http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/2006/04/13/205967/Online+encyclop%c3%a…
DATE:13/04/06
SOURCE:Flight International
Online encyclopædia Wikipedia aircraft group allege deliberate
misleading Airbus and Boeing entries
Readers of the online open-access encyclopædia Wikipedia have raised
concerns that the entries of both Airbus and Boeing have been altered in
possibly deliberately misleading ways.
This is the story of a real case on en: Wikipedia, prompted by a
journalist query on the subject. I'm sending it to wikien-l and
wikimediauk-l as it's on topic, and Aphaia suggested wikipedia-l would
benefit from it as well.
Full credit to en:user:Average Earthman on this one - he did an excellent job.
This shows how Wikipedia deals with hoaxes: patiently and carefully
the first time around, less patiently the second, shoot-on-sight the
third.
The (Glasgow) Daily Record articles:
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16929538%26method=full%26site…http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16929536%26method=full%26site…
The eventual Times article barely mentions Wikipedia:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2130227.html
- but I got a nice thank-you note back from Mr Lister and I think we
can say another journalist has successfully been informed.
I also blogged it: http://reddragdiva.livejournal.com/307381.html
- d.
Original query:
My name is David Lister and I am a journalist for The Times. I am
doing a story today about a man called Alan McIlwraith, a call centre
worker in Glasgow, Scotland, who has been passing himself off as an
Iraq war hero. Mr McIlwraith, who claimed he was a sir and had
received the Military Cross, was exposed by a Glasgow tabloid
newspaper today; the British Army says that he has never even served
in its ranks. He also had an entry in wikipedia - which I am assuming
he wrote himself - in which he was described as someone who "can get
things done and is thought of as a hero…by the UK and NATO". His entry
has now been deleted: can you please tell me when it was removed? I am
assuming that he wrote this entry himself - what are the procedures
that one has to go through to submit an entry on your website?
My reply:
Creating an article is easy - the only requirement is that you
create a WIkipedia user account, which is about thirty seconds'
effort. (This requirement was put into place in November last year,
which is actually after the Alan Mcilwraith article was first
created.) This means it's very easy to create something. The figures
as of November last year were about 4000 new articles a day, 2000 of
which were deleted within 24 hours. We've become ridiculously popular
since then, so I'm sure the numbers are much higher now.
We get a lot of rubbish, but we operate on the principle of "keep
it open and clean up later" because it generally works well enough and
*most* jokes and hoaxes are easily spotted. Ever since the John
Seigenthaler hoax late last year, we've kept a *particularly* close
eye on the biographies of living people, which helps in areas such as
the current case.
The article "Alan Mcilwraith" was created and deleted a few times.
I have administrator powers on English Wikipedia ("administrator" =
"janitor", rather than any sort of "senior editor" - an admin has
various cleanup powers, the ability to block vandals, delete and
undelete articles, etc.), so I am able to look up the history of the
article.
It's actually a pretty typical example of how Wikipedia deals with
people putting rubbish or hoaxes in, so I'll detail exactly what
happened for you to give you an understanding of the process. We get
this sort of thing all the time, and we have reasonably effective
procedures for dealing with persistent hoaxers.
The article was first created 18:28 GMT, 5 October 2005 by an
anonymous IP-address user. It was a badly-spelt and ungrammatical
article detailing Mcilwraith's improbable heroics, and reads like
something a high-school student would create as a prank - a lot of
deletable articles are of that description, and we're used to this
sort of thing. The creator kept working at the article, also creating
a username (User:MilitaryPro) to continue working on it - that
username doesn't appear to have written on any other subject.
(MilitaryPro did add Alan Mcilwraith to "List of honorary British
Knights" on 21:18 GMT, 4 October 2005, but someone removed him two
hours later, at 23:19 GMT, with the comment "del Alan Mcilwraith -
Google has never heard of him - pretty good for someone supposedly
knighted this year". Lists of this sort tend to be on a lot of
editors' watchlists.)
MilitaryPro uploaded a purported picture of Mcilwraith:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Alan.No2.jpg , uploaded 22:36 GMT,
9 October 2005. Note that he marked it "may be reused for any
purpose", so if MilitaryPro is Mcilwraith and he owns the image, he
has in fact legally released it for free reuse if you need a pic :-)
The article triggered the suspicions of Wikipedia editors in
fairly short order. One user, "Average Earthman", tagged it
"cleanup-verify" at 17:49 GMT, 10 October 2005, with the comment "This
smells like a hoax to me. What year was he made a CBE then?" The
"cleanup-verify" tag not only warns the reader, but adds tagged
articles to a category for dubious articles, so others can easily look
over what needs an unforgiving eye.
Ten days later (19:48 GMT, 20 October 2005), with no verification
having been added to the article, another editor (user "RussBlau")
marked it for deletion. You can read the deletion debate at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Alan_Mcilwraith
- typical for an obvious hoax or joke article with no-one coming
forward with anything to verify otherwise. So it was deleted at 11:50
GMT, 26 October 2005.
Interestingly, the same IP address that had created the article
had come back on 24 October and blanked the article, before its
deletion but after the first two comments on the deletion debate.
MilitaryPro came back and created the article again at 18:39 GMT,
21 December 2005, working on it for a few days further, both as a
logged-in user and as an anonymous IP address. (The same IP address
also tried twice to delete the previous deletion discussion from the
list of old discussions, though these changes were quickly spotted and
reverted.)
"Average Earthman" spotted the recreation at 12:44 GMT, 22
December 2005 - presumably he had the article on his watchlist - and
tagged it for deletion again, then re-tagged it 24 December for speedy
deletion as recreated deleted content, with the comments: "No, forget
the AfD, it's already failed in the past. Same lies again. It's a
hoax. And in case it isn't speedied, I still think it's a hoax. Uni at
14? Advisor to Generals at 22? No google hits? Really?" It was then
deleted the second time at 17:50 GMT, 24 December 2005.
MilitaryPro came back to create the article a *third* time at
10:53 GMT, 17 February 2006. It was tagged two minutes later, at
10:55, for speedy deletion as "patent nonsense." MilitaryPro then
blanked the page at 11:00; "Average Earthman" tagged it for deletion
*again* at 11:09. (The more persistent the hoaxer, the easier they are
to deal with.) It was deleted for the third and final time at 16:19
GMT, 17 February 2006, and the page was locked with a "do not
recreate" notice (as you can see at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mcilwraith ) a few seconds later.
Interestingly, the hoax has been noted on the talk page of the
article (the "discussion" tab at the top):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alan_Mcilwraith . Now that he's
making the papers, we have the question of whether his newfound fame
as a hoaxer makes him notable enough to have a Wikipedia article!
It doesn't seem to me like Greasemonkey could solve the systemic problem--
it'd just help deal with it better for a couple individual users who choose
to use it. How could we systemically work to prevent deterioration? I've
identified the following causes:
1.Multiple vandalisms, where only some are reverted
2.Additions of poorly written stuff, but stuff not bad enough to warrant
straight up reverting.
3.Citations getting removed
4.Unecessary factoids and observations getting added.
LS Studio is an article with content introduced by editors with a pro
pedophiles pov. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LS_Studio
Jimbo is aware of the problems with this article. I'm speculating that
his comments about trolling come from observing the pro-pedophilia pov
pushing at this article and a dozen more articles.
I'm trying to gather consensus to delete LS Studio. There is no
verifiable reliable sources for the content of the article. Evidently
the current content is original research. Look through past versions and
you will see that more detailed original research describing the web
site has been removed. None of the newspaper articles identify LS Studio
by name. I searched through FBI press announcement looking for some
evidence that LS Studio was raided. I've looked through the United
States official statements on human rights violations for Ukraine.
Again, I find general reference to the FBI's involvement in shutting
down child porn web sites in Ukraine but nothing specifically naming
this studio.
This article was nominated for deletion on February 4 2006. The result
of the discussion was Keep. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/LS_Studio
I'm not satisfied with the outcome of this Afd. There was heavy input
from pro-pedophilia pov editors. There was a vote from a brand new user.
This Afd vote was their first and last edit. Unless someone can find
verifiable reliable sources in the next 48 hours I'm going to start
another Afd. WP child pornography article already includes this content
so there is no need to merge.
Sydney aka FloNight
Is it ethical for an editor to support one viewpoint and then edit the
opposing viewpoint? Is it ethical for a supporter of the big bang to edit the
alternative plasma cosmology?
tom
Its simply naive to say that infinite edits means an infinitely good
article. If you dont believe that bad, non-vandalism edits take their toll
on articles, I invite you to look at the Featured article review. So many
articles are ruined by people who simply aren't good at writing prose, and
who enjoy adding useless factoids. Articles quite often get worse-- if your
idealism has you believing otherwise, please look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hip_hop_music&diff=41510779&oldid…
This should be a big wakeup call to anyone who thinks that the pure wiki
system allows articles to get better indefinitely. Unless we do something
about it, wikipedia will simply be a place where articles get great then
start to deteriorate. I'm not suggesting stable versions, but surely...
something needs to be done.
Steve Bennett wrote:
>On 4/11/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>To back up Mark's point with a concrete example,
>>[[Victoria]] has had no controversy, despite the
>>Australian state getting far less prominence on that
>>page than it deserves.
>>
>>
>That is truly the mother of all disambiguation pages!
>
It would be more appropriate to call it the queen of disambiguation pages.
--Michael Snow
Jimmy has added a link to the answers.com Wikipedia edition to the
[[Wikipedia:Tools]] page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Tools&diff=48023818&old…
Since Jimmy has also said that the decision to list this tool, and
where to list it, should be an editorial decision, I have begun an
editorial discussion on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Tools#Answers.com_tool
about whether it is wise to effectively advertise this tool, which is
at the heart of Answers.com's software patents lawsuit against Babylon
Software. You can find more information about Answers.com's lawsuit in
their press release on the matter:
http://www.answers.com/main/ir/press03082006.jsp
I have also pointed out the issue on foundation-l and asked the
Wikimedia Board to re-evaluate the Answers.com deal in light of the
software patents lawsuit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-March/006356.html
The Board has not responded to this request. Again, failing any
comment to the contrary, I will assume that the decision whether to
list this tool on [[Wikipedia:Tools]] and/or highlight it in other
forms is up to the community. I personally object to it unless the
software patent lawsuit is mentioned on the page in an NPOV manner.
Erik
Hi all,
Just came across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Georgia . It is
obvious beyond words to me that [[Georgia]] should be the country, and
the US state should be at something like [[Georgia (US State)]].
However, an ongoing poll evenly ties between that, and keeping Georgia
is a disambiguation page.
I find this sad. :(
Steve
