Wikipedia Volunteer Uncovers Decade-Long Campaign That Created 335 Articles About One Composer 59
Wikipedia volunteer Grnrchst uncovered a decade-long campaign that created articles about composer David Woodard in 335 languages. The investigation identified 200 accounts and IP addresses systematically creating Woodard articles across 92 languages between 2017 and 2019, averaging one new article every six days. From December 2021 through June 2025, 183 unique accounts each created a single Woodard article in different languages after establishing credibility through unrelated edits.
Wikipedia stewards removed 235 articles from smaller wikis. Larger Wikipedia communities banned numerous accounts and deleted 80 additional articles. Twenty Woodard articles remain. Grnrchst called it "the single largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia's history."
Wikipedia stewards removed 235 articles from smaller wikis. Larger Wikipedia communities banned numerous accounts and deleted 80 additional articles. Twenty Woodard articles remain. Grnrchst called it "the single largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia's history."
[citation unsolicited] (Score:5, Funny)
Re:[citation unsolicited] (Score:5, Interesting)
If I wanted to use Wikipedia to read up on some music artist I'd just discovered, I know I'd certainly prefer to do so in my mother tongue - English - rather than whatever native language they might speak and had an article written in, for instance. If that kind of language translation is going to be blocked, I'm not seeing how this benefits native speakers of the 315 languages (in this case) that don't make the cut.
Re: (Score:2)
First off, from tfs, it's 92 languages.
FFS, how are you trying to pull this shit when you didn't even read TFS?
Those 92 language additions were between 2017 and 2019. The very first sentence, the one immediately prior to that mention, notes the total:
created articles about composer David Woodard in 335 languages.
Re:[citation unsolicited] (Score:4, Informative)
For relatively obvious reasons, Wikipedia generally bans people from working on articles directly relating to themselves, such as biographies and works they've created. They're allowed to use the talk pages, and can suggest edits, but beyond that they're considered an egregious violation of the requirements for secondary sources and the NPOV.
If someone wants to publish something for their fans, their best route, as always, is to create a website, rather than editing an existing one that's expected to at least make an effort to be neutral. It's not exactly expensive, even those who have no HTML skills and can't manage a $1 VPS can easily get a Wordpress site for under $10 a month.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: [citation unsolicited] (Score:3)
How do you maintain all the translated copies, this isn't rocket science, dumb dumb. If there are enough interested editors with fluency in a given language go ahead and submit it, otherwise stick to automatic translation.
Your hypothetical "what if I want to research Nazis" is transparently bullshit. For example if Timothy McVeigh wrote his own page on Polish Wikipedia, how the fuck does it help Polish readers who now see THAT instead of the American consensus on that shitbird.
The self promotion isn't even
Re: (Score:2)
Check out the Wikipedia article in English on him (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Check out the Wikipedia article in English on h (Score:5, Interesting)
If he's racist does that no longer make him notable?
It makes him someone whom I choose not to support in making notable by giving my time/attention/money to.
This stinks of cancel culture.
Smells like the sweet scent of consequences to me. I'm perfectly happy for someone's poor character to result in diminished opportunities to become "notable". I'm sure someone would feel the same way about me for being too "woke"; acting like it doesn't go both ways would be disingenuous.
Re: (Score:3)
Such as Republicans cancelling The Dixie Chicks because of their political views?
Re: (Score:1)
You don't seem to grasp what "canceling" means.
If there is a public backlash against someone for something they said or did, that is what is now called "cancel", it is really not new, it doesn't come from a particular political side, it doesn't have to be complete.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Only having a couple compositions and you've never heard of them makes him not notable. The racist Nazi crap just means he's unlikely to become notable for his composition skills any time soon, and suggests why he's putting such a large effort into pushing his obscure compositions into the wider public's ears rather than just toning down the racism and see if the quality of the composition can do the job.
Re: (Score:2)
"Cancelling" is when you target everything tied to a person because of that person ideas. For example, refusing to buy Harry Potter because you disagree with J.K Rowling supposedly transphobic ideas, regardless of how good the story is.
Here, the works themselves are racist, and most people don't want to hear racist works, no matter who wrote them. As a result, the author doesn't have much success and is therefore not particularly notable. Not even by being particularly "evil".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
but he seems to really lean hard on the pro-Nazi side of politics
There is no "pro Nazi side of politics", but thanks for illuminating yours.
Re: (Score:3)
There is no "pro Nazi side of politics", but thanks for illuminating yours.
Not only is there a pro-Nazi side of politics, there are still a lot of actual fucking Nazis. My dad fought them in WW2, but while they won the war sadly they did not finish the job. At some point we will have to pick up where they left off.
so what (Score:4, Insightful)
so what's the point? were the articles bad, had no facts, or did they violate any custom-made-on-the-spot rule from the editors?
If the guy is posting his biography in 92 different languages and hasn't done malicious edits or any other foul play why would you delete the articles?
or is it about neckbeard pride? It's very well known that wikipedia editors are a special kind of asshole, right up there with StackOverflow editors.
also editors are as biased as anyone else. Every wiki article about Argentina, especially argentinan politics, has been co-opted by peronist editors (financed by the kirchner government) and the tldr of every subject is "the Nation was founded in 2003 when Kirchner created it from the dust of the old argentina destroyed by liberalism".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
One thing that is surely against the rules is sockpuppetry (you can only use one account). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And those articles were written by sockpuppet accounts, thus the ban of the accounts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
About the articles, it varies between Wikipedia languages (which are partly independent), but the basic rule for biographies is notability as proven by reliable sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia "editors" are you and me (Score:2)
Anyone can edit Wikipedia. And people who contribute to Wikipedia are usually called... Wikipedia contributors.
Re: (Score:2)
No. Wikipedia has editors and some editors can prevent editing completely, and this is often used for "controversial" stuff.
The problem is that the definition of controversial is left to the editors. And editors are heavily biased (generally towards the left).
Re: (Score:2)
You're talking about admins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Those are Wikipedia contributors (aka editors) "who have been granted the technical ability to perform certain special actions on the English Wikipedia. These include the ability to block and unblock user accounts, IP addresses, and IP ranges from editing".
They're elected by the Wikipedia contributors. So if fewer people on the right-wing contribute to Wikipedia, it'll result in less of them being elected as admins.
Try this one (Score:2)
Wikipedia search for winners of obscure prizes in business or other fields. You will find many hundreds of award winners who have little or no entry on Wikipedia except for a book, speech or paper or two. Throw in all the tiny pages on someone's business or other field mentor and you have a mass of low content articles.
That they know of... (Score:5, Informative)
the single largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia's history.
That they know of. I bet there are even larger ones that were better hidden.
Widespread (Score:2)
I see smaller versions of this regularly on Wikipedia. There is some term a professor cooked up regarding AI that has it's own entry. It's only been mentioned in their paper, and a couple of journal articles referencing that paper. It's been marked for deletion a handful of times but a few dozen votes causes it to stay. I'll go out on a limb and guess those votes come from the IP addresses where the professor works.
The other place you see it fairly regularly are in pages about movies and books. There will
Re: (Score:2)
I've noticed video game pages seem to often be press releases.
Specifically a game that hasn't been released yet had its page edited to have the reception page say it was released to good reviews or whatever the language is there.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... One of the few mentions of AI in the comments, but I was hoping to find something about whether or not he used AI as part of his scam. Motivated by self-promotion, it appears?
Re: (Score:2)
the single largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia's history.
That they know of. I bet there are even larger ones that were better hidden.
It is the "only the dumb criminals get caught" argument. However, with enough time and effort even the smarter ones will be eventually be found out and provide a new record.
Re:Portmanteau (Score:5, Funny)
The vast majority of the time you see the word "portmanteau" on Wikipedia, the change was due to a single editor with a predilection for that word.
There's a word for that phenomenon, which I just made up: portmanteautalitarianism .
Now if you'll excuse me I have a new Wikipedia article to write.
Re: (Score:2)
The vast majority of the time you see the word "portmanteau" on Wikipedia, the change was due to a single editor with a predilection for that word.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
What about the notable Michael Crawford (Score:2)
Surely the inventor of the Wall of Text deserves a Wikipedia biographical page?
Who??? (Score:3)
Nyuk nyuk nyuk (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The answer to your question is right there in the question: these were spam.
Wikipedia requires that pages be about things that are noteworthy. If they didn't, the ratio of useful pages to worthless pages would shift pretty rapidly.
If there's one lesson the Internet has taught humanity, it's this: the effort required to create good content is rare, but there is an endless supply of dirtbags who delight in creating enormous volumes of garbage.
Re: (Score:2)
If there's one lesson the Internet has taught humanity, it's this: the effort required to create good content is rare, but there is an endless supply of dirtbags who delight in creating enormous volumes of garbage.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure Cerf, Kahn and others first thought wasn't to create a global pool that anyone can piss in, but here we are.
The future is grim (Score:2)
Prediction: There's a good chance AI will enable this tactic on a scale no number of human moderators can keep up with.
The logical outcome is Wiki uses AI for moderation, thus completing the circle of enshitification where AI is interacting with AI and quaint concepts like truth, creativity and honest human discourse are a chore to find anymore. ...
Streisand Effect (Score:2)