Wikipedia

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Wikipedia
"The free encyclopedia"
Logo of English Wikipedia.jpg
Logo of the English version of Wikipedia since 2010.
Wikipedia frontpage 2023.png
Front-page of Wikipedia in 2023.
Type Collaborative online encyclopedia, wiki
Available in 334 languages
Founded 15 January, 2001
Founder Jimmy Wales
Larry Sanger
Users ~280,000 active editors
Espoused ideology None (de-jure)
Liberalism (de-facto)
URL wikipedia.org

Wikipedia is an open source, free-to-edit online encyclopedia launched in 2001 by capitalist Jimmy ("Jimbo") Wales and his employee Larry Sanger. Sanger had the idea to apply the "wiki" concept to the encyclopedia format, allowing any user to edit and link pages easily, and the resulting project quickly took off in popularity. By January 2007, Wikipedia was one of the top ten most visited sites,[1] a ranking it still holds as of May 2023.[2] Wikipedia's version of the wiki format has since been widely imitated, and it continues to exercise major influence on the dissemination of knowledge. Its impressive growth and stability since the early 2000s has sparked discussions about decentralization, anarchic forms of administration, and the potential of the Internet and the Web.

History

Jimmy Wales and Bomis

Jimmy Wales worked as a financier at Chicago Options Associates starting in 1994. He had a talent for options trading, betting on interest rates, and foreign currency speculation;[3][4] after just six years, he had "earned enough to support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives".[5] In 1996, he used some of his money to co-found Bomis, a dot-com company best known for its "BomisBabes" page featuring softcore pornography. Bomis's advertising director later estimated that "99% of the [user] searches had to do with naked babes".[6] In March 2000, with funding from Bomis, Wales hired his friend Larry Sanger to begin work on a for-profit,[7] online encyclopedia with peer-reviewed content written by experts. On account of its stringent peer-review process, however, Wales and Sanger quickly lost faith in the project and were looking for alternatives when Sanger, inspired by the collaborative programming site WikiWikiWeb, had the idea to create a companion page that would allow for users to submit raw content to be vetted by the review board.

Against their expectations, however, the new WikiPedia quickly outlived its predecessor, outgrowing Bomis's capacity to fund it. Wales initially considered adding advertisements to the site[8] but decided against it; instead, he opted to make it part of the new nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, hiring his old co-chairs at Bomis to serve with him as its inaugural Board of Trustees.[a] Wales quickly gained personal notoriety and press, but not content with his exorbitant speaking fees,[9][10] he decided to take advantage of Wikipedia's popularity, co-founding the for-profit Wikia Inc.[b] (known since 2018 as Fandom).[11] Wales continued to profit from his speaking invitations until at least 2013,[11][12] making from $50,000[11] to over $70,000[12] per engagement. He continues to benefit from an image as "the guy who made the sum of the world's information free without making a penny himself"[12] when in fact, from the beginning, he emphasized to his speaking hosts that, rather than representing the Foundation, he was to be paid directly in his "personal capacity" as a speaker.[13]

Wales has been a lifelong supporter and advocate for the right-libertarian ideas of Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand.[6][7] Wales claims that Wikipedia was heavily inspired by Hayek's well-known theory of dispersed knowledge and self-organization in a capitalist economy.

Wales has repeatedly minimized the role of Larry Sanger in Wikipedia's early development,[citation needed] and he has discredited Sanger's status as "co-founder",[citation needed] going so far as to personally edit Wikipedia pages to remove references to Sanger.[14][15] In fact, it is generally accepted that Sanger created much of the site's early infrastructure[citation needed] as well as coining the name WikiPedia.[citation needed] Wales later apologized for editing his own page but maintained that he had been rightfully correcting "blatant error[s]".[15] Sanger is critical of the Wikipedia project and of Wales for several reasons, including its bottom-up, "anti-elitist" approach.[citation needed]

Issues

Anonymity

Editing by state governments

Sitting members of the US Congress and their staffers regularly make anonymous edits to Wikipedia.[16][17] The edits go back to at least 2007 and include posts from 2008 presidential candidate Joe Biden,[18] Senator Dianne Feinstein,[18] and former Representative Mike Pence.[19] Edits range widely, from "touching up" their own articles[18][19] to transphobic attacks,[20] removal of references to US torture,[21] and unhinged propaganda, such as the claim that the Cuban government had been behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[17] Wikipedia temporarily suspended Congressional IPs in 2014, citing "disruptive edits".[17]

In July 2014, a Twitter user created a bot to automatically track anonymous edits originating from Congress's IP range.[22] The account's posts were widely disseminated until 2018, when an anonymous Congressional user doxxed three Republican Congressmen in a series of Wiki edits,[23] triggering the bot to automatically spread the sensitive information. Twitter promptly suspended the account.[24] A former staffer was later charged for the incident;[25] however, even after the bot's owner offered to automatically redact any future sensitive posts, Twitter refused to lift the ban.[22] The account has since moved to the Mastodon platform.[26] The account @parliamentedits similarly tracks edits from the British Parliament.

In 2007, Reuters found that the CIA and FBI had made edits to Wikipedia pages concerning the Iraq War and Guantanamo Bay.[27]

Structure

Wikipedia boasts that its structure allows for any user to make edits. In reality, getting an edit to stick is a time-consuming process which requires prior understanding of Wikipedia's procedures and internal politics and may involve a lengthy debate process on the article's Talk page.

Languages

Wikipedia.org maintains 321 separate "Wikipedias", mostly separated by language, each with their own separate articles, Talk pages, and moderators. This can result in major differences in content based on the language's userbase.

The Belarusian language has two standard varieties which are highly similar but have political implications,[citation needed] a situation somewhat comparable to Norwegian.[citation needed] Taraškievica, a non-standard orthography which reverts the Soviet-era language reforms of 1933, has its own wiki which frames the Belarusian government as an "occupation government" and a "puppet state" with President Lukashenko as "head of the occupation", and displays the white-red-white flag used by Belarusian nationalists and pro-Western groups.

In 2020, a Reddit user discovered that nearly half of all pages on the Scots[c] Wikipedia had been written by a user who spoke no Scots but who had administrator status through seniority and used their position to overrule actual Scots speakers.[28][29][30] The user had apparently composed pages by individually running English words through an English-to-Scots online dictionary without regard for grammatical rules.

Wikipedias for Balkan languages, in particular Croatian, are notorious for their whitewashing of Nazi and Ustaše crimes. The Croatian Minister of Education, Science, and Sport even discouraged use of the Croatian Wikipedia on account of its extreme bias.[31]

Bias and sources

Wikipedia has strict policies concerning sources which have the effect of stifling views that breach the narrow confines of Western academic and media opinion. These include the following:

  • "Academic consensus" only: Political and historical disagreements are treated like scientific disagreements, making "fringe" theories unaccepted by academics tantamount to pseudoscience.
Example: Conspiracy theories surrounding Jeffrey Epstein or Seth Rich are stonewalled in the mainstream media, making them inadmissable on Wikipedia due to lack of mainstream sources.
  • "Reliable sources" only:
Example: Wikipedia has currently deprecated several sources which have not been demonstrated to be less reliable than other media outlets, including CGTN, the Global Times, Baidu Baike (a Chinese encyclopedia), Russia Today, Telesur, MintPress News, and The Grayzone. As of July 19, 2023, edits from Dr.Swag Lord, Red-tailed hawk, and Philip Cross make up over 50% of the content on the article on The Grayzone.
  • No original research: Working outside the bounds of established institutions, even with quality sources or new evidence, is forbidden.
Example: Citations from ancient Sovietologists like Service and Conquest stand on the same footing as recent works, ignoring the monumentous importance of the Soviet archives for the study of Soviet history.

Motivated editors can make use of these policies to gain an advantage when defending Western mainstream narratives, making correcting bias difficult even with reliable evidence.

Editors

Wikipedia allows paid editors to contribute.[32] The only stipulation is that these editors disclose their funding on their user Talk page. Paid edits in content articles have no indication that they were made by a paid editor.

Philip Cross

Philip Cross is a Wikipedia user who was highly active in attacking British left-wing figures and groups, notably Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway, Craig Murray, Alex Salmond, Owen Jones and others, as well as Americans Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Max Blumenthal and several anti-establishment and anti-war groups. He also devoted effort to protecting right-wing and Scottish Unionist groups by removing references to compromising statements on issues like climate change denial.[33] Corbyn and Galloway were two of Cross's favorite targets, with thousands of edits made to both their pages — enough that in 2018 Galloway offered a reward of £1,000 for the editor's real name and address.[33][34]

Philip Cross gained online notoriety in mid-2018[35] and became the subject of two articles in the BBC,[34] upon which Wikipedia administrators finally investigated his breaches of conduct and gave him a three-month ban from Wikipedia's main site. Cross dutifully spent this time editing George Galloway's entry at Wikipedia's sister project Wikiquote with compromising or embarrassing quotes until he was reinstated. When several journalists asked Jimmy Wales whether he would investigate the account for breach of Wikipedia's norms, Wales called the request "risible" and based on a misunderstanding of "how Wikipedia works".[citation needed]Philip Cross remains one of the best-known Wiki editors outside of Wikipedia for his unusually incessant editing and direct personal attacks.

According to Craig Murray, Philip Cross's Wikipedia edits were often near-simultaneous with personal attacks by Times journalist Oliver Kamm, either online or in actual news outlets, against Neil Clark, Peter Oborne, or Murray himself.[33] When Clark sued Kamm for stalking, Philip Cross removed all references to the suit on Kamm's Wiki page.[33] Murray and others have argued that Cross's prolific, daily edits could mean he represents a group of several editors which may or may not include Kamm. An analysis made by Murray in 2018 found that Cross's Twitter followers included Kamm himself as well as over a dozen prominent mainstream journalists, former politician Tristram Hunt, and the wife of ex-prime minister Gordon Brown. At the time, Cross had less than 200 total followers.[36]

Philip Cross was finally given an "indefinite" ban from Wikipedia in October 2022. However, a year on, many of Cross's contributions remain, making up 46.8% of George Galloway's page and similar percentages on his other favorite topics. Some leftists have questioned whether Cross (or the group represented by this name) has continued editing under one or more sock-puppet accounts.[citation needed]

Mikehawk10

Mikehawk10, now known as Red-tailed hawk, is notable for being the creator of, and biggest contributor to, Wikipedia's Uyghur genocide article, and is highly active on various topics related to US interests, including the 2019 Venezuelan presidential dispute, denial of the neo-Nazi ideology of the Azov Battalion, and Russian "abductions of Ukrainian children".

Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d

The amusingly-named Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d has made massive contributions to the Grayzone and MintPress News pages.

Authoritative position

Wikipedia has shown clear strengths in certain areas, such as for retrieving statistics and dates, reading on STEM-related topics, and for collecting sources on a topic. However, the site's informal reputation as being authoritative has led to overreliance and a lack of due skepticism towards its contents. Reporters and media outlets have been caught lifting content from Wikipedia on several occasions,[citation needed] including uncited material. In such cases, the article in question may even be used to support the original claim on Wikipedia, a phenomenon known to Wiki editors as "citogenesis".[37] In addition, unlike a source written by one author or institution, Wikipedia articles do not disclose the positions or biases of their editors, allowing articles to claim to represent all viewpoints on an issue without clarifying the positions of the author.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Namely, Tim Shell and Michael Davis. See Archive:Former Board of Trustees members at foundation.wikimedia.org. Davis was the founder and longtime head of Chicago Options Associates as well as, notably, the subject of a 2007 landmark Illinois court case concerning his attempt to avoid paying over $800,000 in damages to a former client.
  2. ↑ Not to be confused with the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation.
  3. ↑ Scots is a language variety which is related to English but has important differences. It is not to be confused with Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language.

References

  1. ↑ https://ir.comscore.com/static-files/45b068e1-1cee-412a-b48f-21ec34e7b59d
  2. ↑ "Top Websites Ranking - Most Visited Websites in April 2023 - Similarweb". Similarweb. 2023-05-01. Archived from the original on 2023-05-10. Retrieved 2023-05-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  3. ↑ McNichol, Tom (2007-02-14). "With Wikia, a Wikipedia founder looks to strike it rich. - March 1, 2007". money.cnn.com. Archived from the original on 2007-03-02. Retrieved 2023-05-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  4. ↑ Pink, Daniel H. (2005-03-01). "The Book Stops Here". WIRED. Archived from the original on 2023-01-30. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  5. ↑ Pink 2005.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "The free-knowledge fundamentalist". The Economist. 2010-12-03. Archived from the original on 2010-12-03. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Mangu-Ward, Katherine (2007-05-30). "Wikipedia and Beyond". Reason.com. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  8. ↑ "Wikipedia:FAQ/Overview". Wikipedia. 2002-10-01. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  9. ↑ Finkelstein 2008.
  10. ↑ Greenfield, Rebecca (2013-06-27). "Jimmy Wales Is Only Worth $1 Million". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2020-11-11. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Finkelstein, Seth (2008-09-24). "Wikipedia isn't about human potential, whatever Wales says". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2023-03-31. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Chozick, Amy (2013-06-30). "Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2017-11-20. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  13. ↑ Quoted in Finkelstein 2008; live on the Web, in a somewhat corrupted format, at https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-August/022341.html.
  14. ↑ "Wikipedia Founder Looks Out for Number 1". Workbench. 1986-01-04. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Hansen, Evan (2005-12-19). "Wikipedia Founder Edits Own Bio". WIRED. Archived from the original on 2012-05-30. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  16. ↑ "United States congressional staff edits to Wikipedia". Wikipedia. 2006-01-30. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Miller, Joe (2014-07-25). "Wikipedia blocks 'disruptive' page edits from US Congress". BBC News. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Noguchi, Yuki (2006-02-09). "Wikipedia's Help From the Hill". Washington Post. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 "Did Mike Pence's Office Edit His Wikipedia Page To Make It More Flattering?". HuffPost. 2011-08-18. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  20. ↑ Browning, Laura M. (2014-08-21). "Someone in Congress is messing with an Orange Is The New Black star's Wikipedia page". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  21. ↑ Ries, Brian (2022-03-11). "Senate staffer tries to scrub 'torture' reference from Wikipedia's CIA torture article". Mashable. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 "What Happened to CongressEdits? The Thrilling Life and Untold Death of Twitter's Most Important Wikipedia Bot". The Wikipedian. 2019-01-17. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  23. ↑ Thebault, Reis (2018-09-28). "Fight over Kavanaugh nomination finds its oddest front yet: Wikipedia pages". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2018-12-01. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  24. ↑ "Quarrantine PII · Issue #169 · edsu/anon". GitHub. 2018-10-03. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  25. ↑ Hsu, Spencer S. (2018-10-04). "Democratic ex-staffer contests charges he posted personal data on GOP senators, threatened witness in doxing". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2018-10-23. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  26. ↑ "congressedits (@[email protected])". botsin.space. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  27. ↑ Mikkelsen, Randall (16 Aug 2007). "CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits". U.S. Retrieved 18 Jul 2023.
  28. ↑ Brooks, Libby (26 Aug 2020). "Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia". the Guardian. Retrieved 18 Jul 2023.
  29. ↑ "I've discovered that almost every single article on the Scots version of Wikipedia is written by the same person - an American teenager who can't speak Scots". Reddit. 25 Aug 2020. Retrieved 18 Jul 2023.
  30. ↑ "Uiser collogue:AmaryllisGardener § Translation". Wikipedia. 28 Apr 2017. Retrieved 18 Jul 2023.
  31. ↑ Sampson, Tim (1 Oct 2013). "Fascists are rewriting Croatia's history on Wikipedia". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 18 Jul 2023.
  32. ↑ "Paid-contribution disclosure".
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 33.2 33.3 Murray, Craig (18 May 2018). "The Philip Cross Affair". Craig Murray. Retrieved 19 Jul 2023.
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 Trending, BBC (18 Jun 2018). "Galloway's war of words with a mystery Wikipedia editor". BBC News. Retrieved 19 Jul 2023.
  35. ↑ "Philip Cross mystery: Craig Murray asks if Wikipedia editor is network 'demeaning alternative media'". RT International. 21 May 2018. Retrieved 19 Jul 2023.
  36. ↑ Murray, Craig (21 May 2018). "The "Philip Cross" MSM Promotion Operation Part 3". Craig Murray. Retrieved 19 Jul 2023.
  37. ↑ "Wikipedia:List of citogenesis incidents". Wikipedia. 2016-11-22. Retrieved 2023-05-14.
  38. ↑ "Who or what is Stormfront, and how are they ruining Reddit?". Reddit. 2015-05-01. Retrieved 2023-05-11.

External links

  • @congressedits, account compiling edits made to Wikipedia from the US Congress, now on Mastodon
  • WhoColor, a browser script which color-codes Wiki text by editor and has other useful features


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