I am always looking for people to write blogposts. Perhaps a few people could crowdsource a blogpost about how Wikipedia does quality control, listing various ways like human peer review, edit filters, bots, etc...  I'm sure some of you will know how this is done better than I do.

Here - I've started an open Googledoc. Anyone is free to contribute. 

Virus-free. www.avg.com

John Lubbock

Communications Coordinator

Wikimedia UK

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On 17 January 2018 at 13:45, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:

On 17 January 2018 at 13:24 Harry Mitchell <hjmwiki@gmail.com> wrote:

Would it be worth Wikimedia UK's while to put out a blog post talking about quality control processes (ad-hoc as they are) on Wikipedia? Not so much as a direct reply -  both because these articles look like they're just filling empty column inches, and because we obviously can't prove a negative (that "Russian trolls" *aren't* running amok on political articles). Rather as a timely reminder of what Wikipedia is about and how the 'wisdom of the crowd' makes it quite difficult to grossly distort its content. I could say something about what admins do, though there I'm sure there are people who spend more time on politicians' biographies than I do.

As you say, proving the negative is out of reach.

I would say, take the lesson of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well to heart. Along with straightforward lying, selective quotation, guilt by association, and the reporting of rumour as truth, there is a lot of it about these days.

I'm glad to see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie has had some recent attention, while we're on the topic of propaganda techniques everybody should know about.

Charles

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