Source: TW20
Skewed control
- “It’s interesting to note that there are many Bengali and Malayali senior editors on Wikipedia who have been editing Wikipedia pages for years. They’re staunch Leftists and their job is ensure that Wikipedia doesn’t say nice things about non-left personalities and media.”
- “A gang of about 50 Indian editors are on top of a chain of editors and they have complete control over Wikipedia. The top 50 editors are mostly from IT companies with much free time on their hands and they are on Wiki the whole day. They are on top of a chain of command. A team consists of about 10 editors. A newbie proposes an edit and a chain of command approves it and further edits it.”
Skewing techniques
- “How do they vilify pages? Well that’s another interesting thing. For personalities, they will highlight their flaws. For example, create a separate section for an unverified allegation levelled against him just by citing a newspaper report. But for others, they would ignore it.”
- “For people who are known to have anti-left views, the attacks get more vicious. They scour the internet for publicly available articles that show you in bad light. Once they get such an article, a new editor will edit and the senior editors will ensure that it sticks to the page.”
- “It’s interesting how they organise the malicious edits. They will form a team. Usually such teams are formed on secret chat rooms outside of Wikipedia. They will ensure that the edits come from different locations. So it’s impossible to figure out that it’s a coordinated attack. If seniors from Virginia, Kolkata, Vietnam, Karachi & Mumbai are saying the same thing about an article, then the edit sticks. No matter how much you try, you will not be able to modify it.Everytime new senior editors will come and block you from editing or will reverse the edit”
- Examples: TW20, OI20
Frustrating to change narrative
- “Picture this: You do a lot of research to edit a page on Wikipedia. Backed with data, you edit the article on Wikipedia only to find that it has been reversed the next day. Imagine this happening to you frequently. Day after day. You get frustrated and angry. Right? This is the why new editors have left Wikipedia out of frustration. What is the point of research and editing articles if they get deleted?” TW20
- “Wikipedia has a system where you can “Talk” to your “seniors” about why your edits have disappeared. This is where the bullying happens. There are these “Talk” pages where you can ask why your edits have been deleted. These pages are public and the language is monitored. It is here that the senior editors will bully you by clever usage of words. They’ll tell you that your edits were “pretty pointless” or “vague”.” TW20
Corruption
- “Here’s a payment structure for these Wiki editors in the command chain: 1. Top Editor: 30% (one) 2. Senior editor: 25% 3. Mid editor: 15% 4. Young editor: 10% 5. Agency: 20%.”
- “1. The top editors make about 5 lakhs every month as “consultants”. 2. The agencies make about 3 lakh per month. 3. Students are enrolled as interns and may later on become mid-level editors. Wikipedia is a big business opportunity, hence tightly controlled.”