Wikipedia and its content is controlled in their entirety by the Wikimedia Foundation, even though the latter claims to not interfere in the editorial decision-making process, reported Pirate Wires.
The year was 2019. A prominent Wikipedia admin ‘Fram’ was handed a year-long ban by the free-encyclopedia, reported Ashley Rindsberg of Pirate Wires in August thus year.
It was unique in the sense that the ban was not enforced by the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee (Arbcom) but by the NGO Wikimedia Foundation that owns Wikipedia.
Favouritism and conflict of interest
The drastic and abrupt decision saw the resignation of 2 Wikipedia bureaucrats (high-ranking editors who can assign admin rights) and 18 admins (editors with enhanced rights) in protest.
The top-down ban on Wikipedia admin ‘Fram’ marked a departure from the free encyclopedia’s supposed principles of consensus, openness and self-governance. The issue had become so big that even co-founder Jimmy Wales was forced to intervene.
It later transpired that the banned Wikipedia admin ‘Fram’, who had over 2 lakh edits to his name, had an altercation with another editor named Laura Hale.
Hale, a PhD student in Australia at that time, was in a long-term relationship with another Wikipedia editor named Maria Sefidaris. Coincidentally, the latter was the Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.
Additionally, she was part of top-level decision-making committees at the Wikimedia Foundation. Maria Sefidaris had come to her partner Hale’s defence amid her feud with Wikipedia admin ‘Fram’.
Attempts to portray herself as a victim in the aftermath of the #MeToo Movement also drew support for Hale from the Wikipedia faction ‘Women in Red’
But soon accusations surfaced about how Maria Sefidaris might have influenced her position in the Wikimedia Foundation to enforce the ban on ‘Fram’ over his confrontation with Sefidaris’ love interest Hale.
It also came to light that Hale was able to secure a paid project at ‘Wikipedian in Residence’ for the Spanish Paralympic Committee despite starting to learn the language only a few years prior.
“Salacious as it all was, if this had been the end of the story, it would have been an unpleasant, but quirky, footnote in Wikipedia history. In reality, it was only the beginning of a fundamental change that would replace the decentralized ethos of the site’s founders, and impose the WMF agenda on Wikipedia to use it as a tool for progressive social change,” Pirate Wires stated.
Wikipedia admins serving personal interests
In 2021, Maria Sefidaris stepped down from the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation to become a ‘paid consultant’ at ‘The Movement Strategy.’ This created a hullabaloo among the Wikipedia community about ‘self-dealing.’
The General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation, Amanda Keton, came to her rescue and attempted to rationalise the decision.
According to Pirate Wires, ‘The Movement Strategy’ was launched in 2017 to veer Wikipedia from an alleged ‘decentralised knowledge platform’ to one with a ‘hyper-centralised space of top-down justice activism and advocacy’ by 2030.
Maria Sefidaris was directly named at the launch event of ‘The Movement Strategy’.
The Movement Strategy and the agenda till 2030
The ‘free-encyclopedia’ thereafter began its pivot towards championing DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity) goals.
Wikipedia eventually violated its ‘No Original Research’ policy to promote pages such as ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ‘Police Brutality in the United States,’ ‘Racism in Oregon’ and ‘US National Anthem Protests.’
Pirate Wires noted, “Instead of aggregating information from other sources, Wikipedia editors began both going to protests and proactively reaching out to photographers who would be willing to allow Creative Commons use of protest photography.”
The Movement Strategy also served another purpose. It focused on filling the coffers of the Wikimedia Foundation deep into the future.
A partnership with Google
Wikipedia’s vast dissemination of ‘free information’, carefully curated and verified by its coterie of motivated editors, earned the top spot on Google’s search engine including its knowledge graph.
Google in turn benefitted Wikipedia through regular donations, including a sum of $2 million in 2010.
“Google could donate funds that would eventually get funneled into grants for radical social justice programs with a hefty degree of plausible deniability and no small amount of opacity,” Pirate Wires noted.
OpIndia dossier on Wikipedia and govt intervention
On 5th November, the Modi government sent a notice to Wikipedia pointing out the biased and inaccurate information published by the ‘free encyclopedia.’
The notice was issued by the Union Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry. It highlighted the hegemony of a small group of editors and their control over its content.
The Modi government has asked Wikipedia why it shouldn’t be treated as a publisher instead of an intermediary.
It is important to mention that OpIndia highlighted the same issue in its 187-page dossier published on 9th September 2024.
By definition, an intermediary is not supposed to follow a specific editorial line. It is meant to merely be a platform for the public to air their own views. However, that is not the case with Wikipedia.
Firstly, not everybody can air their views on Wikipedia. Secondly, only a small group of editors and administrators have the final say on the nature of content that is added in any articles, making the articles one-sided, biased, and toeing a specific ideological line.
Thirdly, several of these so-called ‘volunteers’ are paid by the Wikimedia Foundation to further their ideological and business interests.
The sources that are allowed to be quoted in Wikipedia articles also suffer the same bias, often injected by editors and administrators who are directly paid by Wikimedia Foundation.
With all of these realities, Wikipedia does not fall under the intermediary category, but the publisher category – additionally – a publisher that is actively undermine the interest of India without following the law of India – financially or editorially.
