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Restoring: In January 2013, user Jayen466—actually Andreas Kolbe, who tipped us to this story and is a moderator at Wikipedia criticism site Wikipediocracy..."
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===Discussion of governments===
===Discussion of governments===

Wikipediocracy contributors have assisted journalists who cover controversial relations between Wikipedia and governments. For example, the [[Russia]]n government threatened to [[Russian Internet blacklist|block access]] to the [[Russian Wikipedia|Russian-language Wikipedia]] if it continued to describe [[marijuana]] [[drug paraphernalia|paraphernalia]]. Wikipediocracy's [[Twitter|Twitter feed]] documented the suppression of information about marijuana "inhalation devices" by editors of the Russian-language Wikipedia.<ref name="Russian weed">{{cite web |url = http://www.dailydot.com/news/russia-wikipedia-pot-smoking-ban-lifted/ |title = The Daily Dot – Wikipedia pot article loses bongs, gets OK&#39;d in Russia |last = Morris |first = Kevin |date = 9 April 2013 |website = The Daily Dot |accessdate= 18 May 2013 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Twitter / Wikipedia_Forum|url=https://twitter.com/Wikipedia_Forum/status/321584294898323456|publisher=[[Twitter]]|accessdate=26 May 2013}}</ref>


Wikipediocracy contributors' criticisms of Wikipedia have been discussed in news stories covering [[Jimmy Wales]]'s relationship with the government of [[Kazakhstan]],<ref name="Daily Dot Kazakh">{{cite web |url = http://www.dailydot.com/politics/wikipedia-kazakhstan-dictatorship/ |title = The Daily Dot – Wikipedia's odd relationship with the Kazakh dictatorship |last = Morris |first = Kevin |date = 25 December 2012 |website = The Daily Dot |accessdate= 18 May 2013 }}</ref><ref name="netprophet">{{cite web |url = http://netprophet.tol.org/2013/01/08/critics-question-neutrality-of-kazakh-wikipedia/ |title = Critics question neutrality of Kazakh Wikipedia |last = Hermans |first = Steven |date = 8 January 2013 |website = NET PROPHET |accessdate= 26 May 2013 }}</ref><ref name="Telegraph Kazakh">{{cite web |url = http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/9764719/Wikipedia-co-founder-Jimmy-Wales-restricts-discussion-of-Tony-Blair-friendship.html |title = Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales restricts discussion of Tony Blair friendship |last = Williams |first = Christopher |date = 24 December 2012 |work = The Telegraph |accessdate= 26 May 2013 }}</ref> the [[Gibraltarpedia#Controversy|Gibraltarpedia controversy]]<ref name="Daily Dot influence">{{cite web |url = http://www.dailydot.com/news/wikipedia-jimmy-wales-influence-scandal/ |title = The Daily Dot – Wikipedia&#39;s Jimmy Wales breaks silence on resurgence of influence-peddling scandal |last = Alfonso |first = Fernando |date = 25 October 2012 |website =[[The Daily Dot]] |accessdate= 18 May 2013 }}</ref><ref name="El Reg Gibraltarpedia">{{cite web |url= http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/26/gibraltar_pwns_wikipedia/ |title=Wales: Let's ban Gibraltar-crazy Wikipedians for 5 years|publisher=The Register|first=Andrew|last=Orlowski|authorlink=Andrew Orlowski|date=26 October 2012|accessdate=19 May 2013 }}</ref> and an anonymous edit made from a [[U.S. Senate]] [[IP address]] that labelled whistle-blower [[Edward Snowden]] a "traitor".<ref>{{cite web|author=Joe Kloc|title=Is a U.S. senator trolling Snowden's Wikipedia page?|website=[[The Daily Dot]]|url=http://www.dailydot.com/politics/wikipedia-senate-snowden-nsa-traitor/|date=3 August 2013|accessdate=4 September 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai|title=Wikipedia Editor Traced to U.S. Senate Changes Snowden's Bio to 'Traitor'|website=[[Mashable]]|url=http://mashable.com/2013/08/06/snowden-wikipedia-page/|date=6 August 2013|accessdate=4 September 2013}}</ref>
Wikipediocracy contributors' criticisms of Wikipedia have been discussed in news stories covering [[Jimmy Wales]]'s relationship with the government of [[Kazakhstan]],<ref name="Daily Dot Kazakh">{{cite web |url = http://www.dailydot.com/politics/wikipedia-kazakhstan-dictatorship/ |title = The Daily Dot – Wikipedia's odd relationship with the Kazakh dictatorship |last = Morris |first = Kevin |date = 25 December 2012 |website = The Daily Dot |accessdate= 18 May 2013 }}</ref><ref name="netprophet">{{cite web |url = http://netprophet.tol.org/2013/01/08/critics-question-neutrality-of-kazakh-wikipedia/ |title = Critics question neutrality of Kazakh Wikipedia |last = Hermans |first = Steven |date = 8 January 2013 |website = NET PROPHET |accessdate= 26 May 2013 }}</ref><ref name="Telegraph Kazakh">{{cite web |url = http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/9764719/Wikipedia-co-founder-Jimmy-Wales-restricts-discussion-of-Tony-Blair-friendship.html |title = Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales restricts discussion of Tony Blair friendship |last = Williams |first = Christopher |date = 24 December 2012 |work = The Telegraph |accessdate= 26 May 2013 }}</ref> the [[Gibraltarpedia#Controversy|Gibraltarpedia controversy]]<ref name="Daily Dot influence">{{cite web |url = http://www.dailydot.com/news/wikipedia-jimmy-wales-influence-scandal/ |title = The Daily Dot – Wikipedia&#39;s Jimmy Wales breaks silence on resurgence of influence-peddling scandal |last = Alfonso |first = Fernando |date = 25 October 2012 |website =[[The Daily Dot]] |accessdate= 18 May 2013 }}</ref><ref name="El Reg Gibraltarpedia">{{cite web |url= http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/26/gibraltar_pwns_wikipedia/ |title=Wales: Let's ban Gibraltar-crazy Wikipedians for 5 years|publisher=The Register|first=Andrew|last=Orlowski|authorlink=Andrew Orlowski|date=26 October 2012|accessdate=19 May 2013 }}</ref> and an anonymous edit made from a [[U.S. Senate]] [[IP address]] that labelled whistle-blower [[Edward Snowden]] a "traitor".<ref>{{cite web|author=Joe Kloc|title=Is a U.S. senator trolling Snowden's Wikipedia page?|website=[[The Daily Dot]]|url=http://www.dailydot.com/politics/wikipedia-senate-snowden-nsa-traitor/|date=3 August 2013|accessdate=4 September 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai|title=Wikipedia Editor Traced to U.S. Senate Changes Snowden's Bio to 'Traitor'|website=[[Mashable]]|url=http://mashable.com/2013/08/06/snowden-wikipedia-page/|date=6 August 2013|accessdate=4 September 2013}}</ref>

Revision as of 04:26, 9 April 2015

Wikipediocracy
Wikipediocracy logo
Wikipediocracy screenshot taken May 18, 2013
Type of site
Blog and forum
Available inEnglish
URLwikipediocracy.com
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional, required for some features
Users571[1]
LaunchedMarch 16, 2012; 12 years ago (2012-03-16)
Current statusActive
Content license
Copyright retained by authors

Wikipediocracy is a website for discussion and criticism of Wikipedia.[3][4] Its members frequently contact the media about Wikipedia's controversies. The site was founded in March 2012 by users of Wikipedia Review,[5] another site critical of Wikipedia.[6][7]

The site is "known for digging up dirt on Wikipedia's top brass," wrote reporter Kevin Morris in the Daily Dot.[8] Novelist Amanda Filipacchi wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the site's forums "intelligently discusses and entertainingly lambastes Wikipedia’s problematic practices."[9]

Website user activism

Wikipediocracy contributors have investigated problems, conflicts, and controversies associated with Wikipedia, some being prominent enough to have been reported by mainstream media.

Revenge editing

In 2013, Wikipediocracy members contacted Salon.com reporter Andrew Leonard to alert him about the "Qworty fiasco",[10] providing background information on a Wikipedia editor, Qworty, and on the writer Robert Clark Young.[3][11] This background information led to Leonard's writing an article,[10] Revenge, Ego, and the Corruption of Wikipedia, which published the identification of Young as the "revenge editor" Qworty, who had negatively skewed Wikipedia biographies about his literary rivals. Just before the publication of Leonard's article, Qworty had been banned from editing biographies of living persons (on Wikipedia) with this reasoning.[3]

Discussion of governments

Wikipediocracy contributors have assisted journalists who cover controversial relations between Wikipedia and governments. For example, the Russian government threatened to block access to the Russian-language Wikipedia if it continued to describe marijuana paraphernalia. Wikipediocracy's Twitter feed documented the suppression of information about marijuana "inhalation devices" by editors of the Russian-language Wikipedia.[12][13]

Wikipediocracy contributors' criticisms of Wikipedia have been discussed in news stories covering Jimmy Wales's relationship with the government of Kazakhstan,[14][15][16] the Gibraltarpedia controversy[17][18] and an anonymous edit made from a U.S. Senate IP address that labelled whistle-blower Edward Snowden a "traitor".[19][20]

In May 2014, The Telegraph, working with Wikipediocracy, uncovered evidence identifying the civil servant who had allegedly vandalised the Wikipedia articles on the Hillsborough disaster and Anfield.[21]

Wikimedia Foundation

A Wikipediocracy blog post reported that Wikipedia was being vandalized from IP addresses assigned to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF).[8][22] Responding to the allegations, WMF spokesman Jay Walsh stated that the IP addresses belonged to WMF servers and were not used by the WMF offices. He stated that the addresses were assigned to some edits by IPs due to a misconfiguration, which was corrected.[8]

Other issues

One Wikipediocracy forum discussion identified the Wikipedia account responsible for a hoax article Wikipedia admins had recently deleted. The "Bicholim conflict" article described a fictitious 1640–1641 Indian civil war. It was awarded Wikipedia's "Good article" status in 2007, and retained it until late 2012, when a Wikipedian checked the article's cited sources and found that none of them appeared to exist.[23]

A September 2013 story resulting from a Wikipediocracy tip-off concerned commercial plastic surgeons editing Wikipedia's plastic surgery articles to promote their services. Concerns with violations of conflict of interest guidelines and the provision of misinformation in the relevant articles had also been raised by Wikipediocracy members on Wikipedia itself.[24]

In January 2014, a Wikipediocracy blog post pointed out that according to official Wikimedia statistics, page views for all major language versions of Wikipedia had experienced significant and unprecedented drops over the course of 2013. The blog post linked these falls to the introduction of the Google Knowledge Graph.[25]

In February 2015 the Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee banned a user after finding he had edited to promote the Indian Institute of Planning and Management and added negative material to the article on another university. The user's edits were noted in Wikipediocracy in December 2013.[26]

References

  1. ^ "Wikipediocracy - Index Page". wikipediocracy.com. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
  2. ^ "wikipediocracy.com info". alexa.com. Retrieved 18 Dec 2014.
  3. ^ a b c Leonard, Andrew (17 May 2013). "Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia". Salon.com. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
  4. ^ Murphy, Dan (1 August 2013). "In UK, rising chorus of outrage over online misogyny: Recent events in Britain draw more attention to endemic hostility towards women online". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 1 August 2013. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  5. ^ Hersch, Global moderator (15 March 2012). "Welcome". Mission statement and welcome to the public. Wikipediocracy. Retrieved 26 June 2013.
  6. ^ LaPlante, Alice (14 July 2006). "Spawn Of Wikipedia". InformationWeek. Archived from the original on 12 June 2011. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  7. ^ Shankbone, David (June 2008). "Nobody's safe in cyberspace". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
  8. ^ a b c Morris, Kevin (23 April 2013). "Wikipedia says its staffers are not vandalizing Wikipedia". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 24 May 2013.
  9. ^ Filipacchi, Amanda (10 July 2013). "My Strange Addiction: Wikipedia". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  10. ^ a b Nichols, Martha; Berry, Lorraine (20 May 2013). "What Should We Do About Wikipedia?". Talking Writing. Retrieved 20 May 2013.
  11. ^ Manhire, Toby (5 June 2013). "Wikipedia and the scourge of "revenge editors"". New Zealand Listener. Retrieved 5 June 2013.
  12. ^ Morris, Kevin (9 April 2013). "The Daily Dot – Wikipedia pot article loses bongs, gets OK'd in Russia". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
  13. ^ "Twitter / Wikipedia_Forum". Twitter. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
  14. ^ Morris, Kevin (25 December 2012). "The Daily Dot – Wikipedia's odd relationship with the Kazakh dictatorship". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
  15. ^ Hermans, Steven (8 January 2013). "Critics question neutrality of Kazakh Wikipedia". NET PROPHET. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
  16. ^ Williams, Christopher (24 December 2012). "Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales restricts discussion of Tony Blair friendship". The Telegraph. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
  17. ^ Alfonso, Fernando (25 October 2012). "The Daily Dot – Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales breaks silence on resurgence of influence-peddling scandal". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
  18. ^ Orlowski, Andrew (26 October 2012). "Wales: Let's ban Gibraltar-crazy Wikipedians for 5 years". The Register. Retrieved 19 May 2013.
  19. ^ Joe Kloc (3 August 2013). "Is a U.S. senator trolling Snowden's Wikipedia page?". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  20. ^ Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai (6 August 2013). "Wikipedia Editor Traced to U.S. Senate Changes Snowden's Bio to 'Traitor'". Mashable. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  21. ^ Oliver Duggan (21 May 2014). "Civil servants behind 'sickening' Hillsborough slurs identified". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
    Kashmira Gander (21 May 2014). "Hillsborough Wikipedia posts: Suspected civil servant a Merseyside resident". The Independent. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
    Oliver Duggan (17 June 2014). "Civil servant fired after Telegraph investigation into Hillsborough Wikipedia slurs". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
    Mark Tran (17 June 2014). "Civil servant sacked for offensive Wikipedia edits on Hillsborough". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
    Oliver Duggan (17 June 2014). "How The Telegraph identified the Hillsborough Wikipedia vandal". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  22. ^ Hogsky, Roger (22 April 2013). "Busy day at the Wikimedia Foundation office?". Blog. Wikipediocracy. Retrieved 24 May 2013.
  23. ^ Morris, Kevin (1 January 2013). "After a half-decade, massive Wikipedia hoax finally exposed". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
  24. ^ Schroeder, Audra (20 September 2013). "Are plastic surgeons nip/tucking ads into high-profile Wikipedia articles?". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  25. ^ Orlowski, Andrew (13 January 2014). "Google stabs Wikipedia in the front. Is Knowledge Graph killing its readership?". The Register. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
    Kloc, Joe (8 January 2014). "Is Google accidentally killing Wikipedia?". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
    van Lier, Helen (14 January 2014). "Bezoek Wikipedia fors gedaald door Google". de Volkskrant. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
    Belfiore, Guillaume (13 January 2014). "Google Knowledge Graph aurait causé une baisse du trafic de Wikipedia en 2013". Clubic. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
    Dojcsák, Dániel (13 January 2014). "A Google megfojtja a Wikipediát". HWSW. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
    van Riet Paap, Jeroen (13 January 2014). "'Google helpt Wikipedia om zeep'". Webwereld. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
  26. ^ Chari, Mridula (25 March 2015). "Wikipedia bans editor for consistent bias in favour of Arindam Chaudhuri's IIPM". Scroll.in. Retrieved 5 April 2015.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wikipediocracy.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipediocracy&oldid=655630180"