Come play Wikipedia’s “BLP Palooza”

This article was originally published in 2019 on Wikipedia, We Have a Problem, a now defunct blog that investigated “wiki wars” on Wikipedia. The case study functioned as research and development of Conversational Game Theory, a unique computational algorithm for online conflict resolution, consensus building, and collective editing.

Through my research into WikiWars, I was able to discover a dynamic Nash equilibrium in human consensus building, which certainly made the years of targeted harassment and threats to destroy my reputation by a group of disgruntled Wikipedia editors all the more worthwhile.

Wikipedia has been wonderful at introducing the world to decentralized knowledge bases and the value of large collective editing.

Where Wikipedia has failed is in decentralized governance. I think it’s very valuable to study where Wikipedia has gotten it wrong for any community designer, especially in web3 which is facing its own issues in decentralized governance.

The areas of Wikipedia that that can stress test Wikipedia’s governance, known as the Five Pillars, are “Biography of a Living Person”, “Paid Editing”, and “Fringe Topics”, three of the areas my case study researched in detail.

Wikipedia’s “Biography of a Living Person” is especially frail here––the governance system within Wikipedia that assures public individuals access to paths of recourse are very clearly written into Wikipedia’s Five Pillars.

In my case study, I demonstrated how these rules protecting living individuals on Wikipedia break down and can become abused without any recourse, something promised to individuals by the WikiMedia Foundation.

So let’s get ready to play the Wikipedia BLPalooza!

Back in 2019, Entrepreneur online featured a guest writer, Amy Osmond Cook — who blogged about “what she learned when her Wikipedia page was deleted”.

Her biography or “BLP” (Biography of a Living Person) was on Wikipedia for a few months, before, she says, “a Wikipedia editor deleted my article” where she claims it was “taken over by trolls”.

Amy will probably do a better job than I of telling her story about what happened, but what stood out to me about her post was her letting the cat out of the bag with quite a large bang.

Her main conclusion was when it comes to editing on Wikipedia, “The real rules of the game are hidden, political, and bizarre.”

After doing some research, including speaking directly to WikiMedia foundations legal counsel — Amy Osmond Cook shrewdly blogged about how to game the system if you want to improve your Wikipedia biography, company page, or any Wikipedia article really.

Specifically, she noted, playing by the rules is a waste of time since the Wikipedia community has their own shadow rules they play by — the best thing for you or anyone to do is covertly hire a paid editor, anonymously. Her entire post walks you through it.

The Great Game.

Right wing stalker @philipcross63 has made 375 edits to my Wikipedia entry over six years. Method is to add everything unpleasant said about me by MSM columnists and delete anything positive as not having an MSM source. Key bias of @jimmy_wales methodology, relentlessly pursued. https://t.co/HNzz65QE6V

— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) May 7, 2018

When Amy says that “The real rules of the game are hidden, political, and bizarre”, she is referring to the levels of justifications experienced Wikipedia editors use to justify doing virtually whatever they want on the encyclopedia, including the harassment and suppression of other editors they are trying to remove from editing.

Let me show you how the game is played — and I will even end with showing you how to falsify what I am saying, by going in and playing the game yourself. By doing so — I predict you will discover the same set of evidence many of us who are investigating Wikipedia’s toxic community also are.

Two sets of rules.

Neil Degrasse Tyson, famous science educator, noted that according to a National Academy of Science’s study, 7% of scientists believe in divinity of some kind and say prayers. Neil suggested, wisely I believe, that the 93% of the rest of science should be having a conversation with them first, before science could address the public.

This is not the approach within a small subset of Wikipedia editors— their approach is denying that the 7% are even scientists at all. And this is where we can watch and measure the two sets of rules playout on Wikipedia.

Not that long ago, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger visited the wiki entry on the Discovery Institute, which is a mess when you visit it. The Discovery Institute is a hot topic for “skeptic activist” editors on Wikipedia since Discovery institute is a collection of biologists and scientists who introduce the model of evolution known as “intelligent design”, a “naughty” alternative view to have from the viewpoint of skeptic activists.

Nothing brings out the rage in skeptic activists like “intelligent design theory”, and in this case, they use their dominance on Wikipedia to stage criticisms of the organization.

My ignorance on the subject of evolution and biology, intelligent or not could fill volumes — so again I have nothing to add or question about the topic’s dominance by skeptic activist editors, but that didn’t stop Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia and the designer of MediaWiki.

As the originator of and the first person to elaborate Wikipedia’s neutrality policy, and as an agnostic who believes intelligent design to be completely wrong, I just have to say that this article is appallingly biased. … I’m not here to argue the point, as I completely despair of persuading Wikipedians of the error of their ways. I’m just officially registering my protest. — Larry Sanger (talk) 05:30, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Larry Sanger holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is fervent on the concept of “neutral” point of view writing, especially on controversial topics. He is also the designer of Wikipedia.

Following Sanger’s comment, an editor decided to make the article neutral by removing the obvious “skeptic” demeaning bias the article had. Within minutes that edit was reverted, and no improvement to the article was possible outside of a small circle of editors who control access to permissions on the page.

Following on the heels of this event was the BLP deletion of a notable paleontologist, Günter Bechly from Wikipedia (the English version at least, his German article is still up). Günter Bechly’s work in paleontology was notable enough for paleontologists, as they named a number of taxa after him.

Why would they delete this article?

Günter Bechly joined the Discovery Institute, another scientist coming out in favor of Intelligent Design. Opps.

Even though many Wikipedia editors mentioned that Günter Bechly did pass the WP:Prof “test”, and he has actual taxa named directly after his contributions to the field — this shadow group of editors and admins were able to enforce the “WP: Notability” argument to remove his BLP to justify their vendetta against the subject.

This group of activist editors conduct campaigns to suppress information that those 7% of scientists actually are scientists, and use Wikipedia to enforce this narrow and ideological “hidden rule”.

My case study into Wikipedia governance shows that if you break the hidden rule, or even if you are suspected of breaking the hidden rule in the future, Wikipedia’s skeptic community will begin to weaponize Wikipedia and other MediaWiki’s in bizarre social vendettas against the subjects.

While my case study focused on this particular subculture on Wikipedia, that was by the chance of the opportunity of the study––my case study simply shows that if this can happen in this one area of Wikipedia, it can happen everywhere. And where it happens there simply is no accounting of it when it does. And those controlling the editing permissions are all anonymous.

And it is a game to be played using a continually collapsing context and a rabbit hole of twisted logic and rationalizations which fly in the face of human dignity and collaborative consensus building, along with Wikipedia’s own five pillars of collaborative editing.

Welcome to Wikipedia’s BLP-palooza!

Let me give you some another example of how this game is played on Wikipedia. See for yourself. Be skeptical of the claims I make until you do.

Tim Farley — an online skeptic influencer, often mentioned in this case study for his role in promoting Wikipedia editing, encouraging a community of “skeptics” to edit Wikipedia, has his own Wikipedia article.

Such accomplishment. Great skepticism. Wow.

Is he a notable programmer? Certainly Not by Wikipedia’s standards of Notability. Is he a notable writer? Nope. What is Tim Farley’s notability, at least in relation to the encyclopedia? Zero.

His claim to fame is a website he created called “What’s the Harm?”, which also is its own Wikipedia article, which is only cited by other skeptic organizations on the web, with no major publications. Yet his biography reads like his notability is well established and it reads like it is well established because to this small subculture on Wikipedia, it is notable, and that’s the hidden rule.

“Biography of a Living Person: Tim Farley” on Wikipedia was written by Susan Gerbic, and specifically using dozens of sources that Wikipedia’s own policies of notability would not allow on any article. Additionally, she knows Tim personally and credits his lectures encouraging skeptics at TAM (The Amazing Meeting, a national gathering of members of skeptic organizations, hailing their “pope”, magician James Randi, and sharing the exploits in advancing skepticism) to edit Wikipedia as the inspiration for her to create Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia.

Note the “warfare” terminology, “guerrilla”. Tactical. This brings a “battleground” mentality to “wiki wars” that has horrible consequences on the breakdown of Wikipedia’s governance system.

Not only does “Biography of a Living Person: Tim Farley” article fly in the face of WP: Notability policy, it was written with a clear Conflict of Interest by Susan Gerbic, someone who questionably is funded to edit on Wikipedia, thus technically being suspicious as “paid editing” to boot.

But it’s not a conflict of interest to them, and therefore, that is the rule that governs.

I know him also and that seems a shame if we can’t work on this page because we personally know him. So I think as long as we are neutral there won’t be a problem. SGerbic (talk) 00:18, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I’m fine with Tim having his bio on Wikipedia, truly––I could care less.

What I do have an issue with is the “two sets of rules” policy that this shadow community enforces. Especially when this group of activists editing Wikipedia use Wikipedia’s “notability” policy to suppress biographical information on subjects they don’t like.

In this great game on Wikipedia, the game of the “two sets of rules”, one group can control all the editing permissions on their own biographies and topics of cherry interest in addition to controlling all of the editing permissions on biographies of their targets pages.

For example, Tim Farley himself wrote a highly critical article of Deepak Chopra and the conflict of interest for having individuals who knew Chopra edit his Wikipedia article, bragging about how skeptics exposed Chopra for this on Wikipedia, bragging about how they took control of the permissions away from Deepak Chopra’s representative on his article.

#askdeepak Why was your employee editing your biography on #Wikipedia in clear violation of conflict-of-interest rules? @DeepakChopra

— Tim Farley (@krelnik) December 11, 2013

Deepak Chopra is not only allowed but encouraged by WikiMedia Foundation to have a responsible representative on his article, a fact that Tim Farley misrepresents to his Twitter followers and directly violates on Wikipedia, thus preventing a biography of a living person the path of recourse promised them by the WikiMedia foundation.

Tim Farley, proud of the very skeptic activity on Wikipedia that he was a thought leader of, gloats back on Twitter when one of Deepak Chopra’s own representatives to Wikipedia gets blocked from editing, an action that was taken specifically by Farley’s own group of editors.

Two sets of rules.

Play the game.

See for yourself. My entire case study is falsifiable, especially around the work I did on Wikipedia on Rupert Sheldrake’s and Deepak Chopra’s BLP pages.

Go to Sheldrake’s article.

Question why the very first sentence of the article “Alfred Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942) is an English author and parapsychology researcher” does not list “biologist” in the lede sentence and request the article reflects a common encyclopedia entry, despite this being an intrinsic and notable fact to his biography.

Don’t worry, this isn’t meat puppeting. It is an experiment. You don’t have to worry that this is a sneaky edit either, there are numerous primary, secondary, and tertiary sources that show Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist, including Cambridge University, where he published over 70 scientific papers, and traditional encyclopedias such as Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Chances are, “roxythedog” or another Wikipedia skeptic “troll” will come along to bait you and tell you that the page already has a consensus if you just go check the archives (all 22 pages of them even, going back years — which would take someone days to read).

If they try and label you a “woo promoter” for simply suggesting a non-controversial biographical fact to be inserted in the article, tell him you checked the archives, and it looks like far more editors support a more balanced lead than the article currently reflects.

Tell him that additionally, there was a consensus on Rupert Sheldrake’s BLP as a biologist for over seven years. Then inform them that it was removed from Sheldrake’s article without a consensus, with a freshly minted Wikipedia editing account making that their first edit on Wikipedia.

And lastly, try to have a reasonable discussion with them, getting them to explain their reasoning. Be professional.

Watch the contradictions fly around which Wikipedia policies they use to justify it.

Measure how long it takes them to visit your Wikipedia profile page, how long it takes them to escalate the conversation away from consensus on towards you own activities.

Go to Deepak Chopra’s Wikipedia article.

Again, the lede sentence: Deepak Chopra is an Indian-American author and alternative medicine advocate.

Question why he isn’t listed as a MD, despite being a recognized endocrinologist as well as managing a medical staff at his center.

Ask them why were the edits made by SlimVirgin, an experienced senior Wikipedia editor, were reverted, as she corrected the article to meet Wikipedia’s policy at face value.

Greet Roxythedog, who also will show up there to greet you too. He won’t contribute anything of value to the conversation other than quick short rubs, such as “what that other editor told you”. He is probably trying to rile you up. Just continue to question and work collaboratively with them.

When you are done with this experiment––head over to the Wikipedia “Fringe Noticeboards” and watch these same editors who greet you gather their friends, giving them a heads up to your presence––note how they contextualize your participation.

Did the article change to reflect reality despite all of your reasoned attempts and interpretations of Wikipedia policy?

If similar events don’t happen to you that happened to me, I’ll halt publishing Wikipedia, We Have a Problem.

The problem with this is twofold.

It’s not just that one voice dominates an article and one voice gets suppressed, it is that this sort of thing is allowed and supported within Wikipedia’s community.

If it can happen within this small set of articles and editors, it shows this can happen anywhere on Wikipedia. Left unchecked (which it is) it means this sort of toxic culture becomes continually enabled to continue it.

Conclusion: Better governance design plagues Wikipedia as well as Web3

I’m not trying to live up to my reputation amongst skeptics as a “notorious troll trying to disrupt Wikipedia” with my suggestion.

Developers of consensus algorithms and especially the entire world of web3, needs to study how Wikipedia has failed in governance, learn from those problems, and design a better collective editing and governance system.

If Web3 developers do not resolve the “permission” problem, they can look at Wikipedia governance as it has evolved over 20 years to see where they are heading.

If you wish to study this problem, the best way to do it is by jumping into Wikipedia with a clear intention to make the encyclopedia better in articles that have wiki wars on them. Identify non-controversial information in the article, and if it is being suppressed, question that. Hold that question directly to Wikipedia’s own Five Pillars. Try this yourself. Learn where it breaks down. Learn that these are the problems you are going to have to solve in designing better governance systems.

My eight year long case study into consensus building on Wikipedia in Wiki Wars was fortunate to absorb what seems like every possible strategy any consensus agent can use to disrupt rational consensus building and enforce a “hidden” set of rules.

From this study, I was able to complete a computational algorithm for online consensus building which offers novel permission assigning features which can emerge from online discussion and finally initiate Aiki Wiki, the “win-win” protocol for the world wide web.