I did not find any more Arbitration Requests after this date, and the topic ban has not been appealed.

Here's an example: Philip Cross had little interest in Max Blumenthal's Wikipedia entry prior to the Wikipedia topic ban (edited only 11 times from 2007 until Cross was banned from British politics in July 2018[4]). Since then, it's been edited by Cross 552 times[5]. According to WikiWho, Cross is responsible for 56% of all content on Max Blumenthal's Wikipedia page. Before the ban, Cross was responsible for 0.9% of the content.

[1] https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1381746315659509763

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17109290

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csws6q

[4] https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Max%...

[5] https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Max%...

That said, if you go after a person for their personal social media comments and succeed, the common result is that people clam up about their personal opinions in social media. This is the common argument against the recent trend of digging through peoples social media in order to find something to hang them. All it does is to make people less open and more closed minded.

Looking at the archived discussion at the Administrator noticeboard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...), the big issue seems to be the lack of any actually edit conflict. On Wikipedia, that is a problem if one want to sanction an editor for doing biased editing.

The whole discussion seems to be similar to the one about hardware back doors by NSA (if produced in a country where the US has influence), china or both. We can suspect there is a security problem, we can point towards incentives and capability to do it, but trying to do a proper response to the threat without anything concrete is difficult.

If you're interested, compare Max's page before and after Cross got involved with it. You'll see the same pattern we documented in our article. It just gets filled with more and more criticism.

This isn't the same for establishment-friendly voices. Have a look, for example, at the entries for Bellingcat or its founder Eliot Higgins (Bellingcat appears 5 times on Max's page). See how much criticism you find in those entries. Compare with the the articles below[1][2]. One reason of course is that Wikipedia deprecates sources it doesn't approve of, favouring instead "reliable sources" (mostly corporate, establishment-friendly news sites)[3].

Having followed the discussion and arbitration process in 2018, I don't really think anything will change. But I'd like to see more people become aware that what they read on Wikipedia, if it's political, is likely to be very biased and could be the work of nefarious actors.

[1] https://www.mintpressnews.com/bellingcat-intelligence-agenci...

[2] https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/24/author-bellingcat-opcw-wh...

[3] https://twitter.com/fivefilters/status/1381290433658167299

One way we could measure bias in political articles would be to count how much of an article is sources by each news papers and then measure total media bias through establish finding in media bias research. A common cited sources is the study done during the 2016 US election which estimated media bias for each major news paper by looking at social media links where the profile were openly set as being in support to one specific political party. The more links that was shared by a single political aligned demographic, the more aligned the study would define the news paper.

Back to the specific at hands, it is difficult to build a case based on the sum of reliable sourced information without an actually edit dispute. One of the first layers in Wikipedia in order to address issues is through a third-party, and one would have to ask them to decide if the sum of sources are given correct weight in the article. Looking at Max page myself I can't say if the article is correctly reflecting reliable sources or not. I am surprised there even exist 121 distinct reliable sources about a political writer/political documentary maker. If anything the article looks very bloated and should be trimmed down to match subject matters of similar notability. I think there are noble price winners that has less coverage than this person.

I give an extensive explanation on the economics of free speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8HbvC6vqIY

I interviewed Noam Chomsky on it last week here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPZ8rSESZo

And we are building it here (sorry for the bad design so far): https://rational.app/

It seems you want to have debates in the back-end before publishing anything. What have you learned from Nupedia, and how do you expect your system to work differently? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia

It seems you want to use a scoring/voting system. These have some known issues when you're trying to find facts. Have you considered how to prevent gaming? One famous (albeit fortunately failed) example of such an attempt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

If you are posting ad for your product - why you expect people to go through an extensive explanation in a video form?

A paragraph (or page) of someone being self promoting is something i might read if its on topic and sounds like they have something insightful to add. A video has almost zero chance.

This has come up a bit recently. However, I think you're underestimating the effect of "Sea Lioning" and alike. Experts are often busy, doing important things in their respective fields. They don't have time to duke it out.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/05...

^ Wikipedia gets uncharacteristically offended when you ask questions about this particular "person".

Whomever they want to defend themselves against, it's not him.

> "Wikimedia Foundation Inc, the US-based non-profit charitable NGO, is the owner of the Croatian version of Wikipedia." [1]

> "However, the Wikimedia Foundation is not the founder of the Croatian version, nor does it accept that it is responsible for the accuracy of its articles. It insists that it does not have any power over Croatian-language Wikipedia entries." [1]

Other reads are provided for reference [2][3][4].

[1] Wikipedia Not Responding to Inquiries on Croatian Entries: https://balkaninsight.com/2018/04/23/wikipedia-not-replying-...

[2] Croatian Wikipedia Removes ‘Polish Genocide of Germans’ Claim: https://balkaninsight.com/2018/03/29/croatian-wikipedia-remo...

[3] How Croatian Wikipedia Made a Concentration Camp Disappear: https://balkaninsight.com/2018/03/26/how-croatian-wikipedia-...

[4] Croatia Wikipedia Alters Jasenovac Camp Entry Again: https://balkaninsight.com/2018/08/29/croatia-wikipedia-furth...

Establishment media are not super keen on giving anti establishment figures an unimpeded platform to promulgate their views for obvious reasons.

It would be easier for the BBC, Telegraph, Guardian, etc. to ignore/misrepresent/attack George Galloway if he didn't also use competing media they had no control over.

It's very obvious that they do react to this media, too. If something gets big in social media because it's in RT then domestic media feel compelled to respond. This has happened with Galloway.

The same works in the reverse as well (Ai Weiwei, Navalny, etc). RT would like nothing more than to have us shut up about him but the Western media does insist on interviewing the traitor.

Obviously it comes with a risk and it will open you up to the usual cries of traitor, etc. from the serially ultranationalist who believe ardently that the freedom of their own press should be sufficient for traitors with traitorous views to get their hearing.

However, the alternative is, more realistically, being shut out of public discourse almost entirely as they try ardently to pretend you don't exist (hence why Putin famously never uses navalnys name).

What really troubles me is how little concern editors have for the precariousness of WP's reputation. Spewing legalese while missing the larger point, misstating the case in escalation to arbitration, dismissing the claims within minutes of hearing a defence etc. Wikipedia's model is at high risk to opinion farms and any suggestion that that is happening should be taken very seriously by editors, lest they look like they're complicit. When that happens it will quickly suffer repetitional damage that will take much, much longer to repair.

But they want to debate the rules and definitions, make counter accusations... To dawdle over such an obvious case is going to be hard to forgive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia

CNN and NYT may write/send things you don't like, but they are free from government interference.

(Also, the quality of CNN and NYT is far higher, but that's a different point)

Their argument was an association fallacy regardless of the truth of the stated position. I mentioned Russia's poor record with liberal values, but that doesn't mean RT reporting this story means the topic isn't worth considering.

These constant attempts to redefine the meanings of accepted and well-understood words are annoying as all hell. Stop trying to fuck up language all the time, damn kids. If you need a word for some specific meaning of your own, then make up your own damn word. (And now get off my lawn!)

Wikipedia's dispute resolution system handled it ok, I think. After a lot of examination of what had been going on, he was prohibited (at least at the time, those prohibitions can usually be lifted after a while) from further editing about UK politics, but he stayed active in the other areas where he was perfectly ok. There was an occasion or two where he brushed up against his prohibition and caused some temporary localized drama, but that also happens all the time and is no big deal. The pages taking him to task made him sound like an agent of the Illuminati which was ridiculous.

Craig Murray graphed his contributions here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-c...

In fairness his views do seem to match up with Jimbo Wales (who is, as a good friend of Tony Blair/Gordon Brown, not exactly anti war). He might be an institutional construct but there's plenty of institutions other than the CIA he could be fronting.

It's also possible he's basically a sockpuppet for Jimmy Wales, judging by the way he lashes out on Twitter at people questioning who Philip Cross really is.

So he clearly is pretty influential.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...

Not all the goons are influental, but he is (like most media figures), and their policies and practices align.

"Most likely theory"? What? The most likely theory is that he's convinced of his worldview. There are incredible amounts of people who are true believers of whatever they subscribe to. They're certainly not all paid, or we'd see much larger intelligence budgets everywhere.

The other relies on there being a person with a lot of time on his hands who generally believes what he reads in the Times and responds to provocation on Twitter, and George Galloway not jumping to the correct conclusion.

Seriously quoting RT (or Sputnik) in a serious article is giving them legitimacy they don't deserve.

As for the substance of the article. Based on the edits they show it seems the guy really is manipulating the entries. Hiding genuine info and adding stuff that may be/is unsubstantiated.

However this bit is going a bit too far: >The operation runs like clockwork, seven days a week, every waking hour, without significant variation. If Philip Cross genuinely is an individual, there is no denying he is morbidly obsessed. I am no psychiatrist, but to my entirely inexpert eyes this looks like the behaviour of a deranged psychotic with no regular social activities outside the home, no job (or an incredibly tolerant boss), living his life through a screen.

A "deranged psychotic" ? Maybe he is a pensioner with nothing better to do with his time? Judge him by the malice of his edits, not by the time he spends making them.

If these are some of the only outlets picking up this story, they deserve whatever legitimacy they get from that. I'm sure the authors of that website would prefer to quote the NYT and the WSJ, but these haven't picked up the story.

More fundamentally, outlets that are seen as reliable sources by wikipedia are probably biased towards it. If you look for example at articles about wikipedia from the NYT[1] and the WSJ[2], even if they are about problems with it, the framing is always that wikipedia is working on a problem.

So critical reporting about wikipedia is likely to come from outlets seen as "illegitimate". To demand to ignore those is to demand to ignore most critical reporting about it.

> If Philip Cross genuinely is an individual

That's the key part here.

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awsj.com+wikipedia&oq=...

[2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+wikipedia...

Deranged psychotics and pensioners do not show this pattern of behavior.

This account is clearly being operated by a team who clock in and clock out.

If the account were editing pages in a way through Russian government would approve of I guarantee that you would not have a shadow of a doubt that this was definitrly not an obsessed pensioner and neither would I.

This user is however the subject of a ban: if it was a team the clever thing to do would have set up a new account to circumvent the ban. So, Philip Cross is probably just a person with a mission. Agree that we can refrain from any further psychiatric diagnosis at this point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni...

^ Case in point, the first three paragraphs on illegal immigration to America contain no American conservative figures and/or counter points.

Now you can argue that the top 3 paragraphs are factual, and potentially the absolute truth of the matter. But I feel like that might be a little bit unfair if you catch my drift.

(1) Fringe topics are a different matter. A topic which is ignored by most people can contain very one-sided views simply because no one else cares.

So it was (also) left vs left.

I also see the far left complain about similar things, but nobody seems to take their complaints nearly as seriously for some reason I genuinely do not understand.

Seems like there's people even calling The New York Times far left these days.

Whilst 40 years ago it was workers strikes where they threatened to destroy an employer's assets or environmental activists attacking polluters.

A few of the other people I talk to, like Thomas Greco, also distrust Wikipedia, and they're not exactly right wing, though they are against big government.

Like all things, there will probably come a day where wikipedia is disrupted by some new kid on the block, but i highly doubt sanger will be at the center of it.

Again?

Sanger has tried multiple times to launch competitors to Wikipedia -- Citizendium, Digital Universe, Infobitt, Everipedia, now something he calls the "Encyclosphere", apparently. None of them have been successful.

Robert Bernstein criticizes Human Rights Watch that he founded himself.

I guess they're just bitter right? Why consider anything they are actually saying?

For the record: I actually like Wikipedia and don't really see so much what Larry is talking about. I participated in starting articles on Wikipedia back in 2004, which have now grown and added a lot of useful information. But I'd like to hear him out.

Like all monopolies, criticism of wikipedia is essential to wikipedia. There is very little effective competition to wikipedia so criticism is important lest it becomes complacent. Sanger is just failing to deliver.

Wikipedia is still important and useful for many articles and subjects, but I currently just ignore their political stance.