This is a naive take that belies the reality of pages with a lot of traffic, and is the reason why there can be controversial discussions in the talk pages. I know nothing about the history of this page, which is why I said "if it's intentional" regarding any deliberate scrubbing.

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

EDIT: On further inspecting the page history, this definitely looks intentional, or at least is a controversial page.

The page is protected, the general public can't edit it.

There was already discussion on the talk page, "Should Nex's given name be included?" with consensus of "no." That discussion was archived, but you can see it here [0].

From what I can see, the word "Dagny" has been retroactively redacted from all history of the page and its talk page.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Death_of_Nex...

> From what I can see, the word "Dagny" has been retroactively redacted from all history of the page and its talk page.

If this doesn't sound 1984-esque I don't know what does.

This fact per se is not enough 1984, but the reason of that, end especially the power standing at the very beginning of that reasoning is certainly like that.

1984 describes an insurmountably established Soviet-esque state with omniscient surveillance and omnipotent monopoly on violence.

We're discussing a FOSS website that many people use.

There's quite literally nothing stopping you from making "unwoke" Wikipedia or whatever. You probably could even get Elon Musk to signal boost it.

> 1984 describes

1984 describes the practice of retroactively editing publication to erase facts from history.

Wikipedia is retroactively scrubbing not only articles but also their discussion and their editing history to erase facts that are thought to be inconvenient.

Feels reducto ad absurdum. Every encyclopedia does this when it turns a person with fifty biographies about them into a one page encyclopedia entry.

Not when someone with connections and better knowledge of the WP bylaws weaponizes the Arb Com against you.

Here are some of the things you can get banned for:

- Having a too large fraction of your edits be reverts.

- Updating raw references to <ref cite> references (without changing the contents of the reference).

- Saying something on a forum that could be construed as telling people to edit a particular article in a particular way.

The Arb Com doesn't have to open up a public discussion about the matter. They can simply pronounce judgment in private and ban you. There's no prior notice, no representation, and no independent appeal. For a "supreme court", that's quite a low bar.

Wikipedia is very much an oligarchy. Shared IPs are often blocked from editing and pages locked.