TheHindustan Timesspeculates (September 18) that politicians and their supporters are "sanitizing" their articles in advance of the2014 Maharashtra State Assembly election. The October 15th election is for seats in theLegislative Assembly, the lower house of thebicameral legislature ofMaharashtra, the second most populous state ofIndia. TheTimes notes the absence of significant controversies in the articles of particular politicians and the presence of heavily promotional language. One politician is praised for his "commitment to social work", another for her "elegant dressing" and her "fashion sense", a third is identified as a "youth icon". The politicians specifically mentioned by theTimes are:
It is not known who is responsible for these particular edits, but it is known that politicians in India have wanted such changes. TheTimes quoted a "social media consultant" fromPune,Maharashtra's second largest city, who said that politicians often sought "to sanitise their Wikipedia profiles. While some insist on weeding out inconvenient facts, others also insist on inserting words of praise."User:Tinucherian, a former boardmember ofWikimedia India, explained to theTimes that Wikipedia editors and administrators don't always notice these sorts of changes to articles immediately. An examination of the edit histories of these articles shows that some of the edits in question were made well in advance of the current election. For example, all mention of theDisproportionate Assets investigation of Kripashankar Singh wasremoved from his article a year ago, in September 2013, by an IP address originating in Mumbai, the capital city of Maharashtra. What appears to be a pre-written promotional biography of Patangrao Kadam wasadded to the end of his article in July of this year by another Mumbai-based IP address.
The Daily Beast andPhysics Todayreportedon the latest salvo in the conservative "war" on astrophysicistNeil deGrasse Tyson, director of theHayden Planetarium and perhaps the most prominent scientist in the United States. Tyson is a popularscience communicator, frequent public speaker and television guest, hosted the widely watched 2014 television seriesCosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, and has 2.4 million followers onTwitter. He is an outspoken critic ofcreationism,climate change denial, and anti-scientific stances taken by politicians.
There is even more outspoken criticism of Tyson on the right, where he is "widely despised", especially in the wake of the success ofCosmos. A month following the final episode of the series, the cover story of the conservativeNational Review, "Smarter Than Thou: Neil deGrasse Tyson and America's Nerd Problem", accused Tyson of being "the fetish and totem of the extraordinarily puffed-up 'nerd' culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States." Some on the left have charged that Tyson "hatred" is the result of “anti-intellectual paranoia” or even a racist reaction against the success of a prominent African-American.
In September, Sean Davis, co-founder ofThe Federalist, a year-old collective of conservative political opinion bloggers, launched a series of attacks on Tyson, later adding Wikipedia to his targets.Physics Today discusses the background ofThe Federalist, noting that the website's other co-founder and publisher wasBen Domenech, a senior fellow at theHeartland Institute, a conservative think tank at the forefront of promoting climate change denial. Domenech also co-founded the conservative blogRedState and resigned from theWashington Post in 2006 following a plagiarism controversy.
Davis wrote a series of articles accusing Tyson of "fabricating" quotes and anecdotes in his public presentations, most notablyclaiming that US PresidentGeorge Bush never made the 2001 statement "Our God is the God who named the stars" attributed to him by Tyson, writing that Tyson "butchered" a 2003 statement by Bush in a different context, "The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. " Conservatives fromAnn Coulter toRoss Douthat echoed Davis' claim that Tyson was a "serial fabulist", but a senior editor atThe Federalist complained toThe Daily Beast about the lack of a reaction to Davis' charges outside the right-wing, a reaction whichBeast characterized as "overwhelmingly dismissive". Tyson laterresponded to a letter from Davis asking for comment, a request dated a week after Davis' initial article about the Bush quote, writing "I have explicit memory of those words being spoken by the President", but laterconceding that "I transposed one disaster with another (both occurring within 18 months of one another) in my assigning his quote."
Davis took aim at Wikipedia when a short passage about the Bush statement was inserted and then removed from the Wikipedia article about Tyson. Among the insults leveled at Wikipedia editors by Davis were "cultists", "Pravda’s heirs", and "Tyson’sTruthers". Other conservative publications echoed Davis' take on Wikipedia. TheWeekly Standardclaimed that "Wikipedia editors have rigorously deleted anything less than flattering from Tyson’s bio," while theNational Reviewasserted that "text-burning followers" of Tyson were engaged in the "willful suppression of information." None of the criticism discussed any of the policy-based reasons that editors used to advocate either for or against inclusion of the passage, even in Davis'Buzzfeed-like list of"9 Absurd Edit Justifications By Wikipedia’s Neil Tyson Truthers" (which included a comment by this author).
Davis' post"Why Is Wikipedia Deleting All References To Neil Tyson’s Fabrication?" seemed to provide its own answer to that question, which was the political orientation of Wikipedia editors. Davis largely focused on one editor,User:Zero Serenity, highlighting the content ofhis blog anduserboxes. Zero Serenity told theSignpost that "It felt like politics was the only reasonThe Federalist article was written...it seemed likeThe Federalist attempted to use Wikipedia to promote the story instead of letting it grow organically. Wikipedia is not meant as a tool to promote politics." Other editors on the talk page echoed his assessment, with one suggesting that, after the phrase "no evidence exists that Bush ever said" the statement in question was removed from the article following claims of inadequate sourcing, Davis included the phrase in a follow-up blog post in order to provide a source so that phrase could be restored.
When the Wikipedia article onThe Federalist wasproposed for deletion on grounds ofnotability, Davischarged that it was a retaliatory act by the "science-loving censors at Wikipedia". One editor,User:Gaijin42, told theSignpost he contacted Davis and attempted to explain the kind ofsources that Wikipedia articles require, but Davis gave him the "runaround" and accused him of being engaged in "cultish religious zealotry in defense of Neil Tyson", despite the fact that he is politically conservative like Davis. Davis' article went on to compare the proposed deletion tobook burning and defended the significance ofThe Federalist, ending by invokingObi-Wan Kenobi: "You can’t win. If you strike us down, we’ll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."
A Congressional vandal has struck again.User:143.231.249.138, an IP address assigned to theUnited States House of Representatives, was previously in the news for a series of whatThe Hillcalls "controversial and juvenile edits" that were retweeted by the Twitter botCongressEdits. (See previousSignpost coveragehere andhere.) Some were legitimate but odd, while others were vandalism that earned the address a series of escalating blocks. Despite previous calls for an investigation, the identity of the person or persons responsible for these edits is unknown.
The Hill,USA Today,The Cincinnati Enquirer,Wonkette,The Week andNew York were among the publications that reported on an example of the latest vandalism from that IP address after it was tweeted by CongressEdits.That edit, to the article for USSenate Minority LeaderMitch McConnell, read "McConnell is the first openlyOtherkin member of Congress. His species identity is turtle." Comparing McConnell's facial features to a turtle, and more specifically the cartoon characterCecil the Turtle, is a long-running joke for many American comedians, especiallyJon Stewart ofThe Daily Show, and websites, such as with the 2011Daily Caller slideshow"Turtles that look like Mitch McConnell". In the2014 Senate race in Texas, a Republican primary candidate even created a television ad which said McConnell"looks and fights like a turtle". TheCincinnati Enquirer noted, however, that "it was unclear whether [McConnell has] been called an otherkin before."
Buzzfeedreported that the same day the IP address also edited the article about the gaming websiteKotaku.The edit accused the website of "being part of a vast conspiracy to promoteCultural Marxism through video games," citing the right-wing websiteBreitbart. Kotaku has been a target of theGamergate controversy, a controversy thatBuzzfeed calls a "movement of aggrieved and confused white nerds".
Following these and other edits, the IP address was blocked again, this time for three months.
| “ | In terms of sheer numbers, there are only a couple of users which have near as many as me but the actual edit count is not as important as the quality. In that sense, many users have surpassed me. There are plenty of edits I make that have low value individually but you add them up and it makes the encyclopedia better. Other users put forth significant effort on a few edits that are very valuable individually. The thing that makes this project function is everyone doing their part. I'm impressed by anyone who puts forth serious, scholarly effort and freely shares that knowledge with the world, such as my late friendAdrianne Wadewitz. I am also particularly grateful to the software developers who make the back end structure of MediaWiki possible because they have skills that I entirely lack. | ” |
I do really wonder, why someone starts a study like this, because the results were quite predictable. The comparison "Antartica" (a continent, a topic of relevance for all humans) and egypt, a mid-sized country with few inhabitable lands, which ist not of worldwide interest (at least apart from it history/sites of touristical interest) is questionable. The study seems not to mention, that Wikipedia has no policy of "uniform coverage of all topics" at all. So the results do not mean anything "negative" concerning WP. Its a simple fact, that countries with low internet access with respect to numbers and band with, countries where many people have to work all day for their live support, will create rather few articles. WP relies on reliable sources. In the counties of the "third world" those are often sparse or absent. The personal interest of editing or creating articles tends not to be the same for different developed countries too. -Andy king50 (talk)19:02, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
