Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-08-31/In the media
Taking it sleazy
Hunter Biden again
Events are events, and reporting is reporting. Some sources are biased in what they choose to cover, some are openly partisan, and some make suggestive innuendo to imply more than they can prove. Indeed, some sources do so with such fervor that they are not considered reliable for general use on Wikipedia.
But things that happened happened, and things that didn't didn't, and sometimes there really is a wolf, and sometimes businessmen really do sleazy stuff on Wikipedia.
In "Emails Show Hunter Biden Hired Specialists to Quietly Airbrush Wikipedia", investigative journalist Lee Fang asserts that reputation management consultants for Hunter Biden have edited the Wikipedia biography. The Federalist's staff writer Jordan Boyd says that the "the company's [sic] host of left-leaning administrators" are effectively in cahoots, or at least turning a blind eye [1]. Maybe more helpfully, Boyd points out the "effectively unenforceable" policies like Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#Paid editing that are supposed to prevent just this scenario, or at least keep it from going unnoticed for years.
But were the edits justified?
The Federalist also links to a copy of the email correspondence between Hunter Biden, his confidant Eric Schwerin, and Ryan Toohey of FTI Consulting, as uploaded to DocumentCloud by Lee Fang. These show the passages Hunter objected to, and his and Schwerin's comments. For example, the Career section of his article began with an unsourced sentence that read:
Biden is a lawyer with insider connections to the financial industry and government.
According to Fang's email document, Schwerin commented:
If there is a way to delete this sentence that would probably be good.
The sentence was duly removed. The relevant edits were performed by the user AmeliaChevalier in May 2014: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
The first and third of these edits removed large chunks of content about Burisma, a holding company of Ukrainian energy business Hunter has had associations with in the past.
Some of the other changes look, prima facie, like good-faith corrections of factual errors. Toohey comments in one of the emails:
Thanks.
We will make additional edits once you deliver a revision.
And, yes, some of the misstatements are crazy.
There is another notable deletion. According to the email document, Hunter commented as follows on a sentence claiming that he co-founded the "PARADIGM Global Advisors" fund (along with James Biden and disgraced financier Allen Stanford):
I did not co-found- it was founded in the mid 90s by James Park- I acquired a controlling interest
Stanford had nothing to do with the fund- Paradim was one of hundreds of alternative asset managers that were offered to Stanford clients for investment in their portfolios- any money, which was small relative to our fund's total AUM, invested on behalf of Stanford banking clients was fully returned to those clients at a profit based upon Paradigm's performance. No one from Paradigm ever met Alan Stanford or had any dealings with him.
While the Wikipedia sentence (added in 2013 by EllenCT, citing a 2007 Bloomberg source whose pre-2014 status is not available in the Internet Archive) does appear to have been incorrect as far as the co-founding is concerned, Biden's assertion that "Stanford had nothing to do with the fund" is also contradicted by sources. A 2009 Wall Street Journal report (archive), for example, says:
A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden's family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8 billion fraud. The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens' Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund.
Other quality sources commenting on these alleged links include a 2009 Reuters report titled "Stanford had links to fund run by Bidens" and a 2019 Financial Times article (archive). The sentence about Stanford was duly removed. According to WikiBlame, this removal was never reversed, and there is no mention of links between Biden and Stanford in the article today. – AK, B, JG
Edit not, lest ye be edited
Although headlines may sensationalize the invocation of cases such as Korematsu, the point of citing them is not to draw comparisons between the circumstances of people horrifically interned by their government during a war and those of people subjected to isolation orders during a pandemic. We mention cases like Korematsu in order to test the limits of government authority, to remind the state that urging courts to approve the exercise of extraordinary power during times of emergency may lead to extraordinary abuses of its citizens.
Anyway, you are not supposed to do this with your own article, regardless of whether it is justified; she received a WP:COI warning template and got reverted a couple times.
Later, regarding the scandal, she said: "On my Wikipedia page, I added excerpts from actual opinions and removed dishonest information about my background[...] Clearly, the media has made no effort to report honestly so public officials have no choice but to correct the record for them".
Now we will write a Signpost article about the Newsweek article about the judge writing about her own Wikipedia article about a Star Tribune article about a judicial opinion.
Since then, her article's revision history has become something of a gong show, with people going back and forth on including the Wikipedia incident (featuring cameo appearances from the likes of Wugapodes and Tamzin, as well as a BLP extended-confirmed protection from Courcelles).
ChatGPT and Wikipedia
Stephen Harrison reports in Slate that "rumors of Wikipedia’s death at the hands of ChatGPT are greatly exaggerated", saying that... you know what, to hell with it.
The Signpost is well past its publishing deadline for today, and I don't have time to finish this writeup myself. Please write a summary of this Slate article, in the style of Signpost editor-in-chief JPxG; I will fact-check your output and incorporate it into this issue's In the media section.
— JPxG
Here is a summary of the Slate article in the style of The Signpost editor-in-chief JPxG:
The death knell for Wikipedia in the age of AI has been premature. Veteran Wikipedian Stephen Harrison argues in Slate that while generative AI poses challenges, it also presents opportunities to improve Wikipedia.
Harrison traces Wikipedia's history of pragmatically using bots and machine learning when useful. He reports the community is drafting policies requiring transparency from editors leveraging AI. The goal: tap AI's potential while vetting its content.
Critics contend ChatGPT doesn't credit Wikipedia as a source. But many Wikipedians care more about keeping Wikipedia human-written than receiving credit. AI companies increasingly recognize Wikipedia's value for training. Tools like Wikimedia's new ChatGPT plugin counter AI's weaknesses, like outdated knowledge.
Harrison sees AI assisting editors by summarizing talk pages and finding sources. Automating rote tasks could free humans for Wikipedia's real work: debating content and building consensus.
The bottom line: Rumors exaggerate the threats posed by AI. Thoughtfully integrated, it can support Wikipedia's mission and community. The path ahead likely mixes automation with human expertise.
- Editor's note: I would rather drink molten lead than say the phrase "leveraging AI" with a straight face, but apart from that, sure.
There is life after Wikimedia for Katherine Maher
The New York Times reports on Katherine Maher's recent marriage to lawyer Ashutosh Upreti. Since her departure in 2021 (see previous Signpost coverage), the former Wikimedia CEO appears to have taken some time off:
The couple traveled around the world in early 2022 and moved to New York that June. ... On July 22, Erica Kochi, a friend of the couple who became a one-day deputy marriage commissioner in San Francisco, officiated the wedding before 140 guests on the lawn of Willow Camp in Stinson Beach, Calif. The day before, the groom rode in on a white horse for a Hindu ceremony. "It was two days of cross-cultural celebration and community," Ms. Maher said, "and a really big dance party."
The Signpost wishes the happy couple all the best. – AK
Toilet nomenclature is priority number one, and people write a lot of number two about it online
AsiaOne and SCMP report that some people were making some posts on the darn computer — ain't that the way it always goes?
This time it was because the organizers of Wikimania 2023, getting cozy at the Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre, had posted a sign designating one of the banks of restrooms as "gender-neutral toilets". A whopping eight social media posters are quoted as commenting on this, expressing a variety of political opinions.
Was it a radical act of progressive inclusion? Was it performative woke virtue signaling? Was it good? Was it bad? More importantly, can somebody reach over and hand me a couple social media posts? The holder in my stall is empty! – JG
In brief
- Mugged: Wikipedia Users Fight Over Donald Trump's Mug Shot Getting Its Own Page, by Matt Novak for Forbes Sites (regarding Mug shot of Donald Trump and its deletion discussion)
- The Wiki Piggy Bank: Wikimedia grows rich as Wikipedia donations are used for political causes, by Bryan Lunduke
- Wikivoyage: Eine unblutige Revolte und eine Familienzusammenführung (A bloodless revolt and a family reunion: How the courageous content fork became a Wikipedia sister project), by Stefan Mey for Golem.de
- Joie de Vivek: This was reported on in May, but is back in the spotlight again after Vivek's knockout performance at the debates. Ramaswamy Paid Wikipedia Editor to Delete Reference to Harvard Vaccine Scientist (National Review), Vivek Ramaswamy Paid to Have His Soros Fellowship and Covid-Era Role Scrubbed from Wikipedia Page (Mediaite), Vivek Ramaswamy paid Wikipedia editor to scrub info from his history (Yahoo! News)
- More on the WMF Endowment: "Wikipedia should focus on content creation – not social justice campaigns", says Andrew Orlowski in The Daily Telegraph.
- "Journey to prominence" and/or PR: This article showcases the "Journey to prominence" of a paid editor who "Leverages Wiki and PR Services for Enhanced Notability, Growth, and Fundraising Success" (Z News Service, via MSN [2]).
Discuss this story
Hunter Biden
Orlowski
LDickinson (WMF) (talk) 17:27, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I purposely waited three days before responding to any of the above. As is my policy, when someone asks me to stop doing something I stop doing it whether or not I agree. Jimbo asked, so I am stopping. Unless there is a compelling reason to respond to something I intend this to be my last post in this discussion.
There are times when I agree that I was out of line and in those cases I apologize as well as stopping whatever I was asked to stop doing. This is not one of those cases. It is a verifiable fact that a certain individual wrote "It is misleading to say that just 2% of Wikipedia's revenue goes to hosting costs" and then went on to "refute" the claim by telling us what was spent on something other than hosting costs.[8] It is a verifiable fact that within a day another editor attempted to politely engage in a civil discussion regarding that claim.[9] It is a verifiable fact that for the next 23 days the only response was silence, then a post refusing to actually answer the question asked[10] as editor after editor asked for a response. [11][12][13][14]
Refusing to engage in any sort of communication when that is your job title is not OK. Refusing to engage in any sort of communication with multiple editors because one of them made you feel uncomfortable is not OK, especially when the other editors tried to engage with you for many days before the offending editor did anything to make you feel uncomfortable.
This is (I hope) my final word on this matter. I believe the diffs above speak for themselves and will not comment further. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 19:02, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Katherine Maher