People often talk about governments or political groups infiltrating Wikipedia and editing it to promote their agendas, but are there any verified examples of this happening?--Jack Upland (talk) 03:31, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Can't really infiltrate something that, by its very nature, is open to all. But to answer your question, yes. There are plenty of examples of governments, politicians, and political groups editing their own articles to make themselves look better. This article may interest you: United States Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia. --Majora (talk) 03:43, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That really underlines my concern with these claims. There is no clear distinction between a legitimate and illegitimate edit. The conflict of interest policy only goes so far. And there is no distinction made in articles like that between edits that come from a particular IP range and edits which are made by political staffers etc as part of their job. Someone could be just goofing off at work.--Jack Upland (talk) 05:17, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There are endless cases of corporations hiring a bunch of people to edit, and cases of politicians and staffers editing their own articles and articles of their opponents, and an admin protecting the page for a scam-college for years, and at least one case of a government intelligence agency threatening an admin with prison if he didn't delete an article. But the only cases I know of that really fit "political groups infiltrating Wikipedia and editing it to promote their agendas" were Croatian and Chechen Wikis, but I think those were "organic" cases of wiki-startup wingnut editors becoming wignut admins, and naturally voting in favor of fellow wignuts for admin. The English article about Croatian Wikipedia has new coverage on it. The entire Croat wiki went to hell because it was infested with abusive hyper-nationalistic admins. You can see the international editing community investigating and dealing with it at meta:Requests_for_comment/2013_issues_on_Croatian_Wikipedia. I'd have to double check, but I'm pretty sure there was a mass recall and re-election of admins. I'm less familiar with the Chechen situation, but that also looks like adminship was infested with nationalistic wignuts and all admins definitely were revoked: meta:Requests_for_comment/Massive_sysop_abuse_in_Chechen_Wikipedia. Work was done developing up a Policy "restart process" to address dysfunctional wikis, but it was never finalized. You can see it at meta:Project_restarting_process and meta:Talk:Project_restarting_process. But I'm unaware of any organized deep infiltration case on any major wiki. Well.... unless of course you buy the Conservapedia view that EnWiki's articles on science etc prove that EnWiki has been completely taken over by radicals. Chuckle. Alsee (talk) 10:28, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Since making my last comment I have found Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia. My impression from this is that overall it isn't a major problem. One of the reasons I asked the question was that I have been editing articles relating to North Korea over the past few years, and people have regularly suggested that North Koreans were editing the pages. I haven't been able to find any evidence of this, and I wanted to gauge if this kind of thing was, in fact, a major problem for Wikipedia. As far as I can see, this is just a cheap smear against other editors.--Jack Upland (talk) 11:34, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

tbh, it's none of the above. It's not a major problem overall 1) because wikipedia is so large and so much of it is relatively uncontroversial that injections of Point-of-View tend to affect only the margins and not the totality and 2) because we are more or less able to identify and more or less able to deal with instances of PoV. However the margins are big because wikipedia is big: there are all sorts of areas that are warred over by factional interests: good examples are Israel-Palastine, and a wide range of fringe theories. PoV (your infiltration) is a major problem where it happens, both because it slants articles and because it takes an enormous amount of input from editors to correct the slant; and this can go on pretty much without end. It's also a major problem where it has not been discovered or not been tackled. I don't know what to say to your "cheap smear against other editors". There's a spectrum of editors from good-faith to PoV-warrior, with no one broad brush description with which to paint them. Finally, what I might call minor-PoV - normally commercial conflicts of interest - are a daily occurrence on Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard much as copyright violations are on Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/Noticeboard. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:30, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When I said cheap smear, I was referring to describing other editors as North Korean government agents without evidence. I also noticed this about supposed involvement of Pakistani agents. There doesn't seem to be any strong evidence that this is true. POV is different. Simply because someone has a pro-American bias does not mean they are a CIA agent or even a Congressional staffer.--Jack Upland (talk) 22:40, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

On English Wikipedia, guidelines such WP:Harassment are very helpful in our trying to prevent users from stalking and harassing other users and creating contentious debates (always detrimental to constructive work and good article content), just because of real or imagined political differences. We should perhaps be aware that there are other language projects which have no such guidelines at all, and that some political-agenda users who come here from them, whether to infiltrate articles and discussions with their POV or just to pick fights, may not be accustomed to the stricter policies of English Wikipedia. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 14:57, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It could turn into harassment. I have been accused of being North Korean, but I just find that amusing. Of course someone else could find that kind of accusation highly offensive. What concerns me though is the use of that kind of accusation to dismiss the work of other editors and whole articles, portraying them as the handiwork of Pakistan's secret state, the North Korean regime, etc. Of course, it would be different if the accusations were true, and Wikipedia really was battling legions of secret agents. But that appears to be a fantasy.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:18, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

≤I know there was a spate of British Tory MPs editing their entries just before the last general election (May 2015) to obviously remove anything that portrayed them In a less-than-favourable light or, in some cases to add things that weren't true to boost their image. I know this because the computer network at Westminster logs everything and one paper - think it was either the Guardian or the Independent - made a FoIA request as they're been rumours circulating - I think Wikipedia is now blocked at Westminster! Margo (talk) 22:35, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of this is media-driven, isn't it? And it seems basically a beat-up. There is a low standard of proof and a low level of importance. There's an obvious contradiction in this kind of story: if anyone was making a concerted effort to use Wikipedia for propaganda, they wouldn't be an "IP editor" or use computer network that logs activity. They would set up a account that appeared to be one of bona fide editor. So there could be professional propagandists operating in Wikipedia, but it doesn't appear they've ever been caught. They would have to be playing a long game, and I think politics in the West is fairly short term. Until someone comes up with some kind of proof I feel justified in treating this as a myth. Sure, someone in an MP's office (maybe the work experience kid) edited the MP's page. But the existence of an eel does not prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:20, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I saw WP:FIES quoted in a discussion about edit summaries recently - the shortcut redirects to Help:Edit summary#Always provide an edit summary. The last two letters of the acronym are therefore obvious, but I can't for the life of me guess what FI stands for. Any thoughts? Just curious. Optimist on the run (talk) 07:55, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:FILLINEDITSUMMARY, or predating both links somewhat, WP:Always fill in the summary field. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 07:59, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Of course! . Optimist on the run (talk) 08:03, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Murphy's Laws of Wikipeida #263: when writing a comment about edit summaries, a user will inevitably forget to use one! [1] Optimist on the run (talk) 08:09, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'd prefer WP:ACES Always Complete Edit Summaries. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:24, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Always Remember to Summarise your Edits? Optimist on the run (talk) 09:28, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Try to Use Sensible, Helpful, and Informative Edit Summaries? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:25, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SUMMARIZE has gone- but WP:SUMMARISE is still available! More important, I think is to look at WP:Always fill in the summary field and see the plethora of acronyms which no-one could predict, then look at the content of the page. Do we need a MOS:EDITSUMMARIES - that could be helpful ClemRutter (talk) 10:47, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If WP:SUMMARISE is created, it should redirect to the same page as WP:SUMMARIZE. It would be confusing if different users were redirected to different pages according to their regional use of English. Optimist on the run (talk) 11:11, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Follow-up - I've created it as such. Optimist on the run (talk) 11:18, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You should never use an acronym in a comment or an edit summary, unless it's clear from the plain text what it stands for. See the essay which is actually called Wikipedia:WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG!. With few exceptions, I never use such shortcuts in discussions, unless either it's been explained in the discussion, I pipe iot using a descriptive text, or I'm referring to a common page to users who are presumably familiar with them. (I did once use WP:AAGF in a response to someone citing Assume good faith in their own defence; and I perfer using the shortcut WP:SCRABBLE to a section of Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day which explicitly refers to the game, and don;'t use the name of the page, per Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers.) עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:25, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summaries are often pointless.--Jack Upland (talk) 18:55, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Could I beg a reviewer for this? Long story short, there's been masses of debate about the hook, because as a BLP most notable for negative things, it's hard to get the balance right. We've come up with a compromise format between all the parties, so if Alt 2b is okay, this 4-month ordeal can be over, but it needs an independent reviewer.

Please no new hook suggestions. We have enough. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 16:06, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what is going on with this page List of automated transit networks suppliers. It appears to be a vandalism, can someone have a look at this page. Thank you. Asiaworldcity (talk) 17:55, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to add User:Anna Frodesiak/Green sandbox to your watchlist. That is how I noticed the Ricky81682 matter. I probably wouldn't have seen the announcement at the ARBCOM noticeboard. Of course, it is not for watching to see if any admins turn to the dark side. I use it for instant notification of vandals angry at admins. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:32, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi

Is there someone from Pittsburgh here ? who coud help me about this ?

Regards --Archimëa (talk) 16:17, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]