List of political editing incidents on Wikipedia

Last updated

The following is a list of publicly known incidents that occurred on Wikipedia when people with an external relationship to a political subject added information, promotional material, or maintained a particular context, with an aim of advancing a political ideology, viewpoint, or state position.

Contents

Such practices, comprising political editing, can be seen as a type of conflict-of-interest editing. The Wikipedia community utilizes various tools and policies to detect and remove such content; whether they would be effective against a state actor has been called into question. [1]

Incidents

WikiScanner

In 2007, Virgil Griffith created a searchable database that linked changes made by anonymous Wikipedia editors to companies and organizations from which the changes were made. The database cross-referenced logs of Wikipedia edits with publicly available records pertaining to the internet IP addresses edits were made from. [2]

Most of the edits WikiScanner found were minor or harmless, [2] but further analysis detected more controversial and embarrassing instances of conflict of interest edits. [3] These instances received media coverage worldwide. Included among the accused were the Vatican, [4] [5] the CIA, [2] [5] the Federal Bureau of Investigation, [6] the US Democratic Party's Congressional Campaign Committee, [5] [7] the US Republican Party, [8] [7] Britain's Labour Party, [7] Britain's Conservative Party, [8] the Canadian government, [9] Industry Canada, [10] the Department of Prime Minister, Cabinet, and Defence in Australia, [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] the United Nations, [17] the US Senate, [18] the US Department of Homeland Security, [19] the US Environmental Protection Agency, [19] Montana Senator Conrad Burns, [2] Ohio Governor Bob Taft, [20] the Israeli government, [21] and various media and industry organizations. [2] [8] [19] [20] [22]

Although the edits correlated with known IP addresses, there was no proof that the changes actually came from a member of the organization or employee of the company, only that someone had access to their network. [5]

Israeli–Palestinian conflict

In 2008, the pro-Israel activist group Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) launched a campaign to alter Wikipedia articles to support the Israeli side of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The campaign suggested that pro-Israeli editors should pretend to be interested in other topics until elected as administrators. Once administrators they were to misuse their administrative powers to suppress pro-Palestinian editors and support pro-Israel editors. [23] Some participants in the project were banned by Wikipedia administrators. [24]

In 2010, two pro-settler Israeli groups, Yesha Council and Israel Sheli, launched courses to instruct pro-Israel editors on how to use Wikipedia to promote Israel's point of view. A prize was to be given to the editor who inserted the most pro-Israel changes. [25]

In July 2023, the right-wing Israeli think tank Kohelet Policy Forum came under criticism for allegedly using sock puppet accounts to skew its Wikipedia page, which it has claimed was done by an employee without the consent or knowledge of KPF. KPF has openly used paid editing in the past to write about the 2023 Israeli judicial reform and other issues aligned with its viewpoints, mainly on the Hebrew Wikipedia. [26]

Pro-China editing

In October 2019, the BBC reported that there were indications that tendentious edits on 22 politically sensitive articles (such as those related to the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests or Taiwan) were not all "necessarily organic, nor random". The BBC quoted an academic article published in the Journal of Social Sciences called Opportunities And Challenges Of China's Foreign Communication in the Wikipedia as saying "due to the influence by foreign media, Wikipedia entries have a large number of prejudiced words against the Chinese government" and continues "We must develop a targeted external communication strategy, which includes not only rebuilding a set of external communication discourse systems, but also cultivating influential editors on the wiki platform." before concluding "China urgently needs to encourage and train Chinese netizens to become Wikipedia platform opinion leaders and administrators… [who] can adhere to socialist values and form some core editorial teams." Not all edits made by Chinese state actors are vandalism; many are related to asserting one disputed claim over others or pruning language to make a political point. The BBC reported that attacks have been made not just against Wikipedia's content but also against individual editors. [27]

On 13 September 2021 the Wikimedia Foundation banned seven editors belonging to the Chinese Wikipedia group "Wikimedians of Mainland China", and removed the administrative privileges of another twelve, due to a "security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence". [28] [29] Researchers have called the incident "the clearest indication of a more concerted and strategic attempt to change Wikipedia by a state". [30]

Promotion or debasement of politicians and political candidates

United States Congressional staffers

In 2006, it was discovered that more than 1,000 changes had been made to Wikipedia articles originating from United States government IP addresses. Changes had been made to articles about Representative Marty Meehan, [31] [32] Senator Tom Coburn, Senator Norm Coleman, [33] Representative Gil Gutknecht, [34] then-Senator Joe Biden, [34] Senator Conrad Burns, [35] Senator Dianne Feinstein, [36] Senator Tom Harkin, [36] Representative David Davis, [37] Tennessee state representative Matthew Hill [37] [38] and then-Representative Mike Pence. [39] The edits removed accurate but critical information and embellished positive descriptions. [36] In response to the controversy, certain affected IP addresses were temporarily blocked. [40]

Later, in 2011, conflicted edits were also made to US Congressional representative David Rivera's article. [41]

2008 US presidential campaign

During the 2008 US presidential election, changes made by both Barack Obama's and John McCain's campaigns made news. [42] A user who later claimed to work for the McCain campaign made changes to Sarah Palin's article just before the announcement that she would run for vice-president. [43]

2012 Newt Gingrich presidential campaign

Around the beginning of 2012, Joe DeSantis, the campaign communications director for American presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, argued for and made changes to Gingrich's Wikipedia article. [44] Some changes which DeSantis requested were minor, but his initial efforts tried to remove negative details which he thought unduly biased the articles, [45] including details about Gingrich's extramarital affairs, information about his financial expenditure, ethics charges against him, and his political positions on controversial issues. [45] [46]

The incident was notable for DeSantis' switch from editing articles about the politician and his wife directly, to following Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline by using the linked discussion pages for each article to suggest edits rather than make them himself. He said, "I stopped making direct edits in May 2011 because I was alerted to the COI rules...Earlier I thought that simply disclosing my affiliation was enough but it wasn't. So I started posting requests on the Talk page. This has been far more successful and the other editors on Wikipedia have largely received this very positively." [46] He told the political journalism organization Politico that his approach of working with the Wikipedia community by discussing edits on talk pages to be more successful than making the changes himself. Wikipedia editor Tvoz was quoted as critical of the practice; she wrote: "... I have to say this micro-managing by a Gingrich campaign director is a matter of concern to me even though you now are identifying yourself. Pointing out factual errors is one thing, but your input should not go beyond that, even [on a Talk page]." [45]

United Kingdom Parliament

In March 2012, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism uncovered that UK MPs or their staff had made almost 10,000 edits to the encyclopedia, and that almost one in six MPs had their Wikipedia articles edited from within Parliament. [47] Many of the changes dealt with removing unflattering details from during the 2009 expenses scandal, as well as other controversial issues. [48] Former MP Joan Ryan admitted to changing her entry "whenever there's misleading or untruthful information [that has] been placed on it." [48] Clare Short said her staff were "angry and protective" over mistakes and criticisms in her Wikipedia article and acknowledged they might have made changes to it. [48] Labour MP Fabian Hamilton also reported having one of his assistants edit a page to make it more accurate, in his view. MP Philip Davies denied making changes about removing controversial comments related to Muslims from 2006 and 2007. [48]

Labour MP Chuka Umunna was alleged to have created and edited his own Wikipedia page. Umunna told the Daily Telegraph that he did not alter his own Wikipedia page, but the paper quoted what they called "sources close to Umunna" as having told the newspaper that "it was possible that one of his campaign team in 2007, when he was trying to be selected to be Labour's candidate for Streatham in the 2010 general election, set up the page." [49]

Irish former Senator Jim Walsh

In September 2015, former senator Jim Walsh admitted editing his own Wikipedia entry, claiming it had been edited by "a person from the gay lobby groups". [50] He said that he had removed "certain erroneous comments" but did not say which edits he made. [50] T.J. McIntyre, a law lecturer at University College Dublin, drew attention to edits made from an IP address belonging to the Oireachtas. [50] Edits made from that address included removal of controversial comments made by the former senator about gay people or the Marriage Equality referendum. [50]

Saudi infiltration

On 6 December 2022, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that it had globally banned 16 users — including seven administrators of Arabic Wikipedia as well as several ordinary users of Arabic Wikipedia and Persian Wikipedia — for conflict-of-interest editing of Middle East and North Africa topics. Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) alleged these users to have been agents of the Saudi Arabian government; the organization also drew attention to the case of two administrators of Arabic Wikipedia from Saudi Arabia, — Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani — who had been arrested in 2020, and allegedly sentenced to imprisonment on charges including but not limited to their editing of Wikipedia. [51] The Foundation rejected DAWN's allegations about Saudi infiltration but did not comment on the incarceration of two administrators, and refused to confirm the specifics of the ban. [52] [53]

Iranian infiltration

In September 2018, a gathering titled "Exploring the Utilization of Wikipedia Strategies in Communication" took place in Tehran. [54] The event was hosted at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and consisted of a meeting between Iran's Ministry of Culture and chief editors of the Persian Wikipedia. During this meeting, discussions revolved around incorporating the Persian Wikipedia as a non-governmental organization within the oversight of Iran's Ministry of Culture. Another point of discussion was the protection of Wikipedia pages of Iranian officials from what Hamid Ziaei Parvar (the then deputy minister of Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance) referred to as "attacks and campaigns." [55] [56] An article featured in Open Democracy concluded that there were risks in the collaboration between the Iranian state and the Persian Wikipedia, mainly involving the empowering of the Iranian government to adopt complex forms of censorship within its propaganda apparatus. [57] [58]

An article published in The Times on January 2024 said that "anonymous users" change content in the English-language Wikipedia to "downgrade Iranian human right atrocities" and "discredit Iranian dissident groups". [59] An op-ed by Majid Rafizadeh also said that Iranian state propaganda articles are used as sources to "shape narratives" in the English-language Wikipedia. Rafizadeh said that certain content that is critical of the Iranian government is also being censored in the platform. [60]

Other examples

In 2011, Sarah Palin commented on the history of Paul Revere. This led to Palin supporters attempting to change the Wikipedia article about him to match Palin's comments. [61] [62] [63]

In October 2012, the Occupy Melbourne article was edited from a City of Melbourne IP address to alter language about recent protests, in the week leading up to the election of lord mayor Robert Doyle. Doyle denied any involvement or motive. [64]

In May 2019, LNP reported on paid conflict-of-interest editing concerning several Pennsylvania politicians. [65] [66]

In December 2019, Slate and other media reported on likely conflict-of-interest editing of US presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg's article. [67] [68]

In December 2020, Politico reported on conflict-of-interest editing regarding Jeffrey Zients by the Democratic consulting firm Saguaro Strategies. [69]

In November 2022, Politico reported that New York congressman George Santos had edited his own Wikipedia article on at least one now-blocked Wikipedia account. [70] In July 2023, The Daily Beast reported that fellow New York congressman Mike Lawler had edited his own Wikipedia page on several occasions. [71]

In May 2023, shortly before announcing his candidacy for president, U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy paid a Wikipedia editor to remove information on his Wikipedia page, allegedly to appeal more to conservatives. Vivek's intention was to occult his history of being on Ohio COVID-19 Response Team and his post-graduate fellowship from Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Ramaswamy denied manipulation and instead insisted that he was just paying to edit "factual distortions". [72] [73] [74]

Other incidents

On 12 July 2023, Hebrew Wikipedia administrators blocked five sock puppet accounts operated by an employee of the right-wing nonprofit Kohelet Policy Forum, [75] who edited articles related to the 2023 judicial reform, which the forum supports. [75] The forum, which already operates six authorized accounts, distanced itself from the sock puppets, claiming their operation was unauthorized and contravened the community's rules and forum's own policies. [75]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Wikipedia</span>

Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers known as Wikipedians, began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered. It grew out of Nupedia, a more structured free encyclopedia, as a way to allow easier and faster drafting of articles and translations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiki</span> Type of website that visitors can edit

A wiki is a form of online hypertext publication that is collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newt Gingrich</span> American politician and author (born 1943)

Newton Leroy Gingrich is an American politician and author who served as the 50th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U.S. representative for Georgia's 6th congressional district serving north Atlanta and nearby areas from 1979 until his resignation in 1999. In 2012, Gingrich unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English Wikipedia</span> English-language edition of Wikipedia

The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheldon Adelson</span> American businessman (1933–2021)

Sheldon Gary Adelson was an American businessman, investor, political donor, and philanthropist. He was the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which owns the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and the parent company of Venetian Macao Limited, which operated The Venetian Las Vegas and the Sands Expo and Convention Center before selling the properties in early 2022. He owned the Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom, the Israeli weekly newspaper Makor Rishon, and the American daily newspaper the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian Wikipedia</span> Russian-language edition of Wikipedia

The Russian Wikipedia is the Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of March 2024, it has 1,969,314 articles. It was started on 11 May 2001. In October 2015, it became the sixth-largest Wikipedia by the number of articles. It has the sixth-largest number of edits (136 million). In June 2020, it was the world's sixth most visited language Wikipedia.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) is an American non-profit pro-Israel media-monitoring, research and membership organization. According to its website, CAMERA is "devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East." The group says it was founded in 1982 "to respond to The Washington Post's coverage of Israel's Lebanon incursion", and to respond to what it considers the media's "general anti-Israel bias".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criticism of Wikipedia</span>

The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been criticized since its creation in 2001. Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias. Concerns have also been raised about systemic bias along gender, racial, political, corporate, institutional, and national lines. Conflicts of interest arising from corporate campaigns to influence content have also been highlighted. Further concerns include the vandalism and partisanship facilitated by anonymous editing, clique behavior, social stratification between a guardian class and newer users, excessive rule-making, edit warring, and uneven policy application.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reliability of Wikipedia</span>

The reliability of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition, has been questioned and tested. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual unreliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; it has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikimania</span> Official annual conference organized by volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge and free content, and social and technical aspects related to these topics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larry Sanger</span> American Internet project developer and Wikipedia co-founder

Lawrence Mark Sanger is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who was the editor-in-chief of the online encyclopedia Nupedia and co-founded its successor Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined the name 'Wikipedia', and wrote many of Wikipedia's early guidelines, including the "Neutral point of view" and "Ignore all rules" policies. Sanger later worked on other encyclopedic projects, including Encyclopedia of Earth, Citizendium, and Everipedia, and advised the nonprofit American political encyclopedia Ballotpedia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vandalism on Wikipedia</span> Maliciously editing Wikipedia

On Wikipedia, vandalism is editing the project in an intentionally disruptive or malicious manner. Vandalism includes any addition, removal, or modification that is intentionally humorous, nonsensical, a hoax, offensive, libelous or degrading in any way.

Widespread censorship of Wikipedia has occurred in countries including China, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. Some instances are examples of widespread internet censorship in general that includes Wikipedia content. Others are indicative of measures to prevent the viewing of specific content deemed offensive. The length of different blocks has varied from hours to years. When Wikipedia ran on the HTTP protocol, governments were able to block specific articles. However, in 2011 Wikipedia began running on both HTTP and HTTPS, and in 2015 switched over to solely HTTPS. Since then, the only censorship options have been to block the entire site for a particular language or prosecute editors, which has resulted in some countries dropping their bans and others expanding their bans to the entire site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikipedia community</span> Volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia

The Wikipedia community, collectively and individually known as Wikipedians, is an online community of volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. Since August 2012, the word "Wikipedian" has been an Oxford Dictionary entry.

Conflict-of-interest (COI) editing on Wikipedia occurs when editors use Wikipedia to advance the interests of their external roles or relationships. The type of COI editing of most concern on Wikipedia is paid editing for public relations (PR) purposes. Several Wikipedia policies and guidelines exist to combat conflict of interest editing, including Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Perceived ideological bias on Wikipedia, especially on its English-language edition, has been the subject of academic analysis and public criticism of the project. Questions relate to whether its content is biased due to the political, religious, or other ideologies its volunteer editors may adhere to. These all draw concerns as to the possible effects this may have on the encyclopedia's reliability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deletion of articles on Wikipedia</span>

Volunteer editors of Wikipedia delete articles from the online encyclopedia regularly, following processes that have been formulated by the site's community over time. The most common route is the outright deletion of articles that clearly violate the rules of the website. Other mechanisms include an intermediate collaborative process that bypasses a complete discussion, and a whole debate at the dedicated forum called Articles for deletion (AfD). As a technical action, deletion can only be done by a subset of editors assigned particular specialized privileges by the community, called administrators. An omission that has been carried out can be contested by appeal to the deleting administrator or on another discussion board called Deletion review (DRV).

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been covered extensively on Wikipedia. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has said the topic is debated often but the site strives to be neutral. In 2023, Stephen Harrison of Slate wrote, "It shouldn't come as a surprise that Wikipedia is a better place to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than X, TikTok, and other social media platforms are."

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