List of Wikipedia controversies

Ever since its launch in January 2001, Wikipedia's open nature has led to various concerns, such as the quality of writing, the amount of vandalism, and the accuracy of information. The media have been drawn to cover various controversial events related to Wikipedia, owing to either articles containing false or inconsistent information, or some of the personalities associated with Wikipedia becoming embroiled in contentious behavior.

The nature of Wikipedia controversies

The nature of Wikipedia controversies has been analyzed by many scholars. For example, sociologist Howard Rheingold 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 even one college discusses Wikipedia as a curricular tool, in that "recent controversies involving Wikipedia [are used] as a basis for discussion of ethics and bias."

2004

• August, 2004 – Alexander Halavais, then assistant professor at SUNY Buffalo, decided to test claims regarding the speed at which errors in Wikipedia were corrected by deliberately introducing thirteen errors into Wikipedia articles. The errors were corrected within three hours and Halavais was warned by other editors to "refrain from writing nonsense articles and falsifying information." Halavais's methodology has been criticized as being tainted by an "association effect" since, once it was noted that he had introduced one error, his other introduced errors were discovered by checking the contributions of his account.

2005

• September 2005 – The Seigenthaler incident, was a series of events that began in May 2005 with the anonymous posting of a hoax article in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia about John Seigenthaler, 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 Robert F. Kennedy. Then 78-year-old Seigenthaler, who had been a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, characterized the Wikipedia entry about him as "Internet character assassination". The perpetrator of the hoax, Brian Chase, was identified by Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt and reporters for the New York Times. 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 USA Today.
• September 2005 – Professional book indexer Daniel Brandt started Wikipedia criticism website wikipedia-watch.org in response to his unhappy experience while trying to get his biography deleted.
• November/December, 2005 – The IP address assigned to the United States House of Representatives 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 these changes included edits to Marty Meehan'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 "[t]hat 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 – In December 2005 Wikipedia co-founder Jimbo Wales was caught editing his own Wikipedia entry. In particular Mr. Wales "made the changes to play down the role of his former editor, Larry Sanger, by deleting references to him as a co-founder."

2006

• February 1, 2006 – The Henryk Batuta hoax was uncovered by editors on the Polish Wikipedia. Batuta was claimed to be a Polish Communist revolutionary who was an associate of Ernest Hemingway. It was referenced in seventeen other articles before the hoax was uncovered.
• March 2006 – Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt discovered 142 instances of plagiarism in Wikipedia articles. Brandt told the Associated Press after his discovery that "[t]hey present it as an encyclopedia. They go around claiming it's almost as good as Britannica. They are trying to be mainstream respectable."

2007

• January, 2007 – It was revealed that Microsoft 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. 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.
• March 2, 2007 – The Essjay controversy was an incident concerning a prominent Wikipedia participant and salaried Wikia employee, known by the username Essjay, who later identified himself as Ryan Jordan. Jordan held trusted volunteer positions within Wikipedia known as "administrator", "bureaucrat", "arbitrator", and "mediator". On July 24, 2006, a thread titled "Who is Essjay?" (later retitled "Who is Essjay?, Probably he's Ryan Jordan" after Jordan's self-disclosure) was started on forum site Wikipedia Review, the ensuing discussion bringing to light the contradictions, yet five days later The New Yorker published an interview with Essjay, complete with the falsehoods. The New Yorker later appended their story with an editor's note.

2008

• March, 2008 – In March 2008 Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales used Wikipedia to to dump his lover, Rachel Marsden, by adding a single sentence to his own Wikipedia article stating "I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden."
• December, 2008 – In early December the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) added the Wikipedia page about the album Virgin Killer to its blacklist of websites containing 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 and their action left most British residents unable to edit any page on Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation (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.
  Further information: Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia
• December, 2008 – Professor T. Mills Kelly conducts a class project on "Lying About the Past", which results 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, targeting ships in the Chesapeake Bay. It was revealed when media outlets began reporting the story as fact.

2009

• February, 2009 – In February 2009, Scott Kildall and collaborator Nathaniel Stern created Wikipedia Art, a performance art piece as a live article on Wikipedia. Site editors quickly concluded that the project violated Wikipedia's rules and opted to delete it 15 hours after it was initially posted. A month later, Kildall and Stern received a letter from a law firm representing the Wikimedia Foundation, claiming the domain name, wikipediaart.org, infringed on their trademark. The ensuing controversy was reported in the national press. Wikipedia Art has since been included in the Internet Pavilion of the Venice Biennale for 2009. It also appeared in a revised form at the Transmediale festival in Berlin in 2011.

2010

• April, 2010 - In April, 2010, Wikipedia's co-founder, Larry Sanger, informed the FBI that a large amount of child pornography was available on Wikimedia Commons. Sanger told Fox News that “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 Wikimedia Foundation 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 - In July 2010, following the football World Cup the FIFA president Sepp Blatter was awarded the Order of The Companions of O R Tambo for his contribution over the World Cup. The South African Government's webpage announcing the award referred to him as Joseph Sepp B******d Blatter, the nickname having been taken from his vandalized wikipedia article.

2011

• September, 2011 - In September 2011 British writer and journalist Johann Hari admitted using Wikipedia to attack his opponents.

2012

• July, 2012 – In July, 2012, Wikimedia UK chairperson and Wikipedia sysop Ashley van Haeften was banned from the English Wikipedia. He was only the ninth Wikipedia sysop to be banned. In August 2012, van Haeften resigned as chairperson of Wikimedia UK.

• September, 2012 – In September, 2012, author Philip Roth published an open letter 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, many literary critics had drawn parallels between Silk and the life of Anatole Broyard, 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, not a secondary. 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 IP address, with no evidence provided to support the claim that Roth was actually involved.

• September, 2012 – Gibraltarpedia, a project inspired by Monmouthpedia, was set up where editors created articles about Gibraltar that would then be linked from QR code plaques at spots around the island. The project came under scrutiny due to concerns about a Wikimedia UK board member who was head of the project, Roger Bamkin, 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, eventually resigned as a Board Trustee

• October, 2012 – In October, 2012 a vandalized Wikipedia's article forced Asian soccer's governing body to apologize to UAE soccer team for referring to them as the "Sand Monkeys."

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" on Wikipedia for more than five years – a quality award given to fewer than 1 percent of all articles on the English Wikipedia.
• April, 2013 – In April 2013, the French secret service was accused of attempting to censor Wikipedia by threatening a Wikipedia volunteer with arrest unless "classified information" about a military radio station was deleted.

See also

• Censorship of Wikipedia
• Conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia
• Reliability of Wikipedia