In 2009, law professors David A. Hoffman and Salil K. Mehra published a paper analyzing conflicts like these on Wikipedia and noted something unusual. Wikipedia’s dispute resolution system does not actually resolve disputes. In fact, it seems to facilitate them continuing forever.
These disputes may be crucial to Wikipedia’s success, the researchers wrote. Online communities are in perpetual danger of dissolving into anarchy. But because disputes on Wikipedia are won or lost based on who has better followed Wikipedia process, every dispute becomes an opportunity to reiterate the project’s rules and principles.
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Last spring, the reliable source page collided with one of the most intense political flashpoints on Wikipedia, the Israel-Palestine conflict. In April, an editor asked whether it was time to reevaluate the reliability of the Anti-Defamation League in light of changes to the way it categorizes antisemitic incidents to include protests of Israel, among other recent controversies. About 120 editors debated the topic for two months, producing text equal to 1.9 The Old Man and the Seas, or “tomats,” a standard unit of Wikipedia discourse. The consensus was that the ADL was reliable on antisemitism generally but not when the Israel-Palestine conflict was involved.
Unusually for a Wikipedia administrative process, the decision received enormous attention. The Times of Israel called it a “staggering blow” for the ADL, which mustered Jewish groups to petition the foundation to overrule the editors. The foundation responded with a fairly technical explanation of how Wikipedia’s self-governing reliability determinations work.
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Over the years, Wikipedia has developed an immune response to outside grievances. When people on X start complaining about Wikipedia’s suppression of UFO sightings or refusal to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, an editor often restricts the page to people who are logged in and puts up a notice directing newcomers to read the latest debate. If anything important was missed, they are welcome to suggest it, the notice reads, provided their suggestion meets Wikipedia’s rules, which can be read about on the following pages. That is, Wikipedia’s first and best line of defense is to explain how Wikipedia works.
Occasionally, people stick around and learn to edit. More often, they get bored and leave.
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But attempts to influence the site have grown more sophisticated. The change is likely due to multiple factors: a global rise of political movements that wish to control independent media, the increased centrality of Wikipedia, and a technical change to the website itself. In 2015, Wikipedia switched to the encrypted HTTPS extension by default, making it impossible to see what pages users visited, only that they were visiting the Wikipedia domain. This meant that governments that had previously been censoring specific articles on opposition figures or historic protests had to choose between blocking all of Wikipedia or none of it. Almost every country save China (and Russia, for several hours) chose to not to block it. This was a victory for open knowledge, but it also meant governments had a greater interest in controlling what was written in the encyclopedia.
Instead of brute censorship, what has emerged is a sort of gray-zone information warfare. […]
The goal of these campaigns is what the Wikimedia Foundation calls “project capture.” The term originates in an independent report the foundation commissioned in response to the takeover of the Croatian-language Wikipedia by a cabal of far-right editors.
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In 2020, one of the few remaining dissident editors compiled a comprehensive textual and statistical analysis of editing patterns of dozens of accounts and filed a request for an admin to run IP traces to see if they were sock puppets. The admin stalled, then attempted to fudge the traces, but did so in such a transparent way that it was clear the accounts were indeed fakes.
This was the evidence required to procedurally break the cabal. High-ranking admins called “stewards” from other-language Wikipedias administered a new vote on banning the Croatian admins. This time, the admins lost. […]
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The foundation’s postmortem analysis compared the takeover to “state capture, one of the most pressing issues of today’s worldwide democratic backsliding.” The clique still cited the reliability of sources and invoked rules of debate, but it bent these processes to serve their nationalist purpose. As many governments have discovered, it is extremely difficult to insert propaganda into Wikipedia without running afoul of some rule or another. But what the Croatia capture showed is that Wikipedia’s processes are only effective if they are administered by people who believe in the spirit of the project. If they can be silenced or replaced, it becomes possible to steer the encyclopedia in a different direction.
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One editor I spoke with, who asked to remain anonymous for reasons that will be obvious, had been editing Wikipedia for several years while living in a Middle Eastern country where much other media is tightly controlled. One day he received a call from a member of the intelligence service inviting him to lunch. He cried for hours — everyone knew what this meant.
The meeting was cordial but clear. They didn’t want him to stop editing Wikipedia. They wanted his help. They knew the encyclopedia has rules and you can’t just insert flagrant propaganda, but as a respected member of the community, maybe he could edit in ways that were a little friendlier to the government, maybe decide in its favor when certain topics came up for debate. In exchange, maybe the service could help him if he ever got in trouble with the police, for example, over his sexuality; he was gay in a country where that was illegal.
He fled the country weeks later. He now edits from abroad, but he knows of five to 10 others who have faced arrest or intimidation over their editing. They must do constant battle with editors he believes to be government agents who push the state’s perspective, debating tirelessly for hours because it is literally their job.
Thank you for those of us on this side of the paywall. Fascinating to hear how much the foundation has to deal with, and all the more awesome that it remains as it is without faltering.
Thank you for those of us on this side of the paywall. Fascinating to hear how much the foundation has to deal with, and all the more awesome that it remains as it is without faltering.
It's worth noting that China only chose to block the Chinese-language edition of WP, then changed its stance in 2019 and does now block all of Wikipedia....
Almost every country save China (and Russia, for several hours) chose to not to block it.
It's worth noting that China only chose to block the Chinese-language edition of WP, then changed its stance in 2019 and does now block all of Wikipedia.
Fascinating article. I'm spreading it myself cause I enjoyed reading it that much. State actors influencing Wikipedia is something I've heard about but never in this much detail
Fascinating article. I'm spreading it myself cause I enjoyed reading it that much. State actors influencing Wikipedia is something I've heard about but never in this much detail
I emerged from the right wing long ago, but I still remember the “conservative values” I was raised under. This was ±30 years ago, mind you. A rallying cry I heard many times in those days was a...
I emerged from the right wing long ago, but I still remember the “conservative values” I was raised under. This was ±30 years ago, mind you.
A rallying cry I heard many times in those days was a warning about postmodern relativism… The libs are wishy-washy and emotionally driven, they don’t care about facts. They have no regard for the truth. They use phrases like “your truth” and “my truth” but have forsaken absolute truth. And so on. Often this was coupled with religious reminders that Satan is the great deceiver, the father of lies, and so on.
I don’t know what happened to conservatives but I guess they should have listened to their own instruction. Somehow they’ve completely left those notions by the wayside and jumped on the post-truth bandwagon. They are attacking truth from nearly every possible angle, sowing confusion and disinformation constantly. Factuality has been usurped by loyalty as the indicator of one’s correctness.
I guess the story’s not as simple as I’m making it out to be; politicians of all stripes have had tenuous relationships with truth forever. Colbert coined “truthiness” ages ago. But I do think the larger ideological shift that has occurred in the last decade is noteworthy. And alarming. Not to mention Orwellian, which is the most troubling undercurrent of the political right today.
This is what I've found so infuriating since Trump came on the scene (Admittedly, this was a problem in the Bush years as well, I was just younger/conservative then). My parents raised my brother...
Somehow they’ve completely left those notions by the wayside and jumped on the post-truth bandwagon.
This is what I've found so infuriating since Trump came on the scene (Admittedly, this was a problem in the Bush years as well, I was just younger/conservative then). My parents raised my brother and I in a fundamentalist Christian home. We bought that hook line and sinker and took the teachings to heart. So it's no wonder that when I reached my 20s and saw American Christianity for what it is that I left it. To this day, despite my agnosticism, I still think Jesus is a good model for how to be kind, forgiving, and a generally good person.
I just can't make sense of how my parents, and my entire extended family doesn't see their own hypocrisy. And how their own children/nephews/grandchildren pointing it out doesn't stir doubt in their hearts about what they're supporting. I sincerely hope if I lose my way later in life and my kids are calling me out on it that I have the self-awareness enough to take it to heart or at least hear them out.
It's just heart breaking because I know they know better and there's nothing I can do to fix it.
To me, the "absolute truth" of yesterday's conservatives is the brittle dam they erect (personally and as a movement) to avoid the 'wishy washy' grayness of actual reality. Once the dam broke, it...
To me, the "absolute truth" of yesterday's conservatives is the brittle dam they erect (personally and as a movement) to avoid the 'wishy washy' grayness of actual reality.
Once the dam broke, it because apparent to everyone how underprepared they were to face the world, and how dangerous those whose fearfulness could be when they realized it was a facade all along.
Conclusions about human nature are often too broad and general to be of any use, but I don't think we should avoid them. The Atlantic wrote a great piece about how the feeling of disgust was more evident in those who voted right. It's helpful context for exploring why people put up walls, and why it was the conservatives and not liberals who do did it.
As someone very much in conservative bastion church spaces, this reads essentially accurate. I know both major parties have plenty of dirty laundry, but on the rare occasions that I confront...
As someone very much in conservative bastion church spaces, this reads essentially accurate. I know both major parties have plenty of dirty laundry, but on the rare occasions that I confront political statements individuals are making, those tend to be conservative talking points as they’re often trying to invoke Christian principles at the same time. Seems like 90+% of the time, those statements are butchering Jesus and the Bible.
Wonderful article and a great time to remind everyone that Wikipedia functions purely on donations! One of the few charitable donations I'm happy to keep rolling because I trust them to make good...
Wonderful article and a great time to remind everyone that Wikipedia functions purely on donations! One of the few charitable donations I'm happy to keep rolling because I trust them to make good use of the money.
FWIW they're not really as short on cash as they claim to be. We editors have had to tell them several times to stop running fundraising banners implying they're going to run out of funds. One...
Same. No tax breaks for me with this donation, but sometimes 'them's the breaks!'. Everybody should do what they can to give back to a resource like this one.
Same. No tax breaks for me with this donation, but sometimes 'them's the breaks!'. Everybody should do what they can to give back to a resource like this one.
From the article:
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Thank you for those of us on this side of the paywall. Fascinating to hear how much the foundation has to deal with, and all the more awesome that it remains as it is without faltering.
It's worth noting that China only chose to block the Chinese-language edition of WP, then changed its stance in 2019 and does now block all of Wikipedia.
https://slate.com/technology/2019/05/wikipedia-china-block-censorship-tiananmen-square.html
Fascinating article. I'm spreading it myself cause I enjoyed reading it that much. State actors influencing Wikipedia is something I've heard about but never in this much detail
I emerged from the right wing long ago, but I still remember the “conservative values” I was raised under. This was ±30 years ago, mind you.
A rallying cry I heard many times in those days was a warning about postmodern relativism… The libs are wishy-washy and emotionally driven, they don’t care about facts. They have no regard for the truth. They use phrases like “your truth” and “my truth” but have forsaken absolute truth. And so on. Often this was coupled with religious reminders that Satan is the great deceiver, the father of lies, and so on.
I don’t know what happened to conservatives but I guess they should have listened to their own instruction. Somehow they’ve completely left those notions by the wayside and jumped on the post-truth bandwagon. They are attacking truth from nearly every possible angle, sowing confusion and disinformation constantly. Factuality has been usurped by loyalty as the indicator of one’s correctness.
I guess the story’s not as simple as I’m making it out to be; politicians of all stripes have had tenuous relationships with truth forever. Colbert coined “truthiness” ages ago. But I do think the larger ideological shift that has occurred in the last decade is noteworthy. And alarming. Not to mention Orwellian, which is the most troubling undercurrent of the political right today.
This is what I've found so infuriating since Trump came on the scene (Admittedly, this was a problem in the Bush years as well, I was just younger/conservative then). My parents raised my brother and I in a fundamentalist Christian home. We bought that hook line and sinker and took the teachings to heart. So it's no wonder that when I reached my 20s and saw American Christianity for what it is that I left it. To this day, despite my agnosticism, I still think Jesus is a good model for how to be kind, forgiving, and a generally good person.
I just can't make sense of how my parents, and my entire extended family doesn't see their own hypocrisy. And how their own children/nephews/grandchildren pointing it out doesn't stir doubt in their hearts about what they're supporting. I sincerely hope if I lose my way later in life and my kids are calling me out on it that I have the self-awareness enough to take it to heart or at least hear them out.
It's just heart breaking because I know they know better and there's nothing I can do to fix it.
To me, the "absolute truth" of yesterday's conservatives is the brittle dam they erect (personally and as a movement) to avoid the 'wishy washy' grayness of actual reality.
Once the dam broke, it because apparent to everyone how underprepared they were to face the world, and how dangerous those whose fearfulness could be when they realized it was a facade all along.
Conclusions about human nature are often too broad and general to be of any use, but I don't think we should avoid them. The Atlantic wrote a great piece about how the feeling of disgust was more evident in those who voted right. It's helpful context for exploring why people put up walls, and why it was the conservatives and not liberals who do did it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/manipulators-disgust-hijack-brains/677719/
As someone very much in conservative bastion church spaces, this reads essentially accurate. I know both major parties have plenty of dirty laundry, but on the rare occasions that I confront political statements individuals are making, those tend to be conservative talking points as they’re often trying to invoke Christian principles at the same time. Seems like 90+% of the time, those statements are butchering Jesus and the Bible.
Time travel must make things confusing, huh? :P
ROFL I didn’t even realize I had misused ±! Good catch. 😆
Wonderful article and a great time to remind everyone that Wikipedia functions purely on donations! One of the few charitable donations I'm happy to keep rolling because I trust them to make good use of the money.
FWIW they're not really as short on cash as they claim to be. We editors have had to tell them several times to stop running fundraising banners implying they're going to run out of funds.
One could argue that the other causes they spend the excess on are worthy thereof, but ugh, I wish they'd be more transparent about it.
Same. No tax breaks for me with this donation, but sometimes 'them's the breaks!'. Everybody should do what they can to give back to a resource like this one.
Mirror: https://archive.is/uyEjV