via an announcement on Wikipedia,” she wrote.

By last night bidding on the T-shirt, complete with stubborn stains, had reached more than £150 while bids on the jumper had climbed past £200.

She also sent a transcript of their passionate conversations on an instant messenger service to a California technology blog, fuelling a debate on whether Mr Wales had broken his own website’s principles. Among them is the policy that all of Wikipedia’s “user-facing” content “should be written from a neutral point of view” and may not contain any unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas . . . that, in the words of Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimbo Wales, would amount to a “novel narrative or historical interpretation”.

There was some uncertainty as to whether Mr Wales could write about his past romance from a “neutral point of view”; equally, it was unclear whether his statement that the affair was ended constituted a “novel narrative or historical interpretation”.

What Mr Wales acknowledged was a “far more important” issue was the allegation that, as he became involved with Ms Marsden, he intervened to redraft her Wikipedia biography.

“Rachel Marsden first approached me via e-mail two years ago with complaints about her bio,” he wrote. It already contained plenty of points of controversy. In the late 1990s, as a college swimming star, she had accused the team coach of sexual harassment. The coach, who was fired and then reinstated, claimed that she had harassed him. In 2004 she had been given a conditional discharge for harassing a radio host.

What concerned Ms Marsden, however, was an account of her entanglement with a Canadian counter-terrorism officer with whom she had a two-year affair. On her blog she accused him of passing her secret documents; he accused her of harassment.

Mr Wales said that he reviewed the entry on Ms Marsden and discovered it was not up to standard. “We had never met,” he added. They did meet in February. An apparent transcript of their conversations before that meeting suggests that, although Mr Wales had withdrawn from the editing process, he was still influencing the editors.

He said that he had also explained to the team of editors that he and Ms Marsden “became friends . . . and that we would be meeting about that” and so there was now a conflict of interest.

Ms Marsden replied that this approach “usually, actually works much better than the alternative”, to which he apparently replied: “The truth is of course a much worse conflict of interest than that; but that will do.”

History will decide whether Mr Wales broke his own principles, although before that happens there may well be a Wikipedia page devoted to the controversy.

***

See also:

Rachel Marsden comes a stalkin’ once again

[Al-khiyal]

Wikipedia sued by German killers in privacy claim

November 13, 2009 -- Two German men who killed an actor in 1990 are suing the charity behind the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, claiming that its inclusion of detail of their crimes infringes their right to privacy. The case has become an instant online cause celebre – with one lawyer saying that the integrity of history itself is at stake – because it ranges the U.S.'s First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, against German privacy and criminal laws, which dictate that after a certain period a crime is "spent" and cannot be referred to. The UK has similar rules on the reporting of lesser crimes. The two men, who cannot be named here because the Guardian is available in Germany, became infamous for the killing, for which they were sentenced to life in prison in 1993. They were released in 2007 and 2008. But Alexander Stopp, the lawyer for the two men, noted that Germany's courts allow a criminal's name to be withheld in news reports once they have served a prison term and a set period has expired. "They should be able to go on and be resocialised, and lead a life without being publicly stigmatised" for their crime, Stopp told the New York Times. "A criminal has a right to privacy, too, and a right to be left alone."

German editors of Wikipedia, which is available in multiple languages around the world, have already removed the killers' names from the German-language version about the victim, Walter Sedlmayr. But Stopp has also filed suit in German courts to demand that the Wikimedia Foundation, which funds and runs Wikipedia, remove their names from the English-language article. In fact Wikipedia administrators – the unpaid group that helps oversee the running of the site – have been discussing the challenge for more than a year. But there is deep disagreement about whether the individuals' German-determined right to privacy overrides the U.S. First Amendment. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group, said in a bulletin on Thursday that "he who controls the past, controls the future" – intentionally echoing George Orwell's 1984, in which the government controls the records of the past in order to control the population. Jennifer Granick, a lawyer for the EFF, wrote: "This slogan from Orwell's Ministry of Truth is anathema under U.S. law, which takes it as an article of faith that people must be allowed to publish truthful information about historical events. A foreign power should not be able to censor publications in the United States, regardless of whether doing so suits the country's domestic law. At stake is the integrity of history itself. If all publications have to abide by the censorship laws of any and every jurisdiction just because they are accessible over the global internet, then we will not be able to believe what we read, whether about Falun Gong (censored by China), the Thai king (censored under lèse majesté) or German murders. Wikipedia appears ready to fight for write once, read anywhere history, and EFF will be watching this fight closely."

The English-language Wikipedia article about Sedlmayr notes that the details of the killers' names are available from a number of online sources in Germany. Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer who has represented the New York Times, told the paper that every judge on the U.S. Supreme Court would agree that the Wikipedia article "is easily, comfortably protected by the First Amendment". But Germany's courts have come up with a different balance between the right to privacy and the public's right to know, Abrams said, and "once you're in the business of suppressing speech, the quest for more speech to suppress is endless". The German law springs from a decision of Germany's highest court in 1973, which has led to publications there referring to people whose convictions are "spent" are as, for example, "the perpetrator or, Mr L" But the German duo may discover that their attempts to remove their names from the electronic record has precisely the opposite result – a phenomenon known online as the "Streisand effect", after the singer, whose attempts to remove pictures of her beach house from online records outraged people, who then copied the pictures and distributed them over the internet.

Michael Godwin, the general counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation, said the foundation "doesn't edit content at all, unless we get a court order from a court of competent jurisdiction … if our German editors have chosen to remove the names of the murderers from their article on Walter Sedlmayr, we support them in that choice." But, he added: "The English-language editors have chosen to include the names of the killers, and we support them in that choice." Wikipedia, as one of the top-ranking sites for information from many searches, is often a key source of information about events or people. It has reined in editing on biographies of people who are still alive after a number of embarrassing incidents where people's details were altered to create libels. And when David Rohde, a New York Times reporter, was seized by the Taliban in Afghanistan, the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, personally appealed to the site's editors to keep details about it quiet. Yet the information was available on other smaller sites.

Wikipedia has more than 12 million articles, including 3 million in English, but has just 30 staff – and Godwin comprises its entire legal staff. The killers' lawyer contacted Wikimedia about both men, citing cases since 2006 that had suppressed publication of their names in Germany. He has won a default judgment against Wikimedia for one of the men in a German court, and last month sent the foundation a letter regarding the other, whose case against Wikimedia is pending. "The German courts, including several courts of appeals, have held that our client's name and likeness cannot be used any more in publication regarding Sedlmayr's death," he wrote. Wikimedia told Stopp it questioned the relevance of any judgments in the German courts, since, it said, it has no operations in Germany and no assets there.