There is nothing that I love more than a good content dispute on Wikipedia. The battle of wits, or should I say nitwits, going back and forth with each trying to stake their claim on content that should be introduced (or removed) into an article. While some of the disputes result in compromise and lead to an unbiased depiction of content related to the subject, most disputes continue for months and years and often wide up being judged by someone who has the most experienced Wikipedia account. Although Wikipedia is supposed to be governed by consensus, this rule is often disregarded by administrators and editors who simply want to make their point.

As with war, the victor gets to write the pages of history. The same holds true on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, the “victor” tends to be the person who is the most respected (or feared) admin or editor on the website, regardless of the guiding policy. It is the view that they agree with what content goes into the article and that others will kindly follow their lead, even when they make a wrong decision or openly violate Wikipedia guidelines. This leads to pages that are linked to dispute tags being placed within the header to allow everyone to know that editors on Wikipedia are bickering and fighting over the correct wording to use for an article. Content is often left in dispute as very few people are willing to stand up and try to fight against experienced editors and admins because it only leads to rebuke of the editor for trying, and a potential ban from the site for edit warring.

Amanda Filipacchi:

Wikipedia content disputes often start over someone not liking the subject of the article or wanting to retaliate against the subject of the article due to something that may or may not have happened outside of Wikipedia. No one knows this more than “American woman novelist” Amanda Filipacchi who wrote a New York Times opinion piece in 2013 criticizing Wikipedia over gender bias. Filipacchi stated that she noticed numerous editors moving female writers into a category of “American women novelists” from the general category of “American novelists.” This criticism of Wikipedia did not go well for her. Although her piece did a good job of pointing out a gender imbalance on the site, it sparked anger among many Wikipedia editors. Once such editor, Qworty, took to her page attacking her for the piece.

Prior to her op-ed, the talk page of her article had only 1 entry from 2008. After the article was posted, the talk page exploded with editors weighing in on the gender bias controversy. As the article sits now, information about her op-ed piece takes up 1/3 of the article. This shows how stating something bad about Wikipedia can put you in the doghouse with editors. And Qworty? Oh yeah, he turned out to be none other than Robert Clark Young, a novelist himself who disguised his true identity on Wikipedia in order to cause havoc among the Wikipedia community. His edits mostly involved butchering articles where someone with a conflict of interest was involved. Ironically for him, he was later banned from Wikipedia for having a conflict of interest of his own. And his Wikipedia page? Approximately 1/3 of his article is taken up by his own Wikipedia controversy. Touché, Wikipedia, touché!

Since the Filipacchi incident, Wikipedia has tried its best to perform damage control. The media is now full of articles about Wikipedia holding “edit-a-thons” in an attempt to lure more female editors to the site. Great job, but a little too late. I for one am not convinced that Wikipedia editors care if editors are male or female. They only care about their own points of view which is why they claim to be editing to make Wikipedia more neutral, but neutral for whom? Even former Wikimedia Foundation Sarah Stierch recently reached out by holding an edit-a-thon at UC Berkley. More on Ms. Stierch a little later.

After the demolition of her Wikipedia took place, Filipacchi responded by stating, “In 24 hours, there were 22 changes to my page. Before that, there had been 22 changes in four years.” She is correct. If you wake the sleeping bear, be prepared to get bit. I know this from experience which is why I cannot wait to see what type of retaliation there will be for writing this article. So what now for Ms. Filipacchi? Well, there is no real way to tell the future, but I am sure that Wikipedia editors will let you know once it happens. At least from their point of view.

Carl Freer:

A recent article in Business2Community detailed two cases of how conduct off-Wikipedia can lead to someone writing your history on-Wikipedia. The first example used was that of Bloomex, a national florist based in Canada. The second was for a subject by the name of Carl Freer, an article that sparked my interest after a quick Google search. For Bloomex, there were few sources that would amount to any type of notability. For Freer, there is a little different picture being painted by Wikipedia editors. Thanks to the Google Knowledge Graph, I was able to see a list of “people also searched for.” The first name, Stefan Eriksson, also has a Wikipedia page. As does the next subject, Mikael Ljungman, also a Wikipedia page. What do they have in common? It looks like they all pissed off a group of people who have it out for Swedish businessmen.

All three men are linked to a company by the name of Tiger Telematics that manufactured the game console Gizmondo. Sources found on these subjects show that Freer and Eriksson were on the board of directors together while Ljungman’s company was involved with some of the marketing for the game console. Worthy enough for a Wikipedia article? It is if you pissed off a bunch of investors with an axe to grind. The possible reason for the pages can be found in a 2010 CNN article that talks about Carl Freer being a defendant in a lawsuit filed by shareholders of the company GetFugu. Shareholders filed a lawsuit against the company, including Freer, claiming that Freer owed them millions of dollars. The lawsuit was dismissed and defendants filed a counter suit against the shareholders for defamation. According to the article, the shareholders involved in the initial lawsuit “launched a whisper campaign of concocted innuendo, while at the same time threatening to present bogus charges to regulators, and make knowingly fallacious public accusations, all in ploy to illegally manipulate the public market for Getfugu’s common stock and undermine the success of valuable products, in order to extort an undeserved windfall for themselves and their co-conspirators.” In other words, their stated agenda was to spread rumor about Mr. Freer in order to manipulate the share price and undermine the company he was involved with.

After looking closer at the Wikipedia article on Freer, I see numerous issues with “concocted innuendo.” The line from the Wikipedia article that made me the most interested was that “Los Angeles police raided Freer’s Bel-Air mansion and his yacht moored in Marina Del Rey and found twelve rifles and four handguns.” Expecting to read a story about search warrants and SWAT teams, I went to the Los Angeles Times reference to find that nothing was said about a “raid.” In fact, the reference states that “Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives said they found 12 rifles and four handguns during searches at the Swedish national’s home.” Quite a far cry from a “raid.” The statement in the Wikipedia article is slanted toward making Freer look like a criminal instead of following Wikipedia’s neutrality guidelines or adhering to other guidelines relating to biographies of living persons. Stepping back a bit, the article actually states that Freer is a criminal in the opening paragraph by stating that he was convicted of fraud on two separate occasions. Well, let’s take a look at the references again. The first is to a Sunday Times story where a subscription is needed. The second is to a Los Angeles Times story which states that he was sentenced by a German court for buying cars with bad checks, something that the article also points out that Freer contends he canceled the checks after believing he was sold stolen cars, but nothing about a single conviction let alone 2 convictions. The third reference is a history of a former company he was involved with and states nothing about criminal activity. So, everyone who goes to Wikipedia to look up information on Mr. Freer will see that his history is written by editors so that he was convicted of fraud twice and had his home in Los Angeles raided by police, both of which are not stated in the reference and worded such to make him look like a hardened criminal.

The majority of the other references within the Wikipedia article on Freer refer to his former company, are just brief mentions of him, or speak more about Stefan Eriksson. In fact, the article seems to restate what is already said on the company article for Tiger Telematics or the product article for Gizmondo. The article falls within the definition of an attack page, yet the article has been recommended for deletion 2 times and for some reason still exists. If for anything, Freer’s Wikipedia page lives on to prove my point about how Wikipedia editors write history the way they want it known.

Sarah Stierch:

Wikipedia editors are not the only ones who retaliate against people for off-Wikipedia conduct or Wikipedia criticism, the Wikimedia Foundation often gets involved as well. In fact, the Wikimedia Foundation decided to retaliate against me for my criticism of Wikipedia and acknowledgment that I make money from editing the website. While I cannot disclose what took place due to potential litigation, I will say that it rises to violation of their own privacy policy and outing, which Jimmy Wales has no problem violating himself. So what does the Wikimedia Foundation do when one of its own is caught up in paid editing? Well thank you, Sarah for the next example of Wikipedia editors writing someone’s history the way they want to see it.

Ms. Stierch is a former employee of the Wikimedia Foundation who was caught accepting pay to create a Wikipedia article. Although not against Wikipedia’s guidelines for editing, many editors of the site believe that receiving compensation for creating an article automatically creates a conflict of interest which would be a violation. Regardless of your point of view, an employee of the Foundation was caught up in conduct that the Foundation has not only discouraged, but taken many steps to disrupt and retaliate against. So while Sarah used to be known for her work with the Foundation, the current thing she is known for is separation of employment (unknown if forcibly or voluntary) related to conduct frowned upon by her former employer. Here is where it gets good. Wikipedia editors have essentially removed the existence of her controversy from the site. Although information about the incident can be found buried in the list of Wikipedia controversies article, her own Wikipedia page has since been deleted. Why? You make the call.

The Wikipedia article on Sarah was nominated for deletion in January 2013. The article was recommended for deletion based on her not being notable. The nominator was editor Orange Mike who is respected by many in the Wikipedia community. In fact, I have rarely seen people within the community disagree with him. However, the result of that deletion discussion was that she is clearly notable and the article was kept. Editors disagreed with Orange Mike in order to save Sarah’s article. Some of the comments in support of keeping the article include, “Sarah is notable or advancing the idea that Wikipedia needs to be more inclusive of women as editors and subjects of article.” Ms. Stierch even chimes in on the discussion, providing additional sources in order to show that she is notable for a Wikipedia page. So in the end, the community supported a page that was borderline notable to begin with, but nonetheless it was decided by consensus to keep around. One delete comment to points out, “I’m sure Sarah will be notable someday, but today is not that day.” Well, notability comes with significant coverage in reliable sources which she received after “that day” thanks to her involvement with paid editing.

Since her controversy of paid editing, the article on her was again nominated for deletion. This time it was recommended for deletion based on the same notion as before in that she is not notable in accordance with Wikipedia guidelines. The result of this discussion was to delete the article. In fact, all votes were for delete and none for keep. Reason? Well one comment I thought was very fitting: “the subject has said they would welcome the article to be deleted, and in this instance, since it is focused on a negative event (being fired from work) and she hasn’t made a concerted effort to be notable outside of the Wikipedia project itself, I think we can be within policy to nuke it.” That’s kind of funny since I believe the same would apply for Carl Freer, except he is not a former Foundation employee whose conduct has embarrassed the Foundation. So again, history is written (or erased) by those who win the war (the Wikipedia “edit war” that is).

And for me? Thankfully, I don’t have a Wikipedia page, nor do I want one. The creation of one frightens me as I am very well-hated by the Wikipedia editing community for my criticism of the site. Wikipedia pages often rank in the top 3 queries on search, so whatever is written in those pages, accurate or not, is the first thing that anyone will read about you. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and only a few determined minutes for someone to destroy it. Following this expose, if someone were to pen a Wikipedia about me, I am sure that the article would end up more like Freer and not so much like Stierch. Scary to think of the picture they would paint of me if only I were notable.