A joke too far? Online resource Wikipedia fights spurious edits

On May 17, the day Kenya’s newspapers splashed the news about 12 lives that had been claimed by an explosion at Nairobi’s Gikomba market, something was happening on the Web; something of a joke, but which might not have sat well with Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph ole Lenku. An entry about him on Wikipedia, the popular web-based encyclopaedia, had been edited to say he was a “cook” and “Kenyan comedian.”

This joke would not have been so serious were it not for the fact that Wikipedia has become some sort of a universal reference resource for many students and researchers. That bit of misinformation, therefore, could have been picked up by anyone on the Net and quoted as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Looking at the trails on the edit log for Ole Lenku’s entry, an internal conflict within the encyclopaedia becomes evident. A robot was fighting a losing battle trying to muzzle the malicious entry. It gave up, and the post went global.

Named Reference Bot, it had earlier blocked the edit on the grounds that it was made without any references, and removed edits that had been made by a user nicknamed “Olekina” on the night of May 16.

'ERRORS IN REFERENCING'

“I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing,” the robot wrote at 1:31am that Saturday. But the entry resurfaced around 11am on May 17, bearing the message that Reference Bot was trying hard to block it. It was a truce of sorts when the entry was later rectified for good.

But the Lenku slur cannot match that aganist American rapper Kanye West, whose entry on the site was once edited to say he had died, according to, well, a Wikipedia article on vandalism. The post also lists former US Senators Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy, now deceased, as those who had once been falsely reported to have died.

In Kenya, former Makueni Senator Mutula Kilonzo was a victim of the same, albeit posthumously. Soon after the news of his death broke on April 27, 2013, a user edited his entry, providing unverified information on what had killed the senator. He had been found dead in his Maanzoni Ranch.

It took the intervention of one of Kenya’s Wikipedia contributors, Stephen Wathika, to remove the edits. Wathika told DN2 that he knew everyone would want to get Kilonzo’s biography from the site, hence his quick action to correct it.

HUMOROUS EDITS

The web-based reference resource, which currently has over 30 million posts in various languages, says any form of editing of an article on its site with a motive to “intentionally disrupt” is vandalism. That includes “modification of the text or other material that is either humorous, nonsensical, a hoax, or that is of an offensive, humiliating, or otherwise degrading nature.”

Web users have previously captured humorous edits on the site. For example, an undated snapshot on huffingtonpost.com shows how one user edited a definition thus: “Room temperature is a common term to denote a certain temperature to which humans are gay.”

Another snapshot captures an instance where a user edited a piece on “Collective Noun” to start: “This is so boring dude… In linguistics, collective noun is a word....” A user also edited a page on the first law of thermodynamics thus: “The first law of thermodynamics is you do NOT talk about thermodynamics.”

The same happened when someone changed an item on cow tipping to read: “If you succeed in tipping a cow only partway, such that only one of its feet is still on the ground, you have created lean beef . . . When it falls over, it becomes ground beef.”

Internet users also captured an entry for Brazil and Barcelona soccer star Neymar. The first paragraph of the piece was edited to say he is a “diver who dives for Barcelona.”

ETHNIC TERM

Another snapshot records an edit to an entry on deceased American rock singer Janis Lyn Joplin, which read that she “speedwalked everywhere and was afraid of toilets.”

And when Gor Mahia was on the brink of capturing the Tusker Premier League title last year, the Luo expression “giniwasekao” made it to Wikipedia, but the entry was later deleted by the site’s administrators, who said it was self-glorification of an ethnic term.

So, going by these instances, one is bound to ask: Who, and what, makes the cut to have a Wikipedia entry? Because, apparently, not every subject deserves being on the encyclopaedia.

“To avoid the possible disappointment of your article being rapidly deleted, make sure that it meets Wikipedia’s requirements for inclusion. In brief, this means that the subject must have been mentioned in some detail by at least one (and preferably several) independent academically respectable sources,” says a guide to contributing to the site.

Just like it did to the “giniwasekao” post, Wikipedia says it deletes any article it deems unnecessary. It also discourages people from creating posts about themselves.

A LITTLE FORETHOUGHT

“If you are worthy of inclusion in the encyclopaedia, let someone else add an article for you. Putting your friends in an encyclopaedia may seem like a nice surprise or an amusing joke, but articles like this are likely to be removed. In this process, feelings may be hurt, which can be avoided by a little forethought on your part,” the site states.

“People frequently add pages to Wikipedia without considering whether the topic is really notable enough to go into an encyclopaedia.... Our notability policies and guidelines allow a wide range of articles. However, they do not allow every topic to be included.”

Wikipedia admits that most of its articles are at the mercy of Web users, but it has various preventive measures, including a robot.

“Vandalism is easy to commit on Wikipedia because anyone can edit the site, with the exception of articles that are currently semi-protected, which means that new and unregistered users cannot edit them.”

Users who have a trend of vandalising articles on the site are given four warnings before they are blocked for good. An article that has been prone to many edits may also be restricted.

The first incident of vandalism was discovered in 2005, when American journalist John Seingenthaler’s biography on the site was changed and went for months without being noticed. A user had edited it to say that the journalist had a hand in the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy.

SITE'S VULNERABILITY

The fact that students take Wikipedia content for gospel truth, and given its vulnerability, worries Dr Solomon Waliaula, a lecturer at the Maasai Mara University.

“Sometimes you read a term paper from a student and you easily notice the Americanisms, the easy tone, and you are left worrying what has become of scholarship nowadays. They overuse, misuse, and even abuse it. Some copy and paste directly,” he complains.

Dr Fred Mbogo, a lecturer at Moi University, says that “the trouble with open-source material is that sometimes you can get misguiding information” and that whereas there are some subjects that are exhaustively tackled on the site, “others are really shallow.”

“Try researching on African literature to get a feel of what I’m saying,” says Dr Mbogo.

But Sam Maosa, a Kenyan who has been contributing articles to Wikipedia since 2009, says the portal should be cut some slack by “traditional” scholars.

“All information exists in nature,” says Maosa, “but different people have knowledge of different pieces of information. All the books we read are there because someone wrote them. The same applies to Wikipedia.”

Maosa is among the 20 Kenyans who are recorded as the pioneers of Wikimedia Kenya, a body of volunteers who create and edit Wikipedia articles.

Founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, Wikipedia has grown from humble beginnings to a site that attracts huge traffic.

It does not run advertisements, unlike most of its peers, but every year the site runs a fundraising campaign to support its operation.

It also often makes appeals for donor funding to help it keep content free and free from adverts.