Since the launch of

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

in 2001, several controversies have occurred. Wikipedia's open-editing model, under which anyone can edit most articles, has led to concerns, such as the quality of writing, the amount of

vandalism Vandalism is the action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property. The term includes property damage, such as graffiti and defacement directed towards any property without permission of the owner. The ter ...

, and the accuracy of information on the project. The media have covered controversial events and scandals related to Wikipedia and its funding organization, the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

(WMF). Common subjects of coverage include articles containing false information, public figures, corporations editing articles for which they have a

conflict of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations i ...

, paid Wikipedia editing and hostile interactions between Wikipedia editors and public figures. The Seigenthaler biography incident led to media criticism of the reliability of Wikipedia. This incident began in May 2005 with the anonymous posting of a hoax Wikipedia article with false, negative allegations about

John Seigenthaler John Lawrence Seigenthaler ( ; July 27, 1927 – July 11, 2014) was an American journalist, writer, and political figure. He was known as a prominent defender of First Amendment rights. Seigenthaler joined the Nashville newspaper ''Th ...

, a well-known American journalist. In March 2007, Wikipedia was again the subject of media attention with the

Essjay controversy The Essjay controversy was an incident in which Ryan Jordan, a Wikipedia editor who went by the username "Essjay", falsely presented himself as a university professor of religion from 2005 to 2007, during which time he was elected to top position ...

, which involved a prominent

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of , has the most arti ...

editor and administrator who claimed he was a "tenured professor of religion at a private university" with a "Ph.D. in

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...

and a degree in

canon law Canon law (from grc, κανών, , a 'straight measuring rod, ruler') is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (church leadership) for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members. It is t ...

" when in fact he was a 24-year-old who held no advanced degrees. The 2012 scandals involving paid consultancy for the government of

Gibraltar ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = "Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gibr ...

by Roger Bamkin, a Wikimedia UK board member, and potential conflicts of interest have highlighted Wikipedia's vulnerabilities. The presence of inaccurate and false information, as well as the perceived hostile editing climate, have been linked to a decline in editor participation. Another controversy arose in 2013 after an investigation by Wikipedians found that the Wiki-PR company had edited Wikipedia for paying clients, using "an army" of sockpuppet accounts that purportedly included 45 Wikipedia editors and administrators. In 2015, the Orangemoody investigation showed that businesses and minor celebrities had been blackmailed over their Wikipedia articles by a coordinated group of fraudsters, again using hundreds of sockpuppets. Controversies within and concerning Wikipedia and the WMF have been the subject of several

scholarly paper Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally pub ...

s.''The Future of the Internet: Ubiquity, mobility, security'', by Harrison Rainie (et al.), Cambria Press, 2009, page 259.''Digital Cognitive Technologies: Epistemology and Knowledge Society'', edited by Claire Brossard (et al.), John Wiley & Sons, 2013, page 325. This list is a collection of the more notable instances.

Overview

The nature of Wikipedia controversies has been analyzed by scholars. Sociologist

Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold (born 1947) is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities ( ...

says that "Wikipedia controversies have revealed the evolution of social mechanisms in the Wikipedia community"; a study of the politicization of socio-technical spaces remarked that Wikipedia "controversies... become fully-fledged when they are advertised outside the page being debated"; and one college discusses Wikipedia as a curricular tool, in that "recent controversies involving Wikipedia re used/nowiki> as a basis for discussion of ethics and bias."

Editing restrictions

Despite being promoted as an encyclopedia "anyone can edit", the ability to edit controversial pages is sometimes restricted because of "edit wars" or vandalism. To address criticism about restricting access while minimizing malicious editing of those pages, Wikipedia has also tried measures such as "pending changes" that would open contentious articles for more people to edit, then subject their contributions to approval from more established members of the site.

2002

*February 2002 – In late February 2002, the Spanish Wikipedia community decided to break away ("

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with which one ...

") from Wikipedia to protest plans by co-founders

Jimmy Wales Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipe ...

and

Larry Sanger Lawrence Mark Sanger (; born July 16, 1968) is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded the online encyclopedia Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined the name and wrote much of Wikipedia's original governin ...

to sell advertising on Wikipedia sites.; also see Jimmy Wales
February 2002 post to wikipedia-l
and Larry Sanger
''Wikipedia, a memoir''
Slashdot The fork, set up by volunteer Edgar Enyedy, was hosted at the

University of Seville The University of Seville (''Universidad de Sevilla'') is a university in Seville, Spain. Founded under the name of ''Colegio Santa María de Jesús'' in 1505, it has a present student body of over 69.200, and is one of the top-ranked universi ...

under the name

Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español (English: Universal Free Encyclopedia in Spanish) is a Spanish-language wiki-based online encyclopedia, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. It uses the MediaWiki software. It started as a fork of the ...

.Lih2009 p. 138 Most of the Spanish volunteers followed Enyedy, producing over 10,000 articles within a year. As a result, the Spanish Wikipedia was virtually inactive until mid-2003. Since this incident, the question of advertising has been a sensitive subject on Wikipedia. In an interview with ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...

'' in January 2011, Wales categorically denied having supported the plans for advertising, prompting a public dispute with Sanger. "The suggestion that I demanded ads and that Jimmy Wales was opposed to them is, I am afraid, yet another self-serving lie from Wales", wrote Sanger. As late as 2006 Wales refused to deny that there would ever be advertising on Wikipedia. In January of that year he told a reporter from ClickZ that "the question is going to arise as to whether we could better pursue our charitable mission with the additional money ds would bring We have never said there would absolutely never be ads on Wikipedia." EnwikipediagrowthGom

*October 2002 – Derek Ramsey increased the number of Wikipedia articles by about 40% with the creation of a bot called Rambot that generated 33,832 Wikipedia stub articles from October 19 to 25 for every missing

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

, town, city, and village in the United States, based on free information from the United States Census of 2000. In ''

The Wikipedia Revolution ''The Wikipedia Revolution: How A Bunch of Nobodies Created The World's Greatest Encyclopedia'' is a 2009 popular history book by new media researcher and writer Andrew Lih. At the time of its publication it was "the only narrative account" of t ...

'',

Andrew Lih Andrew Lih (; born 1968)Andrew Lih
"

2005

*September 2005 :* The Seigenthaler incident was a series of events that began in May 2005 with the

anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anony ...

posting of a hoax article in Wikipedia about

, a well-known American journalist. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and

Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...

Robert F. Kennedy. Additionally, the article erroneously stated that Seigenthaler had lived in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

for 13 years beginning in 1971. Seigenthaler, who had been a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, characterized the Wikipedia entry about him as "Internet character assassination".Seigenthaler, John.
A false Wikipedia 'biography'
" ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...

''. November 29, 2005. Retrieved on September 14, 2009. The perpetrator of the hoax, Brian Chase, who was trying to fool a coworker as a prank, was identified by Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt and reporters for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. The hoax was removed from Wikipedia in early October 2005 (although the false information stayed on Answers.com and Reference.com for another three weeks), after which Seigenthaler wrote about his experience in ''

''. :*Professional book indexer Daniel Brandt started now defunct Wikipedia criticism website "wikipedia-watch.org" in response to his unpleasant experience while trying to get his biography deleted. 2005 December 1 Jimbo Wales edits Jimmy Wales article to remove Larry Sanger from history of Wikipedia section

2005 December 1 Jimbo Wales edits Jimmy Wales article to remove Larry Sanger from history of Wikipedia section

*November/December 2005 – The

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

assigned to the

United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...

was blocked from editing Wikipedia because of a large number of edits comprising a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia." According to

CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the '' CBS Evening News'', '' CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 4 ...

, these changes included edits to

Marty Meehan Martin Thomas Meehan (born December 30, 1956) is an American academic administrator, politician, and attorney. Since July 2015, Meehan has served as the President of the University of Massachusetts after serving as Chancellor of the University of ...

's Wikipedia article to give it a more positive tone. The edits to Meehan's article prompted a former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics to say that " at kind of usage, plus the fact that they're changing one person's material, is certainly wrong and ought to be at a minimum the focus of some disciplinary action". *December 2005 – Wikipedia co-founder

was found to be editing his own Wikipedia article. According to public logs, he had made 18 edits to his biography, seven of which were alterations of information about whether

was a co-founder of Wikipedia. It was also revealed that Wales had edited the Wikipedia article of his former company,

Bomis Bomis ( to rhyme with "promise") was a dot-com company best known for supporting the creations of free-content online-encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. It was co-founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis. ...

. "Bomis Babes", a section of the Bomis website, had been characterized in the article as "soft-core pornography", but Wales revised this to "adult content section" and deleted mentions of pornography. He said he was fixing an error, and did not agree with calling Bomis Babes soft porn. Wales conceded that he had made the changes, but maintained that they were technical corrections.

2006

*February 1, 2006 – The

Henryk Batuta hoax The Henryk Batuta hoax was a hoax perpetrated on the Polish Wikipedia from November 2004 to February 2006, the main element of which was a biographical article about a nonexistent socialist revolutionary, Henryk Batuta. History The perpetrators o ...

was uncovered by editors on the

Polish Wikipedia The Polish Wikipedia ( pl, Polskojęzyczna Wikipedia) is the Polish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia. Founded on September 26, 2001, it now has more than articles, making it the -largest Wikipedia edition overall.

. Batuta, an entirely made-up person, was claimed to be a Polish Communist revolutionary who was an associate of

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

. The article was published for 15 months and referenced in seventeen other articles before the hoax was uncovered. The hoax article was written by a group of Polish Wikipedia editors calling themselves the "Batuta Army." One of the group's members, who called himself "Marek", told ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

'' that they had created the hoax article in order to draw attention to the ongoing use of the names of Soviet officials for streets and other public areas in Poland. Marek stated that "Many of these people were traitors and murderers who do not deserve such an honor". *March 2006 – Daniel Brandt found 142 instances of plagiarism on Wikipedia, arguing that the problem plagued the site. *Early to mid-2006 – A series of U.S. Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia were revealed in the press. These mostly involved various political aides trying to whitewash Wikipedia biographies of several politicians by removing undesirable information (including pejorative statements quoted, or broken campaign promises), adding favorable information or "glowing" tributes, or by replacing articles in part or whole by staff-authored biographies. The staff of at least five politicians were implicated:

Norm Coleman Norman Bertram Coleman Jr. (born August 17, 1949) is an American politician, attorney, and lobbyist. From 2003 to 2009, he served as a United States Senator for Minnesota. From 1994 to 2002, he was mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota. First elec ...

Conrad Burns Conrad Ray Burns (January 25, 1935 – April 28, 2016) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Montana and later was a lobbyist. He was only the second Republican popularly elected to represent Montana in the Sen ...

, Joe Biden and Gil Gutknecht. In a separate but similar incident the campaign manager for Cathy Cox, Morton Brilliant, resigned after being found to have added negative information to the Wikipedia entries of political opponents. *July 2006 – MyWikiBiz was founded by Gregory Kohs and his sister to provide paid editing services on Wikipedia. Although Kohs, after some research, concluded that there were no Wikipedia policies forbidding this activity, his Wikipedia account was blocked shortly after the August publication of a press release announcing the establishment of the business. The salient Wikipedia policies were soon edited to regulate the kinds of activities in which MyWikiBiz was engaging. Jimmy Wales defended this decision and the permanent exclusion of Kohs from Wikipedia, even as he acknowledged that surreptitious paid editing continually occurred, saying that " 's one thing to acknowledge there's always going to be a little of this, but another to say, 'Bring it on.'"

2007

*January 2007 **In January 2007, English-language Wikipedians in

Qatar Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it sh ...

were briefly blocked from editing by an administrator, following a spate of vandalism, since they did not realize that the entire country's internet traffic is routed through a single

. Both

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical. Goi ...

and

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally advertised itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories concerning science, technology, and politics that are submitted and eval ...

reported that Wikipedia had banned all of Qatar from the site, a claim that was promptly denied by co-founder

. **It was revealed that

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

had paid programmer Rick Jelliffe to edit Wikipedia articles about Microsoft products. In particular, Microsoft paid Jelliffe to edit, among others, the article on

Office Open XML Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a ZIP (file format), zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized th ...

. A spokesman for Microsoft explained that the company thought the articles in question had been heavily biased by editors at Microsoft rival IBM and that having a seemingly independent editor add the material would make it more acceptable to other Wikipedia editors. *February 2007 **On February 13, 2007, American professional golfer

Fuzzy Zoeller Frank Urban "Fuzzy" Zoeller Jr. (; born November 11, 1951) is an American professional golfer who has won ten PGA Tour events including two major championships. He is one of three golfers to have won the Masters Tournament in his first appeara ...

sued the

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at ...

foreign-credential evaluation firm of Josef Silny & Associates. The lawsuit alleged that defamatory statements had been edited into the Wikipedia article about Zoeller in December 2006 by someone using a computer at that firm."Golfer Zoeller sues law firm for Wikipedia posting" (February 22, 2007), MiamiHerald.com ** Barbara Bauer sued the

, which runs the Wikipedia website, claiming that information on Wikipedia critical of her abilities as a literary agent harmed her business. The

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

defended Wikipedia and the case was dismissed in July 2008. **

Taner Akçam Altuğ Taner Akçam (born 1953) is a Turkish-German historian and sociologist. During the 1990s, he was the first Turkish scholar to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, and has written several books on the genocide, such as ''A Shameful Act'' ( ...

, one of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and openly discuss the

Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through t ...

, was detained in Canada at the airport in Montreal for nearly four hours after arriving on a flight from the United States. Taner Akçam said that Canadian authorities referred to an inaccurate version of his biography on

from around December 24, 2006, which called him a terrorist. Essjay

*March 2007 – The

was sparked when ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' magazine issued a rare editorial correction saying that a prominent

editor and administrator known as " Essjay", whom they had interviewed and described in a July 2006 article as a "tenured professor of religion at a private university" who held a "Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law", was in fact a 24-year-old who held no advanced degrees. Essjay had invented a completely false identity for his pseudonymous participation in Wikipedia. In January 2007, however, Essjay became a

Wikia Fandom (formerly known as Wikicities before 2007 and later Wikia before 2019) is a wiki hosting service that hosts wikis mainly on entertainment topics (i.e. video games, TV series, movies, entertainers, etc.). Its domain is operated by Fandom, ...

employee and divulged his real name, Ryan Jordan; this was noticed by Daniel Brandt of Wikipedia Watch, who communicated Essjay's identity to ''The New Yorker''. Jordan held trusted volunteer positions within Wikipedia known as "administrator", "bureaucrat", "checkuser", " arbitrator", and "mediator". Responding to the controversy, Jimmy Wales stated that he viewed Essjay's made-up persona like a pseudonym and did not really have a problem with it: "Essjay has always been, and still is, a fantastic editor and trusted member of the community... He has been thoughtful and contrite about the entire matter, and I consider it settled." The incident caused wide-ranging debates in the Wikipedia community, and saw Wikipedia co-founder

challenge Wales: "Jimmy, to call yourself a tenured professor, when you aren't one, is not a 'pseudonym'. It's identity fraud. And the full question is not why you appointed Essjay to ArbCom, but: why did you ignore the obvious moral implications of the fact that he had fraudulently pretended to be a professor – ignoring those implications even to the point of giving him a job and appointing him to ArbCom – until now?" As a result of the controversy, Wales eventually invited Jordan to relinquish his responsibilities on Wikipedia, which he did; Jordan also quit his job at Wikia. BenoitInTheRing

*June 2007 – In June 2007, a statement regarding Nancy Benoit's death was added to the wrestler

Chris Benoit Christopher Michael Benoit (; May 21, 1967 – June 24, 2007) was a Canadian professional wrestler. He worked for various pro-wrestling promotions during his 22-year career including most notably the World Wrestling Federation/World Wrestlin ...

article fourteen hours before police discovered the bodies of Benoit and his family. This seemingly prescient addition was initially reported on

Wikinews Wikinews is a free-content news wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation that works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying, "On Wikinews, each story is to be ...

and later on

Fox News Channel The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is ...

. The article originally read: "Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW World Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy." The phrase "stemming from the death of his wife Nancy" was added at 12:01 a.m. EDT on June 25, whereas the Fayette County police reportedly discovered the bodies of the Benoit family at 2:30 p.m. EDT (14 hours, 29 minutes later). The

of the editor was traced to

Stamford, Connecticut Stamford () is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut, outside of Manhattan. It is Connecticut's second-most populous city, behind Bridgeport. With a population of 135,470, Stamford passed Hartford and New Haven in population as of the 202 ...

, which is also the location of WWE headquarters. After news of the early death notice reached mainstream media, the anonymous poster accessed Wikinews to explain his edit as a "huge coincidence and nothing more." *August 2007 – It became known that Virgil Griffith, a

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

computation and neural-systems graduate student, created a searchable database that linked changes made by anonymous Wikipedia editors to companies and organizations from which the changes were made. The database cross-referenced logs of Wikipedia edits with publicly available records pertaining to the internet

es edits were made from. Griffith was motivated by the edits from the United States Congress, and wanted to see if others were similarly promoting themselves. He was particularly interested in finding scandals, especially at large and controversial corporations. He said he wanted to, "create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what 'interesting organizations' (which I am neutral towards) are up to." He also wanted to give Wikipedia readers a tool to check edits for accuracy and allow the automation and indexing of edits. Most of the edits Wikiscanner found were minor or harmless, but the site was mined to detect the most controversial and embarrassing instances of conflict of interest edits. These instances received media coverage worldwide. Included among the accused were the

Vatican Vatican may refer to: Vatican City, the city-state ruled by the pope in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum The Holy See * The Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and sovereign entity recognized ...

, the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

, the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice ...

, the U.S. Democratic Party's Congressional Campaign Committee, the

U.S. Republican Party The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP ("Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. The GOP was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act ...

, Britain's Labour Party, Britain's

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

, the

Canadian government The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-in ...

Industry Canada Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED; french: Innovation, Sciences et Développement économique Canada; french: ISDE, label=none)''Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada'' is the applied title under the Federal ...

, the Department of Prime Minister, Cabinet, and Defence in Australia, the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

, the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and po ...

, the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-ter ...

, the U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale ...

, Montana Senator

, Ohio Governor

Bob Taft Robert Alphonso Taft III (born January 8, 1942) is an American politician and attorney, who served as the 67th governor of Ohio from 1999 to 2007 as a member of the Republican Party. A member of the Taft political dynasty, Taft served first in ...

, Prince Johan Friso and his wife Princess Mabel of the Netherlands, the

Israeli government The Cabinet of Israel (officially: he, ממשלת ישראל ''Memshelet Yisrael'') exercises executive authority in the State of Israel. It consists of ministers who are chosen and led by the prime minister. The composition of the governmen ...

Exxon Mobil ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 3 ...

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

AstraZeneca AstraZeneca plc () is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, England. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includi ...

, Diebold,

Dow Chemical The Dow Chemical Company, officially Dow Inc., is an American multinational chemical corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. The company is among the three largest chemical producers in the world. Dow manufactures plastics ...

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

Anheuser-Busch Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC is an American brewing company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Since 2008, it has been wholly owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV ( AB InBev), now the world's largest brewing company, which owns multiple ...

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Switzerland, Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other me ...

Pepsi Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by PepsiCo. Originally created and developed in 1893 by Caleb Bradham and introduced as Brad's Drink, it was renamed as Pepsi-Cola in 1898, and then shortened to Pepsi in 1961. History Pepsi wa ...

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and ...

Sony Computer Entertainment Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), formerly known as Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), is a multinational video game and digital entertainment company wholly owned by multinational conglomerate Sony. The SIE Group is made up of two legal co ...

, EA,

SCO Group The SCO Group (often referred to SCO and later called The TSG Group) was an American software company in existence from 2002 to 2012 that became known for owning Unix operating system assets that had belonged to the Santa Cruz Operation (the o ...

, MySpace,

Pfizer Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfize ...

Raytheon Raytheon Technologies Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It is one of the largest aerospace and defense manufacturers in the world by revenue and market capitali ...

DuPont DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

, Anglican and Catholic churches, the

Church of Scientology The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious ...

, the

World Harvest Church World Harvest Church is an nondenominational, evangelical megachurch pastored by Rod Parsley, based in Columbus, Ohio. History First started in 1977 in Rod Parsley's parents' backyard, the church consisted of 17 people. Two years later Parsley ...

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and s ...

, the

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Chan ...

Fox News The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is o ...

, CBS, ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'', the

National Rifle Association of America The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is a gun rights advocacy group based in the United States. Founded in 1871 to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA has become a prominent gun rights lobbying organization while conti ...

News International News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group) is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher of ...

Al Jazeera Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazee ...

, Bob Jones University, and

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pub ...

. Although the edits correlated with known IP addresses, there was no proof that the changes actually came from a member of the organization or employee of the company, only that someone had access to their network. Wikipedia spokespersons received WikiScanner positively, noting that it helped prevent conflicts of interest from influencing articles as well as increasing transparency and mitigating attempts to remove or distort relevant facts. In 2008 Griffith released an updated version of WikiScanner called WikiWatcher, which also exploited a common mistake made by users with registered accounts who accidentally forget to log in, revealing their IP address and subsequently their affiliations. As of March 2012, WikiScanner's website was online, but not functioning. *September 2007 ** Auren Hoffman was noted by ''

VentureBeat ''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. It publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos. History The ''VentureBeat'' company was founded in 2006 by Matt Marshall, ...

'' in 2007 as having edited his own Wikipedia profile under a pseudonym. Hoffman responded that he was editing his profile to remove inappropriate comments. **One thousand IPs were blocked in Utah in order to prevent further edits from a highly active user who had been banned from editing Wikipedia. *October 2007 – In their obituaries of recently deceased TV theme composer Ronnie Hazlehurst, many British media organizations reported that he had co-written the

S Club 7 S Club 7 were a British pop group from London, created by former Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller and consisting of members Bradley McIntosh, Hannah Spearritt, Jo O'Meara, Jon Lee, Paul Cattermole, Rachel Stevens and Tina Barrett. The gro ...

song "

Reach Reach or REACH may refer to: Companies and organizations * Reach plc, formerly Trinity Mirror, large British newspaper, magazine, and digital publisher * Reach Canada, an NGO in Canada * Reach Limited, an Asia Pacific cable network company ...

". In fact, he had not, and it was discovered that this information had been sourced from a hoax edit to Hazlehurst's Wikipedia article. *December 2007 – In December 2007, it became known that the Wikimedia Foundation had failed to do a basic background check and hired Carolyn Doran as its chief operating officer. Doran had criminal records in three states for theft, drunken driving and fleeing the scene of a car accident. According to ''

The Register ''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information tec ...

'', Doran left her position after yet another arrest for DUI; the Wikimedia Foundation lawyer,

Mike Godwin Michael Wayne Godwin (born October 26, 1956) is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and he created the Internet adage Godwin's law and the notion of an Internet meme, as ...

, was quoted as saying, "We've never had any documentation of any criminal record on Carolyn Doran's part at all. As far as I'm concerned, I have no direct knowledge of er criminal recordyet... We have, in our records, no evidence of any such thing." The

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. new ...

also reported that Doran had wounded her boyfriend "with a gunshot to the chest".

2008

*February 2008 – A group of

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

s started an online petition demanding that Wikipedia remove images of the prophet

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the mon ...

from Wikipedia articles about him since some followers of

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...

believe that such images violate the precepts of the religion. Protesters also organized an email campaign to pressure the English Wikipedia into removing the offending images. By February 7, approximately 100,000 people had signed the petition and the article had been protected from editing by non-registered users. Jay Walsh, Wikimedia Foundation spokesman, told ''

Information Week ''InformationWeek'' is a digital magazine which conducts corresponding face-to-face events, virtual events, and research. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California and was first published in 1985 by CMP Media, later called Informa. The p ...

'' that " Noncensorship is an important tenet of the user community and the editing community" and Mathias Schindler, of Wikimedia Deutschland, said in response to efforts to have the images removed from the German language Wikipedia that "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a venue for an inter-Muslim debate." *March 2008 **Wikipedia co-founder

used Wikipedia to end a relationship he was having with conservative political columnist, television commentator and university lecturer

Rachel Marsden Rachel Marsden (born December 2, 1974) is a Canadian conservative political columnist, television commentator and university lecturer, based in Paris. She is also the CEO of Rachel Marsden Associates, a PR and media consultancy firm. As of Mar ...

, by adding a single sentence to his own Wikipedia user page stating "I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden." This was interpreted as a wider Wikipedia controversy because of the suggestion (from released private chat logs purportedly between Marsden and Wales) that Wales had previously edited Marsden's biographical article on Wikipedia, at the request of Marsden (before they were romantically involved). **Jimmy Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied. Then-chairperson of the foundation

Florence Devouard Florence Jacqueline Sylvie Devouard, (; born 10 September 1968) is a French agricultural engineer who served as the chair of the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees between October 2006 and July 2008. Education Devouard holds an engineering d ...

and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past". **It was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense". *May 2008 – A long-running dispute between members of the

and Wikipedia editors reached Wikipedia's arbitration committee. The church members were accused of attempting to sway articles in the church's interests, while other editors were accused of the opposite. The arbitration committee unanimously voted to block all edits from the IP addresses associated with the church; several Scientology critics were banned too. *June 2008 **In 2007,

Jim Prentice Peter Eric James Prentice (July 20, 1956 – October 13, 2016) was a Canadian politician who served as the 16th premier of Alberta from 2014 to 2015. In the 2004 federal election he was elected to the House of Commons of Canada as a candida ...

, then member of the

Parliament of Canada The Parliament of Canada (french: Parlement du Canada) is the federal legislature of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and is composed of three parts: the King, the Senate, and the House of Commons. By constitutional convention, ...

for Calgary Centre-North and Minister of Industry, introduced copyright protection legislation, which was compared by many to the

DMCA The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...

. The legislation was controversial and Prentice withdrew it in December 2007. By June 2008 there was a great deal of speculation in the Canadian press that Prentice would eventually succeed

Stephen Harper Stephen Joseph Harper (born April 30, 1959) is a Canadian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015. Harper is the first and only prime minister to come from the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada, ...

Prime Minister of Canada The prime minister of Canada (french: premier ministre du Canada, link=no) is the head of government of Canada. Under the Westminster system, the prime minister governs with the confidence of a majority the elected House of Commons; as su ...

Michael Geist Michael Allen Geist (born July 11, 1968) is a Canadian academic, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa and a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. Geist was educated at the Univer ...

, professor of internet law at the

University of Ottawa The University of Ottawa (french: Université d'Ottawa), often referred to as uOttawa or U of O, is a bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on directly to the northeast of Downtown Ottaw ...

, discovered that a series of anonymous edits to Prentice's Wikipedia article had been made in late May and early June from an IP address owned by

, Prentice's ministry. The modifications removed critical mentions of Prentice's involvement with the copyright legislation and added generic positive claims about the minister. Geist announced on his blog his findings about the modifications, which one Canadian commentator called "hagiographic palaver extolling Prentice". **Australian press stated that American law firm

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP (known as Cadwalader) is a white-shoe law firm, and is New York City's oldest law firm and one of the oldest continuously operating legal practices in the United States. Attorney John Wells founded the practice i ...

had threatened the Wikimedia Foundation on behalf of then-

Telstra Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 2 ...

-CEO

Solomon Trujillo Solomon Dennis "Sol" Trujillo (born November 17, 1951) is an American businessman, global media-communications and technology executive. He has served as the CEO of Telstra, US West, and Orange S.A., and has held executive positions in United ...

. The letter allegedly contained: "If Wikipedia and Wikimedia do not remove the improper language by that time (7pm on March 7), and take the steps necessary to block its being reinserted, Mr (Trujillo) intends to commence litigation..." and reportedly demanded that the editor responsible for the defamatory material be blocked. Jimmy Wales denied that any such threat had been received, stating that "It is sad to see a media so irresponsible as to make it seem that Wikipedia would cave to a few lawyers letters objecting to legitimate criticism. It is even sadder to see Mr Trujillo attacked by that same irresponsible media for something he did not do." *August 2008 – Republican senator and then presidential candidate

John McCain John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two te ...

was accused of plagiarizing from Wikipedia some elements of a speech he gave about the Republic of Georgia. The

Congressional Quarterly Congressional Quarterly, Inc., or CQ, is part of a privately owned publishing company called CQ Roll Call that produces a number of publications reporting primarily on the United States Congress. CQ was acquired by the Economist Group and combined ...

found that McCain's speech contained two passages which were substantially identical to passages in the Wikipedia article on the country and that a third passage "bore striking resemblances." McCain's speech was written by speechwriters rather than by the candidate himself. After the Congressional Quarterly's report was released, McCain's aides released a statement that contained: "there are only so many ways to state basic historical facts and dates and that any similarities to Wikipedia were only coincidental". David Rohde 14 400x600

*November 2008 – ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' reporter David Rohde was kidnapped by the

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

while reporting in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...

. The ''Times'' feared that reporting of the matter would endanger Rohde's life, so they did not mention it in their pages. Statements about Rohde's kidnapping were edited into Wikipedia during the voluntary news blackout, however. Representatives of the ''Times'' called Jimmy Wales and asked him to suppress the information. He agreed to take care of it, but in order to avoid the scrutiny which attends his edits to Wikipedia, Wales asked an unnamed administrator on the site to delete the information instead. Wales told ''Times'' media reporter

Richard Pérez-Peña Richard Pérez-Peña (born May 26, 1963 in Santiago, Cuba) is a Cuban-American journalist who has been with '' The New York Times'' since 1992. He has covered topics relating to Albany, New Jersey, healthcare, the media, and higher education ...

, "We were really helped by the fact that it hadn't appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source. I would have had a really hard time with it if it had." ''

The Christian Science Monitor ''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...

'' reported that Wales's actions were the subject of much criticism from bloggers and journalists, who argued that information suppression undermined the credibility of Wikipedia. *December 2008 **In early December, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) added the Wikipedia page about the album ''

Virgin Killer ''Virgin Killer'' is the fourth studio album by the German rock band Scorpions. It was released in 1976 and was the band's first album to attract attention outside Europe. The title is described as being a reference to time as the killer of i ...

'' to its blacklist of online material potentially illegal in the United Kingdom because it contains an image of a naked prepubescent girl. The IWF's blacklist is voluntarily enforced by 95% of British internet service providers. The issue eventually left most British residents unable to edit any page on Wikipedia. The

(WMF) protested the blacklisting of the page even though, as the IWF stated at the time, "the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978", and, in an "unprecedented" move, the IWF agreed to remove the page from its blacklist. **Professor T. Mills Kelly conducted a class project on "Lying About the Past", which resulted in the Edward Owens hoax. A biography was created about "Edward Owens" who was claimed to be an oyster fisherman that became a pirate during the period of the

Long Depression The Long Depression was a worldwide price and economic recession, beginning in 1873 and running either through March 1879, or 1896, depending on the metrics used. It was most severe in Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing st ...

, targeting ships in the

Chesapeake Bay The Chesapeake Bay ( ) is the largest estuary in the United States. The Bay is located in the Mid-Atlantic region and is primarily separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Delmarva Peninsula (including the parts: the Eastern Shore of Maryland / ...

. It was revealed when media outlets began reporting the story as fact.

2009

*January 2009 – The Wikipedia articles for United States senators Robert Byrd and

Edward Kennedy Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic ...

were briefly changed to state, incorrectly, that they had died. *February 2009 – Scott Kildall and

Nathaniel Stern Nathaniel Stern (born 1977) is an American/South African interdisciplinary artist who works in a variety of media, including photography, interactive art, public art interventions, installation, video art, net.art and printmaking. He is curr ...

created ''Wikipedia Art'', a

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

piece as a live article on Wikipedia. It was deleted 15 hours later as a violation of Wikipedia rules. The

subsequently claimed that the domain name ''wikipediaart.org'' infringed on its trademark. The ensuing controversy was reported in the national press. ''Wikipedia Art'' has since been included in the Internet Pavilion of the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

for 2009. It also appeared in a revised form at the

Transmediale Transmediale, stylised as transmediale is an annual festival for art and digital culture in Berlin, usually held over five days at the end of January and the beginning of February. Transmediale takes the form of a conference (sometimes called ...

festival in Berlin in 2011. *March 2009 – Hours after the death of French composer

Maurice Jarre Maurice-Alexis Jarre (; 13 September 1924 – 28 March 2009) allmusic Biography/ref> was a French composer and conductor. Although he composed several concert works, Jarre is best known for his film scores, particularly for his collaborations wit ...

, someone added a phony quote to Jarre's Wikipedia article: "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear." The quote then appeared in obituaries of Jarre published in newspapers around the world. *May 2009 – Wikipedian David Boothroyd, a UK Labour Party member, created controversy in 2009, when

Wikipedia Review Wikipedia Review is an Internet forum and blog for the discussion of Wikimedia Foundation projects, in particular the content and conflicts of Wikipedia. Wikipedia Review is a Wikipedia watchdog website, scrutinizing Wikipedia and reporting o ...

contributor "Tarantino" discovered that he committed sockpuppeting, editing under the accounts "Dbiv", "Fys" and "Sam Blacketer", none of which acknowledged his real identity. Boothroyd regained Administrator status with the "Sam Blacketer" sockpuppet account in April 2007. Later in 2007, Boothroyd's Sam Blacketer account became part of the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. Under the Sam Blacketer account, Boothroyd edited many articles related to United Kingdom politics, including that of rival

leader

David Cameron David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...

. Boothroyd then resigned as an administrator and as an arbitrator. Rorschach blot 10

*June 2009 ** Chris Anderson, editor of ''

'', was accused by the '' Virginia Quarterly Review'' of plagiarizing material for his book '' Free: The Future of a Radical Price'' from Wikipedia. Anderson claimed that he had originally attributed the material properly but that due to disagreements with his publisher over formatting it had ended up in the published work without quotation marks. He took responsibility for the error, saying "That's my screw-up." Anderson announced that the attribution errors would be corrected in the online version of the book and in future publications. Anderson's book is not a defense of the notion of free information as exemplified by Wikipedia, but of the notion of zero-price digital works. However, due to confusion over the concept of ''free as in freedom'' versus ''free as in zero monetary cost'' (although both concepts apply to Wikipedia), the fact that he plagiarized material for it was seen by at least one commentator as "riddled with savage irony." **

James Heilman James M. Heilman (born ) is a Canadian emergency physician, Wikipedian, and advocate for the improvement of Wikipedia's health-related content. He encourages other clinicians to contribute to the online encyclopedia. With the Wikipedia user ...

, a Canadian doctor, uploaded to Wikipedia copies of all 10 inkblot images used in the

Rorschach test The Rorschach test is a projective psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a pe ...

, on the grounds that

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

to the images had expired. Heilman was widely criticized by psychologists who used the test as a diagnostic tool, because they were worried that patients with prior knowledge of the inkblots would be able to influence their diagnoses. In response to Heilman's posting of the images, a number of psychologists registered Wikipedia accounts to argue against their retention. Later that year two psychologists filed a complaint against Heilman with the

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...

medical licensing board, arguing that his uploading of the images constituted unprofessional behavior. *July 2009 – The

National Portrait Gallery in London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it ...

issued a cease and desist letter for alleged breach of copyright against a Wikipedia editor who downloaded more than 3,000 high-resolution images from the gallery's website to upload them to

Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons (or simply Commons) is a media repository of free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used across all of the Wikimedia projects in ...

. *November 2009 – Convicted German murderers Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber sued the

(WMF) in German courts, demanding that their names be removed from the English Wikipedia's article on their victim, Walter Sedlmayr. German laws force compliance with such requests for suppression. Alexander H. Stopp, the two men's lawyer, succeeded in forcing the German Wikipedia to remove their names.

responded on behalf of the WMF, stating that the organization "doesn't edit content at all, unless we get a court order from a court of competent jurisdiction. our German editors have chosen to remove the names of the murderers from their article on Walter Sedlmayr, we support them in that choice. The English-language editors have chosen to include the names of the killers, and we support them in that choice." *December 2009 – Actor Ron Livingston, star of the 1999 film ''

Office Space ''Office Space'' is a 1999 American black comedy film written and directed by Mike Judge. It satirizes the worklife of a typical 1990s software company, focusing on a handful of individuals weary of their jobs. It stars Ron Livingston, Jennife ...

'', filed a lawsuit in

Los Angeles County Superior Court The Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, is the California superior courts, California superior court with jurisdiction over Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, which includes the city of Los Angeles. It is the lar ...

against a

John Doe John Doe (male) and Jane Doe (female) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are ofte ...

who had repeatedly edited Livingston's Wikipedia article to include statements that Livingston was gay and in a relationship with a (possibly notional) man named Lee Dennison. The lawsuit also claimed that the John Doe defendant had set up phony Facebook profiles for Livingston and his putative partner. The suit named neither Wikipedia nor Facebook, but was evidently intended to give Livingston the power to subpoena identifying information from the two organizations about the anonymous defendant. The lawsuit was followed by a manifestation of the Streisand effect as Livingston was targeted with accusations of homophobia. Jay Walsh, then head of communication for the Wikimedia Foundation, said that "This is a serious issue. We take it quite seriously. We understand real people are reflected in these articles.... Articles about living people are tough articles to manage. Someone who is a fan or an enemy might try to attack or vandalize those articles. This isn't a new scenario for us to witness."

2010

Donauturm Vienna top from S on 2013-06-14

*April 2010 and before – One of the largest disputes in the German Wikipedia about a simple sentence was about the Donauturm in Vienna. While the observation tower shares some architectural aspects with the Fernsehturm Stuttgart, it was never planned for TV broadcasting purposes. The German Wikipedia went through an approximately 600,000-character discussion about the suitable title and category. Some (often Austrian) authors denied the description of Donauturm as a "TV tower", which was defended by others. The '' Spiegel'' coverage of the issue cited a participant with "On good days, Wikipedia is better than any TV soap". *April 2010 – Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger informed the FBI that a large amount of

child pornography Child pornography (also called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a ...

was available on

. Sanger told

: "I wasn't shocked that it was online, but I was shocked that it was on a Wikimedia Foundation site that purports to be a reference site." Co-founder Jimmy Wales responded by claiming that a strong statement from the

would be forthcoming. In the weeks following Sanger's letter, Wales responded by unilaterally deleting a number of images which he personally deemed to be pornographic. Wales's unilateral actions led to an outcry from the Wikipedian community, which in turn prompted Wales to voluntarily relinquish some of his user privileges. *July 2010 – Following the

football World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament has ...

, the

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' (French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

president

Sepp Blatter Joseph "Sepp" Blatter (born Josef Blatter; 10 March 1936) is a Swiss former football administrator who served as the eighth President of FIFA from 1998 to 2015. He has been banned from participating in FIFA activities since 2015 as a result o ...

was awarded the

Order of the Companions of O. R. Tambo The Order of the Companions of O. R. Tambo is a South African honour. It was instituted on 6 December 2002, and is granted by the President of South Africa to foreign citizens who have promoted South African interests and aspirations through co ...

for his contribution over the World Cup. The South African Government's webpage announcing the award referred to him as Joseph Sepp Bellend Blatter, the nickname having been taken from his vandalized Wikipedia article. "Bellend" is a

British slang British slang is English-language slang originating from and used in the United Kingdom and also used to a limited extent in Anglophone countries such as Ireland, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, especially by British expat ...

term for the tip of the penis. *August 2010 – After the

requested that Wikipedia remove the FBI seal from Wikipedia (on grounds that the high-resolution graphic could facilitate creation of fake FBI badges) Wikimedia Foundation lawyer

sent a letter to the Bureau, denying their request and contending that the FBI had misinterpreted the law. *September 2010 – Right-wing radio presenter

Rush Limbaugh Rush Hudson Limbaugh III ( ; January 12, 1951 – February 17, 2021) was an American conservative political commentator who was the host of '' The Rush Limbaugh Show'', which first aired in 1984 and was nationally syndicated on AM and FM r ...

broadcast a discussion of an upcoming hearing in the

United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida The United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida (in case citations, N.D. Fla.) is a federal court in the Eleventh Circuit (except for patent claims and claims against the U.S. government under the Tucker Act, which are app ...

courtroom of judge

Roger Vinson Clyde Roger Vinson (born February 19, 1940) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Until May 3, 2013, he was also a member of the United States Foreign Intelligence Survei ...

of the case ''

Florida et al v. United States Department of Health and Human Services ''National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius'', 567 U.S. 519 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court upheld Congress's power to enact most provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Car ...

'', one of the cases brought by U.S. states challenging the

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act The Affordable Care Act (ACA), formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and colloquially known as Obamacare, is a landmark U.S. federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by Pres ...

(Obamacare). Limbaugh told his audience that Vinson had previously killed three brown bears and mounted their heads over the door of his courtroom in order, according to Limbaugh, to "instill the fear of God into the accused." This, stated Limbaugh, "would not be good news" for supporters of Obamacare. However, the story was not only false, but had been edited into Vinson's Wikipedia article a scant few days before the broadcast. The bear-hunting information inserted into the Wikipedia article was sourced to a nonexistent story in the ''

Pensacola News Journal The '' Pensacola News Journal'' is a daily morning newspaper serving Escambia and Santa Rosa counties in Florida. It is Northwest Florida's most widely read daily. The ''News Journal'' is owned by Gannett, a national media holding company tha ...

''. A spokesman for Limbaugh told the ''New York Times'' that a researcher for Limbaugh's show had found the information on the ''News Journal'' website, but that newspaper's managing editor told the ''Times'' that no such information had ever been published there.

2011

*June 2011 **Potential candidate for U.S. Vice President

Sarah Palin Sarah Louise Palin (; Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator, author, and reality television personality who served as the ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the 2008 R ...

described

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

hero

Paul Revere Paul Revere (; December 21, 1734 O.S. (January 1, 1735 N.S.)May 10, 1818) was an American silversmith, engraver, early industrialist, Sons of Liberty member, and Patriot and Founding Father. He is best known for his midnight ride to a ...

as "he who warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells." This description, characterized by '' U.S. News & World Report'' (USN&WR) as "flummoxed ramblings", kicked off a battle over the contents of the English Wikipedia's article about Revere. Palin's remarks and various interpretations were added by Palin supporters to the Revere Wikipedia page and just as quickly removed by detractors, although at least one commentator opined that "in some cases people appeared to be attributing the claims to Ms. Palin in order to mock her." In the 10 days following Palin's remark, Revere's Wikipedia page received over a half million page views and led to extensive and inconclusive discussion on the article's talk page and in the national media about whether the episode had improved or harmed the article. Robert Schlesinger, writing in USN&WR, summarized the episode by saying that " used to be said of conservatism that it stood athwart history and yelled 'stop.' Increasingly it seems to stand beside reality while hitting the 'edit' button." **''

PR Week ''PRWeek'' is a trade magazine for the public relations industry. The original UK edition was the brainchild of the late Geoffrey Lace who at the time worked for Haymarket. After failing to interest Haymarket in his idea he left to launch it on ...

'' reported on a 'fixer', an unnamed London-based figure in the PR industry who offered his services to 'cleanse' Wikipedia articles for clients. Wikipedia entries this person was accused of changing included Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross, Von Essen Group chairman Andrew Davis, British property developer David Rowland, billionaire Saudi tycoon Maan Al-Sanea, and Edward Stanley, 19th Earl of Derby. According to ''PR Week'', 42 edits were made from the same IP address, most of them removing negative or controversial information, or adding positive information. *September 2011 – British writer and journalist

Johann Hari Johann Eduard Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a British-Swiss writer and journalist who has written for ''The Independent'' and ''The Huffington Post''. In 2011, Hari was suspended from ''The Independent'' and later resigned, after admitting to ...

admitted using Wikipedia to attack his opponents by editing the online encyclopedia's articles about them under a pseudonym. Using a sockpuppet, Hari engaged in a six-year trolling spree where he would repeatedly paint himself in a flattering light while also inserting fabrications in the entries for people he considered enemies, such as Francis Wheen, Nick Cohen,

Niall Ferguson Niall Campbell Ferguson FRSE (; born 18 April 1964)Biography
Niall Ferguson

, and Christina Odone, who he falsely said had been fired from her job at '' The Catholic Herald''. Odone also suspects Hari of having made anonymous edits calling her an antisemite. *November 2011 – After the

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

n government passed the Protection of State Information Bill, a law which criminalized certain forms of speech in that country, the Wikipedia article about the ruling

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...

(ANC) party was altered in protest. The protesters deleted phrases on the page which were critical of the ANC, presumably suggesting that they would be illegal under the new law. This was denied by ANC spokesman Keith Khoza, who stated that the edits were "conduct... not consistent with a civilised society."

2012

*January 2012 **British MP Tom Watson discovered that

Portland Communications Portland Communications is a political consultancy and public relations agency set up in 2001 by Tim Allan, a former adviser to Tony Blair and Director of Communications at BSkyB. In 2012 a majority stake in Portland was purchased by Omnicom. ...

had been removing the nickname of one of its clients' products ("Wife Beater", referring to

Anheuser-Busch InBev Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, commonly known as AB InBev, is an American-Belgian multinational drink and brewing company based in Leuven, Belgium. AB InBev has a global functional management office in New York City, and regional headquarters ...

Stella Artois Stella Artois ( ) is a pilsner beer, first brewed in 1926 by Brouwerij Artois in Leuven, Belgium. In its original form, the beer is 5.2 per cent ABV, the country's standard for pilsners. The beer is also sold in other countries like the UK, Ir ...

beer) from Wikipedia. Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) CEO Jane Wilson noted, "Stella Artois is on the 'wife-beater' page because it is a nick-name in common currency for that brand of strong continental lager. The brand managers who want to change this have a wider reputational issue to address, editing the term from a Wikipedia page will not get rid of this association." Other edits from Portland's offices included changes to articles about another Portland client, the

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

BTA Bank BTA Bank ( kk, БТА; БТА Банкі; BTA Banki) (''BTA Bank Joint-Stock Company'' in full) is a Kazakhstan bank with headquarters in Almaty. it was the third largest lender by assets. In 2009, BTA Bank was subject of one of the world's bi ...

, and its former head

Mukhtar Ablyazov Mukhtar Qabyluly Ablyazov ( kk, Мұхтар Қабылұлы Әблязов, ''Muhtar Qabyluly Ábliazov''; born 16 May 1963) is a Kazakh businessman and political activist who served as chairman of Bank Turan Alem (BTA Bank), and is a co-fou ...

. Portland did not deny making the changes, arguing they had been done transparently and in accordance with Wikipedia's policies. Portland Communications welcomed CIPR's subsequent announcement of a collaboration with Wikipedia and invited Jimmy Wales to speak to their company, as he did at

Bell Pottinger Bell Pottinger Private (legally BPP Communications Ltd.) was a British multinational public relations, reputation management and marketing company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. On 12 September 2017 it went into administration (bankr ...

. Tom Watson was optimistic about the collaboration: "PR professionals need clear guidelines in this new world of online-information-sharing. That's why I am delighted that interested parties are coming together to establish a clear code of conduct." **During the 2008 U.S. presidential race, changes made by both

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

's and

's campaigns to their Wikipedia pages made the news. *February 2012 – American labor historian Timothy Messer-Kruse, an expert on the

Haymarket affair The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square i ...

, published an article in the ''

Chronicle of Higher Education ''The Chronicle of Higher Education'' is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals (staff members and administrators). A subscription is required to r ...

'' describing his three-year struggle to edit the Wikipedia article on the subject. Messer-Kruse had discovered new primary sources which, in his professional opinion, cast doubt on the conventional view of the incident. In 2009, when he first tried to edit the article to include the new information, he was told by other editors that primary sources were not acceptable and that he would have to find published secondary sources. As he later said on

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

, "So I actually bided my time. I knew that my own published book would be coming out in 2011." When his book was published and he returned to insert his newly discovered material into the article, he was told that it was a minority view and could not be given "undue weight", even though he had proved in his book that the majority view was incorrect regarding major details of the case. Steven Walling of the

told a NPR reporter that all of Wikipedia's rules had been followed, stating that "We do not rely on what exact, individual people say, just based on their own credibility." National security scholars

Benjamin Wittes Benjamin Wittes (born November 5, 1969) is an American legal journalist and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he is the Research Director in Public Law, and Co-Director of the Harvard Law School–Brookings ...

and Stephanie Leutert have used Messer-Kruse's experiences to illuminate the "broad question" of "whether Wikipedia's policies are encouraging an undue conservatism about sourcing." *March 2012 – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism uncovered that UK MPs or their staff had made almost 10,000 edits to the encyclopedia, and that the Wikipedia articles of almost one in six MPs had been edited from within Parliament. Many of the changes dealt with removing unflattering details from Wikipedia during the 2009 expenses scandal, as well as other controversial issues. British politician Joan Ryan admitted to changing her entry "whenever there's misleading or untruthful information hat hasbeen placed on it."

Clare Short Clare Short (born 15 February 1946) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for International Development under Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1997 to 2003. Short was the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Ladywood from 1983 ...

said her staff were "angry and protective" over mistakes and criticisms in her Wikipedia article and acknowledged they might have made changes to it. Labour MP Fabian Hamilton also reported having one of his assistants edit a page to make it more accurate in his view. MP Philip Davies denied making changes about removing controversial comments related to Muslims from 2006 and 2007. William and Kate wedding

*July 2012 ** Attempts to delete an entry about the wedding dress of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge led to a controversy on the English Wikipedia.

used the example to illustrate his notion about a "gender gap" in Wikipedia on the

Wikimania Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, f ...

2012. The issue received press coverage. ** Wikimedia UK chairperson and administrator of the English Wikipedia

Ashley van Haeften Wikimedia UK (WMUK) is a registered charity established to support volunteers in the United Kingdom who work on Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia. As such, it is a Wikimedia chapter approved by the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and host ...

was banned from the

for 6 months for sockpuppeting and other violations of Wikipedia's norms and policies. He was only the ninth Wikipedia sysop to be banned. Wikimedia UK's board fully supported van Haeften following the case, until van Haeften resigned as chair in August. *September 2012 **Author

Philip Roth Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophicall ...

published an

open letter An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally. Open letters usually take the form of a letter addressed to an indiv ...

to Wikipedia, describing conflicts he experienced with the Wikipedia community while attempting to modify the Wikipedia article about his novel '' The Human Stain'': although the character Coleman Silk had been inspired by the case of

Melvin Tumin Melvin Marvin Tumin (February 10, 1919 – March 3, 1994) was an American sociologist who specialized in race relations. He taught at Princeton University for much of his career. Early life Tumin was born and grew up in Newark, New Jersey. His ...

, many literary critics had drawn parallels between Silk and the life of

Anatole Broyard Anatole Paul Broyard (July 16, 1920 – October 11, 1990) was an American writer, literary critic, and editor who wrote for ''The New York Times''. In addition to his many reviews and columns, he published short stories, essays, and two books dur ...

, and Roth sought to remove statements that Broyard had been suggested as an inspiration; however, Roth's edits had been reverted on the grounds that direct statements from the author were a

primary source In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under ...

, not a

secondary Secondary may refer to: Science and nature * Secondary emission, of particles ** Secondary electrons, electrons generated as ionization products * The secondary winding, or the electrical or electronic circuit connected to the secondary winding i ...

. Wikipedia administrator and community liaison Oliver Keyes subsequently wrote a blog post criticizing both Roth and his approach, and pointed out that even prior to Roth's attempts to modify the article, it had ''already'' cited a published interview in which Roth stated that the inspiration for Coleman Silk had been Tumin rather than Broyard. Keyes also pointed out that the edits had been made via an anonymous

, with no evidence provided to support the claim that Roth was actually involved. ** The Gibraltarpedia project, where editors created articles about Gibraltar, came under scrutiny due to concerns about Roger Bamkin, a Wikimedia UK board member who was head of the project, having a professional relationship with the government of Gibraltar in connection with Gibraltarpedia. Of primary concern was that the site's main page "Did You Know" section was allegedly being used for the promotional purposes of Bamkin's clients. Bamkin, under pressure, resigned from the board. *October 2012 – Asian soccer's governing body was forced to apologize to the

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (Middle East, The Middle East). It is ...

soccer team for referring to them as the "Sand Monkeys"; the spurious nickname had been taken from a vandalized Wikipedia article."Asian soccer body blames Wikipedia for slur of UAE team"
''

'', July 31, 2006. *November 2012 –

Lord Justice Leveson Sir Brian Henry Leveson (; born 22 June 1949) is a retired English judge who served as the President of the Queen's Bench Division and Head of Criminal Justice. Leveson chaired the public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the ...

wrote in his report on British press standards, "''The Independent'' was founded in 1986 by the journalists Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Brett Straub..." He had used the Wikipedia article for ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

'' newspaper as his source, but an act of vandalism had replaced Matthew Symonds (a genuine co-founder) with Brett Straub (an unknown character). ''The Economist'' said of the Leveson report, "Parts of it are a scissors-and-paste job culled from Wikipedia." Cherie Blair with Jimmy Wales and cake Allan Warren

Cherie Blair with Jimmy Wales and cake Allan Warren

*December 2012 – A discussion took place on the Wikipedia user talk page of Jimmy Wales about his connection with the Republic of Kazakhstan WikiBilim organization and the repressive government of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Wales unilaterally shut down the conversation when other Wikipedia editors questioned him about his friendship with

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of t ...

, whose company provides paid consultancy services to the Kazakh government. Wales stated that the line of questioning was "just totally weird and irrelevant" and told Andreas Kolbe, a moderator at Wikipediocracy who edits Wikipedia under the username "Jayen466": "please stay off my talk page."

2013

*January 2013 **The discovery of a hoax article on the "Bicholim conflict" caused widespread press coverage. The article, a meticulously crafted but completely made-up description of a fictitious war in Indian Goa, had been listed as a "

good article __NOTOC__ Click any of the topics above for a list of good articles on that topic. Good Articles ...

" – a quality award given to fewer than 1 percent of all articles on the English Wikipedia – for more than five years. **Wikipedia editors engaged in a protracted conflict for nearly two months concerning whether to capitalize the "I" in the title of the Wikipedia article on the film ''

Star Trek Into Darkness ''Star Trek Into Darkness'' is a 2013 American science fiction action film directed by J. J. Abrams and written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof. It is the 12th installment in the ''Star Trek'' franchise and the sequel to t ...

'', with some arguing that the title should be written as ''Star Trek into Darkness''. The styling conflict, which spanned over 40,000 words on the article's talk page, mostly centered around the fact that there was no colon in the title, as there had been in every previous ''Star Trek'' film, throwing into relief the question of whether "Into Darkness" was a subtitle. The conflict received coverage in various media outlets who noted the conflict's pedantry and meaninglessness, with cartoonist

Randall Munroe Randall Patrick Munroe (born October 17, 1984) is an American cartoonist, author, and engineer best known as the creator of the webcomic ''xkcd''. Munroe has worked full-time on the comic since late 2006. In addition to publishing a book of th ...

in particular writing a comic strip on ''

xkcd ''xkcd'', sometimes styled ''XKCD'', is a webcomic created in 2005 by American author Randall Munroe. The comic's tagline describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". Munroe states on the comic's website that the name ...

'' in which an editor resolves the conflict by writing the title as ''StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNeSs''. The conflict was eventually resolved in favor of capitalizing the "I", reflecting the consensus of primary and secondary sources. *February 2013 – Prison company GEO Group received media coverage when a Wikipedia editor using the name "Abraham Cohen" (who was, at the time, also GEO Group's Manager of Corporate Relations) edited the company's entry to remove information on its past controversies, following the announcement that it had obtained

naming rights Naming rights are a financial transaction and form of advertising or memorialization whereby a corporation, person, or other entity purchases the right to name a facility, object, location, program, or event, typically for a defined period of ...

Florida Atlantic University Florida Atlantic University (Florida Atlantic or FAU) is a public research university with its main campus in Boca Raton, Florida, and satellite campuses in Dania Beach, Davie, Fort Lauderdale, Jupiter, and Fort Pierce. FAU belongs to the 12-c ...

's new stadium. *March 2013 – Controversy arose in March 2013 after it emerged that large segments of the BP article had originated from a corporate employee who was a Wikipedia editor.Violet Blue
"Big Oil's Wikipedia cleanup: A brand management experiment out of control"
ZDNet, March 27, 2013. Retrieved March 28, 2013 *April 2013 **The French-language Wikipedia article '' Station hertzienne militaire de Pierre-sur-Haute'', about a military radio station, attracted attention from the French interior intelligence agency DCRI. The agency attempted to have the article about the facility removed from the French-language Wikipedia. After a request for deletion in March 2013, the

had asked the DCRI which parts of the article were causing a problem, noting that the article closely reflected information in a 2004 documentary made by ''Télévision Loire 7'', a French local television station, which is freely available online and had been made with the cooperation of the French Air Force. The DCRI refused to give these details, and repeated its demand for deletion of the article. The DCRI then pressured Rémi Mathis, a volunteer

administrator Administrator or admin may refer to: Job roles Computing and internet * Database administrator, a person who is responsible for the environmental aspects of a database * Forum administrator, one who oversees discussions on an Internet forum * N ...

of the French-language Wikipedia, and president of Wikimedia France, into deleting the article by threatening him with arrest. Later, the article was restored by another Wikipedia contributor living in Switzerland. As a result of the controversy, the article temporarily became the most read page on the French Wikipedia, with more than 120,000 page views during the weekend of April 6/7, 2013. For his role in the controversy, Mathis was named ''Wikipedian of the Year'' by

2013. **It was confirmed by a spokesperson for the

Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as ''Roskomnadzor'' (RKN) (russian: Роскомнадзор �КН, is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, co ...

that Wikipedia had been blacklisted over the Russian Wikipedia's article about cannabis smoking. Being placed on the blacklist gives the operator 24 hours to remove the offending material. If the website owner refuses to remove the material then either the website host or the network operator will be required to block access to the site in Russia. The ''New York Times'' had reported in March that Russia had begun to "selectively" block internet content that the government considered either illegal under Russian law or otherwise harmful to children. **'' The Sun'' alleged that Labour Party MP

Chuka Umunna Chuka Harrison Umunna (; born 17 October 1978) is a British retired politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Streatham from 2010 until 2019. A former member of the Labour Party, he was part of the Shadow Cabinet from 2011 to ...

, in 2007 before his election, used the Wikipedia username "Socialdemocrat", to create and repeatedly edit his own Wikipedia page. Umunna told ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' that he did not alter his own Wikipedia page, but the paper quoted what they called "sources close to Umunna" as having told the newspaper that "it was possible that one of his campaign team in 2007, when he was trying to be selected to be Labour's candidate for Streatham in the 2010 general election, set up the page." On April 11, 2013, the ''

Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

'' alleged that an edit in January 2008 was made on a computer at the law firm at which he then worked. Umunna said that he had "no recollection" of doing so. **An edit war on the Wikipedia article of Canadian politician and leader of the

New Democratic Party The New Democratic Party (NDP; french: Nouveau Parti démocratique, NPD) is a federal political party in Canada. Widely described as social democratic,The party is widely described as social democratic: * * * * * * * * * * * * ...

(NDP) in

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, for ...

Adrian Dix Adrian Dix (born April 20, 1964) is a Canadian politician serving as the current Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Vancouver-Kingsway in British Columbia. In addition to serving as the current Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) f ...

, was widely reported in the Canadian press. Dix, while employed by

Glen Clark Glen David Clark (born November 22, 1957) is a Canadian business executive and former politician who served as the 31st premier of British Columbia from 1996 to 1999. Early life and education Clark attended independent Roman Catholic schools, n ...

, then premier of British Columbia, had falsified a memo related to a scandal involving casinos in which Clark was implicated, leading to Dix being fired from his post. The Wikipedia editor who led the effort to keep mention of the incident out of Dix's article was identified by ''

Global News Global News is the news and current affairs division of the Canadian Global Television Network. The network is owned by Corus Entertainment, which oversees all of the network's national news programming as well as local news on its 21 owned-an ...

'' and the ''

Vancouver Sun The ''Vancouver Sun'', also known as the ''Sun'', is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. Published s ...

'' as Mike Cleven, who edits Wikipedia under the username Skookum1. Cleven denied that he was associated with the NDP, stating that "I am the editor who's spent the most energy on keeping the people pushing an inflammatory and undue-weight account of this. Whitewashing the article to prevent mention of this is not the aim here, it is to prevent articles being used for defamatory purposes... the BC Liberals have pulled this kind of crap on Wikipedia before; they can say it's not them, sure uh-huh, but the agenda of those claiming NOT to be them is too much like theirs to be worth explaining further." ** Amanda Filipacchi portrait

Amanda Filipacchi Amanda Filipacchi (; born October 10, 1967) is an American novelist. She was born in Paris and educated in both in France and in the U.S. She is the author of four novels, '' Nude Men'' (1993), ''Vapor'' (1999), '' Love Creeps'' (2005), and '' T ...

wrote an op-ed for ''The New York Times'' on April 24, 2013, titled "Wikipedia's Sexism Toward Female Novelists", in which she noted that "editors have begun the process of moving women, one by one, alphabetically, from the 'American Novelists' category to the 'American Women Novelists' subcategory." She suggested the reason for the move might be to create a male-only list of 'American Novelists' on Wikipedia. The story was picked up by many other newspapers and websites and

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

s said in response that they were disappointed and shocked by the action. Wikipedia editors initiated various responses soon after Filipacchi's article appeared, including the creation of a category for 'American men novelists' along with an immediate proposal to merge both categories back into the original 'American novelists' category. The 'American men novelists' category was criticized because the two categories together would have the effect of emptying the 'American novelists' category. When the 'American men novelists' category was first created, its only entries were

Orson Scott Card Orson Scott Card (born August 24, 1951) is an American writer known best for his science fiction works. He is the first and (as of 2022) only person to win both a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years, winning both awards for both ...

and P. D. Cacek (who is female). A few days after the op-ed, Filipacchi wrote in the ''New York Times Sunday Review'' about the reaction to it, which included edits to the Wikipedia article about her that she suggested were retaliatory. In an article in ''The Atlantic'' responding to accounts that the edits she had initially complained of were the work of one rogue editor, Filipacchi detailed edit histories identifying seven other editors who had individually or collectively performed the same actions. Andrew Leonard, reporting for '' Salon.com'', found that Filipacchi's articles were followed by what he called "revenge editing" on her article and articles related to her, including that of her father,

Daniel Filipacchi Daniel Filipacchi (born 12 January 1928) is the Chairman Emeritus of Hachette Filipacchi Médias and a French collector of surrealist art. Career Filipacchi wrote and worked as a photographer for ''Paris Match'' from its founding in 1949 by ...

. Leonard quoted extensively from talk page comments of Wikipedia editor Qworty, who, e.g., wrote on the talk page of Filipacchi's article: "Oh, by all means, let's be intimidated by the Holy New York Times. Because when the New York Times tells you to shut up, ''you have to shut up.'' Because that's the way 'freedom' works, and the NYT is all about promoting freedom all over the world, which is why they employed Judith Miller." Andrew Leonard poses in front of his own Wikipedia article

Andrew Leonard poses in front of his own Wikipedia article

*May 2013 –

Andrew Leonard Andrew Leonard (born 1962) is an American journalist who writes feature articles for ''San Francisco'' and contributes to Medium. From 1995 to 2014 he wrote for '' Salon.com''. He has also written for ''Wired''. Career Leonard is credited with co ...

, writing in salon.com, revealed Wikipedia editor Qworty's

real life Real life is a phrase used originally in literature to distinguish between the real world and fictional, virtual or idealized worlds, and in acting to distinguish between actors and the characters they portray. It has become a popular term on the ...

identity to be Robert Clark Young, a novelist and writer. Qworty first drew attention to himself through his "revenge editing" on the Wikipedia article of novelist and Wikipedia critic

. Young routinely made negative revisions to the pages of authors with whom he disagreed. Leonard was aided in his investigation by members of Wikipedia criticism site Wikipediocracy. According to ''

Washington Monthly ''Washington Monthly'' is a bimonthly, nonprofit magazine of United States politics and government that is based in Washington, D.C. The magazine is known for its annual ranking of American colleges and universities, which serves as an alternat ...

'' columnist Kathleen Geier, "The Qworty case reveals the Achilles' heel of the Wikipedia project. Anyone possessing enough time and resources, and who is obsessed enough, can post information on the site that is false, misleading, or extremely biased." Shortly after the publication of Leonard's article Qworty/Young was indefinitely blocked from editing Wikipedia and a sockpuppet investigation was opened in order to determine the extent of Young's editing with multiple accounts. Sockpuppet investigation on Qworty. Writing about the episode on his talk page, Wikipedia co-founder

quoted Leonard's original article: "For those of us who love Wikipedia, the ramifications of the Qworty saga are not comforting." and went on to write that "That sums it up for me. More thoughts soon. I would have banned him outright years ago. So would many others. That we did not, points to serious deficiencies in our systems." Leonard's continued investigations into Young's editing revealed a years-long crusade against articles about topics and people related to

modern Paganism Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a term for a religion or family of religions influenced by the various historical pre-Christian beliefs of pre-modern peoples in Europe and adjacent areas of North Afric ...

. Leonard reported that one of the pagans whose article Young had nominated for deletion in 2012 nominated Young's article, in an act of revenge, for deletion after Young's revenge editing came to light. However, the pagan editor told Leonard "that he was unlikely to be successful in getting Young's page deleted, because ''Salon's'' series of articles on the Qworty affair had enshrined the entire saga as a notable moment in Wikipedia history." The Robert Clark Young article was, however, deleted in January 2017. *June 2013 –

, co-founder of Wikipedia, asked other editors to post their suspicions about

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...

's activities on Wikipedia to Wales' talk page, arguably violating Wikipedia's strict "outing" policy. No evidence of Snowden's editing was uncovered. *August 2013 – On August 22, 2013, Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning announced her intention to transition. Shortly thereafter, Manning's Wikipedia page was moved from "Bradley Manning" to "Chelsea Manning", and the page was rewritten to reflect Manning's female name and gender "with remarkably little controversy" at first. Within a day, however, a long move request had begun which found no consensus for the move, resulting in the page being returned to "Bradley Manning" until a second long move request in October found consensus that it should indeed be "Chelsea Manning". The same month (October), Wikipedia's

Arbitration Committee On Wikimedia Foundation projects, an Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is a binding dispute resolution panel of editors. Each of Wikimedia's projects are editorially autonomous and independent, and some of them have established their own ArbComs w ...

heard a case about the disputes about the article, which resulted in several editors being topic-banned from editing transgender-related pages for either making transphobic remarks or accusing others of making such remarks. This led

Trans Media Watch Trans Media Watch (TMW) is a British charity founded in 2009 to improve media coverage of transgender and intersex issues. By improving media coverage, TMW strives to "foster social acceptance and civil recognition for trans persons", and to pr ...

to criticize the committee for implying that accusations of transphobia were as bad as actual transphobia. *September 2013 **Lawyer Susan L. Burke who had represented Iraqi civilians against the private military company Blackwater Inc. (now known as Academi) sued to discover the identity of two Wikipedia editors who allegedly inserted misleading information into the Wikipedia article about her and who she alleged were associates of Blackwater Inc. **Croatian newspapers reported that the

Croatian Wikipedia The Croatian Wikipedia ( hr, Wikipedija na hrvatskome jeziku) is the Croatian version of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, started on February 16, 2003. This version has articles and a total of edits have been made (live count). It has regis ...

had been taken over by a clique of fascists who were rewriting Croatian history and promoting anti-gay sentiment. The Croatian Minister of Education, Science, and Sport, Željko Jovanović, made a public statement saying that the country's students should not rely on the Croatian Wikipedia: " have to point out that much of the content in the Croatian version of Wikipedia is not only misleading but also clearly falsified." In an interview with Croatian news agency HINA, Snježana Koren, a historian at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, judged the disputed articles "biased and malicious, partly even illiterate", adding that "These are the types of articles you can find on the pages of fringe organizations and movements" and expressing doubts on the ability of its authors to distinguish good from evil. *October 2013 **Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director

Sue Gardner Sue Gardner (born May 11, 1967) is a Canadian journalist, not-for-profit executive and business executive. She was the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation from December 2007 until May 2014, and before that was the director of the C ...

expressed concerns that too much money from Wikipedia donations was flowing to the various Wikimedia chapters around the world, funding bureaucracy rather than benefiting the encyclopedia. She also expressed concerns that Wikimedia's Funds Dissemination Committee process, being "dominated by fund-seekers, does not as currently constructed offer sufficient protection against log-rolling, self-dealing, and other corrupt practices." **

Rand Paul Randal Howard Paul (born January 7, 1963) is an American physician and politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, junior United States Senate, U.S. senator from Kentucky since 2011. A member of the Republican Party (Un ...

was accused of quoting Wikipedia in some of his speeches. Specifically, Jeremy Peters of ''

'' accused Paul of plagiarizing the Wikipedia article on the sci-fi film '' Gattaca'' when Paul was giving a speech about

eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...

. The ''Gattaca'' article was semi-protected soon after for a period of a week. **An investigation by Wikipedians found that the Wiki-PR company had operated "an army" of sockpuppet accounts to edit Wikipedia on behalf of paying clients. The company's website claimed that its "staff of 45 Wikipedia editors and admins helps you build a page that stands up to the scrutiny of Wikipedia's community rules and guidelines." The company's Twitter profile stated: "We write it. We manage it. You never worry about Wikipedia again." The Wikimedia Foundation subsequently sent Wiki-PR a cease-and-desist letter. After a Wikipedia sockpuppet investigation related to the company, more than 250 Wikipedia user accounts were blocked or banned. **Australian Environment Minister

Greg Hunt Gregory Andrew Hunt (born 18 November 1965) is a former Australian politician who was the Minister for Health between January 2017 and May 2022. He was a Liberal Party member of the House of Representatives between November 2001 and 2022, rep ...

made headlines in Australian media in an interview with the

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the British Government through the Foreign Secretary's office. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception a ...

stating that he had "looked up what Wikipedia says about bushfires" and read there that bushfires were frequent events that had occurred in hotter months prior to European settlement. At the same time, meteorologists funded by the federal government, other scientists and politicians expressed concerns that increasingly extreme fire and flood events are linked to scientifically accepted climate change. According to the ''Sydney Morning Herald'', Wikipedia's article about Hunt was edited to state that he uses Wikipedia for important policy research, and editing of the article was then disabled for new or unregistered users due to vandalism.

2014

*January 2014 **The Wikimedia Foundation announced that Program Evaluation Coordinator Sarah Stierch was "no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation", after evidence was presented on a Wikimedia mailing list that she had been editing Wikipedia on behalf of paying clients, a practice the Wikimedia Foundation said was "frowned upon by many in the editing community and by the Wikimedia Foundation". **The Wikipedia page about

North Carolina North Carolina () is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 28th largest and List of states and territories of the United ...

state senator Jim Davis was edited to state, incorrectly, that he had died of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

. ** There was concern that the Wikipedia article on the

Hillsborough disaster The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal human crush during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in ...

had been vandalized with offensive comments posted from computers within various UK government departments. *July 2014 **''

'' reported that IP addresses belonging to the

Russian government The Government of Russia exercises executive power in the Russian Federation. The members of the government are the prime minister, the deputy prime ministers, and the federal ministers. It has its legal basis in the Constitution of the Russ ...

had edited articles relating to Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 to remove claims that it helped provide the missile system used to shoot down the aircraft. Among the pages edited was the Russian Wikipedia's article listing of civil aviation incidents, to claim that "the plane light MH17was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers". **''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' reported on a controversial article-writing program called Lsjbot that has created millions of articles on Swedish Wikipedia and several other language editions. ** The 5-year-old ''Amelia Bedelia Cameroon'' "accidental hoax" about Amelia Bedelia, main character of its eponymous popular children's book series, was revealed by journalist EJ Dickson. Dickson, who authored the fabricated statements with a friend when they were "stoned", only rediscovered the hoax after it had been propagated tens of times by blogs, journalists, academics, as well as Amelia Bedelia's current author, causing debate about Wikipedia, the usage made of it, as well as responsibility regarding online sources in general. After the hoax was identified, the

which had been used to insert it was banned from Wikipedia. *August 2014 – Photographer David Slater sent a copyright takedown notice to the

over a photograph of a Celebes crested macaque taken on one of his cameras, which at the time was being operated by the macaque, resulting in a "

monkey selfie Between 2011 and 2018, a series of disputes took place about the copyright status of selfies taken by Celebes crested macaques using equipment belonging to the British nature photographer David Slater. The disputes involved Wikimedia Commons an ...

". The Wikimedia Foundation dismissed the claims, asserting that the photograph, having been taken by a non-human animal, rather than Slater, is in the public domain per United States law. Subsequently, a court in San Francisco ruled copyright protection could not be applied to the monkey and a University of Michigan law professor said "the original monkey selfie is in the public domain."

2015

* January 2015 – ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' reported that the

had banned five editors deemed to be breaking the site's rules from gender-related articles amid the

Gamergate controversy Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized online misogyny, misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "# ...

. This gathered a response from outlets such as ''

Gawker ''Gawker'' is an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers and based in New York City focusing on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded ...

'', ''

Inquisitr Inquisitr, a website started in 2007 for news and entertainment stories, was relaunched in May 2011. It is owned and operated by Inquisitr Ltd. History The web domain for Inquisitr was registered in Iceland on August 6, 2007. The company was fo ...

'', '' Think Progress'', '' The Mary Sue'', ''

de Volkskrant ''de Volkskrant'' (; ''The People's Paper'') is a Dutch daily morning newspaper. Founded in 1919, it has a nationwide circulation of about 250,000. Formerly a leading centre-left Catholic broadsheet, ''de Volkskrant'' today is a medium-sized c ...

'', and '' Wired Germany''. The accuracy of these reactions was promptly addressed by the committee, which had not yet released its final decision. The Wikimedia Foundation also released a statement on its blog. On January 28, the Arbitration Committee issued a final ruling in the GamerGate case, in which one longtime editor was banned from the site and other editors were prohibited from editing articles related to Gamergate or gender. * February 2015 – Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee banned Wikipedia administrator Wifione after accusations that they had for years manipulated the Wikipedia article on the Indian Institute of Planning and Management, an unaccredited business school. The Wikipedia page was used as a marketing tool by the school. Indian journalist Maheswhar Peri said, "In my opinion, by letting this go on for so long, Wikipedia has messed up perhaps 15,000 students' lives." * June 2015 – Wikipedia administrator Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry, who in real life is Richard Symonds, a Liberal Democrat, was stripped of his advanced permissions on English Wikipedia after the site's

found that he improperly blocked an account and attributed its edits to then

Chairman of the Conservative Party The chairman of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom is responsible for party administration and overseeing the Conservative Campaign Headquarters, formerly Conservative Central Office. When the Conservatives are in government, the off ...

Grant Shapps Grant Shapps (born 14 September 1968) is a British politician who is serving as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy since October 2022. He previously served as Secretary of State for Transport in the Johnson governm ...

. The committee stated the account in question could not be connected to "any specific individual." * September 2015 – Wikipedia was hit by the Orangemoody blackmail scandal, as it came to light that hundreds of businesses and minor celebrities had faced demands for payment from rogue editors to publish, protect or update Wikipedia articles on them. * November 2015 – The ''

Washington Examiner The ''Washington Examiner'' is an American conservative news outlet which consists principally of an online/digital website with a weekly magazine, based in Washington, D.C. It is owned by MediaDC, a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group, which is ...

'' and several other outlets reported that editors associated with '' The Hunting Ground'', a documentary on rape on college campuses, were discovered making edits to various Wikipedia articles "to make facts conform to the film." In response, Jimmy Wales started a discussion on his talk page about people who edit when they have a conflict of interest (COI) "I have long advocated that we should deal much more quickly and much more severely with COI editors. The usual objections (from some quarters – I think most people agree with me) have to do with it being hard to detect them, but in this case, the COI was called out, warnings were issued, and nothing was done."

* December 2015 – The

Board of Trustees A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit org ...

voted to remove board member

on December 28. Heilman was one of three members elected by the Wikipedia editing community in May of that year. The unclear circumstances of his dismissal led to a number of discussions critical of the Board, exacerbating long-standing tensions concerning its relationship with the community. Heilman suggested that his internal inquiry to make the

Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants for journalism, communities, and the arts. The organization was founded as the Knight Memorial Education ...

grant public was a factor in his dismissal from the WMF's board of trustees.

2016

*January 2016 – On January 5, the Wikimedia Foundation announced the addition of

Arnnon Geshuri Arnnon Geshuri (born 1969 or 1970) is an American Business executive, corporate executive. He was vice president of Human Resources, human resources at Tesla, Inc. from 2009 until 2017, senior director of human resources and staffing at Google ...

, vice president of human resources at Tesla Motors, to its board of directors. The appointment was controversial among Wikipedia editors due to his prior role as senior director of human resources and staffing at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

, where he was involved with a "no cold call" arrangement between tech companies that ended with action by the Department of Justice. Nearly 300 editors signed a vote of no confidence, urging his removal from the board. On January 27, board president Patricio Lorente announced Geshuri would step down. *February 2016 – On February 25, owing to pressures presented by a "community revolt", Wikimedia Foundation executive director

Lila Tretikov Lila Tretikov () (born Olga (Lyalya) Tretyakova, russian: Ольга (Ляля) Третьяко́ва, January 25, 1978) is a Russian–American engineer and manager. Early life and education Tretikov was born in Moscow, Soviet Union. Her fath ...

resigned from the organization. Sources attributed the resignation largely to concerns that the organization's leadership was not being transparent enough with a proposal to develop a

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

, which was seen by many as being outside the remit of the non-profit educational charity.

2018

*May 2018 – In May 2018, a Wikipedia user rejected a draft for Canadian laser physicist

Donna Strickland Donna Theo Strickland (born 27 May 1959) is a Canadian optical physicist and pioneer in the field of pulsed lasers. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, together with Gérard Mourou, for the practical implementation of chirped ...

. An entry only appeared after she jointly won a Nobel Prize for Physics in October 2018. *September 2018 – On September 27, 2018, the home addresses and phone numbers of United States senators

Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin Graham (born July 9, 1955) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from South Carolina, a seat he has held since 2003. A member of the Republican Party, Graham chaired the Senate Committee on ...

Mike Lee Michael Shumway Lee (born June 4, 1971) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Utah, a seat he has held since 2011. He is a member of the Republican Party. Lee began his career as a clerk for the U ...

, and Orrin Hatch were posted to their respective Wikipedia articles during confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee

Brett Kavanaugh Brett Michael Kavanaugh ( ; born February 12, 1965) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on July 9, 2018, and has served since O ...

. Wikipedia administrators deleted the information shortly afterwards. Jackson A. Cosko, a staffer for Congress paid by an outside institution, was sentenced to 4 years in prison for the making the posts and for theft of personal data of Congressional employees.

2019

*January 2019 – On January 11, 2019, in the midst of the

2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis The Venezuelan presidential crisis is an ongoing political crisis concerning the leadership and the legitimate president of Venezuela; the office of the president has been contested since 10 January 2019, with the nation and the world divided ...

, the Venezuelan state company CANTV started completely blocking Wikipedia, affecting 1.5 million users. * May 2019 – In May 2019,

Leo Burnett Tailor Made Leo Burnett Worldwide, Inc., also known as Leo Burnett Company, Inc., is an American advertising company, founded on August 5, 1935, in Chicago by Leo Burnett. In September 2002, the company was acquired by Publicis Groupe, the world's thir ...

, a marketing agency for The North Face Brazil, revealed that they had surreptitiously replaced photos of popular outdoor destinations on

with photos featuring North Face products in an attempt to get these products to appear more prominently in search engine results. Following widespread media coverage and criticism from the

, The North Face ended and apologized for the campaign, and the

product placement Product placement, also known as embedded marketing, is a marketing technique where references to specific brands or products are incorporated into another work, such as a film or television program, with specific promotional intent. Much of th ...

was undone. * June 2019 – On June 10, 2019, the English Wikipedia administrator Fram was banned by the

(WMF) from editing the English Wikipedia for a period of one year. The ban was eventually overturned. It was the first ever partial ban implemented by the WMF Trust and Safety team. According to Joseph Bernstein of ''

Buzzfeed News ''BuzzFeed News'' is an American news website published by BuzzFeed. It has published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was heavily criticized, and the FinCEN Files. Since its establishment in 2011, i ...

'', this took place "without a trial", and WMF did not "disclose the complainer nor the complaint" to the community. Some in the editor community expressed anger at the WMF not providing specifics, as well as skepticism as to whether Fram deserved the ban. An internal Wikipedia page called "Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram" was created to discuss the controversy, and within weeks surpassed 470,000 words, more than the novel ''

A Game of Thrones ''A Game of Thrones'' is the first novel in ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', a series of fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin. It was first published on August 1, 1996. The novel won the 1997 Locus Award and was nominated for both ...

''. A second administrator unblocked Fram, later citing "overwhelming community support", but the WMF reblocked Fram and revoked the administrative abilities of the administrator who unblocked Fram. A third administrator then unblocked Fram. Three weeks after the initial ban, 21 English Wikipedia administrators had resigned. An open letter to WMF Board by the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee on June 30 acknowledged and channelled some of the community dissatisfaction. On July 2, the WMF board on July 2 opened up the Fram case for a review by the Arbitration Committee, and supported further community involvement in the "debate on toxic behavior" and how to deal with it; a commitment echoed by a July 3 statement from Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher, who also acknowledged "that there are things that the Foundation could have handled better". The Arbitration Committee completed a review of the Foundation's confidential evidence in September 2019, and overturned the ban. * July 2019 – On the Russian Wikipedia a group of 12 users ( meatpuppets and sockpuppets) was revealed, which coordinated their edits praising current Russian governments officials (mostly governors) and slandering Russian opposition activists, especially top

Anti-Corruption Foundation The Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF or FBK; russian: Фонд борьбы с коррупцией (ФБК), Fond borby s korruptsiyey (FBK), Foundation for combating corruption) is a non-profit organization established in 2011 by Russian opposit ...

activists

Alexei Navalny Alexei Anatolievich Navalny ( rus, links=no, Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, , ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj; born 4 June 1976) is a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, and anti-corruption act ...

and

Lyubov Sobol Lyubov Eduardovna Sobol (russian: link=no, Любо́вь Эдуа́рдовна Со́боль, née Fedenyova, ; born 13 September 1987) is a Russian opposition politician, lawyer and a member of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council ( ...

, Russian non-government media and journalists critical to Russian government (e.g.

Arkady Babchenko Arkady Arkadyevich Babchenko (russian: Аркадий Аркадьевич Бабченко; born 18 March 1977) is a Russian print and television journalist. From 1995, Babchenko served in the communication corps in the North Caucasus while par ...

and

Yevgenia Albats Yevgenia Markovna Albats (russian: Евге́ния Ма́рковна Альба́ц, born 5 September 1958Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch who reportedly is very close to

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...

and is rumored to be in charge of a social media bot network exercising state-sponsored Internet propaganda. Those users were initially noticed by an editor who saw them almost simultaneously apply for advanced user rights.

2020

*August 2020 – A

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...

user publicized that a prolific Scots Wikipedia administrator did not speak the

Scots language Scots ( endonym: ''Scots''; gd, Albais, ) is an Anglic language variety in the West Germanic language family, spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster in the north of Ireland (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots). Most commo ...

; tens of thousands of articles were in fact English with eye dialect spellings to suggest a Scottish accent, or word-by-word

machine translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates ...

s of articles from English Wikipedia. Wikimedia users debated recruiting fluent speakers of Scots to repair the articles, reverting all edits from the administrator in question, or – as the latter would entail removing nearly half the articles in the encyclopedia – even deleting and restarting Scots Wikipedia afresh. ''The Guardian'' attributed the problem to systemic issues in Wikipedia culture, suggesting that some administrators are afforded effectively unchecked power based on sheer volume of edits (rather than the quality of their work). Robyn Speer, chief scientist at Luminoso, expressed concern that

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

corpora which used Wikipedia for language-training data had been corrupted by the pseudo-Scots. *September 2020 – ''

'' published an experiment conducted by economists from Collegio Carlo Alberto in Italy and ZEW in Germany where they added content into articles about randomly selected cities in

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

. The researchers reported that adding photos increased the nights spent in those cities by 9%. The experiment resulted in the research team being barred from making further edits on Dutch Wikipedia.

2021

* September 2021 – The Wikimedia Foundation banned seven accounts and desysoped 12 accounts on the Chinese Wikipedia. * November 2021 ** For several years, a man named Nathaniel White had his picture associated on Wikipedia and Google with a serial killer also named Nathaniel White. ** The

's entry for " Mass killings under communist regimes" was nominated for deletion, with some editors arguing that it has "a biased '

anti-Communist Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...

' point of view", that "it should not resort to 'simplistic presuppositions that events are driven by any specific ideology", and that "by combining different elements of research to create a 'synthesis', this constitutes

original research Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness t ...

and therefore breaches Wikipedia rules." This was criticized by historian Robert Tombs, who called it "morally indefensible, at least as bad as

Holocaust denial Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements: ...

, because 'linking ideology and killing' is the very core of why these things are important. I have read the Wikipedia page, and it seems to me careful and balanced. Therefore attempts to remove it can only be ideologically motivated – to

whitewash Whitewash, or calcimine, kalsomine, calsomine, or lime paint is a type of paint made from slaked lime (calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)2) or chalk calcium carbonate, (CaCO3), sometimes known as "whiting". Various other additives are sometimes used. ...

Communism." Other Wikipedia editors and users on social media opposed the deletion of the article. The article's deletion nomination received considerable attention from conservative media.

The Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presi ...

, an American conservative

think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-govern ...

, called the arguments made in favor of deletion "absurd and ahistorical". On December 1, 2021, a panel of four administrators found that the discussion yielded no consensus, meaning that the status quo was retained, and the article was not deleted. The article's deletion discussion was the largest in Wikipedia's history by a significant margin.

2022

* June 2022 – A Chinese woman was found to have "created over 200 fictional articles on the Chinese Wikipedia, writing millions of words of imagined history that went unnoticed for more than 10 years." She went under the username Zhemao ( Chinese: 折毛). Some of the

Zhemao hoaxes From 2012 to 2022, Zhemao ( zh, c=折毛, p=Zhémáo), an editor of the Chinese Wikipedia, created over 200 interconnected articles about falsified aspects of medieval Russian history in one of Wikipedia hoaxes, Wikipedia's largest hoaxes. Co ...

were translated and entered into other Wikipedias, among them the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

and Russian Wikipedias. * July 2022 – A dispute broke out among Wikipedia editors over the definition of an economic

recession In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be triggered by various ...

given in the article on that subject. Right-wing critics accused Wikipedia of aligning with the Joe Biden administration's definition of recession, but according to ''

'', the article had always reflected a variety of definitions and was recently changed to give "slightly more emphasis to the two-quarter definition, noting that it is 'commonly used as a practical definition of a recession.'" The ''Post'' also noted that "Locking Wikipedia pages to prevent partisan edits is nothing new." When

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The B ...

used

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

to accuse Wikipedia of "losing its objectivity", Wikipedia co-founder

replied: "Reading too much Twitter nonsense is making you stupid." According to ''Slate'', the recession dispute "shows that ikipediacan have trouble communicating their complexities to outsiders." *September 2022 — Following a loss of India to Pakistan in a cricket game at the 2022 Asia Cup, an editor at the article on Indian cricketer Arshdeep Singh changed the country for which he plays to the

separatist movement Separatism is the advocacy of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group. As with secession, separatism conventionally refers to full political separation. Groups simply seeking greate ...

of Khalistan. Under 2021 regulations governing large

intermediaries An intermediary (or go-between) is a third party that offers intermediation services between two parties, which involves conveying messages between principals in a dispute, preventing direct contact and potential escalation of the issue. In law ...

, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology summoned Wikimedia executives to ensure that "deliberate efforts at incitement and user harm" are not made in the future.

Overview

Editing restrictions

2002

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2022

See also

References

Further reading

Legal citations of Wikipedia

Wikipedia and juries