Wikipedia sometimes used as a tool for deception

It looks like Wikipedia, the 'everyman's encyclopaedia' to which anyone can contribute, and which can be edited by any user, is increasingly being used as a tool to mislead and deceive. There have been several cases in the news lately.

In Germany, a prankster added a false name to the new Economy Minister, just prior to the announcement of his appointment - and embarrassed many mainstream news outlets in that country, who were shown to be relying in Wikipedia rather than do their own research!

On Sunday February 8, the evening before Guttenberg was officially named to replace the outgoing Michael Glos, someone decided to add the name “Wilhelm” to his already prolix name on his Wikipedia entry: Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jakob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. “Freiherr,” for the record, is the title of Baron.

“I asked myself if anyone would notice if I simply added one more entry to the long list of names,” the anonymous Wikipedia poster wrote in a guest commentary for the media critique site bildblog.de on Tuesday. “It turns out that no one noticed, and scores of online media, newspapers and television stations used my invention without verifying it.”

Mass-circulation daily Bild ran the incorrect name and photo above the front-page headline, “Do we have to remember this name?” on Monday, poking fun at his aristocratic roots. Meanwhile the mistake ran in major publications across the country, including Germany’s leading news site Spiegel Online, which reported that journalists took pleasure in asking Guttenberg to recite his name.

Bloggers and media critics have triumphed at the coup, calling a “declaration of bankruptcy” for journalistic ethics.

Along with other papers across the country, both Bild and Spiegel Online published corrections, but their tone seemed less apologetic than irritated at having had their reliance on Wikipedia revealed. On Thursday Bild wrote that the 37-year-old had been the “victim of a falsification” that many media sources, “including Bild, fell into.” But the correction included a final dig at the new minister by adding that instead of 11 names, he had “‘just’ ten” names.

Meanwhile Spiegel Online corrected its mistake as soon as it was discovered, attributing it to “a manipulation of the internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia and insufficient research by Spiegel Online.” But in another article about the incident published on Thursday, it chalked up the embarrassing gaffe to “time pressure that was great.”

The news magazine also admitted that the author of the initial article had, for various reasons, only verified zu Guttenberg’s name using Wikipedia - despite receiving an accurate and substantiated news flash on his name from news agency DPA.

“Spiegel Online will research more carefully in the future. Wikipedia remains an important source, but can never be the only source for journalistic work,” the magazine concluded.

In England, an article cites a laundry-list of fake Wikipedia entries that have caused embarrassment and concern to politicans (and probably hilarity to the general public). Schools, teachers, universities and lecturers are cracking down as a result.

Wikipedia hoaxes have become a news staple. Recent ones have included the suggestion that Alan Titchmarsh, recipient of the Bad Sex Award for embarrassing passages in fiction, is rewriting the Kama Sutra (ha ha); that the population of the village of Denshaw, near Manchester, is infested with tapeworms (ho ho); and Robbie Williams made his pre-Take That living 'by eating domestic pets in pubs' (hilarious).

For a month-and-a-half, Wikipedia even reported that Margaret Thatcher was a fictitious character.

Only last week, a Tory Party worker altered a Wikipedia entry on Titian after a Commons clash between Gordon Brown and David Cameron over the artist's age. At Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Cameron had mocked Mr Brown for talking of Titian as being 90, claiming that, in fact, he had died aged 86.

Back at Tory HQ, the Party worker noticed that, although historians disagree over the age at which Titian died, Mr Brown was actually nearer the mark. So he changed the date of the painter's death on the relevant Wikipedia entry - just as anyone could have done.

. . .

At any one stage, it is estimated that there are 100,000 'sabotaged' pages on Wikipedia - which means the chances of coming across false information is one in 70.

This might not sound much, but it is enough for teachers in schools and universities to be deeply concerned about the site, telling their students not to confuse a fleeting 'click search' with actual research. Teachers try to crack down on anyone lazy enough to copy verbatim, or 'cut and paste', its frequently dubious material into their essays.

One, Professor Tara Brabazon of the University of Brighton, has explicitly banned first-year students from using Wikipedia - or Google - and insists on them sticking to reading lists.

Too many students don't use their own brains enough,' she says. 'We need to bring back the important values of research and analysis.'

Other colleges have followed suit not only here in Britain but also in America, where the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the University of California in Los Angeles and Syracuse University in New York have all banned the use of Wikipedia as a source for material.

Fake Wikipedia entries have been used in the USA as well. As a result, Wikipedia's founder has proposed reforms to the editing process.

Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales has proposed a controversial new system under which any changes to pages about living people would have to be approved by one of the site's editors or trusted users before they could be read by the general public.

The online encyclopaedia has struggled with vandalism and accusations of inaccuracy in its vast number of entries. But the new system would be radical step back from the "wiki" philosophy that anyone can make changes to the entries on Wikipedia.

The proposal comes after edits of the pages of Senators Robert Byrd and Edward Kennedy gave the false impression both had died.

Senator Kennedy was taken ill during a lunch in the Capitol for Barack Obama and members of Congress. However, before hospital sources confirmed he was OK, a false entry appeared on Wikipedia.

It read: "Kennedy suffered a seizure at a luncheon following the Barack Obama Presidential inauguration on January 20, 2009. He was removed in a wheelchair, and died shortly after." The error was quickly spotted and amended.

Wikipedia's has a system of protecting pages that are subject to vandalism by blocking all edits except those by trusted Wikipedia editors. But the system of "flagged revisions" proposed by Mr Wales would mean that once edits to biographies of living people were made, they would not go "live" to be seen by readers until checked.

In his blog, Mr Wales said the "nonsense" of the false reports would have been "100% prevented by Flagged Revision" and said he wanted the changes to be implemented as soon as possible.

"It [the error] could also have been prevented by protection or semi-protection, but this is a prime example of why we don't want to protect or semi-protect articles - this was a breaking news story and we want people to be able to participate (so protection is out) and even to participate in good faith for the first time ever (so semi-protection is out)," he wrote.

However, this posting caused a storm of comments, with many editors saying the proposal was against the spirit of Wikipedia and would introduce long delays to the editing process.

One user posted: "It is not in the interests of the community to trample on the views of large and passionate minority who wish to maintain the principle that all editors have an equal right to edit and equal responsibility for what they produce. It cannot be in anyone's interests for this to go ahead and doing so will show contempt for a whole layer of people who have devoted their time and energy in good faith, believing that what WP told them: 'this is an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit,' was true."

But a Wikipedia administrator posted: "In the vast majority of cases, a Wikipedia article on an individual will be the very highest-ranking search engine result when a search is conducted on the name of that person. This affects the lives of the people we write about on a daily basis.

"To suggest that Wikipedia does not have profound obligations to do its best to keep these articles free of defamatory, gossipy and privacy-invading material is to suggest that we are without obligation to consider the real-world impacts of our actions and the work we are doing."

I hope Mr. Wales succeeds in getting these reforms implemented. I link to Wikipedia quite a lot, as regular readers will know, but mostly in the historical and aviation fields. None of the articles I've referenced appear to have been affected by this, at least not yet: but I'd hate to lose so valuable a repository of information because it had become untrustworthy. Sure, it's no Encyclopaedia Britannica: but it's free. That's worth a lot to me, and should be to all of us.

Peter