You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
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In 2023, the International Boxing Association (IBA) disqualified two women’s boxers — Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting — launching a controversial and ugly media barrage. Here we examine how Wikipedia handled it. Spoiler: Poorly - they handled it poorly. ...continue reading From Dispute to Morality Play: Wikipedia and Olympic Boxing Eligibility
The CEO of a publishing services company created their Wikipedia article, and despite their obvious conflict of interest, eventually prevailed in promoting their company via Wikipedia. The lesson here is that if you want to have an article about your company on Wikipedia, you need to be persistent. Don't give up the first time it is deleted. Or the second. Or the the third. Just keep trying. It…
By Ming The Merciless At 1:15 PM EDT, CNN made the call: Robert Prevost had been elected pope. But the edits had already started: the first was at 12:16 from an IP in Chile, changing his titles; this was immediately reverted and then reapplied differently. But the real action came at the time of the CNN post: in that minute, there were ten edits, none of which made substantial changes; but one of…
One of the many things that "Wikipedia Is Not" is The News. The policy in question states that Wikipedia is not for original reporting, ephemeral news items, bios of everyone who appears in a media report, or (and especially) celebrity gossip. In practice, this is a principle that is routinely violated. Whole classes of "noteworthy" events get articles as soon as news reports come out, absent any…
In 2013 we discovered a number of administrators from India who secretly had conflicts of interests and were using Wikipedia for PR. Today, we reveal another. ...continue reading Another Wikipedia Admin Caught Making PR Edits
By Sidney UlpsWikipediocracy sports and traffic reporter Do you remember our 2023 blog post about a French court case involving a Wikipedia editor accused of libeling a French businessman? You might have wondered who the editor was in real life. We decided not to name him at that time, but since he is back on English Wikipedia in a bigger way than usual, the time has come to introduce you to the…
By Eddy Landwehr Following up on our blog post about Nihonjoe’s conflict of interest editing, we present this as a public service to the Wikipedia community. Eric W. Jepson edits Wikipedia as Thmazing. If you search Wikipedia for his name, you will find he is named or used as a source in a few articles. Did he add himself to Wikipedia? Yes. Is that allowed on Wikipedia? Good question. It’s…
By Eddy Landwehr Bureaucrats are the most trusted users on Wikipedia. There are only 19 bureaucrats for the entire English-language Wikipedia. Bureaucrats have the ability to grant or revoke administrator privileges, so it is important that the Wikipedia community chooses bureaucrats they can trust. Nihonjoe, Wikipedia bureaucrat, is not trustworthy and never has been. The elephant in the room…
by Don B. Louterfist “I used to call it my ‘cluestick,’ but then I realized it was just a baseball bat,” says Wales Jimbo “Jimmy” Wales, considered by many to be the “godfather” of Wikipedia, was recently stripped of advanced permissions on the site he co-founded after making false corruption allegations against one of its more respected volunteer administrators. Here’s an account of what…
The first thing you notice when you look at Neal Schon's Wikipedia biography is a big ugly warning that "some of this article's listed sources may not be reliable." That warning has been there since 2013. ...continue reading Wikipedia and Neal Schon: Who’s Sorry Now?
