By Virginia Belmont
On 4 November, 2022, a veteran Wikipedia editor named Rathfelder was blocked for sockpuppetry. Rathfelder had been editing Wikipedia since 2005 and had amassed over 540,000 edits. Girth Summit, the admin who made the block, announced it on one of Wikipedia’s noticeboards because, as they said, “I know a lot of people will be surprised to see the block.”
Sockpuppetry, or using multiple accounts to influence votes and discussions, is one of the most unforgivable offenses on WIkipedia. And yet, not long after announcing Rathfelder’s block, Girth Summit was suggesting that they would “not stand in the way of an unblock.” Other editors (including admins) also suggested that if Rathfelder promised not to do it again, they should be unblocked. And so, three days later, good and prolific editor Rathfelder was unblocked.
Perhaps if Girth Summit knew what I’m about to tell you, they would not have unblocked Rathfelder.
Meet Martin Rathfelder
Rathfelder is Martin Rathfelder from Manchester, England. We know that because he told us on an early version of his Wikipedia user page. There’s a Martin Rathfelder on Facebook who lives in Manchester and says he “works on Wikipedia.” The profile for Twitter account @rathfelder reads, “Health and politics: Manc, Cyclist, European, Labour Party, Wikipedian.” Pretty clearly the same person.
Martin Rathfelder used to be the Director of the Socialist Health Association (SHA). According to left-wing British newspaper The Morning Star, he was dismissed as Director in 2018 for “gross misconduct and bringing SHA into disrepute.” We’ll get into that later, but for now, notice that Wikipedia’s article on the Socialist Health Association was created by Wikipedia editor Rathfelder and edited dozens of times by that account, right through to 2018. On Wikipedia, that’s a serious conflict of interest.
According to this 2017/2018 annual report
…continue reading Rathfelder – “a good editor”
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