Vivek Ramaswamy
? a long-shot Republican candidate for the
2024 United States presidential election
?
paid a Wikipedian
to edit the article about himself, according to
Mediaite
(see also
The New Republic
,
Forbes
, and
Yahoo!
). The paid editor,
Jhofferman
, had earlier declared that he was paid, and even summarized
two
edits
as "at subject's request." Jhofferman is
the most active editor of the article
, having made 97 (38.5%) of the edits. His most controversial edits removed Ramaswamy's role in Ohio’s COVID-19 Response Team, and Ramaswamy's receipt of the
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans
.
Paul Soros
was the older brother of
George Soros
, a perceived enemy of the
MAGA
crowd.
Ramaswamy's campaign, according to
HuffPost
,
stated
that the edits simply corrected "factual distortions" on "a number of topics, including family members’ names." Of Jhofferman's 97 edits to the article,
The Signpost
could only find 3 that "corrected" family member's names: two added "Ramaswamy" as his wife's family name, and one abbreviated his father's given name "Vivek Ganapathy" to V.G.
Even though Jhofferman is
not an
undeclared paid editor
, he was reported at
an administrators' noticeboard
anyway. Commenters there seemed to be leaning toward an editing restriction for violating our rules, perhaps
neutral point of view
.
The Signpost
can add
that Ramaswamy appears to have repeatedly used undeclared paid editors on his biography article, and articles on two of his businesses,
Axovant Sciences
and
Roivant Sciences
. These 16 editors who have since been blocked as
sock puppets
include two members of the well-known
Yoodaba sockfarm
. One of those socks edited all three articles, the other only two articles. In total seven editors who were later blocked for socking edited the Axovant Sciences article; ten edited the Roivant Sciences article, and seven edited the Vivek Ramaswamy article. The biography article and the Roivant Sciences article were both created by now banned sock puppets from the
Jbuffkin sockfarm
. The Axovant Sciences article was edited by an
anonymous account
who declared a
conflict of interest
for the article and also edited the other two articles.
We remind our readers that the identities of an editor or their employer can not be definitively proven even with Wikipedia's near-complete record of edits, for example an editor may be intentionally trying to embarrass an article subject with a
Joe job
.
Political candidates who are considering editing articles about themselves through undeclared paid editors or sock puppets should consider themselves notified that these editors are fairly easy to track on Wikipedia. We expect to further report on paid editing and socking by presidential candidates as the campaign progresses. ?
S
Encyclopaedia exemption to online safety bill?
The
BBC
reports that
Wikipedia will not perform Online Safety Bill age checks
which will likely be required under a proposed UK online safety bill meant to protect children. See also
[1]
,
[2]
,
[3]
,
[4]
The two methods of protecting children on the surface are contradictory. The online safety bill could require children to register accounts with their names and age and store this data. According to Rebecca MacKinnon of the WMF, Wikipedia has a "commitment to collect minimal data about readers and contributors" which is a method of protecting all Wkipedia editors. Fortunately, the
House of Lords
has debated an amendment that would exempt encyclopaedias and other websites "provided for the public benefit". ?
S
Compromise with paid editors?
Wikipedia's influence grows
in
Axios
discusses how companies can help write encyclopedia articles, showing the viewpoints of a
reputation management
company as well as from several unnamed Wikipedians. This is a couple of steps above how
Entrepreneur
used to write similar articles which didn't have input from Wikipedians.
Summarizing some of Axios's main points, they tell companies
- If a client or company is in the news, communication and PR teams should make sure that the Wiki page is up to date, because it'll inevitably see a surge in views.
- "You must have a presence on Wikipedia, and you must be able to correct or update your presence there ? which is easier said than done," quoting the CEO of the reputation management firm.
- Flowery brand language or spin, ... makes editors skeptical of PR professionals and corporate communicators.
And they say that Wikipedians say
- Create a Wikipedia account, do not attempt to edit anonymously
- Always disclose conflicts of interest
- Sourcing is a must. Every edit must be cited by a secondary source ? and no, your company website or personal records don't count.
There's some obvious tension in the two viewpoints. What would happen if a company maintained a presence on Wikipedia and tried to keep the article about their company up to date, while avoiding anonymous edits, disclosing their conflicts of interest, and adequately sourcing every edit?
It would be a great advance from the current conditions, of course. But what's going to happen when Wikipedians and the company representatives disagree? Wikipedians almost always disagree about major edits, even among ourselves. Some Wikipedians will want it one way and won't be shy about telling the company employees. The employees generally won't disagree among themselves. They will be thinking about their paychecks and what their bosses want. Who will win?
Axios seems to suggest that a compromise can be reached.
The Signpost
is skeptical. Would the companies really want to work this way? Would Wikipedians really be willing to compromise so easily? Perhaps more importantly, if everybody could agree on what not to include, we would end up having some really boring articles.
The "Wikipedia's influence grows" claim in the title rests on a recent report by the Washington Post, titled
"Inside the secret list of websites that make AI chatbots sound smart"
. Axios summarizes it as saying that "these tools focused on three key websites ? 'patents.google.com No. 1, which contains text from patents issued around the world; wikipedia.org No. 2, the free online encyclopedia; and scribd.com No. 3, a subscription-only digital library.'" However, it is worth noting that according to the WaPo's numbers this top position corresponded to Wikipedia contributing only 0.19% of the tokens in the
text corpus in question
- much less than e.g. the 3% of
the training data for OpenAI's GPT-3 model
that are said to have come from Wikipedia.
Axios also states that "According to
Wikistats
, the data gathering function within the Wikimedia organization, Wikipedia saw 26 billion total page views in March alone.
In the last year, the site received 279 billion unique views [sic], which is a 22% increase year over year." However, as cautioned in the small print of Wikistats, "this data shows page views from automated traffic as well as human traffic." When switched to display "human user page views", the same site instead indicates a 4.5% drop from 2021 to 2022 (although for more recent months, the WMF's more detailed "
Movement Metrics
" analysis indicates a modest year-over-year growth again).
?
S
,
H
African Journalism Award: Open the Knowledge
A number of African media outlets, among them the Nigerian
Guardian
, are reporting on the WMF's "Open the Knowledge" African Journalism Awards announced on 3 May 2023 in a
WMF press release
:
Africawide
? The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, is today launching the inaugural Open the Knowledge Journalism Awards. Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, this year’s awards celebrate the contributions of journalists in Africa who prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion in their reporting.
African journalists living on the continent (including active Wikimedians, but excluding Wikimedia staff) can
submit
their articles from May 3 to June 30, 2023. Articles must have been published online between January 1, 2022 and June 23, 2023. Admissible topics are:
- Arts, Culture, Heritage, and Sports
- Health, Climate Change, and Environment
- Women and Youth
- Digital and Human Rights
In what is surely a blow to diversity and inclusion, however, only English-language articles may be submitted. The WMF will
not even accept translations
of articles published in any other language.
This seems like an unfortunate exclusion, given that close to half of Africa by area is Francophone and there is a significant amount of African journalism in Arabic, Swahili, Portuguese, Afrikaans and many other languages. ?
AK
Wikipedia too powerful?
The UK
Telegraph
published a 3000-word
article
(
archive copy
) titled "How Wikipedia became too powerful". Featuring interviews with Wikipedians like
Rich Farmbrough
, WMF CEO
Maryana Iskander
,
Wikimedia UK
CEO Lucy Crompton-Reid and Wikipedia co-founder
Larry Sanger
among others, the article starts out by reminding readers of the two Wikimedians imprisoned in Saudi Arabia:
What is the price of information? For Osama Khalid, one of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who edit Wikipedia, the tariff was 32 years in jail ? his punishment for 'violating public morals' by posting news 'deemed to be critical' of the Saudi regime. Ziyad al-Sofiani, his fellow 'admin' (as senior Wikipedia editors are known) was handed eight years. Their jail terms were reported by activist groups around the same time that Wikimedia, the online encyclopaedia's parent foundation, revealed that it had banned 16 users in the Middle East and North Africa region for 'editing the platform in a coordinated fashion to advance the aim of [external] parties'. Alleged spies for the Saudi government, in other words, trying to manipulate the truth. And these days, if you want to control 'the truth', you want to control Wikipedia.
The article goes on to say that Wikipedia gets almost as many visits as Twitter, about half as many as Facebook ? and about ten times as many as the BBC. Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander however feels this level of influence is in good hands:
'There are enough checks and balances in the system,' she says. Chief among them, she notes, are the 'human army of truth tellers out there trying to ensure that information remains accurate and reliable and neutral'. And that means the volunteers like Osama Khalid.
The article goes on to provide a well-researched overview of Wikipedia topics such as edit wars, volunteer motivation, Wikipedia's gender imbalance and Wikipedia bureaucracy and ends with a summary of plans for the future growth of Wikipedia:
Iskander says that in future she wants to focus on Wikipedia becoming as comprehensive in its hundreds of other language versions as it is in English. The danger then might not be the danger of regulatory extinction, but of Wikipedia becoming too powerful ? a ubiquitous single source of truth. It has already become, for example, the go-to source for smart speakers and voice assistants dishing out information on demand. And Wikimedia is keen to go further by vacuuming up the archives and data at specialist institutions. Iskander thinks it’s a good deal for such institutions, because the size of Wiki's audience brings such huge exposure. 'More eyeballs on your content is going to increase interest.'
It sounds like the take-it-or-leave it power play of information’s market leader. Iskander insists it's all for the greater good. But she does admit that the rapid growth, influence and reach achieved by Wikipedia's decentralised structure means it is a model that is being closely followed. 'I think more governments, corporations, organisations are heading in this direction,' she says. 'Wikipedia stands for a way of human engagement and a way of human interaction that the world would benefit from in other spheres, too.'
?
AK
In brief