A Wikipedia editor's campaign to discredit anti-war campaigners (2018) | Hacker News Reader

A Wikipedia editor's campaign to discredit anti-war campaigners (2018)

wikipedia.fivefilters.org

134 pointshliyan77 comments

Rather than to rehash an 2018 debate about a particular editor social media posts is in conflict with their edits on Wikipedia, where did the discussing end up afterward? I think the answer is in an Arbitration a month or so after this article was written (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...).

I did not find any more Arbitration Requests after this date, and the topic ban has not been appealed.

If it's clear he has the backing of Jimmy Wales (as evidenced by wikipedia's weirdly explosive reaction on twitter to people questioning this), what would be the point?

I worked on the article posted here. I think it's come up again because anti-war US writers are now noticing more hostile editing of their pages[1]. Philip Cross was banned from editing in the area of British politics (which, in my opinion, was done reluctantly by Wikipedia arbitrators after Hacker News[2] and later BBC[3] exposure), the account now continues with the same kind of editing, but targetting people that fall outside the area of the topic ban.

Here's an example: Philip Cross had little interest in Max Blumenthal's Wikipedia entry prior to the Wikipedia topic ban (edited only 11 times from 2007 until Cross was banned from British politics in July 2018[4]). Since then, it's been edited by Cross 552 times[5]. According to WikiWho, Cross is responsible for 56% of all content on Max Blumenthal's Wikipedia page. Before the ban, Cross was responsible for 0.9% of the content.

[1] https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1381746315659509763

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17109290

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csws6q

[4] https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Max%...

[5] https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Max%...

If there is enough evidence to start a arbitration request, then start there. A editor who has already received a topic ban is more likely to get a second ban, or harsher because of the repeat offense.

That said, if you go after a person for their personal social media comments and succeed, the common result is that people clam up about their personal opinions in social media. This is the common argument against the recent trend of digging through peoples social media in order to find something to hang them. All it does is to make people less open and more closed minded.

Looking at the archived discussion at the Administrator noticeboard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...), the big issue seems to be the lack of any actually edit conflict. On Wikipedia, that is a problem if one want to sanction an editor for doing biased editing.

The whole discussion seems to be similar to the one about hardware back doors by NSA (if produced in a country where the US has influence), china or both. We can suspect there is a security problem, we can point towards incentives and capability to do it, but trying to do a proper response to the threat without anything concrete is difficult.

I'm not sure if the account is operated by a single person, and if it is, I'm not interested in "hanging them" for their opinions. This isn't a free speech issue. People go to Wikipedia thinking they're getting neutral information. How many people are aware, when they load some of these pages, like Max Blumenthal's for example, that it's mostly the work of one account hostile to that individual? And in this case, the work of an account that's already been banned for the hostile editing of other people's pages.

If you're interested, compare Max's page before and after Cross got involved with it. You'll see the same pattern we documented in our article. It just gets filled with more and more criticism.

This isn't the same for establishment-friendly voices. Have a look, for example, at the entries for Bellingcat or its founder Eliot Higgins (Bellingcat appears 5 times on Max's page). See how much criticism you find in those entries. Compare with the the articles below[1][2]. One reason of course is that Wikipedia deprecates sources it doesn't approve of, favouring instead "reliable sources" (mostly corporate, establishment-friendly news sites)[3].

Having followed the discussion and arbitration process in 2018, I don't really think anything will change. But I'd like to see more people become aware that what they read on Wikipedia, if it's political, is likely to be very biased and could be the work of nefarious actors.

[1] https://www.mintpressnews.com/bellingcat-intelligence-agenci...

[2] https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/24/author-bellingcat-opcw-wh...

[3] https://twitter.com/fivefilters/status/1381290433658167299

I have seen plenty of times when reliable sources are mostly negative about a subject, and Wikipedia article reflecting those sources while ignoring more critical or broader investigative journalism. Gamergate was one of those time, and depending on a persons political alignment the Wikipedia article is either a great description of what happened, or an corporate/establishment-friendly perspective with a specific narrative in mind.

One way we could measure bias in political articles would be to count how much of an article is sources by each news papers and then measure total media bias through establish finding in media bias research. A common cited sources is the study done during the 2016 US election which estimated media bias for each major news paper by looking at social media links where the profile were openly set as being in support to one specific political party. The more links that was shared by a single political aligned demographic, the more aligned the study would define the news paper.

Back to the specific at hands, it is difficult to build a case based on the sum of reliable sourced information without an actually edit dispute. One of the first layers in Wikipedia in order to address issues is through a third-party, and one would have to ask them to decide if the sum of sources are given correct weight in the article. Looking at Max page myself I can't say if the article is correctly reflecting reliable sources or not. I am surprised there even exist 121 distinct reliable sources about a political writer/political documentary maker. If anything the article looks very bloated and should be trimmed down to match subject matters of similar notability. I think there are noble price winners that has less coverage than this person.

With the consistency of edit history and stacked time card, I would guess that Mr. Cross is perhaps a few people or maybe an agency of some kind.

Prior thread (2018): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17109290

To those who don’t know: the Discussion page on Wikipedia is freely accessible to anyone who wishes to debate content like this. It can be very helpful when the actual page is missing information. I’ve found good information on them more than once.

I actually want to move away from celebrity culture and privately owned platforms, means of distribution, and audiences, and towards platforms based on collaboration, where people have to duke it out and address all serious arguments before the public sees it. It might take slightly longer but our society wouldn't be so divided. Individual people can't all be expected to be experts on climate change, vaccines, 5G and so on.

I give an extensive explanation on the economics of free speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8HbvC6vqIY

I interviewed Noam Chomsky on it last week here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPZ8rSESZo

And we are building it here (sorry for the bad design so far): https://rational.app/

> where people have to duke it out and address all serious arguments before the public sees it

This has come up a bit recently. However, I think you're underestimating the effect of "Sea Lioning" and alike. Experts are often busy, doing important things in their respective fields. They don't have time to duke it out.

I think it could be a fairer way of including experts. Text has a way of levelling trolls and experts.

Seems like an interesting idea, but it’s light on details such as how consensus is actually achieved. Infobombing is a common tactic (sometimes called the Gish Gallop), where one person will spew multiple claims and sources (which are in of themselves quite often wrong), shifting the burden of fighting not only each incorrect point but refuting each citation, usually exhausting the opposition, especially when they are a minority view (see how well transgender topics fare against “moderate” views even on here for example).

One person would not have much power in the collaborative system, unlike the current system where someone who amassed a lot of followers can spew whatever they want for a long time.

> I give an extensive explanation on the economics of free speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8HbvC6vqIY

If you are posting ad for your product - why you expect people to go through an extensive explanation in a video form?

No, if I posted links to the actual product on HN comments I'd be accused of "shilling" it by someone and downvoted for that. (Search this page for the word "shilling" for instance, it's already happened.) So often I prefer to discuss the broader topic until the product is good enough to just submit to HN as a submission. I encourage you to watch the video discussion with Noam Chomsky, or read the text on rational.app for TL;DR

Shilling with extra steps is still shilling. If you're going to do that might as well actually write out what your proposal is so we can skim it.

A paragraph (or page) of someone being self promoting is something i might read if its on topic and sounds like they have something insightful to add. A video has almost zero chance.

Seems many people think differently than you.

2 critical questions:

It seems you want to have debates in the back-end before publishing anything. What have you learned from Nupedia, and how do you expect your system to work differently? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia

It seems you want to use a scoring/voting system. These have some known issues when you're trying to find facts. Have you considered how to prevent gaming? One famous (albeit fortunately failed) example of such an attempt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

This story makes me wondering whether Wikipedia has any means to defend against possible malicious foreign campaigns carries out by non-democratic countries (Russia/China) to discredit western personalities, society and institutions.

It does have power over what it allows to be published, although it does not have the staff to enforce violations. As a Croatian-American who speaks Croatian, it is best to avoid the Croatian language Wikipedia pages about wars, with some more recent than others. It is quite hateful, xenophobic, and nationalistic. The news source I provided is investigative journalism for Balkan countries funded via European Union.

> "Wikimedia Foundation Inc, the US-based non-profit charitable NGO, is the owner of the Croatian version of Wikipedia." [1]

> "However, the Wikimedia Foundation is not the founder of the Croatian version, nor does it accept that it is responsible for the accuracy of its articles. It insists that it does not have any power over Croatian-language Wikipedia entries." [1]

Other reads are provided for reference [2][3][4].

[1] Wikipedia Not Responding to Inquiries on Croatian Entries: https://balkaninsight.com/2018/04/23/wikipedia-not-replying-...

[2] Croatian Wikipedia Removes ‘Polish Genocide of Germans’ Claim: https://balkaninsight.com/2018/03/29/croatian-wikipedia-remo...

[3] How Croatian Wikipedia Made a Concentration Camp Disappear: https://balkaninsight.com/2018/03/26/how-croatian-wikipedia-...

[4] Croatia Wikipedia Alters Jasenovac Camp Entry Again: https://balkaninsight.com/2018/08/29/croatia-wikipedia-furth...

I have good news. For years there were campaigns to remove croatia wiki moderators but all were unsuccessful until recently when, with the involvement of global community, some moderators and their sockpuppets were removed. Subsequently the rest of the controversial moderators were removed since without the others sockpupets they could not maintain their position.

What, like George Galloway, Sputnik TV presenter (mentioned in the article?)

It's pretty normal for anti establishment politicians to go to "enemy" broadcasters even if they do not support them.

Establishment media are not super keen on giving anti establishment figures an unimpeded platform to promulgate their views for obvious reasons.

It would be easier for the BBC, Telegraph, Guardian, etc. to ignore/misrepresent/attack George Galloway if he didn't also use competing media they had no control over.

It's very obvious that they do react to this media, too. If something gets big in social media because it's in RT then domestic media feel compelled to respond. This has happened with Galloway.

The same works in the reverse as well (Ai Weiwei, Navalny, etc). RT would like nothing more than to have us shut up about him but the Western media does insist on interviewing the traitor.

Obviously it comes with a risk and it will open you up to the usual cries of traitor, etc. from the serially ultranationalist who believe ardently that the freedom of their own press should be sufficient for traitors with traitorous views to get their hearing.

However, the alternative is, more realistically, being shut out of public discourse almost entirely as they try ardently to pretend you don't exist (hence why Putin famously never uses navalnys name).

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/05...

^ Wikipedia gets uncharacteristically offended when you ask questions about this particular "person".

Whomever they want to defend themselves against, it's not him.

It goes the other way around too

So Phillip Cross is accused of conflicts of interest. He could move to edit other pages but insists on continuing without explanation. From the diffs he has a pretty clear agenda and isn't in it to just fact check, fix grammar, check sources etc.

What really troubles me is how little concern editors have for the precariousness of WP's reputation. Spewing legalese while missing the larger point, misstating the case in escalation to arbitration, dismissing the claims within minutes of hearing a defence etc. Wikipedia's model is at high risk to opinion farms and any suggestion that that is happening should be taken very seriously by editors, lest they look like they're complicit. When that happens it will quickly suffer repetitional damage that will take much, much longer to repair.

But they want to debate the rules and definitions, make counter accusations... To dawdle over such an obvious case is going to be hard to forgive.

Whatever this piece is, it lost all credibility in my opinion when it started citing RT and Sputnik.

By now, the same should be true of CNN and NYT. Yet...

And yet the whataboutism (an old and tired rhetorical tactic) actually attempts to equate the situation for freedom of the press, civil rights, human rights and a functioning democratic/republic form of government in the USA and Russia. They are in no way equal to each other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia

How can you bemoan whataboutism when your entire argument was an ad hominem attack? Even though Russia's track record on liberal values is worse than America's, RT can print truthful things.

by definition, an ad hominem attack is on the character or morals of a single individual. RT/Sputnik are large state run corporations.

The term "ad hominem" had changed beyond it's literal Latin translation, but I guess I can swap it to "your entire argument was an association fallacy."

That would require the GPs comment to be false. RT and Sputnik are Russian government propaganda pieces. Anyone who denies that either lies to themselves or to others.

CNN and NYT may write/send things you don't like, but they are free from government interference.

(Also, the quality of CNN and NYT is far higher, but that's a different point)

>That would require the GPs comment to be false

Their argument was an association fallacy regardless of the truth of the stated position. I mentioned Russia's poor record with liberal values, but that doesn't mean RT reporting this story means the topic isn't worth considering.

It has? Who says it has? As far as I'm concerned, it hasn't.

These constant attempts to redefine the meanings of accepted and well-understood words are annoying as all hell. Stop trying to fuck up language all the time, damn kids. If you need a word for some specific meaning of your own, then make up your own damn word. (And now get off my lawn!)

I followed this case closely when it was going on. The accusations of that guy were completely overblown. He did not seem to be on any kind of campaign or operating as part of any organization. He was a guy with some opinions and with a lot of time on his hands, who edited a lot in many different subject areas. His editing in most areas was in fact quite good, but in the area of UK politics he had a Tory bias that got out of hand some of the time. That type of thing is very routine, whether it's about politics, computer languages, or anything else.

Wikipedia's dispute resolution system handled it ok, I think. After a lot of examination of what had been going on, he was prohibited (at least at the time, those prohibitions can usually be lifted after a while) from further editing about UK politics, but he stayed active in the other areas where he was perfectly ok. There was an occasion or two where he brushed up against his prohibition and caused some temporary localized drama, but that also happens all the time and is no big deal. The pages taking him to task made him sound like an agent of the Illuminati which was ridiculous.

Also many of the people mentioned are more ‘anti-west’ than ‘anti-war’. Not really questioning that this editor appears biased but let’s call it what it is, which is basic tribal left/right politics.

Has anyone tried editing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chosen_people within the context of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_writings

The Max Blumenthal fan club want everyone to think Philip Cross is some sort of CIA bogeyman that controls Wikipedia. He's prolific, but far less influential than he's made out to be.

Well, being paid by the CIA or MI5 is the most likely theory. But point is the agenda, not the affiliation.

Not all the goons are influental, but he is (like most media figures), and their policies and practices align.

> Well, being paid by the CIA or MI5 is the most likely theory.

"Most likely theory"? What? The most likely theory is that he's convinced of his worldview. There are incredible amounts of people who are true believers of whatever they subscribe to. They're certainly not all paid, or we'd see much larger intelligence budgets everywhere.

One hypothesis involves intelligence agencies being unaware that it is possible to edit from other Wikipedia accounts and having opinions almost as strong on jazz as geopolitics.

The other relies on there being a person with a lot of time on his hands who generally believes what he reads in the Times and responds to provocation on Twitter, and George Galloway not jumping to the correct conclusion.

Of course someone who works for Russian state TV is going to say their enemies are CIA.

He's more prolific than any person would be. There's no indication he's a person and every indication that his persona is run by an institution that doesn't like anti war campaigners.

Craig Murray graphed his contributions here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-c...

In fairness his views do seem to match up with Jimbo Wales (who is, as a good friend of Tony Blair/Gordon Brown, not exactly anti war). He might be an institutional construct but there's plenty of institutions other than the CIA he could be fronting.

It's also possible he's basically a sockpuppet for Jimmy Wales, judging by the way he lashes out on Twitter at people questioning who Philip Cross really is.

So he clearly is pretty influential.

The Craig Murray graph is completely misleading. It was not generated by Murray, it was generated by Wikipedia, and Murray apparently saw it, misunderstood it, flipped out, and put it on his own site. It is discussed rather thoroughly in the Wikipedia proceedings. It doesn't mean anything like what it looks like. Of course generating the misleading graph is Wikipedia's fault, but it was intended for something else altogether.

Is there a link to this discussion somewhere that disproves the notion that the account is a 9-5 editing machine?

It was actually technically findable with links presented in this HN discussion, but I've dug down to the relevant bit to save you some time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...

Somebody is definitely downplaying him here. Im not seeing any data to support that though.

Disproves? It's a stupid premise to begin with. But yes, you can look at the account's editing history. There is a timestamp on every edit. It is nothing like how Murray imagined.

If a banned Wikipedia editor was responsible for 56% of the content of your Wikipedia page, would you not be concerned?

>The story has now also been picked up by RT and the Sunday Herald.

Seriously quoting RT (or Sputnik) in a serious article is giving them legitimacy they don't deserve.

As for the substance of the article. Based on the edits they show it seems the guy really is manipulating the entries. Hiding genuine info and adding stuff that may be/is unsubstantiated.

However this bit is going a bit too far: >The operation runs like clockwork, seven days a week, every waking hour, without significant variation. If Philip Cross genuinely is an individual, there is no denying he is morbidly obsessed. I am no psychiatrist, but to my entirely inexpert eyes this looks like the behaviour of a deranged psychotic with no regular social activities outside the home, no job (or an incredibly tolerant boss), living his life through a screen.

A "deranged psychotic" ? Maybe he is a pensioner with nothing better to do with his time? Judge him by the malice of his edits, not by the time he spends making them.

Well, we usually just call these people trolls, but if they are really a single person who is devoting that much time to the activity of smearing people they don't like via Wikipedia, I don't think calling them a "deranged psychotic" is an exaggeration...

He said it got picked up by RT. So what? It's ancillary to the story.

Deranged psychotics and pensioners do not show this pattern of behavior.

This account is clearly being operated by a team who clock in and clock out.

If the account were editing pages in a way through Russian government would approve of I guarantee that you would not have a shadow of a doubt that this was definitrly not an obsessed pensioner and neither would I.

> Seriously quoting RT (or Sputnik) in a serious article is giving them legitimacy they don't deserve.

If these are some of the only outlets picking up this story, they deserve whatever legitimacy they get from that. I'm sure the authors of that website would prefer to quote the NYT and the WSJ, but these haven't picked up the story.

More fundamentally, outlets that are seen as reliable sources by wikipedia are probably biased towards it. If you look for example at articles about wikipedia from the NYT[1] and the WSJ[2], even if they are about problems with it, the framing is always that wikipedia is working on a problem.

So critical reporting about wikipedia is likely to come from outlets seen as "illegitimate". To demand to ignore those is to demand to ignore most critical reporting about it.

> If Philip Cross genuinely is an individual

That's the key part here.

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awsj.com+wikipedia&oq=...

[2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+wikipedia...

The duration an account is spending on editing Wikipedia posts is one clue to determining if it is a question of a person or a team at work. Teams may benefit from using a single account as privileges are tied to accounts, if I understand it correctly.

This user is however the subject of a ban: if it was a team the clever thing to do would have set up a new account to circumvent the ban. So, Philip Cross is probably just a person with a mission. Agree that we can refrain from any further psychiatric diagnosis at this point.

I just assume every page on Wikipedia is left based at this point, I don't mind, seems to do the job. I think most right leaning people in the digital age realise that you have to get your information from further sources at this point.

This viewpoint is not relevant to or supported by the article. The article describes a Wikipedia editor using his position to oppose labor MP George Galloway and labor leader Jeremy Corbyn. It's hard to see how this is "left based".

I was implying that the left does what the originally linked "offender" does all the time without scrutiny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni...

^ Case in point, the first three paragraphs on illegal immigration to America contain no American conservative figures and/or counter points.

Now you can argue that the top 3 paragraphs are factual, and potentially the absolute truth of the matter. But I feel like that might be a little bit unfair if you catch my drift.

You are always free to add "conservative figures and/or counter points" if you can support them according to the Wikipedia guidelines. The lack of said counter points on such a high profile topic(1) suggests there aren't any good ones.

(1) Fringe topics are a different matter. A topic which is ignored by most people can contain very one-sided views simply because no one else cares.

The text says that one of the targeted people are Jeremy Corbyn, so in this case your assumtion is wrong

Whilst the right certainly disliked Corbyn, his downfall was mainly due to his colleagues in his party, Labour.

So it was (also) left vs left.

I might be wrong as I don't live in the UK. But wasn't it the more Tony Blair like (center left ish) that were against him. Making it more right leaning relative to Corbyn

Interestingly, the cofounder of wikipedia, Larry Sanger (who is right wing) rebelled against it and started his own project: https://larrysanger.org/2019/10/introducing-the-encyclospher...

A few of the other people I talk to, like Thomas Greco, also distrust Wikipedia, and they're not exactly right wing, though they are against big government.

> Larry Sanger (who is right wing) rebelled against it and started his own project

Again?

Sanger has tried multiple times to launch competitors to Wikipedia -- Citizendium, Digital Universe, Infobitt, Everipedia, now something he calls the "Encyclosphere", apparently. None of them have been successful.

Nigel Farage resigns from his party saying it's become overrun by racists.

Robert Bernstein criticizes Human Rights Watch that he founded himself.

I guess they're just bitter right? Why consider anything they are actually saying?

For the record: I actually like Wikipedia and don't really see so much what Larry is talking about. I participated in starting articles on Wikipedia back in 2004, which have now grown and added a lot of useful information. But I'd like to hear him out.

The point is very much that we've now heard him out on about half a dozen different occasions and he's repeatedly shown an inability to deliver.

Its not that Sanger is criticizing wikipedia, its that his criticism isn't particularly insightful (imo) and its been getting repetitive.

Like all monopolies, criticism of wikipedia is essential to wikipedia. There is very little effective competition to wikipedia so criticism is important lest it becomes complacent. Sanger is just failing to deliver.

And it's that Sanger really isn't the expert on Wikipedia (or on community-building in general) that he claims to be. Sure, he was involved with Wikipedia in its early days -- but that was 20 years ago. That experience is largely irrelevant in commenting on Wikipedia as it exists today, because the organization has evolved significantly over that time, and he hasn't been involved in that process.

Wikipedia might have problems, but at this point larry sangar is just desperate to try and reinvent wikipedia with him at the center to stay relevant. He's started an excessive number of wikipedia like sites with some variable changed, some pretty silly like the cryptocurrency one where it was intended you could vote for what the truth was using your crypto wallet (they never actually implemented it but what could possibly go wrong in a plutocracy?). He's just desperately throwing stuff at the wall praying that something sticks.

Like all things, there will probably come a day where wikipedia is disrupted by some new kid on the block, but i highly doubt sanger will be at the center of it.

I would say that’s a strange response since the article implies the exact opposite of your assumption: that is, a right-leaning editor is applying their politics to entries on left-leaning individuals and organizations.

This is a fairly consistent meme in right wing politics, but I've never actually seen it backed up by evidence.

I also see the far left complain about similar things, but nobody seems to take their complaints nearly as seriously for some reason I genuinely do not understand.

It's because they don't mean the actual left, they really mean "people with nearly identical economic politics to me but are marginally less overtly racist and homophobic". The same people who with a straight face compare Biden to FDR but as a diss instead of a massive (and largely undeserved) compliment.

From what I have seen this is true. Just check Antifa discussion page or the page on classical liberalism. The left wing bias is quite clear and it will probably only grow with the increase in the number militant left wing online warriors and the increasing perception that their views are adopted by society at large and constitute the definition of correct-thinking.

Wikipedia is still important and useful for many articles and subjects, but I currently just ignore their political stance.

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