Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-11-06/In the media
An old scrimmage, politics and purported libel
Gonzalez fined. WhiteHatWiki threatened libel suit?
The long saga of the paid Wikipedia edits made at the behest of Portland, Oregon mayoral candidate Rene Gonzalez (or his commissioner's office) continued on October 15, during a candidate debate.
Gonzalez justified the paid edits made by his commissioner's office staff — with the help of contractor WhiteHatWiki — by saying that the contractor had trained his staff to counter misinformation spread about him. He said "Wikipedia is one of the tools that I have used and will use in the future".
Co-moderator Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, who first reported the story in The Oregonian, probed further, asking if he was "fine with sticking taxpayers with that bill". Gonzalez attacked the accuracy of the original article, saying they "had to correct it under a threat of a libel suit from the contractor". Kavanaugh disagreed. A correction to the original article had made this change:
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The next Monday, the Portland City Auditor’s office released its second report, a "reconsideration" based on new evidence, with respect to a complaint that Gonzalez had misused taxpayer money to fund his campaign.
They found that he had, for paying to post a requested edit saying he was a Democrat.
It would have been allowed if it had been about his non-partisan commissioner's position, rather than about his current mayoral campaign — but an edit to disclose his political party could only have been relevant to the mayoral campaign. The auditor’s office also said that Gonzalez hadn't cooperated in providing the information on that requested edit; for example, he had pressured the chief deputy auditor by accusing him of a conflict of interest. The fine was $2,400.
Gonzalez’s city-paid policy advisor had actually submitted the requested edits drafted with WhiteHatWiki despite his discomfort with them, and an attempt to "slow-walk" the process. The Oregonian, Exhibit A, pp.8-9.
The entire process involving WhiteHatWiki helping to create and submit the requested edits started with WhiteHatWiki and the commissioner's office staff exploring possible edits.
- Rene Gonzalez's policy advisor "shared with investigators that when he joined the Commissioner’s office in February 2024, the decision to edit the Wikipedia page had already been made. He was assigned to work on the Wikipedia edits with WhiteHatWiki shortly after his arrival at the City and described his role as a 'middleman' between WhiteHatWiki and Gonzalez."
- The advisor and WhiteHatWiki "exchanged ideas for edits over the course of a few months (March – June, 2024.)" He said that he "did not care for the Wikipedia project, so he 'slow-walked' it". He "recalls having several discussions with Gonzalez and others in the office about the status and content of the Wikipedia edits".
- According to the advisor, "the Wikipedia edits under consideration with WhiteHatWiki were frequently an agenda item during the full office’s Monday meetings". He "estimates the Wikipedia edits were discussed four to five times at these Monday meetings during the course of a few months" and "further recalls that Gonzalez was present for the meetings 'consistently,'" but "reflected that it is possible Gonzalez was not there every single time".
- Gonzalez's advisor "informed investigators that because he was slow on the project, Gonzalez would check in with him periodically (about once a month) for an update".
Both Rene Gonzalez and WhiteHatWiki CEO Ed Sussman were asked for comment when the story first broke. On August 7, I asked whether the mayoral campaign had paid for Wikipedia editing in making the edit requests on the article. An unsigned response from the candidate's official email address — presumably Gonzalez — stated that no campaign staffers had been paid for the edits, and referred me to the commissioner's office as well as the "paid editor" who had commented on the article’s talk page. Nobody from the commissioner's office (including Gonzalez's policy advisor) replied to a request sent to his official email address.
Sussman’s reply on August 8 stated that WhiteHatWiki "only served as a consultant", and thus didn’t need to declare as a paid editor. He did say that that the editor was an "employee of the commissioner", but denied that the paid editing disclosure policy applied: only the less-strict conflict of interest guideline.
The three main involved parties all seem to agree that Gonzalez's policy advisor was being paid while he posted edits to the article talk page. And WhiteHatWiki was being paid. But nobody made a formal paid editing declaration. – S
Comparisons between Donald Trump and fascism, Wikipedia and fascism, and/or Wikipedia and Donald Trump
Pirate Wires wrote an article about a Wikipedia article (itself about other newspaper articles), which as of press time was titled Comparisons between Donald Trump and fascism, although a second move request and a deletion debate are both currently underway. The claims made therein are generally along the lines that the article is irreparably biased, that it was written unreasonably close to the election, that it reflects a failure of the project and a "tightly coordinated effort to control the narrative". It afterwards goes into substantial detail on sourcing and policy — beyond what can be summarized here.
Just a year ago, Elon Musk offered to donate $1 billion to the Wikimedia Foundation, contingent on one small requirement, and today he remains a regular feature of the news cycle, for a variety of reasons; of late, the most noticeable being his effusively outspoken support of Donald Trump's campaign for President of the United States. This item is no exception, as he tweeted the original Pirate Wires article, sparking additional coverage of his remarks by the Washington Examiner and The Times of India, the latter of which saying he believes Wikipedia is "controlled by far-left activists. People should stop donating to them."
Lest the level of simulacra become unmanageable (articles about tweets about articles about articles about articles about public statements about things potentially happening in reality), and more to the point: while some claims are obviously silly, allegations of political bias on Wikipedia are neither a new phenomenon nor prima facie preposterous. You can see previous Signpost reporting for some attempts to study this more or less rigorously. Indeed, there is a very long article titled Criticism of Wikipedia detailing twenty years of these allegations, as well as the subsequent back-and-forth on them. If anyone remembers this article exists a dozen news cycles from now, we might actually be able to find out whether it's biased. – J
C6-H0
Way back on October 29, 1921, tiny Centre College defeated the dominant American football team of the day — Harvard — 6–0 in one of the biggest upsets in football history. Exactly 103 years later, the Wikipedia article on the game was Today's Featured Article on the main page. The same day, Centre College News featured the main author of the article, Patrick Nelson, who graduated from Centre this May with a degree in mathematics.
Nelson started editing Wikipedia during high school, focusing on college football rivalries. He told CCN that wiki editing "helped prepare him for the rigors of college writing". The preparation worked both ways "Getting not only my work, but also Centre's name, in front of millions of eyes is very exciting. Especially so, knowing that Centre contributed to my writing and research skills (and provided resources that I used to research that article) and, in part, made the article possible in doing so."
"Knowledge is human"
The Wikimedia Foundation's latest PR campaign is "Knowledge is human" designed by the VIRTUE Worldwide advertising agency. Zack McCune of the WMF is quoted as saying, "We’re living in a world that feels defined by online echo chambers, misinformation, and polarised opinions. This leaves people around the world increasingly sceptical of their information sources." The project's landing page shows videos, photos of people many of us know, and is designed to emphasize the humanity of Wikipedia. It is an updated version of a campaign presented last year. One innovation is a Wikipedia truck which made at least four stops in New York City, and the same number in Los Angeles. The truck displays a huge version of a Wikipedia article on its side and is displayed on billboards and in other ads. See also meta and articles in Design Rush and Ad Age.
In brief
- Australian place names: Phys.org reviews a Wikihistories project How Australian Places are Represented on Wikipedia. The project, led by Heather Ford, gives an outstanding overview of Australian place name articles, their editors, and the editing process that any Wikipedia editor should be able to recognize and learn from.
- Indian court case: straight from The Hindu.
- Legal trouble: The BBC reports on the same case.
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