> Wikipedia would benefit from a policy where a sufficient number of individual complaints against a user who has passed some threshold of number of edits to a single article (say 100) would be automatic grounds to block the user from further edits to the article, regardless of fault

So, let's suppose that some particular expert who has a particular level of knowledge or expertise in a given field, and is an established member of the Wikipedia community, accumulates a few hundred edits to some particular page in his area of interest. But this area of interest is politically controversial, and there is a certain narrative about this area of interest that some group of people would like to push, but this expert is too diligent about keeping the relevant Wikipedia pages neutral, well-sourced, and factual. That policy would basically allow large groups of trolls to basically lock that guy, or any other editor who catches onto their monkeyshines, out of certain Wikipedia pages, so that they are free to inject their biases unchecked.

The problem is that not every bad actor is a single person standing behind a single username. Some of them are coordinated groups of anonymous trolls. Giving the trolls an advantage over single people standing behind a single username that they can be held accountable for is a bad, bad move.

If some editor makes 1000 edits to a single page, and they're doing so in bad faith, you have more than enough evidence to prove that. If 100 trolls each make 10 edits to a single page, in bad faith, you can't even prove that they're working together.

> That policy would basically allow large groups of trolls to basically lock that guy,

That. It's not theoretical, it's an existing usage pattern. See "brigading"

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/36xhxc/what_i...

If the ability for Wikipedia to have a neutral article on a topic hinges on the existence of a single irreplaceable person with that level of dedication, then I think the right solution is to not have an article on the topic. In general, for a topic area that someone out there cares enough to brigade in the fashion you describe, there surely must also exist a non-obsessive set of users capable of moderating the page without making hundreds of edits per person to it.

> If the ability for Wikipedia to have a neutral article on a topic hinges on the existence of a single irreplaceable person with that level of dedication, then I think the right solution is to not have an article on the topic.

This kills the Wikipedia.

Unsurprisingly, there are orders of magnitude more people on the earth with some sort of agenda to push than there are people who actually care about having an unbiased and comprehensive Wikipedia, such that the good-faith Wikipedians are spread very, very thin. This is a shitty state of affairs, but it would be far, far more shitty for the Wikipedia community to just surrender to the post-truth dystopian future we find ourselves living in.

Why do you think it is more likely that a given obsessive editor is a good-faith Wikipedian who cares about an unbiased and comprehensive encylopedia than an agenda-pusher? My proposal was implicitly based on the opposite assumption, namely, that removing obsessive editors will reduce the agenda-pushing set much more than it will the unbiased encyclopedist set. I think that, considering the real world, this is reasonable: we clearly see many more people dedicating an extreme amount of resources, up to and including their lives, to political causes than to abstract values such as objectivity and the accuracy of the historical record. The example that spawned this discussion certainly seems to involve a highly active editor being driven by a political agenda (do you dispute this?), and this is the case for almost all other instances I am aware of (though of course there is a selection bias here). Do you actually contend that the subject of the opening post has no agenda to push, or do you count him as a force for an unbiased and comprehensive Wikipedia because you think that his agenda is correct?

> My proposal was implicitly based on the opposite assumption, namely, that removing obsessive editors will reduce the agenda-pushing set much more than it will the unbiased encyclopedist set.

Which is the exact opposite of what would happen. It’s trivial to get an internet brigade of trolls to push one particular agenda. It’s easy to incite the Internet outrage machine into an angry mob. And the people who do this don’t play fair; they disappear and reappear under new pseudonyms and IPs, spurn accountability, and burn identities. Making it harder for someone to build a record they can stand behind is the wrong direction.

> we clearly see many more people dedicating an extreme amount of resources, up to and including their lives, to political causes than to abstract values such as objectivity and the accuracy of the historical record

Which is why allowing these mobs to brigade against the rare person who is committed to the unbiased truth is the wrong move.

> The example that spawned this discussion certainly seems to involve a highly active editor being driven by a political agenda (do you dispute this?), and this is the case for almost all other instances I am aware of (though of course there is a selection bias here). Do you actually contend that the subject of the opening post has no agenda to push, or do you count him as a force for an unbiased and comprehensive Wikipedia because you think that his agenda is correct?

I did some research on Phillip Cross above and beyond simply reading OP, because OP is an obvious hit piece and the group of fringe political figures who have seemingly declared war on this guy seem to be vaguely aligned with Russian propaganda operations, and this guy’s edit history, from what I’ve seen, seems to be largely in the direction of removing random vandalism and Russian propaganda from Wikipedia. The only seemingly factual criticism I’ve seen is that this guy seems a little obsessive, which is a fair point if you’re worried about this guy having a well-rounded and fulfilling life, but I trust you’ll understand if I don’t think these people who are butthurt about some obsessive Wikipedia editor deleting their propaganda from Wikipedia are genuinely concerned about his well-being.

"If the ability for Wikipedia to have a neutral article on a topic hinges on the existence of a single irreplaceable person"

i don't think that's been said.

"the right solution is to not have an article on the topic."

false. or i guess we'll exclude most of quantum mechanics and dozens of other things few people are knowledgeable about.

"for a topic area that someone out there cares enough to brigade in the fashion you describe, there surely must also exist a non-obsessive set of users capable of moderating the page without making hundreds of edits per person to it."

maybe, but it doesn't mean they're doing it. as you say, they're non-obsessive.

> i don't think that's been said.

I think it's implied by the phrase "they are free to inject their biases unchecked."

> false. or i guess we'll exclude most of quantum mechanics and dozens of other things few people are knowledgeable about.

Note that I said "neutral article". For articles on esoteric QM topics, it's not like one would expect the existence of a well-organised brigade trying to push an alternative viewpoint at all costs, either.

> a user who has passed some threshold of number of edits to a single article (say 100) would be automatic grounds to block the user from further edits to the article

This would not be without precedent. I was an active Wikipedia editor in 2004-2006, and I recall an editor (later admin), who was otherwise a great contributor and a positive force in the project, who had a seemingly unhealthy obsession with singer Ashlee Simpson. After multiple arbitration proceedings, he was restricted from editing her Wikipedia entry under threat of 24-hour bans for each edit.

Here is the notice of the final arbitration ruling [1], mentioning the prolonged history of the case.

To be fair, it was a different time back then. Not sure if a ruling like that could or would be done today.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

There is an unfortunate asymmetry that breaks wikipedia this way which is counter to the asymmetry that makes wikipedia work. Making an article is harder than reverting or deleting it. This asymmetry produces all of the content and stops it from going too pear shaped. The asymmetry of good actors getting annoyed by bad actors and leaving unfortunately swings in the other direction.

We can't just jump to conclusions like this. We can't take a single story about a single bad editor and make blanket rules. You have to take a look at the whole dataset of people who make crusader efforts and then see if there's a pattern.

Even if there is, you then have to ask yourself if it's something that people will just learn and work-around.

I'm not disagreeing Cross was likely a net negative for wikipedia, but gut reactions to a single bad actor don't justify large theoretical changes to a largely-successful system.

> You have to take a look at the whole dataset of people who make crusader efforts and then see if there's a pattern.

You'll never see the whole dataset, and understand exactly the motivation behind every edit. All you can go on is anectodes like this and adjust as you can. Its a social system, not an exact piece of engineering science.

It’s not just this sort of editor who cause problems. There is a class of editor who makes no significant extra content via research or substantially flesh out article but who watch the edits as they come through.

As an example, see the user WWGB - if you review their contribution history you will not see any work done other than “review” the work of others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/WWGB

Not adjusting your overall rules to the actions of single bad actors can be fatal.

Single bad actors can sometimes wreak utter havoc.

> Not adjusting your overall rules to the actions of single bad actors can be fatal.

Rash and systemic overreactions to bad actors can be fatal.

Also true.

Single bad events are usually how we, as democracies, create new blanket rules. The events have to be bad enough to move people to action, and that normally means something out of the ordinary, which by definition is likely to be singular.

The blanket rules should be made with care, for sure, but your premise is wrong.

The reality fact that it's a common mistake isn't a good reason to keep doing it.

I didn't interpret the premise as it's not possible, I interpreted it as an argument for why blanket rules need considerably more justification.

1800 edits on a single page in only a few years is essentially a sickness. I'm not a doctor, but that should be classified as obsession.

So, here's the Wikipedia page in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Galloway

The revision history is interesting to look through as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Galloway&o...

Many of Cross's revisions seem to revolve around removing unreliable sources (such as RT and Sputnik), integrating edits such that the verbiage flows better, and so forth. I can't find any edits that he's performed that were out of line.

It's also not especially interesting to have a high number of edits. For example, of Cross's most recent 50 edits, the vast majority are to a single article (which is not the George Galloway biography): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Philip_C...

The more I look into this, the more convinced I am that the bad actor isn't this guy, it's the Russian propaganda network who are mad that he's getting in the way of them using Wikipedia as an outlet.

That’s a very generous interpretation. Usually, when you find something that is not sufficiently well sourced, you add “citation needed” or mention it on the talk page or something. You don’t just delete entire sections that aren’t obvious vandalism.

You generally do on Biographies of Living Persons, particularly when it's controversial political figures and particularly when the material has a source which just happens to be RT

In my opinion, it's only fair to respond to hit pieces with generous interpretations. The internet outrage machine needs more coolant, not less.

That is a good point.

The linked article shows quite a few edits that violate the Biographies of Living Persons policy.

I glanced through it and none of the facts removed seem particularly controversial. The editor simply put the fact back in and replaced the source.

Moreover, wikipedia doesn't ban RT as a source and correctly argues that biased sources can be legitimate if they are correct in context.

It seems these days that simply being an anti-establishment politician of any stripe instantly attracts accusations of Russian conspiracy theories. It's weird.

That was the intent of Russian misinformation campaign; to create an environment where all sides stop trusting each other.

If the intent was to have every idiot seeing Russian conspiracy theories around every corner then mission accomplished I guess.

Maybe they're going for a "boy who cried wolf" dynamic.

If indeed it is one individual. With the intensity of edits it would not be at all surprising if this editor was in fact more than one individual masquerading behind a single account.

What possible benefit would accrue from doing something like that?

Look at who get's the favourable edits, and figure out their agenda?

A stipend for the editor is small change to some of the financial types.

Controlling the narrative through the use of propaganda? Its what governments and spy agencies spend billions of dollars doing, annually, around the world, in every format.

Why would they pretend to be one editor?

To shroud and conceal their motive and activities.

They'd be less noticeable as many accounts, and would get more than one voice in discussions.

And of course if you were orchestrating a shadowy conspiracy to denigrate certain figures on Wikipedia by subtle edits as opposed to an individual with an interest in politics and lot of time on their hands, you probably wouldn't use the same handle to copyedit political bios and vent your opinion on the particular individuals on Twitter...

Why not mouth off on social media? Yes, it draws attention. But it also adds legitimacy to the operation if he is not an individual. If a PR firm is making edits to Wikipedia, they get heavily frowned on. If it appears that an individual is doing it, especially one with a long history of good edits, they will be defended.

I don't have a particularly conspiratorial mind and I prefer coincidence until conspiracy becomes the simpler explanation. Just so it's clear we're not entering the unfundable fantasy realm, PR firms can easily afford a competitive salary for a Wikipedia editor just from one or two clients. As can think-tanks.

I can see how I'd set up and scale up such an operation. I'd keep the one editor to one account for reasons above. I'd probably have them be more like a newspaper editor -- they keep a consistent style across the edits. I'd offload the real work to researchers who dig up sources and to write the bits they want inserted and removed.

Look at the first edits by this account: they're on Jazz musicians and politics, and the political stuff isn't too biased. Eventually the cover of Jazz edits decreases. Maybe he started out as a Wikipedia editor and enjoyed writing so got picked up by one of the many many think-tanks that pay journalism money for advancing what will make their sponsors money. Maybe he's an internet sock-puppet. Snowden revealed that the UK has a unit that engages in such activities. [0]

This very site has not been immune from individuals who work for a very-well-funded, highly-litigious, politically-motivated organization posting op-eds that masquerade as thought-provoking articles. Sometimes they make the front page.

It so happens that one of the few handles that only post articles from there are paid to do so and have re-used a handle that as far as I could tell was only used to ask questions about lipstick on Reddit. It was also her real name and she was confirmed as head of social media at the organisation. This was easy to catch, because the only stuff they posted was from one domain.

Perhaps this is an individual living off passive income with a lot of time on their hands and nothing more they want to do. But perhaps this is somebody being funded for doing what they do.

I am reminded of Poul-Henning Kamp's talk "Operation Orchestra" at Fosdem 2014, in which he humorously outlines how entrenched interests could invade or could have invaded open source [1]

[0] https://theintercept.com/2015/06/22/controversial-gchq-unit-...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcl17Q0bpk

Sure, nobody is disputing that PR sources can and do manipulate influential publicly editable media full time. But if you were trying to not draw attention to yourself and maximise the percentage of your time spent on edits that were strategically useful, it'd be hard to come up with a less practical approach than User:PhilipCross

(This is not something I lack knowledge of as a formerly prolific editor of UK politics articles. I reckon at least a quarter of MPs have had their articles edited by themselves or their campaign staff, usually in a very unsophisticated and obvious manner. One obscure elected Member of Parliament's biography appeared to have been mostly written, in good faith, by their partner, and that text was up there for a very long time...)

The irony is that some the figures complaining about User:PhilipCross openly take money for regularly appearing on Russian state media, and yet I still believe their politics isn't shaped by financial incentives.

> The irony is that some the figures complaining about User:PhilipCross openly take money for regularly appearing on Russian state media, and yet I still believe their politics isn't shaped by financial incentives.

Because they are openly taking money. If User:PhilipCross is then it is most certainly not transparent.

Almost everybody you see on TV is being paid by somebody. There is a particularly grating employee of the Institute for Economic Affairs regularly appearing on the UK state and corporate media to talk liberating the taxpayer of the NHS. She's presumably not being paid by the BBC or Sky News, but she is being paid for appearing there by interests that would benefit from what she is advocating.

In this way, we see that the majority people providing their time on TV have an agenda. We don't naturally expect the same of Wikipedia editors, but maybe we should.

True, but my point is that many accounts imply (but don't prove) that there's a concerted effort and organized strategy that is bigger than a one-man operation. And that may be what they want to avoid giving away.

Wikipedia is number one on any Google search, with especially advantageous snippets on every search engine. It it hard coded into things like Siri. It's not hard to imagine the economical value of a bit of inside access to the platform.

There are several types of organizations with a big budget whose job it is to influence public discourse. It wouldn't surprise me if some of them were found to be in control of an editor's account in some way. The easiest way is probably to hire one, but seeing accounts are bought and sold on pretty much every other online service the possibility is there.

You just have to be very careful not to burn them. Sloppiness would probably look like editors working exactly the same hours every day for a decade without ever tiring, vacationing or being sick.

Depends on how you edit. Same with commits in github. If you describe issues very granular and commit for each, you can accumulate a lot of commits each day. Others might only get one a week for the same code produced. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Less like a obsession, more like a paid agenda.

He is discrediting reliable anti-war (i.e. anti-government) news sources.

If you were a bad actor or a member of a group with malicious intent, how could you abuse or circumvent the policy you have just proposed? This editor is either a front or insane, but a hundred edits to an article on the subject of one's own long-term research is totally reasonable. This is why Wikipedia has a manual intervention process for people who appear to be abusing the system.

Okay but I mean in reality everybody has an opinion. In fact the people doing actual edits tend to have stronger opinions than others. My active Wikipedia time is already 10 years ago but the linked page looks like a complete out of hand discussion on Wikipedia discussions page. except that it isn't, it's a lot of stitched together samples from the depths of Wikipedia. Double-checking whether the assertions on the page are correct would take ages.

I still gonna make a small attempt:

- "has written for the Guardian" removed but "broadcasts regularly" kept. I google and: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/piers-robinson 2 articles? Are there more he wrote? Is this considered encyclopaedic knowledge that he wrote 2 articles in the Guardian?

- okay, next point: Eva Bartless. I google and one of the top 3 links goes to Quora: https://www.quora.com/Is-Eva-Bartlett-credible "Bartlett talks figures and proportions, and expands your desk research with facts that she documented as a witness on site. Her stark observations have upset an entire media industry." Answer number 2 is not so negative but at the same way basically stating that there are no super reliable sources for things happening in Syria. Also please check out her Twitter.

- added piece about Vanessa Beeley: please just google: Vanessa Beeley White helmets Twitter . I'm not gonna copy&paste all that stuff into here

I know it sucks to be in such kinds of discussions. But also don't forget what Wikipedia is and what it not is. It is an encyclopaedia, people visiting the website assume they are confronted with peer-reviewed and relevant facts. It's tough but if you can only find a single reliable source for some information, then IMHO it's better to remove that piece from the page.

If you want news, then go to Wiki News. If you want to read about research theories, then go to Wikiversity. Also don't forget that eventhough there are obviously controversial users on the platform, there are mechanisms to protect articles, review them etc.

> Wikipedia would benefit from a policy where a sufficient number of individual complaints against a user who has passed some threshold of number of edits to a single article (say 100) would be automatic grounds to block the user from further edits to the article, regardless of fault

If you haven't yet worked out how that would be abused, think a bit more.

No..if there really is a problem with his edits, there'll be a discussion and he'd be banned from that topic, which does happen (e.g, the top editor to the Donald Trump article also has 1800 edits to it but is indefinitely banned from that topic). That is far better than having this easily abusable system.