> I was interested in Wikipedia when I first heard about it, and was
> using other wikis first. However, my serious involvement began in
> September last year when I discovered a situation with an article of
> political interest. The article had been, over a long period,
> carefully crafted to (1) present all the propaganda points and spin
> developed by an advocacy organization, and (2) to exclude all criticism.
>
> Attempts by ordinary users to insert critical material met with
> immediate reversion, by certain users and by a certain IP address.
> Some excuse was always given. As an example, one of the "plus"
> arguments in the article was contradicted by a source. A user posted
> it with the source. It was reverted on the basis that the report was
> a blog. When it was pointed out that it wasn't a blog, it was an
> edited, on-line newspaper, it was still taken out with other
> arguments. The editors keeping the article free of criticism were
> clearly experienced with policy. When I became involved, they had to
> work a little harder. The IP editor crossed the 3RR bright line. I
> tried to file a 3RR report, but didn't get the details just the way
> the admin who dealt with it wanted, so even though the offenses were
> blatant, nothing happened immediately. But then a sock puppet account
> was created and *I* was reported for 3RR, though I hadn't actually
> done that. Fortunately, the admin who looked at it saw what was going
> on and blocked just about everyone in sight. The registered editors
> maintaining the position of the article were sock puppets of a
> long-banned user, and the IP address, from independent evidence, was
> the personal IP address of the Executive Director of the advocacy
> organization.
>
> Most ordinary users did not have the patience or skills to deal with
> that situation.
>
> But there is more. I discovered that an SPA had registered, more than
> a year before, and had been systematically AfDing articles on topics
> inconvenient to the agenda of the advocacy organization. Typically,
> nobody who understood the issues participated in the AfDs; this is a
> specialized field and the people who had created the articles were
> mostly experts or students in the field, most of them not serious
> Wikipedians. I.e., they don't check their watchlists regularly. Some
> of what was deleted was clearly not notable, but other articles were.
> This SPA still has an account, though his activities of late have
> been reduced to sporadic personal attacks. He was finally blocked for
> a brief period because of his canvassing for Oppose votes in my last
> RfA. From his activities, he appeared to be a sock puppet of an
> experienced user, but the most likely candidate, the same active
> puppet master as the one as who had been socking the article I
> mentioned, was not confirmed by RfCU.
>
> This organization has funding. It has knowledgeable volunteers. I
> know that one of them, an experienced Wikipedian (active back to
> 2004, I understand) was assigned to interdict my work on Wikipedia,
> because he, when he realized the situation, told me.
>
> Now, when I research the subject of the article on the internet, I
> find, everywhere, quotations from Wikipedia. I go to the web sites of
> city governments, and find quotations from the Wikipedia article that
> were the propaganda inserted by that organization. It's all stuff
> that can be asserted with a straight face; it's skillful political
> spin. If you look closely and check it, it is inaccurate, but in a
> way that is deniable, i.e., to an inexperienced eye, the difference
> between the statements and the truth is seemingly minor. But the
> difference introduces a spin, and the spin is what is important to
> political activists. A description of a thing becomes a
> "recommendation," but critical information from the same source is
> not mentioned. Words are shifted in definition, so that one can imply
> something that isn't true without actually stating something untrue.
> It's stuff that is familiar to anyone who has studied the tools of
> political propaganda. And the work of this organization on Wikipedia
> has been *effective.* I've slowed it down, to be sure, but it's like
> pushing the boulder up the hill. If there is funding and energy
> pulling that boulder back, it comes back.
>
> I'm just one editor, and I have other interests. (I've become very
> interested in Wikipedia itself, its structure and policies and
> procedures, how the community functions, for better and for worse,
> and so, even though the article I mention above is on my watchlist, I
> often don't even notice the edits until much later, when I look at
> the article itself, so much traffic comes my way.) Wikipedia is a
> community project, and nothing should depend on one editor, but often
> it works out that way, simply because nobody else takes an interest.
> The article mentioned had multiple RfCs that attracted no
> participation. Even though it is a hot political topic in the United
> States.
>
> Now, the advocacy organization I mention above is a small
> organization. Wikipedia has taken on a project with vast political
> implications. Control knowledge and you can control society. What if
> someone dedicates governmental-level resources to the problem of
> managing Wikipedia spin? Are we at all ready for this? And, since the
> possibility is so obvious and the possible benefit to those who would
> manipulate so great, what would make us imagine that it is not
> already happening? Just not so clumsily as with the efforts that have
> been discovered to date?
>
> One person with some patience and fairly modest technical skills
> could develop a whole army of sock puppets, and take a few of them to
> admin status. But that's not the major worry. I've seen a set of
> articles, in another field, systematically distorted by a single SPA,
> active continuously for a couple of years, steading pushing the
> articles in a certain direction. In my paranoid moments, I realize
> that drug companies might have some incentive for this slant. What if
> some drug lobbying company paid a person to do that? It would be a
> drop in the bucket of their available funds. It would essentially be
> crazy *not* to do it. Just about impossible to prove, so, please,
> don't take this as an accusation, I'm just noting that such *could*
> be occurring. The articles have suffered greatly, whether or not this
> person is sincere.
>
> Here is what I expect we could find if we had the means: we'd find a
> couple of corrupt administrators. We'd find more administrators who
> are merely dupes. The absolute numbers would be small, considering
> that there are, what, 1600 administrators? We would find, however,
> many more simple editors quietly doing their work, civil, avoiding
> violating policy, familiar with sourcing requirements and using them
> to steadily and selectively removing what they don't like and adding
> what they do, always with deniability. The world of "reliable source"
> is vast and you can find almost anything in it. Finding *balance* is
> much more difficult and standards for balance much more subtle.
>
> There are solutions to the problem. But ... they fly in the face of
> many common assumptions, and there are obvious objections that people
> think of immediately. With more exposure to the ideas, those opinions
> would probably change, but the knee-jerk responses mean that the
> solutions are immediately rejected. Just as people would have
> rejected the idea of an "encyclopedia anyone can edit" because of
> certain very obvious objections. The solution is to develop true
> community consensus, measured within a system that allows full
> deliberation to take place in a connected and efficient way. It's
> really ideal for wikis. But we have taken certain directions contrary
> to it. For example, "No canvassing." If some topic comes up and is
> under debate, to solicit the participation of someone knowledgeable
> can, under some conditions, be considered canvassing. Canvassing is a
> problem because of participation bias, and we are totally
> schizophrenic about this. If votes don't count, canvassing creates a
> minor noise problem. But if votes count, then participation bias is a
> serious thing. And networks of users can exist off-wiki to do the
> canvassing, and, in fact, they do. This is one of them. There are
> others with other agendas.
>
> Now, I claim that (1) there is a problem, and (2) there are
> solutions. How would we determine the truth of these? Rough consensus
> can be highly vulnerable to knee-jerk responses, particularly as
> communities become established, people become familiar with the "way
> things work," and the pressure to maintain status quo increases, as
> it always does in even diffuse "organizations" such as the Wikipedia
> editor community. Until we establish true deliberative mechanisms --
> and we don't need to reinvent the wheel, there are many precedents
> for what we need to do -- we, as a community, will be a pushover for
> special interests. Only the clumsy ones will be discovered and stopped.
Yes, obviously true. But rather than a witch hunt we need to focus on
implementation of neutral point of view. That means making sure unpopular
(at least among Wikipedia users) viewpoints are fully and fairly
expressed.
Fred