Wikipedia Editor Threatened With Lawsuit For Participating In Discussion Leading To Deletion Of Entry
from the skin-in-the-game dept
After weathering earlier attacks on its reliability, Wikipedia is now an essential feature of our online and cultural landscapes. Indeed, it's hard now to imagine a world where you can't quickly check up some fact or other by going online to Wikipedia and typing in a few keywords. But that centrality brings with it its own problems, as a post from Benjamin Mako Hill about legal threats he received thanks to his work as a Wikipedia editor makes clear.
You can read the long and involved tale on his site, but the facts are basically these. A Berlin-based organization called the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD) is unhappy because an entry about it had been deleted from Wikipedia. Hill explains why that happened:
Although the Wikipedia article was long and detailed, it sent off some internal Wikipedian-alarm-bells for me. The page read, to me, like an advertisement or something written by the organization being described; it simply did not read -- to me -- like an encyclopedia article written by a neutral third-party.
After discussions among some of Wikipedia's editors, the article was first proposed for deletion, and then duly deleted -- but not before Hill's own Wikipedia page had been edited to accuse him of slander and defamation. Things went quiet for a while, and then another Wikipedia page about ICD appeared:
I looked through the history of the article and found that the article had been created by a user called Icd_berlin who had made no other substantive edits to the encyclopedia. Upon further examination, I found that almost all other significant content contributions were from a series of anonymous editors with IP addresses associated with Berlin. I also found that a couple edits had removed criticism when it had been added to the article. The criticism was removed by an anonymous editor from Berlin.Several months later a new article was created -- again, by an anonymous user with no other edit history. Although people tend to look closely at previously deleted new pages, this page was created under a different name: "The Institute of Cultural Diplomacy" and was not noticed.
That was problematic, for the following reason:
Deleted Wikipedia articles are only supposed to be recreated after they go through a process called deletion review. Because the article was recreated out of this process, I nominated it for what is called speedy deletion under a policy specifically dealing with recreated articles. It was deleted again. Once again, things were quiet.
But not for long. On 25 February of this year, yet another article about ICD appeared on Wikipedia, once more "out of process", and by a user with almost no previous edit history. The next day, Hill received the following email from Mark Donfried, who is described on ICD's Web site as "Executive Director and Founder of the institute for Cultural Diplomacy":
Please note that the ICD is completely in favor of fostering open dialogue and discussions, even critical ones, however some of your activities are raising serious questions about the motives behind your actions and some even seem to be motives of sabotage, since they resulted in ICD not having any Wikipedia page at all.
These events indicate how important it is becoming to have a Wikipedia entry -- preferably a favorable one. Indeed, it's getting to the point where some people think that they actually have a right to one. Although that's a wonderful sign of Wikipedia's power and importance, it also means that it will find itself increasingly under pressure from those who are unhappy at not having an entry, or because of the things the entry says. Maintaining objectivity and a neutral point of view was always hard, but is bound to get harder in the future.
We are deeply concerned regarding these actions of yours, which are causing us considerable damages. As the person who initiated these actions with Wikipedia and member of the board of Wikipedia, we would therefore request your answer regarding our questions below within the next 10 days (by March 6th). If we do not receive your response we will unfortunately have to consider taking further legal actions with these regards against you and other anonymous editors.
Moreover, it seems likely that Hill finds himself on the receiving end of legal threats because he uses his own name on Wikipedia, rather than operating anonymously as many others do. ICD's current actions almost certainly mean that fewer people will be willing to take that risk, and will instead opt to carry out their work under the cloak of anonymity, or may not want to get involved at all. That last point -- the potential chilling effect -- is the most worrying, as Hill explains:
If I can be scared off by threats like these, anybody can. After all, I have friends at the Wikimedia Foundation, a position at Harvard Law School, and am close friends with many of the world's greatest lawyer-experts on both wikis and cyberlaw. And even I am intimidated into not improving the encyclopedia.
We may come to look back on today's Wikipedia as the project's golden age, before those "with skin in the game" started their assault in earnest, and before Wikipedia editors increasingly gave up trying to ward them off for fear of legal reprisals.
I am concerned by what I believe is the more common case -- where those with skin in the game will fight harder and longer than a random Wikipedian. The fact that it's usually not me on the end of the threat gives me lots of reasons to worry about Wikipedia at a time when its importance and readership continues to grow as its editor-base remains stagnant.
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Filed Under: benjamin mako hill, deletion, legal threats, mark donfried, wikipedia
Companies: institute for cultural diplomacy
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Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
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Re: Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
That and $5 will get you a latte at Starbucks.
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Re: Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
Like your corporate masters, boy?
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Re: Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
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Re: Re: Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
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Re: Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
Deleting the article was in compliance with Wikipedia's policies. Recreating the article was in circumvention of those policies -- and we all know how you feel about circumvention of the rights of creators -- such as the creators of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia's policies are designed to foster the creation of an encyclopedia. Not create advertisements.
If you or ICD does not like or wish to comply with Wikipedia policies, you are free to create your own encyclopedia. Nobody is stopping you. Just set up a server and get started. Isn't the internet wonderful?
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Re: Re: Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
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Re: Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
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Re: Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
That's where Wikipedia's rule about editing your own page (or an organization editing it's own page) comes from. Of course this doesn't stop you from having someone related to you do the edit of your Wikipedia page. This happens more often than you think. People get friends to whitewash their entries all the time, and if you happen to know an admin or have protection from on high, the sky is the limit.
I can kind of agree w/ ootb's point here, the editorial polices on Wikipedia aren't exactly stellar, aren't always enforced equally; some are just more equal than others. And they *do* have a commercial interest, just like any organization that exists on donations, you can't piss off your whales.
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Re: Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
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Re: Lesson: commercial interests ruin everything public.
> or as bad, omitting, info is worrisome.
Worrisome, perhaps, but it's a private web site and no one has a right to force them to include anything they don't want to include on it. Wiki is paying the bills and they can delete anything they want to delete.
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In other words, WP:NPOV is now illegal.
The law is now literally being used to punish those who are insufficiently reverent of their corporate overlords.
What next? Must we gather outside their offices and sing their praises every hour on the hour?
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Re:
The evidence is circumstancial (anonymous editors probably based in Berlin doesn't mean it was ICD), but it appears the ICD didn't play by Wikipedia's rules. As it is not a right to have a Wikipedia article, and certainly not a Wikipedia "brochure", on what basis should a judge decide ICD's page should be restored?
I read that a website owner is responsible for moderating comment threads if spam is to be fenced off. Wikipedia's moderation rules are pretty clear about not having advertisements for articles.
So I don't fear that NPOV is illegal - at least not before a judge rules that adhering to Wikipedia's rules is defamation.
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There's such a thing as too open
I've long been a proponent of some sort of enforced user validation and "karma" system at Wikipedia... Ideally, only people with a track record of being reliable editors would be able to edit high profile articles, and random people would not be able to create WP pages until they've actually proven they know how the system works.
In this case, it appears that ICD thinks that Wikipedia is some sort of free web hosting service or some sort of free directory service, rather than being an encyclopedia. The difference is huge: Would ICD expect to see an entry about themselves in The World Book Encyclopedia?
If this went to court, it would be a a loss for both parties. ICD would not win, but the problem is that these lawsuits can drag on for years, and you've got to pay for your lawyer out of pocket.
So nobody wins and life goes on.
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Re: There's such a thing as too open
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Re: Re: There's such a thing as too open
WP is going to have to make some fundamental changes, or it will soon become untenable as a research and information tool.
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die Streisandeffekt
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how long ago did wikipedia become trash
example: look at any major technology and their competitor's pages. You'll see tons of trashtalking about the competitor and/or removal/hiding of controversy.
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Wikipedia
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Wikipedia has become a heap of masturbating moderators
Also the rule that a 'new user with first edits' is frowned upon is highly questionable. It is often exactly these users that have to add something.
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If the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy isn't notable for anything else, their Wikipedia article is going to mostly be about how they contested the Wikipedia paradigm by threats of litigation.
Classy, ICD. So classy.
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Can anyone explain why there's a notability requirement? If an article is properly cited and neutral, who cares how important the topic is? Are they running out of disk space or something?
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Are you claiming that is the reason for the notability requirement, or just making an observation?
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Good point!
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Bureaucracy killed Wikipedia
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This is the stupidest story I've seen in a while.
I see ICD's wikipedia page comes up in search results, so wikipedia's acquiesced to the bullying, sadly. I hope the Streisand Effect slaps them silly for a long time coming.
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huh?
"as the person... we would..." makes one suspect that as the reader we would question the conversational competence of him... err, them... err, whatever...
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Bullying Wikipedia
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Bullying Wikipedia
Why did he do that? Because he wants no public attention, due to the controversy over his incestuous affair with his adult daughter. (Yes, it really happened.)
The harm done in this case is fairly minimal; McMahan is not really that notable, and he demanded only silence, not lies or plaudits about anything really important.
But the case does demonstrate how vulnerable Wikipedia really is.
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