All the comments here are positive, the range is from slightly amused to comparing her to Borges (rofl).
I didn't like it the moment I heard this, but now contrarian mode has kicked in:
Why isn't this destruction of essential information infrastructure?
Why isn't this a 'fuck you' to the millions of volunteer hours W is based on?
Why isn't this potentially infecting millions of minds with lies?
Why isn't this absolutely deplorable?
(COI Statement: i am a wikipedia editor for 15+ years, I am a member of my local wikimedia chapter)
Completely agree. If she had released this in a different medium it would be a wonderfully fun achievement (which I think is what most of the comments are responding to), but what she actually did is quite literally a detriment to humanity. It goes against basic, fundamental principles of what it means to be a good person.
That's an interesting take on balance. Although, the determination, not to speak of the will, would usually add to a sentence, the plain damage taken as base-line by some meassure, whereas the individu prospect of future damage is a priori limited by the hope that measurate judgement will deter, because you shan't condem future crimes before they happen.
The problem with fake information on Wikipedia is that poorly sourced documents will source it, which will then be sourced by Wikipedia down the line until the misinformation is self- legitimized.
I'm also quite surprised that the impact this could have on how the Chinese view Russia and Russians in general is not mentioned. It's likely not major (I'm not sure how easy it is to access the Chinese Wiki in there), but I'd imagine it's non-negligible.
> Why isn't this destruction of essential information infrastructure
It may be deemed "vandalism" by seasoned editors, though Arb might chose more salient descriptors.
I don't recall right now what the legal opinion on destruction of data is, ie. irrecoverable erasure in the most trivial case, and I think they wouldn't introduce specific new laws around IT systems if it were that easy. But if it is, then analogies from destruction to somewhat impeding property is well precedented (in .de) even if it's entirely reversable in theory.
1mil words isn't that much work though, so I'd consider this a fairly quick end and not exactly news.
Probably because it's not merely destruction but creation with volume.
As a wikipedia reader I guess I have the luxury to laugh about it knowing stuff like this is eventually discovered and corrected
"Wikipedia is like an old and eccentric uncle. He can be a lot of fun—over the years he's seen a lot, and he can tell a great story. He's also no dummy; he's accumulated a lot of information and has some strong opinions about what he's gathered. You can learn quite a bit from him. But take everything he says with a grain of salt. A lot of the things he thinks he knows for sure aren't quite right, or are taken out of context. And when it comes down to it, sometimes he believes things that are a little bit, well, nuts. If it ever matters to you whether something he said is real or fictional, it's crucial to check it out with a more reliable source."
—Charles Seife, Virtual Unreality, Appendix, "The top ten dicta of the internet skeptic", Dictum no. 1.
I have a herd of elephants. I decide one day I get them all really really well fed, and then lead them to the marketplace where they then take a really really big dump on the stalls and the produce and the sellers and the customers. In the end, everything and everyone is just covered, and people are walking knee-deep in elephant poo.
That's not merely destruction but creation with volume.
Though my personal experience with Wikipedia editors has been imperfect, thank you for your commitment to providing accurate information, thank you for your service.
I don’t really see how that example is supposed to be that egregious?
“A colony of the UK” vs “under the ruling of a colonial government” are pretty similar.
Given that the basis of the UK’s colonization of Hong Kong was based on a treaty granting it control over the territory for 150 years, after which it was returned to China. The Chinese portrayal seems apt, given that it was a temporary, though long, occupation.
> E.g. The CCP recently declared that Hong Kong was never a colony of the UK, but "under ruling of a colonial government" [1]
I don’t really understand the strenuous objection to this. This seems less like “1984-style rewriting of history” and more like completely routine nationalism that you see all around the world.
Yeah this problem affects all countries to varying degrees. Usually not as bad as the CCP. Most of the west have no opinion or don’t support Yemen against the oppressive Saudis who are backed by the US and more of the west. Same issues: propaganda/how News and media is handled.
To be clear: The Russian Govt invasion of Ukraine is awful. They are completely in the wrong. Putin needs to go and another strong man duplicate must not replace him. Don’t get me started on how bad the CCP is!
I completely agree. This almost feels like a state-sanctioned act. Isn't "Fake News" the theme of the last six years? It's undoing pieces of our society. This is just one more log on the fire.
Wikipedia, despite all odds, has proven the most effective distributor of facts of our time. Shame on those who undermine its credibility.
No, "Fake News" is a term coined to allow a blanket dismissal of anything made public that political leaders don't want to be heard. There certainly can be factual falsehoods in news, and it is worth evaluating how well news organizations are reporting facts... but "Fake News" was the opening salvo before following up with stating that fact-checking is insulting.
Let us not validate the concept by embracing the term. It is a weasel word for people who want to promote their own flavor of misinformation.
As far as Wikipedia goes, this shows a loophole that needs to be closed. I'm amused by it - I can also understand why others are not.
But the story is perfectly real: the link to the community discussion on Wikipedia checks out.
Chinese state media do enjoy reporting – often intelligently – on Wikipedia's foibles (I've been quoted by them a number of times). And I have sometimes wished Western media were equally diligent about digging up stories like this, rather than always reflexively singing Wikipedia's praises. Wikipedia would actually profit from the scrutiny, as I and some Signpost colleagues pointed out at the 2015 WikiConference:
But it is also clear that this Sixth Tone article is designed to support a political narrative. I would not completely exclude the possibility that it was a state-sponsored effort. The apology the user posted (in Chinese) on the English Wikipedia (someone linked it below) does read quite wooden (I had DeepL translate it). On the other hand, this may simply reflect cultural differences.
This is not serious because if you believe something you read online, you are a sucker.
I am not saying that this is funny or anything, but I feel like it's irrelevant. I assume many articles contain lies or are downright fabricated. This just confirms my assumption, and makes me think of how many things like this one are left to discover yet.
I would not believe anyone who claimed they did not believe something they read online. What is the distinction between online and offline these days as a source of information?
It made sense when online was a bunch of random people with no businesses or editors behind it. But when all major organizations and institutions have an online presence, it seems meaningless to differentiate online and offline.
This false history is a literary achievement. Writing such a plausible pseudo-account and convincing so many for so long is impressive. I guess they should take it all down but I'm kind of sad that there aren't any comparable projects (note: I'm aware that there are wikis devoted to creating fictional worlds, but these worlds are rarely historically grounded or plausible)
I’m surprised that she doesn’t publish adapted novels based on her Wikipedia entries.
Might be wrong, but both the Twilight series and 50 Shades of Gray series were initially fan fiction pieces by housewives who published their work on blogs.
Alternate historical fiction is a very popular genre.
Exactly my thoughts. This whole story is wild. Putting over 10 years of effort into this is mind bending.
Some people really love to write. She must have gotten incredibly lost in her fictional world. I can only imagine it must have been the case here, and at some point it just happened to be that the medium she used was Wikipedia becuase that's where it all started for unrelated reasons.
Dunno. In uni I vandalized Wikipedia (oops, I mean created a hoax) with large, believable edits to generic/major articles like "Tree". My edits stayed up until I grew up years later, felt bad, and took them down.
I don't think Wikipedia is as closely vetted as we assume. For one, it's just so much cheaper to create content than it is to verify it. It's pretty amazing that Wikipedia is generally as high quality as it is with this in mind. And one reason why is that I imagine these types of bad actors (vandals making convincing edits just to be a jerk) are relatively rare.
I reckon most of Wikipedia's bad edits come from low-effort vandals and people trying to game high-value articles that have lots of eyeballs.
> Writing such a plausible pseudo-account and convincing so many for so long is impressive.
I find that in practice, the scary part is that it is not so impressive and that the thousand eyes are largely a lie.
All too often have I seen such things go on for a long time without anyone noticing, or perhaps many noticing, but not being motivated to investigate and call out, or perhaps many even calling out, but their calls going unanswered.
I routinely find spam, vandalism and heavy POV-pushing in English WP. In general, I check the sources, and if they are absent or fail to support the article text, I correct them[0], or challenge them on the talk page.
Do you? When you say you see such things going on without anybody noticing, presumably you noticed?
[0] I don't generally edit articles on politically-sensitive topics. They are wargrounds, patrolled by tough gatekeepers. I take any information in WP about current affairs with a bushel of salt. But it's still better than, for example, mainstream media.
The Assassins' Creed video game franchise weaves real history to it's fictional story line. Playing the game or watching the game movies on YouTube can yield interesting Wikipedia rabbit holes.
While I understand your initial reaction, I implore you to think again about the potential consequences of her actions.
As a not-so-far-fetched example, remember that QAnon started out as a similar sort of 'blended reality fiction' (before it was likely overtaken by state-level propaganda agents). The only difference is that QAnon was based on giving a new interpretation to reputable third-party texts, while this goes one step further to actually fabricate seemingly original texts by a reputable source - I'd argue that's even worse.
If you have trouble with the concept of 'truth', just go by what's useful.
That's eg why financial newspapers often stick closer to the truth: their readers want to be able to play the markets, so need something with a bit of a reality check, instead of just playing to their ideological preferences only.
> Zhemao published an apology letter on her English Wikipedia account, writing that her motivation was to learn about history. She also wrote that she is in fact a full-time housewife with only a high-school degree.
This is not the full story, she originally said the motive was to win online debates with wikipedia references (created by her alias account)
Scenario simulations based on eu4, hoi4 battles (possibly with mods), both teams would setoff by a historical event, also external events would affect the progress.
It's a somewhat popular online sport & sub-culture in China. People go to extremes for historical "accuracy" or just for the sake of it. Tons of memes are generated without people noticing.
In this example, Zhemao can claim something like "I should have extra 2000 silver starting at my castle because check out this wikipedia article". She surely have played many games in her favor.
I don’t see any similarity between the scandals beyond the surface level one person generating a lot of content on Wikipedia that was later reversed. Your linked article is about some teenager putting up mistranslated garbage. That’s very boring vandalism, notable only due to its scale. TFA is about someone creating a vast collection of plausible-sounding history out of thin air, which is fascinating and arguably more damaging for Wikipedia.
Even worse (or better, depending on how you look at it), she interconnected her made-up history with historical places and persons - e.g. the principality of Tver did exist, so it's probably hard to tell which of the details about it are fact and which are fiction. That's almost Dan Brown-level stuff...
The Scots Wikipedia issue isn't straightforward at all. For one, considering the sheer effort spent in 170 000 edits over a decade, it's quite possible that the editor was acting in severely misguided good faith. More importantly, it raised questions about the utility and proceedings of Wikimedia sites with low traffic; a substantial discussion took place in an RFC[0] that included proposed audits to prevent future incidents, but nothing really went through other than increased attention to the long-existing Small-Wiki Monitoring Team. And the off-wiki effects...poisoned datasets and damage to the language itself!
Perhaps proposals from the RFC will be renewed in light of this, though it's not the same situation as the Chinese Wikipedia isn't really small. It's known for questionable circumstances regarding adminship and other user behaviour, though, and is generally quite insular. So, unsurprising that this story hasn't received much attention outside of Chinese Wikipedia or news. On-wiki, the only pages for it currently are that on zhwiki and a corresponding page on English Wikipedia with a brief summary.[1]
Also, enwiki's own newspaper has a more informed article on the Scots incident,[2] also with some discussion (there's also an HN post). By the way, I remember an article or Wikipedia page about how journalism about Wikipedia persistently lacks nuance or understanding of its customs (basically a community-wide Gell-Mann amnesia effect), but can't find it now...anyone happen to just know it?
> I don’t see any similarity between the scandals beyond the surface level one person generating a lot of content on Wikipedia that was later reversed.
That's the similarity.
It's like saying you don't see any similarity between Maradona and Messi, other than both of them being very successful Argentinian players.
Michael Scott: "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information."
OK but what's the upshot wrt this story? Now that someone knows about its connection to the CCP, does it change how we ought to think about it in any way?
Yes. If this wasn't state-driven, it'd be a somewhat-humorous prank. If it is state-driven, it becomes a situation straight from 1984, where the protagonist's job is quite literally to rewrite history.
I gave up on wikipedia after adding beautiful photos of relevant chemical reactions I performed during University and watching random accounts remove them for no reason and replace them with... nothing.
I hope these articles are just mirrored onto a separate wiki site where more people can jump in and elaborate on the alt-world history that Zhemao started. Unfortunately I can't read Chinese, but I do for some reason find fake but entirely real feeling historical accounts very compelling.
Imagine a traveler from an alternate universe getting fed up by editors constantly rolling back their edit of A to E in Berenstein, and just documenting everything they remember from their prior life.
They do not exist. First a Hungarian aristocrat was hoodwinked by some locals for money in Egypt in the 1930s, then a Hungarian student spending two semesters Cairo in the 1960s rewarmed the issue to prove his worth and successfully sold himself as an expert of all things Arabic in Hungary -- he never managed to get even a degree -- then finally in the nineties a far right weekly dug up the story for nationalistic purposes.
Finally an expedition was sent in 2006-2007 which have found with absolute surety these people do not exist. Their report is linked from wikipedia.
I tried to correct the article, I tried to delete the article, it was refused saying it's notorious enough to have an article on Wikipedia ... ... ... seriously?
Similarly, Hungarian prehistory on Wikipedia is completely outdated. Most of the "primary sources" it lists are completely unreliable, they were not even written with the intent of being reliable history wise (the The Annals of Fulda and The Annals of St-Bertin being remarkable exceptions). It notes "their reliability ... is suspect" ignoring Tamás Hölbling absolutely tearing them apart in 2010 in his two volume massive source criticism book. They are much closer to a comic book today than a historical book. It completely omits all the remarkable archaeogenetic findings since 2008. It completely ignores an absolutely groundbreaking symposium held in 1999 (they brought together researchers Indo-European and Uralic both archeological and linguistic, this was never done before), second edition can be found at https://www.sgr.fi/sust/SUST242.pdf . Overall, the Wikipedia article reflects the scientific consensus of the 1970s or so.
I tried to fix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Abdallah_Jayhani because Gayhani is incorrect, one spelling which could be used is Ğayhānī (eg https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/islm.1998.75....) it got reverted with "The other names in the lead are not supposed to have custom alphabets or whatever they're called." Whatever, eh? But hilariously enough, Wikipedia itself has an article on the romanization of Persian and you can check that article and see for yourself that "G" in itself is never used to transliterate a persian letter no matter which scheme you pick... but whatever!
Yeah, you should look into Arabic Numerals, the Hindu Nationalists took over the page and now writes as originating from India, which it doesn't and doesn't really originate from a single country at all, it comes from the silk road. But anyways, they use "sources" which result in he said she said arguments, and at one time just completely lists an old elementary mathematics book as their source. The level of inaccuracy in many wikipedia articles is frighteningly high especially maintained by "offical" channels.
You should read sources on how the jewish americans helped black americans. The sources flat out state that During the period Jewish American's did nothing to help black americans during the segregation and at times actively encouraged it.
I'll add a grievance here too. The Timeline of Japanese History article really tends to skip over the less than nice parts of Imperial Japan, especially during WW2.
From ~1942 to 1945, there are no entries, for example. I know it's kinda covered in the Timeline of WW2 article, but the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese are not mentioned.
Whitewashing is real on Wikipedia. I know its a tired meme, but you really do need to do your own research nowadays.
So much of it is that when archaeologists confirm a historical account, it's news. I recall when King Richard's body was dug up under a parking lot, the historians were shocked to discover he really did have a seriously curved spine. They had thought that the accounts of his disability were just propaganda by his enemies.
No its not news most of the time. The situation you are referencing is an extreme case and that's why it made news, and it happens to be a very well known story with the evidence being literally in the capital city. Seems like you are suffering from an extreme case of survivor bias.
Launched on April 6 [2016], garnering some immediate attention from the Western China-watching community, Sixth Tone is a Chinese invention: a media start-up under party oversight that features a slick, attractive website and appealing headlines designed to entice Western readers.
Zhemao said she made most of her fake entries to fill the gaps left by her first couple of entries she edited. “As the saying goes, in order to tell a lie, you must tell more lies. I was reluctant to delete the hundreds of thousands of words I wrote, but as a result, I wound up losing millions of words, and a circle of academic friends collapsed,” she wrote. “The trouble I’ve caused is hard to make up for, so maybe a permanent ban is the only option. My current knowledge is not enough to make a living, so in the future I will learn a craft, work honestly, and not do nebulous things like this any more.”
A "fictional Wikipedia" seems like a nice project. Something that could grow organically from contributors with an effort to cross-link and cross-reference.
SCP Foundation comes to mind https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/. An entire wiki of a loosely interconnected series of supernatural events and entities. It's very easy to get lost in it.
When I was a kid, I enjoyed making up fake history and fake world political map just for fun lol, I also designed flags for each county I came up with. Great time.
all history is narrative, with a greater or lesser degree of fidelity to reality. This example should be preserved in some way to remind us of this important fact
I don't think it's too surprising that stuff like can happen on a non-English Wikipedia. The English one has superb moderation and reliability, but other languages range in quality from pretty good to complete garbage. It's a shame because often the only comprehensive article written about something will be in another language.
Yeah, the English Wikipedia definitely has similar problems, though they may not be on such a grand scale as this. For instance, I know there's one user who, for at least a decade, has basically been trying to breath life into a new religious concept with a Wikipedia page for it. He's persistent enough, benefits from a relatively frequent typo for sourcing, and his the corner is obscure enough that nothing can be done (given Wikipedia's culture and his persistence).
I wonder if you could extract all of her contributions as a patch and use one of the deep learning language models to fill in the gaps. Maybe there's a great work hidden in there.
It's worth noting that sixthtone is a Chinese state-affiliated website. But the link to the community investigation on Chinese Wikipedia bears them out.
While it is admittedly amusing, methinks it's not harmless at all. Vandalism of this sort undermines the legitimacy of information sources more broadly. It was in fact a deliberate tactic of (incidentally Russian) propaganda outlets like RT to mix actual facts with fairly obvious lies and the appearance of a "mainstream" news source. The resulting effect that it had on consumers was that they'd say things like 'yeah, some things there are lies, but there are lies on both sides, you can't really trust any of them'. Or remember QAnon, which also derived its original success from blending authentic information sources with fabrications.
I'm not implying that she intended anything of that sort (although some of the other comments suggest that she may have used the fabrications to her advantage in smaller settings), but that her actions could have ended up producing similar results.
This is decidedly different from deliberate world-building that takes inspiration from the real and mixes it with the fictional, like what Tolkien did. It would have been exponentially harder to get anyone to care about her stories if they hadn't come with the wikipedia veneer (somewhat sadly, it might be easier for her now that she got global media attention).
Gpt-3 does not have the long-term memory required to create a convincing book-length narrative. Not that that's a guarantee that gpt-4 will be thus limited.
America has probably rewritten history more times than we'd like to acknowledge. There are some countries that will jail you for questioning the official narratives. I have a feeling America is headed in that direction, one ideology or another.. eventually if you question it you will be labeled some sort of name to elicit the worst reactions from people towards you.
All the comments here are positive, the range is from slightly amused to comparing her to Borges (rofl).
I didn't like it the moment I heard this, but now contrarian mode has kicked in:
Why isn't this destruction of essential information infrastructure? Why isn't this a 'fuck you' to the millions of volunteer hours W is based on? Why isn't this potentially infecting millions of minds with lies?
Why isn't this absolutely deplorable?
(COI Statement: i am a wikipedia editor for 15+ years, I am a member of my local wikimedia chapter)
Completely agree. If she had released this in a different medium it would be a wonderfully fun achievement (which I think is what most of the comments are responding to), but what she actually did is quite literally a detriment to humanity. It goes against basic, fundamental principles of what it means to be a good person.
> Why isn't this destruction of essential information infrastructure?
Because it doesn't scale. Unlike spam / fake news, the effort to take down something like this is smaller than the effort of creating it.
Now sadly when people start using GPT-4 for the same thing, the balance changes, and we're not far from that..I'm much more worried about that.
That's an interesting take on balance. Although, the determination, not to speak of the will, would usually add to a sentence, the plain damage taken as base-line by some meassure, whereas the individu prospect of future damage is a priori limited by the hope that measurate judgement will deter, because you shan't condem future crimes before they happen.
The problem with fake information on Wikipedia is that poorly sourced documents will source it, which will then be sourced by Wikipedia down the line until the misinformation is self- legitimized.
I'm also quite surprised that the impact this could have on how the Chinese view Russia and Russians in general is not mentioned. It's likely not major (I'm not sure how easy it is to access the Chinese Wiki in there), but I'd imagine it's non-negligible.
> Why isn't this destruction of essential information infrastructure
It may be deemed "vandalism" by seasoned editors, though Arb might chose more salient descriptors.
I don't recall right now what the legal opinion on destruction of data is, ie. irrecoverable erasure in the most trivial case, and I think they wouldn't introduce specific new laws around IT systems if it were that easy. But if it is, then analogies from destruction to somewhat impeding property is well precedented (in .de) even if it's entirely reversable in theory.
1mil words isn't that much work though, so I'd consider this a fairly quick end and not exactly news.
Probably because it's not merely destruction but creation with volume. As a wikipedia reader I guess I have the luxury to laugh about it knowing stuff like this is eventually discovered and corrected
It's of little help to you if it is corrected a day or decade after you read the article.
The thing to remember is to check the cited sources whenever the information is remotely important to you.
See https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday... or this from Charles Seife:
"Wikipedia is like an old and eccentric uncle. He can be a lot of fun—over the years he's seen a lot, and he can tell a great story. He's also no dummy; he's accumulated a lot of information and has some strong opinions about what he's gathered. You can learn quite a bit from him. But take everything he says with a grain of salt. A lot of the things he thinks he knows for sure aren't quite right, or are taken out of context. And when it comes down to it, sometimes he believes things that are a little bit, well, nuts. If it ever matters to you whether something he said is real or fictional, it's crucial to check it out with a more reliable source."
—Charles Seife, Virtual Unreality, Appendix, "The top ten dicta of the internet skeptic", Dictum no. 1.
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I have a herd of elephants. I decide one day I get them all really really well fed, and then lead them to the marketplace where they then take a really really big dump on the stalls and the produce and the sellers and the customers. In the end, everything and everyone is just covered, and people are walking knee-deep in elephant poo.
That's not merely destruction but creation with volume.
Though my personal experience with Wikipedia editors has been imperfect, thank you for your commitment to providing accurate information, thank you for your service.
Even worse, what if it isn't a single actor on a single website but a whole swarm of army faking humanity?
E.g. The CCP recently declared that Hong Kong was never a colony of the UK, but "under ruling of a colonial government" [1]
1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-61810263
Are we aware that in China, people mostly support Russia's invasion to Ukraine because of state level propaganda?
I don’t really see how that example is supposed to be that egregious?
“A colony of the UK” vs “under the ruling of a colonial government” are pretty similar.
Given that the basis of the UK’s colonization of Hong Kong was based on a treaty granting it control over the territory for 150 years, after which it was returned to China. The Chinese portrayal seems apt, given that it was a temporary, though long, occupation.
> The CCP recently declared that Hong Kong was never a colony of the UK, but "under ruling of a colonial government"
Is this supposed to be a difference of fact or a difference of perspective? Colonies are ruled by colonial governments.
edit: e.g. if I kidnap a woman and force her to marry me, her family may not want to refer to her as my ex-wife after they get her back.
> E.g. The CCP recently declared that Hong Kong was never a colony of the UK, but "under ruling of a colonial government" [1]
I don’t really understand the strenuous objection to this. This seems less like “1984-style rewriting of history” and more like completely routine nationalism that you see all around the world.
"You don't need to cite that the sky is blue" applies.
The thing is, in cz.WP they could do that if they want.
> Are we aware that in China, people mostly support Russia's invasion to Ukraine because of state level propaganda?
I cannot say that because of state propaganda I became aware of that. But I sense that you are low key shilling, no offence, so yeah
Yeah this problem affects all countries to varying degrees. Usually not as bad as the CCP. Most of the west have no opinion or don’t support Yemen against the oppressive Saudis who are backed by the US and more of the west. Same issues: propaganda/how News and media is handled.
To be clear: The Russian Govt invasion of Ukraine is awful. They are completely in the wrong. Putin needs to go and another strong man duplicate must not replace him. Don’t get me started on how bad the CCP is!
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>Are we aware that in China, people mostly support Russia's invasion to Ukraine because of state level propaganda?
Are you aware that in USA people mostly supported Middle East invasion because of state-level propaganda? China isn't an outlier here.
> essential information infrastructure
lol
I completely agree. This almost feels like a state-sanctioned act. Isn't "Fake News" the theme of the last six years? It's undoing pieces of our society. This is just one more log on the fire.
Wikipedia, despite all odds, has proven the most effective distributor of facts of our time. Shame on those who undermine its credibility.
No, "Fake News" is a term coined to allow a blanket dismissal of anything made public that political leaders don't want to be heard. There certainly can be factual falsehoods in news, and it is worth evaluating how well news organizations are reporting facts... but "Fake News" was the opening salvo before following up with stating that fact-checking is insulting.
Let us not validate the concept by embracing the term. It is a weasel word for people who want to promote their own flavor of misinformation.
As far as Wikipedia goes, this shows a loophole that needs to be closed. I'm amused by it - I can also understand why others are not.
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The website reporting this is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Tone
But the story is perfectly real: the link to the community discussion on Wikipedia checks out.
Chinese state media do enjoy reporting – often intelligently – on Wikipedia's foibles (I've been quoted by them a number of times). And I have sometimes wished Western media were equally diligent about digging up stories like this, rather than always reflexively singing Wikipedia's praises. Wikipedia would actually profit from the scrutiny, as I and some Signpost colleagues pointed out at the 2015 WikiConference:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journalism_and_the_o...
(The Signpost is the English Wikipedia's community newspaper, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost )
But it is also clear that this Sixth Tone article is designed to support a political narrative. I would not completely exclude the possibility that it was a state-sponsored effort. The apology the user posted (in Chinese) on the English Wikipedia (someone linked it below) does read quite wooden (I had DeepL translate it). On the other hand, this may simply reflect cultural differences.
This is not serious because if you believe something you read online, you are a sucker.
I am not saying that this is funny or anything, but I feel like it's irrelevant. I assume many articles contain lies or are downright fabricated. This just confirms my assumption, and makes me think of how many things like this one are left to discover yet.
Everyone is a sucker?
I would not believe anyone who claimed they did not believe something they read online. What is the distinction between online and offline these days as a source of information?
It made sense when online was a bunch of random people with no businesses or editors behind it. But when all major organizations and institutions have an online presence, it seems meaningless to differentiate online and offline.
This false history is a literary achievement. Writing such a plausible pseudo-account and convincing so many for so long is impressive. I guess they should take it all down but I'm kind of sad that there aren't any comparable projects (note: I'm aware that there are wikis devoted to creating fictional worlds, but these worlds are rarely historically grounded or plausible)
I’m surprised that she doesn’t publish adapted novels based on her Wikipedia entries.
Might be wrong, but both the Twilight series and 50 Shades of Gray series were initially fan fiction pieces by housewives who published their work on blogs.
Alternate historical fiction is a very popular genre.
50 Shades of Grey was Twilight fanfic with the 'serial numbers filed off'. I don't think Twilight itself has fanfic in its origin.
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Forgot to add that Orson Welles started his Hollywood career pulling a much worse public deception.
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They are preserved in Wikipedia and ranked according to their longevity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi...
There's more or less a competition for them.
I suppose the real way to win would be to add a fake hoax to that page...
Exactly my thoughts. This whole story is wild. Putting over 10 years of effort into this is mind bending.
Some people really love to write. She must have gotten incredibly lost in her fictional world. I can only imagine it must have been the case here, and at some point it just happened to be that the medium she used was Wikipedia becuase that's where it all started for unrelated reasons.
She made a statement that she should learn a craft, but she already has one. She could definitely start writing a novel in her fictional world.
It was the Chinese Wikipedia. It's not like it would be vetted as closely as the English version, so not that surprising it stayed up so long.
Dunno. In uni I vandalized Wikipedia (oops, I mean created a hoax) with large, believable edits to generic/major articles like "Tree". My edits stayed up until I grew up years later, felt bad, and took them down.
I don't think Wikipedia is as closely vetted as we assume. For one, it's just so much cheaper to create content than it is to verify it. It's pretty amazing that Wikipedia is generally as high quality as it is with this in mind. And one reason why is that I imagine these types of bad actors (vandals making convincing edits just to be a jerk) are relatively rare.
I reckon most of Wikipedia's bad edits come from low-effort vandals and people trying to game high-value articles that have lots of eyeballs.
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This sort of thing has happened on English Wikipedia as well. Remember the Bicholim conflict?
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/wikipedia-bicholim-conflict...
Or the Amelia Bedelia hoax?
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/amelia-bedelia-wikipedia-ho...
More here:
https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday...
Some of this content was also in the English Wikipedia – it had been translated from the Chinese Wikipedia. See the deletion discussion here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
Admin noticeboard thread:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Adminis...
> Writing such a plausible pseudo-account and convincing so many for so long is impressive.
I find that in practice, the scary part is that it is not so impressive and that the thousand eyes are largely a lie.
All too often have I seen such things go on for a long time without anyone noticing, or perhaps many noticing, but not being motivated to investigate and call out, or perhaps many even calling out, but their calls going unanswered.
And perhaps scarier: Wikipedia is one of the better policed places.
If you work in a commercial publisher, there's less oversight.
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I routinely find spam, vandalism and heavy POV-pushing in English WP. In general, I check the sources, and if they are absent or fail to support the article text, I correct them[0], or challenge them on the talk page.
Do you? When you say you see such things going on without anybody noticing, presumably you noticed?
[0] I don't generally edit articles on politically-sensitive topics. They are wargrounds, patrolled by tough gatekeepers. I take any information in WP about current affairs with a bushel of salt. But it's still better than, for example, mainstream media.
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The Assassins' Creed video game franchise weaves real history to it's fictional story line. Playing the game or watching the game movies on YouTube can yield interesting Wikipedia rabbit holes.
While I understand your initial reaction, I implore you to think again about the potential consequences of her actions.
As a not-so-far-fetched example, remember that QAnon started out as a similar sort of 'blended reality fiction' (before it was likely overtaken by state-level propaganda agents). The only difference is that QAnon was based on giving a new interpretation to reputable third-party texts, while this goes one step further to actually fabricate seemingly original texts by a reputable source - I'd argue that's even worse.
"false history" -- is there any other kind? It is like the difference between a cult and established religions: the main difference is scale and time.
If you have trouble with the concept of 'truth', just go by what's useful.
That's eg why financial newspapers often stick closer to the truth: their readers want to be able to play the markets, so need something with a bit of a reality check, instead of just playing to their ideological preferences only.
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Correct.
History in an ideal world tries to record what happened.
But realistically, history is a tool for politics.
But judging by the heavy downvotes of your comment, that fact doesn’t seem to be popular.
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> Zhemao published an apology letter on her English Wikipedia account, writing that her motivation was to learn about history. She also wrote that she is in fact a full-time housewife with only a high-school degree.
This is not the full story, she originally said the motive was to win online debates with wikipedia references (created by her alias account)
Then this article is disingenous, because it did not state it as part of her apology, which would have put some context to it.
What kind of debates?
Keyword: 贴游 or 文游
Scenario simulations based on eu4, hoi4 battles (possibly with mods), both teams would setoff by a historical event, also external events would affect the progress.
It's a somewhat popular online sport & sub-culture in China. People go to extremes for historical "accuracy" or just for the sake of it. Tons of memes are generated without people noticing.
In this example, Zhemao can claim something like "I should have extra 2000 silver starting at my castle because check out this wikipedia article". She surely have played many games in her favor.
Her apology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%E6%8A%98%E6%AF%9B
There was a similar scandal for the Scots wikipedia:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-...
I don’t see any similarity between the scandals beyond the surface level one person generating a lot of content on Wikipedia that was later reversed. Your linked article is about some teenager putting up mistranslated garbage. That’s very boring vandalism, notable only due to its scale. TFA is about someone creating a vast collection of plausible-sounding history out of thin air, which is fascinating and arguably more damaging for Wikipedia.
Even worse (or better, depending on how you look at it), she interconnected her made-up history with historical places and persons - e.g. the principality of Tver did exist, so it's probably hard to tell which of the details about it are fact and which are fiction. That's almost Dan Brown-level stuff...
The Scots Wikipedia issue isn't straightforward at all. For one, considering the sheer effort spent in 170 000 edits over a decade, it's quite possible that the editor was acting in severely misguided good faith. More importantly, it raised questions about the utility and proceedings of Wikimedia sites with low traffic; a substantial discussion took place in an RFC[0] that included proposed audits to prevent future incidents, but nothing really went through other than increased attention to the long-existing Small-Wiki Monitoring Team. And the off-wiki effects...poisoned datasets and damage to the language itself!
Perhaps proposals from the RFC will be renewed in light of this, though it's not the same situation as the Chinese Wikipedia isn't really small. It's known for questionable circumstances regarding adminship and other user behaviour, though, and is generally quite insular. So, unsurprising that this story hasn't received much attention outside of Chinese Wikipedia or news. On-wiki, the only pages for it currently are that on zhwiki and a corresponding page on English Wikipedia with a brief summary.[1]
Also, enwiki's own newspaper has a more informed article on the Scots incident,[2] also with some discussion (there's also an HN post). By the way, I remember an article or Wikipedia page about how journalism about Wikipedia persistently lacks nuance or understanding of its customs (basically a community-wide Gell-Mann amnesia effect), but can't find it now...anyone happen to just know it?
[0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Large_s...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fabricated_articles_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
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In both cases people pretended to be experts (history / scots), it worked and large amount of inappropriate articles stayed public a long time.
> I don’t see any similarity between the scandals beyond the surface level one person generating a lot of content on Wikipedia that was later reversed.
That's the similarity.
It's like saying you don't see any similarity between Maradona and Messi, other than both of them being very successful Argentinian players.
It’s hard to not see this as Borges’ “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” come to life. For a hoax, it’s still an impressive feat of fictional world building.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertiu...
Michael Scott: "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information."
It might be worth noting that Sixth Tone is state media overseen by the Shanghai CCP, intended for English speaking audiences.
OK but what's the upshot wrt this story? Now that someone knows about its connection to the CCP, does it change how we ought to think about it in any way?
Yes. If this wasn't state-driven, it'd be a somewhat-humorous prank. If it is state-driven, it becomes a situation straight from 1984, where the protagonist's job is quite literally to rewrite history.
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Very specious of the CCP to think English speaking audiences have any interest in what they have to say.
Borges, Umberto Eco, Thomas Pynchon, and Danilo Kiš would be proud; what else is the world's historical narrative but an edit war?
Such a fantastical lie wrapped around such utter banality; surely this will warrant her own Wikipedia article.
I gave up on wikipedia after adding beautiful photos of relevant chemical reactions I performed during University and watching random accounts remove them for no reason and replace them with... nothing.
Maybe because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
Doesn't really apply to pictures especially on wikicommons.
I hope these articles are just mirrored onto a separate wiki site where more people can jump in and elaborate on the alt-world history that Zhemao started. Unfortunately I can't read Chinese, but I do for some reason find fake but entirely real feeling historical accounts very compelling.
Imagine a traveler from an alternate universe getting fed up by editors constantly rolling back their edit of A to E in Berenstein, and just documenting everything they remember from their prior life.
Wikipedia has an article on Magyaráb people.
They do not exist. First a Hungarian aristocrat was hoodwinked by some locals for money in Egypt in the 1930s, then a Hungarian student spending two semesters Cairo in the 1960s rewarmed the issue to prove his worth and successfully sold himself as an expert of all things Arabic in Hungary -- he never managed to get even a degree -- then finally in the nineties a far right weekly dug up the story for nationalistic purposes.
Finally an expedition was sent in 2006-2007 which have found with absolute surety these people do not exist. Their report is linked from wikipedia.
I tried to correct the article, I tried to delete the article, it was refused saying it's notorious enough to have an article on Wikipedia ... ... ... seriously?
Similarly, Hungarian prehistory on Wikipedia is completely outdated. Most of the "primary sources" it lists are completely unreliable, they were not even written with the intent of being reliable history wise (the The Annals of Fulda and The Annals of St-Bertin being remarkable exceptions). It notes "their reliability ... is suspect" ignoring Tamás Hölbling absolutely tearing them apart in 2010 in his two volume massive source criticism book. They are much closer to a comic book today than a historical book. It completely omits all the remarkable archaeogenetic findings since 2008. It completely ignores an absolutely groundbreaking symposium held in 1999 (they brought together researchers Indo-European and Uralic both archeological and linguistic, this was never done before), second edition can be found at https://www.sgr.fi/sust/SUST242.pdf . Overall, the Wikipedia article reflects the scientific consensus of the 1970s or so.
I tried to fix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Abdallah_Jayhani because Gayhani is incorrect, one spelling which could be used is Ğayhānī (eg https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/islm.1998.75....) it got reverted with "The other names in the lead are not supposed to have custom alphabets or whatever they're called." Whatever, eh? But hilariously enough, Wikipedia itself has an article on the romanization of Persian and you can check that article and see for yourself that "G" in itself is never used to transliterate a persian letter no matter which scheme you pick... but whatever!
I gave up on trying to fix Wikipedia.
Yeah, you should look into Arabic Numerals, the Hindu Nationalists took over the page and now writes as originating from India, which it doesn't and doesn't really originate from a single country at all, it comes from the silk road. But anyways, they use "sources" which result in he said she said arguments, and at one time just completely lists an old elementary mathematics book as their source. The level of inaccuracy in many wikipedia articles is frighteningly high especially maintained by "offical" channels.
You should read sources on how the jewish americans helped black americans. The sources flat out state that During the period Jewish American's did nothing to help black americans during the segregation and at times actively encouraged it.
I'll add a grievance here too. The Timeline of Japanese History article really tends to skip over the less than nice parts of Imperial Japan, especially during WW2.
From ~1942 to 1945, there are no entries, for example. I know it's kinda covered in the Timeline of WW2 article, but the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese are not mentioned.
Whitewashing is real on Wikipedia. I know its a tired meme, but you really do need to do your own research nowadays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Japanese_history#2...
Jewish support for the civil rights movement is well documented, including strong participation in the March on Washington.
Why would you bring that particular topic up out of the blue?
Which version of Wikipedia? Do you have a link? (Edit:) Ah, never mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarab_people
It begs: how many people find themselves weaving webs of lies in places like Wikipedia to keep their personas/identities intact?
It makes no difference to me, because I don’t read Wikipedia articles. I do use Wikipedia to find references and public domain illustrations, though.
okay
Not sure that's relevant?
But those illustrations could be full of lies just the same?
Forget Wikipedia, how much of history in general is largely made up or fluffed.
So much of it is that when archaeologists confirm a historical account, it's news. I recall when King Richard's body was dug up under a parking lot, the historians were shocked to discover he really did have a seriously curved spine. They had thought that the accounts of his disability were just propaganda by his enemies.
No its not news most of the time. The situation you are referencing is an extreme case and that's why it made news, and it happens to be a very well known story with the evidence being literally in the capital city. Seems like you are suffering from an extreme case of survivor bias.
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This person should get together with the random brony who messed with the Scottish language Wikipedia.
https://www.google.com/search?q=scots+Wikipedia+brony&oq=sco...
Launched on April 6 [2016], garnering some immediate attention from the Western China-watching community, Sixth Tone is a Chinese invention: a media start-up under party oversight that features a slick, attractive website and appealing headlines designed to entice Western readers.
It's working.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/china-explained-sixth-t...
How beautiful is her apology . From the article:
Zhemao said she made most of her fake entries to fill the gaps left by her first couple of entries she edited. “As the saying goes, in order to tell a lie, you must tell more lies. I was reluctant to delete the hundreds of thousands of words I wrote, but as a result, I wound up losing millions of words, and a circle of academic friends collapsed,” she wrote. “The trouble I’ve caused is hard to make up for, so maybe a permanent ban is the only option. My current knowledge is not enough to make a living, so in the future I will learn a craft, work honestly, and not do nebulous things like this any more.”
A "fictional Wikipedia" seems like a nice project. Something that could grow organically from contributors with an effort to cross-link and cross-reference.
Is there anything like this?
SCP Foundation comes to mind https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/. An entire wiki of a loosely interconnected series of supernatural events and entities. It's very easy to get lost in it.
Are they now redirecting (from scp-wiki.net and scpwiki.com) to the Wikidot URL for SEO?
If you by change understand German, there is https://www.stupidedia.org
A Sci-Fi version of this is Orion's Arm project: https://www.orionsarm.com/
Here we go : https://iiwiki.us/wiki/Main_Page
Uncyclopedia and SCP come to mind.
"This Tweet links to a China state-affiliated media website. Find out more".
This is what I am seing on Twitter linking the above article. A good additional information.
When I was a kid, I enjoyed making up fake history and fake world political map just for fun lol, I also designed flags for each county I came up with. Great time.
all history is narrative, with a greater or lesser degree of fidelity to reality. This example should be preserved in some way to remind us of this important fact
I don't think it's too surprising that stuff like can happen on a non-English Wikipedia. The English one has superb moderation and reliability, but other languages range in quality from pretty good to complete garbage. It's a shame because often the only comprehensive article written about something will be in another language.
>The English one has superb moderation
I don't think I've ever seen that claim before. It's... maybe true of some articles.
Yeah, the English Wikipedia definitely has similar problems, though they may not be on such a grand scale as this. For instance, I know there's one user who, for at least a decade, has basically been trying to breath life into a new religious concept with a Wikipedia page for it. He's persistent enough, benefits from a relatively frequent typo for sourcing, and his the corner is obscure enough that nothing can be done (given Wikipedia's culture and his persistence).
Sounds like a curious work of fiction. I hope they are not going to just delete that.
I wonder if you could extract all of her contributions as a patch and use one of the deep learning language models to fill in the gaps. Maybe there's a great work hidden in there.
It's worth noting that sixthtone is a Chinese state-affiliated website. But the link to the community investigation on Chinese Wikipedia bears them out.
While it is admittedly amusing, methinks it's not harmless at all. Vandalism of this sort undermines the legitimacy of information sources more broadly. It was in fact a deliberate tactic of (incidentally Russian) propaganda outlets like RT to mix actual facts with fairly obvious lies and the appearance of a "mainstream" news source. The resulting effect that it had on consumers was that they'd say things like 'yeah, some things there are lies, but there are lies on both sides, you can't really trust any of them'. Or remember QAnon, which also derived its original success from blending authentic information sources with fabrications.
I'm not implying that she intended anything of that sort (although some of the other comments suggest that she may have used the fabrications to her advantage in smaller settings), but that her actions could have ended up producing similar results.
This is decidedly different from deliberate world-building that takes inspiration from the real and mixes it with the fictional, like what Tolkien did. It would have been exponentially harder to get anyone to care about her stories if they hadn't come with the wikipedia veneer (somewhat sadly, it might be easier for her now that she got global media attention).
I love this. I wish it was in English. It sounds a lot better than the regular Wikipedia.
Wikipedia isn't perfect, it's the best we got and it can be improved further.
Does Wikipedia no longer require you to cite any sources?
I hope she gets her own wikipedia page about this
Which means this can happen to any form of Wikipedia.
Is there an IgNoble prize in Literature?
> some Wikipedia editors warned that the incident had “shaken the credibility of the current Chinese Wikipedia as a whole
That might have been the goal all along.
[dead]
Not surprising
What could she do with GPT-3 and DALL-E?
Gpt-3 does not have the long-term memory required to create a convincing book-length narrative. Not that that's a guarantee that gpt-4 will be thus limited.
America has probably rewritten history more times than we'd like to acknowledge. There are some countries that will jail you for questioning the official narratives. I have a feeling America is headed in that direction, one ideology or another.. eventually if you question it you will be labeled some sort of name to elicit the worst reactions from people towards you.