Dec 18, 2021

14 min read

Aiki Wiki, Wikipedia We Have a Problem update, pt 3

The Wikipedia case study.

The case study began with an inquiry into how majority and minority views build a consensus on a Wikipedia article, specifically when a phenomenon known as “Wiki Wars” erupt on the article.

For years I was intimidated away from ever participating in one to view the dynamics for myself. Primarily, because of my own lack of expertise in topics where Wiki Wars could emerge, such as politics, Israel or Palestine, Oil and Gas or pharmaceutical industry. Finding the right entry point into the case study was always challenging.

In 2013, I made the decision to initiate the case study into what I thought would be a small and benign wiki war, but one that was getting mainstream media attention.

The BBC Radio Hour featured an interview with Rupert Sheldrake, a Cambridge biologist and researcher whom is somewhat vilified by “skeptic organizations” and according to Rupert, this community of editors were taking control of his own biographical article.

Professor Jerry Coyne from the University of Chicago penned a polemic against Rupert Sheldrake and the BBC for treating his views as science. “Rupert Sheldrake is no scientist, he is not practicing science!” is a phrase often heard by this very agitated group of bloggers, and Wikipedia’s article did start to reflect this “editing war” happening around the “history” of Rupert Sheldrake.

On one side of this editing community were the “skeptic” editors, who in their minds defend Wikipedia from pseudoscience and bizarre new age claims entering the encyclopedia.

On the “other” side of the issue is an incredibly diverse community of various viewpoints around things like alternative and integrative medicine or things considered “fringe” research, things like parapsychology, cold fusion, even cryptocurrency.

At the time, I was a bit naive to how Wikipedia worked, and I assumed that “skeptic vs woo” editor culture would be a safe environment for me.

Additionally, these “wiki wars” were on pages that were biographies of notable individuals, not complex theories or political movements, so easy to distinguish factually correct or incorrect biographical information.

I assumed this would a harmless community contrasted against the broader heated political or religions pages and editors.

Boy was I mistaken.

When I began my case study on Wikipedia, the “skeptic community” was one of the more larger social networks on the internet, and early adopters of web tools to bolster broadcast and consensus.

“Skeptics” as a collection of social networks and groups who identify as “skeptics” around this time were primarily white males which divided into two groups at the time of GamerGate.

One cultural side of skeptics became more focused progressive or left wing political influences (the SJWs), and the other skeptic group group became what is now known as the “alt-right”, suspicious of “mainstream media sources”, applying their “skeptic prowess” to online research and YouTube videos. This has become much of the culture of the “dark enlightenment”.

Both groups are highly toxic online, independent of their ideological swing as skeptics.

With GamerGate lighting the match, within a short amount of time what was once a semi-unified community across social media, now “skeptics” became politically divided like the rest of the country.

Since 2014, the internet has become increasingly more toxic, and there is no question that GamerGate was a significant culture milestone of online division, creating streams of “troll farms” across the web engaging in what are “misinformation” wars about each other’s motivations.

I wrote an executive summary of the MediaWiki problem here.

Below is the eight year case study that would inform it.

The MediaWiki Case studies

This overall case study focuses on contentious consensus building on social media platforms specifically wikis, and primarily focuses on Wikipedia with a few exceptions.

Originally, the study was a focus on how majority viewpoints and minority viewpoints build a consensus on a contentious Wikipedia article in a “wiki war”.

I thought it would consume about three months of my life. It would become a case study which went on for over eight years.

The study now broadly focuses on consensus building with individuals or groups of individuals who make three distinguishable choices or assertive behaviors in a group consensus process;

individuals who practice deception in an online consensus.
individuals who attempt to influence an online consensus through intimidation, non-resolving communication, or bullying.
individuals who attempt to control all the permissions (access to participation) in a consensus building process.

It was these specific behaviors which can emerge within consensus building that I developed the Aiki Wiki algorithm to and completed in 2020.

As a case study on majority and minority view editing on Wikipedia, the event travels across three of the most controversial issues and topics on Wikipedia; Biographies of a Living Person (BLP), Fringe subjects (WP: Fringe), and Paid/Agenda Editing.

This case study presents both first-person narratives along with third-party evidence detailing “harassment”, as defined by the Wikipedia community editing guidelines, which is referred to in this study as editor suppression.

Editor suppression is a community strategy to control editing permissions on Wikipedia.

This study details how an agenda group (troll farm) can control and influence an article on Wikipedia, and influence perception of a topic via various MediaWiki platforms.

This study focused on two well-publicized and well-known wiki wars occurring on Wikipedia, the biographical articles about Rupert Sheldrake and Deepak Chopra, and I worked directly with these subjects through the entire process.

I offer complete transparency within the case study about my relationships with these individuals.

Rupert Sheldrake

I only personally met Rupert Sheldrake once previously and had no relationship with him prior to the study.

While Rupert initially asked for my help as a professional, I told him that I would propose to him a counter-offer, I wanted to turn his BLP problem on Wikipedia into my case study that I was already wanting to work on.

Since the case study, Rupert and I have become friends. I don’t mind defending Rupert Sheldrake as an individual. I find him to be a lovely person, his wife as kids as well, lots of fun to hang out with. A type of “bohemian intellectual” and family.

Deepak Chopra

With Deepak Chopra, he contacted me after he learned about the case study on Rupert’s biography, as the individuals know each other. My brief relationship with Deepak was professional for a few months as his media representative on Wikipedia. Since the case study, we have continued no further contact and relationship.

First when we met, Deepak was simply interested and fascinated with both Aiki Wiki and the research, and offered a donation of $5,000.00 to the project, so I could keep working on it. I accepted, it was put to good use.

He then asked about my professional services, and if they could be acquired, as he needed help. He did need help. No matter anyone’s personal view of Chopra, his BLP on Wikipedia was truly a mess factually.

I proposed he could pay me to be his direct media representative on his article, as this would be another dynamic to research, “paid editing”.

What happens when a famous person has a legitimate problem with their BLP?

They can hire a representative, Wikipedia allows this.

The representative cannot perform any edits, only negotiate with the community.

Does this process work? Can it produce a reasonable outcome between subject and community? (short answer, no, deeply flawed.)

It was again, perfect for this case study.

So despite what my many detractors claim, this was not and is not an “ideological” report, defending either Rupert Sheldrake or Deepak Chopra or their ideas.

The “content” of the majority view and the minority view is irrelevant from the viewpoint of this study.

RationalWiki

For many years and even to this day, the troll farm that I exposed on Wikipedia attempts all sorts of broadcast about this case study, claiming the case study is a “promotion of pseudoscience” or, even a type of fraud itself, claiming that throughout the process, I harassed and doxxed Wikipedia editors defending “charlatans”, even claiming I was in Deepak Chopra’s “cult”, in bed with PR companies, “illegally” editing Wikipedia.

Nothing could be further from the truth. And nothing could be further from having any evidence to back up those claims.

As my entire study transpired over Media Wikis, all of my activity is published, and no links to any doxxing or harassment that I would have engaged in is ever supported by any evidence, while the evidence I have collected is verifiable to a third party.

This troll farm of experienced Wikipedia/MediaWiki editors usually find a home on RationalWiki, which has featured itself into the MediaWiki case study by broadcasting misinformation about the study itself as well as target the author, moi.

RationalWiki formed when conservative Wikipedia editors formed “Conservapedia”, a MediaWiki alternative to Wikipedia, where as RationalWiki began literally as a way to troll their conservative counter-parts.

RationalWiki, looking like it could be Wikipedia, and branding itself with a title that should speak to its own credibility, is a common example of how MediaWiki’s are created by “wiki-wars” beginning on Wikipedia, and then the ideological wings of the wiki-war finding another platform to broadcast their lost narrative on Wikipedia, or, when necessary, broadcast misinformation about your ideological opponent.

Because I became a target within my own study, an opportunity opened where I had a perfect view of how information could be twisted into misinformation, as I happen to be a subject matter expert on myself, and therefore easy to spot where misinformation and misunderstanding about my identity and motivations are.

Because of this targeting and misinformation about both myself and the case study, the work now had a dual purpose. Wikipedia, We Have a Problem had to serve as an account of events that happened within my research, but also as a way to negotiate and build consensus with the many troll farms now spreading misinformation about me, quite a challenge to overcome, about the author, which was having a direct impact on my professional life.

This did expose activities of publicly known Wikipedia editors, however, accounts that already revealed their identities, primarily Tim Farley, an influencer in the skeptic “movement” specifically a thought leader on Wikipedia editing for skeptics as an activity for their activism, as well as a software developer who creates digital tools for skeptics to use across the web. As an influencer, Tim Farley is an activist.

What opened up in my first Wiki-war experience was learning how Wikipedia was used by academics in their own personal “tit for tats” with other academics or scientists they don’t like.

In my case by a well known professor from the University of Chicago, Jerry Coyne, and a few well known skeptic bloggers such as Tim Farley were caught using Wikipedia as a platform for their peculiar brand of activism, of which Rupert Sheldrake and Deepak Chopra are their primary targets.

These strategies employed by Coyne and Farley included working alongside large wiki “troll farms” that were masterfully gamed by experienced Wikipedia editors, all anonymous, but all sure to contain the aforementioned characters behind their MediaWiki charades.

Predictably, this has made me rather unpopular with a very small, insular and protective MediaWiki editing community members, who desperately have sought to sour perceptions and literally destroy my own professional online reputation out of fear of their own through coordinated attack articles published on RationalWiki and other Media Wikis, some of which still exist to this day.

Amazingly, I discovered a first person experience to something that provided treasures of insight towards the completion of AikiWiki, so I am indeed grateful for these malevolent attempts on my work and character.

Notably mentioned in the case study as well is senior Wikipedia editor David Gerard, a UK citizen, who oversees the publication of RationalWiki along with Trent Toulouse, a professor of psychology and political activist from New Mexico. Horribly irresponsible individuals to say the least.

Having to focus on communities whose overall content I had mixed sympathy with was challenging from the case study viewpoint.

I don’t have that many ideological differences with RationalWiki or skeptics, especially when it comes to a pro-science position, or even progressive policies publication.

What I deeply object to is the dualistic (competitive, divisive) promoting science or progressive politics as specific acerbic style of confrontation, applying GOAT to what is supposed to be “rational” commentary, attacking their perceived ideological foes on the far right.

I do have problems with how these subjects are treated by communities who are responsible for publishing content. I am critical of any scientists who choose this pathway, I think it is very harmful to the productive to the spread of science.

A troll farm, at the end of the day, is still a troll farm.

The case study (with help from others on the internet) did expose a well known internet troll, twin brothers out of the UK, who were operating a list of over five hundred Wikipedia editing accounts that were used in influence and harassment campaigns, even influencing the press. These individuals still taunt me to this day, and are also quite adept, even clever, at online impersonations, their speciality.

While the community the case study focused on in the “majority and minority view” identify themselves as “skeptics” as a way to distinguish their form of online activism, nothing in this case study seeks to criticize “skepticism” as either a philosophy or a form of activism. I didn’t expect this environment to have repercussions in the manner that they did, it was very awkward to navigate.

The focus was specifically certain types of online behaviors that can emerge within a group consensus process between majority and minority viewpoints.

This meant that if I participated in the process, I would have to walk a very fine and delicate line.

I had to show “real” intent between editing behaviors and choices.

To show the distinctions between genuine editing and genuine editor suppression, this case study solely focused on editing biographical and non-controversial information about controversial individuals.

These subjects were in the “minority view” in relationship to the majority view of the community and Wikipedia, which leans very strongly pro-science and towards mainstream views on many subjects, and seeks to suppress any publication on the platform from what they community considers “pseudo-science” to put it politely, but “woo” as the community calls it directly.

Much of this communal tit for tat between two communities editing on Wikipedia, the “woo” on one side and the “skeptics” on the other, does contain much of a genuine concern of Wikipedia, which has to deal with many problematic situations especially around alternative health claims. Wikipedia is correct to police that.

Yet at the same time, Wikipedia still has a responsibility to treat controversial subject matter to the same terms it treats any other subject. And even a controversial subject can have valid editorial concerns or reasonable boundaries.

So how do the two views co-operate on Wikipedia? That is what I wanted to find out.

So in my case study, I solely focused on bland information about the subjects. On both articles, the problem was identical, the lede section.

Deepak Chopra is a medical doctor, this is factually correct about his biography, and significant to his biographical narrative. Rupert Sheldrake is a Cambridge biologist, this is a factually correct detail in his biography, and central to everything in his personal life.

This information was being suppressed in these two articles by the majority view on Wikipedia. They did not want to list Deepak Chopra as a medical doctor, or Rupert Sheldrake as a biologist, but rather Deepak as a “New Age Guru” and Rupert as a “parapsychologist”.

The community on Wikipedia made it clear that Wikipedia should not give them any credibility, and justified this suppression of factually correct information and the treatment of minority view editors who, rightfully, wanted it included.

Even supporting this editorial decision about this non-controversial information made the minority view, in the eyes of the majority, “promoters of pseudo-science.”

So I wanted to apply the methodology of non-dual consensus building specifically in this environment.

Employed, tested, and piloted was a methodology of collaborative consensus building designed to be employed in contentious environments for the purposes of achieving a resolution, expressed as a completed article.

I informed the community harassing me numerous times that I was authoring a case study into Wikipedia consensus building for Aiki Wiki, and that by participating with me, targeting me, they were willingly participating in this case study.

Additionally, I offered many times opportunities for resolution.

This study continually grew in scope primarily because of one component of my methodology; I documented and responded directly to each instance of targeting or harassment I have received over four years while I attempt to find recourse for a resolution.

I did not predict that I would be a target of harassment when I began this study. Nor did I realize it would ever extend into the darker depths of “wiki” communities that it did, and never in my wildest dreams did I believe it would continue to give me a unique insight and deeper understanding of the psychologies that lurk under the surface of the internet for the past four years since it began.

So below is the relevant list of published articles that were on Wikipedia, We Have a Problem from 2013–2019.

Introduction:

Internet Drama: A consensual field study into online consensus building

What is a wiki war?

Part One: Collaborative consensus building in a contentious editing environment.