Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Wifione/Evidence/Wifione evidence summary

Edits to Indian Institute of Planning and Management

Wifione's edits to the articles Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) [1]

Vejvančický	Wifi	Comment
1. Removes criticism from the article, 26 June 2009	My reasons were listed down at the talk page in multiple sections. While I believe that the reasoning as of then was valid (new magazine, having a conflict of interest with the institution), a blanket removal in this diff of five and a half years ago should not have been done in the manner that it was done.	Specifically, Wifi removed a summary of the Careers360 IIPM expose. The summary referred to testimonials from disappointed students, it stated that IMI Belgium, which awards the MBAs, was itself not recognised and that claims about successful placement of graduates were misleading (placements were short-term and low paid in the Persian Gulf), and it named prestigious foreign educational institutions that repudiated IIPM's advertising claim that it has a special relationship with them. In September 2014 the High court censured IIPM and its founder Arindam Chaudhuri for misleading students. [2].
2. Adds "At the same time, the institute has also been reported by various leading newspapers in India to have been amongst the top ranked management institutes in India", 26 June 2009	Newbie edit. Not the best way to include rankings.	The ranking details added by Wifi would mislead any prospective student looking to validate the information in IIPM's widespread advertising campaign.
3. Adds: (IIPM) "..has never claimed it is a university, nor sought recognition from regulatory bodies or accreditation agencies as its courses are non-technical and non-professional and do not come under the purview of bodies like AICTE and UGC", 2 August 2009	I simply reworded the paragraph from Makrandjoshi’s previous diff. Doesn’t seem significant, and in fact, helps the set of statements achieve a neutral point of view. Stand by it.	IIPM public relations avoided the accreditation issue by claiming it had never been sought. Wifi comments "I simply reworded the paragraph" If you examine the edit, you will find that it is not 'rewording'. For example, the original wording stated unequivocally that the institute is 'unaccredited', which Wifi removed.
4. Removes "unaccredited" from the infobox and Category:Unaccredited institutions of higher learning in India, 15 November 2009	I would have preferred the term “not applied for accreditation” or “non-accredited” as explained by Amatulic in this edit, given that applying for accreditation was not compulsory.	See above. In same edit, 'certificate programs' is changed to 'management programs'.
5. Removes "unaccredited" from the lede, adds "In 2009, the Union Minister of Education formally communicated his intentions of closing down AICTE and UGC - due to corruption and inefficiency charges against the bodies - in favour of a larger regulatory body with more sweeping powers", 21 November 2009	Silly edit. The paragraph was unrelated to the article and should have not been included.	This is the third time (probably of many more) that 'unaccredited' is removed. The part about 'closing down AICTE and UGC' would have the effect of weakening the authority of the regulators. It is unlikely that a new regulator with 'sweeping powers' would have taken any different line. We can only speculate on Wifi's motives.
6. Removes criticism, 11 December 2009	Should not have been removed without the proper creation of footnotes. But given that another editor Amatulic later on in the talk page disputed footnotes, this edit would have been reverted.	The edit removed the perfectly true statement that the partner, IMI Belgium, was also an unaccredited business school. Speculating, but the purpose of these edits is to persuade potential candidates that IIPM is more than a worthless certificate factory.
7. Adds "At the same time, IIPM has also been ranked amongst the top business schools of the country in the years 2008 and 2009", 26 December 2009	Editorially incompetent line. Goes against WP:UNIGUIDE, especially against the subsection contents which I authored later after learning from such editing mistakes.	The claim would mislead prospective students. See above.
8. Starts section "Usage of the word 'Controversy' as per Wikipedia:AVOID:Controversy_and_scandal" at the talk page of IIPM, 27 December 2009	Nothing wrong with starting a talk page discussion as per editorial guidelines at that time.	We can only speculate on why Wifi wants to suggest "removal of the term [controversy] itself from wherever it is mentioned within the article".
9. Removes criticism, 29 December 2009	Incompetent edit.	Removes "IIPM has been the subject of controversies regarding accreditation, rankings in third party publications, advertising claims, trade practices, and tax issues" and replaces with "IIPM was the subject of a blogging controversy in 2005", which implies the issues are no longer current.
10. Adds self-published POV by Chaudhuri, 14 February 2010	Out of place and not the best source that should have been used.	The edit included "According to Arindam Chaudhuri, Honorary Dean of IIPM, Careers 360 is a "poor in quality and shady new yellow journal that keeps doing illogical and brazenly false stories about IIPM!". The Careers 360 claims were later vindicated by the High Court.
11. Removes court decision against IIPM: "This suit was decisively quashed by the Dehradun High Court, which stated, ‘A truth spoken for public good can never be called defamatory’", 9 August 2011	Stand by the edit. It was a lounge piece and a copy vio.	'Lounge piece' refers to the exposé. Chaudhuri sued the publishers for defamation but the High Court quashed the lawsuit. Wifi's edit has the effect of discrediting the publishers by removing the reference to this decision.
12. Removes criticism, 23 August 2011	Stand by the edit. It was primary, CoI source, making exceptional claims about themselves. Any other reliable source would have been accepted.	Again removes the link to the High Court ruling, and a summary of it. "On 8th October 2010, the Uttarakhand High Court, on an appeal by Careers360, maheshwer Peri and Mahesh Sarma quashed the order of the Dehradun court. While passing the order, the high court observed that 'truth is also the best defence in a case of defamation. A truth spoken for public good can never be called defamatory'."
13. Adds "The institute states that "Rankings don't matter" and it has "strong reservations on the methodology applied by most of the magazines to rank b-schools,"" 4 July 2012	Seems an acceptable standard NPOV edit.	Removes the 'advert' template. Follow the link to see how the article looks once Wifione, now an administrator, has taken control of it. The introduction presents all the issues has having been resolved, ending with the claim that it ranks 5th best business school in India.
14. Restores revision more favorable to IIPM, 21 February 2013	Stand by it. See the talk for reasons. I’ve brought back the DGG version.	The edit restores the introduction to its original pristine version, suggesting that all the problems have been resolved, and removing any reference to the awkward fact that IIPM is not accredited.
15. Removes criticism, stating: "Dont belabour point in lede; it's already made extensively below" 21 February 2013	Stand by the edit. Bemoaning the belabouring of points is similar to what editors like Amatulic have mentioned on the article before.[51][52][53]	The belaboured point was the reference to misleading advertising practices.
16. Removes criticism from the article, stating: "Removing non-NPOV UGC line" ... "please keep historical data in the main section than in the lede", 23 February 2013	No criticism has been removed. Seems a perfectly neutral edit.	Removes the claim that the UGC, responsible for the standards of university education in India, has repeatedly issued public notices stating that IIPM is unrecognised, and that its technical programmes are invalid. Wifi's edits were very consistent in removing any reference to 'unaccredited' that might reach the eyes of prospective students.
16a. Addition.	The edit summary clarifies my position clearly, "Removing non-NPOV UGC line. Include IIPM's version before reincluding it or maintain DGG's version; please don't discredit months of discussion; and please keep historical data in the main section than in the lede)" In other words, I suggested to the editor to include the UGC line placing IIPM's response too, or maintain DGG's version."	Whether it was discussed or not, the edit removed a statement by the UGC that may have helped prospective students. On "DGG's version", yet another appeal to Wikipedian in good standing. It was DGG, of course who said (my emphasis) "I now come back to this. The school is , put simply, not accredited. That it offers degrees from the IIM is misleading, for neither is that school recognized as accredited. IIPM does offer an arrangement by which its students can get degrees actually awarded by a cooperating institution. This is not the same thing as offering degrees, and all the evasions of the Institute's spokesmen do not make it the same thing.

IIPM timeline

Real world	Wikipedia
In June 2005, an Indian online magazine called Just Another Magazine (JAM) published an article accusing IIPM of misleading students and the public with its advertisements by using institutional rankings published in 2003 which were no longer valid. The article also reported that IIPM was not accredited by UGC or AICTE (government agencies that accredit tertiary educational institutions).
IIPM sued the publisher of JAM in remote Assam state - where she could not contest because of the difficulty of going there to fight the case. After a court ruling, the article was removed from the internet.
JAM's editor Rashmi Bansal later published similar content in her blog. In response, IIPM called the statements baseless rumours and filed a lawsuit against Bansal. A series of single-purpose blogs sprang up, extolling IIPM and vilifying its critics: Blogger IIPMstudent9 said "Hindustan Lever, McKinsey and Bank of America came to campus in IIPM Bangalore - but they only offer 7 lac - 8 lac packages! My friends were happy, buit I'm looking for 12 lac packages... guess the international placements will be able to do that... I heard in New York IIPM students get 20 - 25 lacs...2005 Student" These single-purpose blogs ran a campaign, saying, among other things, JAM editor Rashmi Bansal was expelled from college for being a lesbian. Some of the comments were quite nasty. "Rashmi, can u please post your degree on the net? Also please post the photo of your husband (or wife) so that we can be sure it’s a man (alongwith the sex certificate from JJ Hospital). Man, this is good. Rashmi, I’m open to any sex. If you are interested, let’s hit it big. I can do some good stuff on you, whatever you are." "She’s a whore. A walking cum-dumpster who is so controlled by her genitals, she needs to be fucked and she’ll take it any way she can. That’s how you tear down a woman…" [3].
In October 2005, Gaurav Sabnis, an IBM employee who had commented on and linked to Bansal's article in his blog, was forced to resign from his post after IIPM threatened to burn their IBM laptops in front of IBM's Delhi office.	In November 2005, User:Drnoamchomsky (Contribs) began editing Wikipedia. 2nd edit changed "IIPM claims its infrastructure to be cutting edge" to "IIPM infrastructure is cutting edge." 3rd edit added: "Outlook Magazine refers to the group as 'a media, publishing and education behemoth'". 4th edit added lots of puff about IIPM and intemperate spleen about its critics, including that JAM editor Rashmi Bansal is an IIM (competing company) alumnus who harbours ill-feeling for IIPM, that JAM is "a tiny and inconsequential rag," that Gaurav Sabnis (the blogger IIPM forced out of his job) said "malicious and derogatory" things about IIPM in his blog post, and that the government agencies UGC (unhappy with IIPM for claiming to award Bachelors and Masters degrees which only UGC-accredited institutions have the right to confer) and AICTE (whose spokesman said IIPM does not have the right to use the words "Indian Institute" in its name without central government approval) "are known to be a tool for politicians to extract money". 5th edit: more puffery 6th edit: puffery and spleen. 7th edit: puffery 8th edit: puffery.
	Drnoamchomskey then changed his name to Iipmstudent9, who identified as a woman. Edits included "IIPM has a strong interface with industry and its course content is highly regarded", and removing any mention of the JAM article. Throughout December there was a fierce edit war about whether the JAM article could be mentioned in Wikipedia. Iipmstudent9 and a co-editor Iipmalum, who seemed to share the same IP address, argued that JAM is really a blog or a tabloid. Iipmstudent9 was blocked in February 2007 for making a credible legal threat against user Makrandjoshi.
	Around September 2006, an IP editor calling herself 'Mrinal Pandey' joined the IIPM talk page. She was indefinitely blocked in December 2008 for using 43 accounts to edit IIPM related articles. A second farm of 37 socks was built up January-February 2009. These were activated as soon as semi-protection was lifted in March 2009. However they were discovered immediately and blocked and the page was re-protected for six months. On 1st April 2009 the Wifione account was created, identifying as female.
In June 2009, Maheshwar Peri's Careers360 magazine published "IIPM – Best only in claims?" investigating the authenticity of many of the claims made by the IIPM in their advertisements. IIPM was claiming its graduates were eligible for MBA degrees from IMI, Belgium. The article reported that IMI, an entity controlled by Chaudhri, was not accredited by the Belgian government. It also said that IIPM could not in any circumstances award MBA/BBA degrees or offer such courses in the state of Uttarakhand.	On 22 June 2009, Makrandjoshi, the user against whom Iipmstudent9 had made a serious legal threat, wrote on the IIPM talk page: "I have edited the article to include in relevant places information published in an investigative article by the Indian education magazine Careers 360. Have also added a small subsection under controversies summarizing the findings from the article." On 26 June 2009, Wifione, her account now autoconfirmed, joined the discussion, objecting, like the others before, that JAM is not really a magazine, and that the Careers 360 article doesn't qualify. She deleted that content. Makrandjoshi immediately demanded a sockpuppet investigation. It returned inconclusive. Wifione demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of Wikipedia's arcane policies, arguing that none of the publications exposing IIPM are 'reliable sources', pushing the same bias as Mrinal and using Mrinal's very idiosyncratic style of address.
IIPM filed against the magazine Careers 360 and the publisher, Maheshwar Peri, again in the remote state of Assam. It also filed a criminal case against Peri at Uttarakhand, although this was subsequently quashed by the High Court. Indeed, the judge asked for IIPM to be banned.	In August 2010, Wifione added to the IIPM article, "In 2009, IIPM filed a criminal defamation charge against Careers 360. In May 2010, the court - citing Careers 360 article to be "prima facie defamatory" - issued bailable warrants against Maheshwar Peri, publisher Careers 360 and Outlook, and Mahesh B Sarma, editor of Careers 360 magazine".
In February 2011, Caravan magazine published an excerpt discussing Chaudhuri and IIPM from an upcoming book by Siddhartha Deb. In April IIPM sued, and the chapter on Chaudhri and IIPM was deleted from the book's Indian edition. Stacey Mickelbart at The New Yorker wrote, "Without writers willing to take that risk, a truly open global literary culture remains imperiled …" Deb explained in The Guardian, "The injunction has received little attention in the Indian media. There has been hardly any discussion, as yet, of the fact that for all India's vaunted embrace of free-market capitalism and its frequent claims to being the world's 'largest' democracy, it remains a place utterly reluctant to allow public criticism of the powerful and the wealthy …. There is a sad irony to the fact that a book about contemporary India, while available in full in most of the world, appears only in partial form for Indian readers." [4]	In June 2011, Wikipedia's IIPM article reported the Caravan lawsuit. An editor called Suraj845, who has interacted heavily with Wifione on an obscure page, reverted the report, with the comment " Undoing unconstructive edits"
15 February 2013: Various articles and news reports critical of IIPM were blocked by the Indian Department of Telecommunications (IDT) following a [Gwalior, 320 km south of Delhi] court order. The IDT issued orders to block 78 URLs - 73 of which had IIPM content. The block even covered the government agency, UGC, because it hosted this: "It is hereby informed to the public at large and students that Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) is not a University within the meaning of Section 2(f) of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956. Further, as per Section 22 of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) does not have the right of conferring or granting degrees as specified by the University Grants Commission under Section 22(3) of the University Grants Commission Act. It is further clarified for information that Indian Institute of Planning and Management is neither entitled to award MBA/BBA/BCA degree nor is it recognized by UGC." Other URLs blocked for carrying reports about IIPM included Outlook Magazine, Careers360, The Times of India, FirstPost, Rediff, The Indian Express, The Economic Times, MensXP, The Wall Street Journal, The Caravan Magazine.	The event was reported in Wikipedia, but Wifione reduced it to one sentence and moved it out of the "controversies" section to the bottom of the page. [5].
16 February 2013, hackers brought down the IIPM website.
18 February 2013 the accrediting agency UGC retaliated in the India Education Review: "A senior official of UGC on condition of anonymity added, 'IIPM is not recognised by the UGC; they are running their business on their own. The malpractices cell of UGC has mentioned specifically that the IIPM is a fake university, but we had to remove it after a court, on the basis of 'undertaking' given by IIPM, instructed the UGC not to put them in fake universities list."
In December 2013, a lengthy exposé of Wifione's activities was published on Wikipediocracy.	There were several discussions on Jimmy Wales's talk page, to which Wales initially did not contribute. After the story was mentioned in the Times of India, Wifione invited editors to review her work. There was a series of damaging allegations, and she left. Jimbo thought it would "be best if he just doesn't come back".
In September 2014 the High Court censured IIPM and its founder Arindam Chaudhuri for misleading students. A division bench restrained IIPM and its management with immediate effect from using the words "MBA, BBA, management course, management school, business school or b-school" in relation to the courses offered by it as well as in representations made to the public.

Notes

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The comments on this page were kindly provided by Peter Damian. I agree with the conclusions. Begoon ^talk 11:25, 24 January 2015 (UTC)