Why this Site?

  • Our Mission:
  • We exist to shine the light of scrutiny into the dark crevices of Wikipedia and its related projects; to examine the corruption there, along with its structural flaws; and to inoculate the unsuspecting public against the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense that issues forth from one of the world’s most frequently visited websites, the “encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”
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Wikipedia and the Deep, Dark Web

By Dolores Haze

Numerous Wikipedia articles about the Dark Web, and various sites and entities operating within it, contain links to forums and websites supporting activities that would generally be described as criminal — selling drugs, hacking secure networks, stealing credit card numbers, and so forth. Sometimes, links to fake websites are added by the criminals themselves as part of their efforts to ensnare people (many of whom are also criminals) into parting with personal or financial details. Many have reported being scammed this way, with Wikipedia acting as an otherwise innocent-looking gateway into the scams and frauds of the Dark Web.

There are no background checks on editors in this (or any other) topic area, so any thief, drug dealer, or pedophile could be editing articles about the Dark Web with impunity. Recently we noticed that someone tried to draw attention to the problem on Jimmy Wales’ talk page, providing numerous examples. Unfortunately, the responses from Wikipedians were not very helpful. One claimed the person was “promoting censorship,” though all he was actually doing was expressing his disapproval of Wikipedia linking to criminal websites. Another even argued that linking to websites that sell and trade child pornography would be “fine,” as long as the sites don’t host any of the child-porn images themselves! The sheer repulsiveness of this stance should be obvious; even sites that specialize in hardcore pornography don’t intentionally carry such links. Hopefully — hopefully — the person in question isn’t typical of most Wikipedians, and we can safely shift our focus to… someone else.

Meet the editors: Deku-shrub

Cute, but looks can be deceiving.

At least one convicted child-porn possessor that we know about has been editing

…continue reading Wikipedia and the Deep, Dark Web

Trust & Safety?

by Pa Nautilus

About a week ago, we put up a blog post about Paul Benjamin Austin, a particularly creepy Wikipedia editor. If you were wondering why someone here didn’t just report him to the Wikimedia Foundation’s Trust & Safety department, it’s because we knew someone already had. You’re about to learn just how incompetent that group was in handling the complaint.

The person who brought Paul Benjamin Austin to our attention complained to Trust & Safety about Paul Benjamin Austin. “Senior Trust and Safety Specialist” Kalliope Tsouroupidou handled the case. Her email response reads as follows:

Thank you for reaching out to the Trust & Safety team.

We have taken a look at the concerns you have raised, though this doesn’t look like a situation that T&S may be able to act on at this time. Office actions [1] tend to be considered when the local communities have already exhausted all their options in handling a situation. After a quick look I see that the community has been able to handle this [2] so far, so we would not like to usurp their autonomy in continuing to do so.

Should this cause on-wiki issues that the community is unable to handle, we will be happy to consider a conduct investigation on our end.

While it is reassuring to know that Trust and Safety would prefer not to usurp the community’s authority, it must be pointed out that Tsouroupidou has investigated the wrong user. She has linked to a complaint about edit warring involving a user named “Benjamin au.” It may seem like confusing “Benjamin au” with “Paul Benjamin Austin” is simply an innocent mistake, but even the most cursory examination should have alerted Tsouroupidou that something was not right. “Benjamin au” made a total of 10 edits,

…continue reading Trust & Safety?

Wikipedia is Nuts

Wikipedia editors mud-wrestle over the issue of squirrels and their negative impact on the security of our nation’s infrastructure.

…continue reading Wikipedia is Nuts