List of Wikipedia controversies
Timeline and brief descriptions of controversies involving Wikipedia / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Since the launch of Wikipedia in 2001, it has faced several controversies. Wikipedia's open-editing model, under which anyone can edit most articles, has led to concerns such as the quality of writing, the amount of vandalism, and the accuracy of information on the project. The media have covered controversial events and scandals related to Wikipedia and its funding organization, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Common subjects of coverage include articles containing false information, public figures, corporations editing articles for which they have a conflict of interest, paid Wikipedia editing and hostile interactions between Wikipedia editors and public figures.
The Seigenthaler biography incident[2] led to media criticism of the reliability of Wikipedia. The incident dates back to May 2005, with the anonymous posting of a hoax Wikipedia article containing false and negative allegations about John Seigenthaler, a well-known American journalist. In March 2007, Wikipedia was again the subject of media attention with the Essjay controversy, which involved a prominent English Wikipedia editor and administrator who claimed he was a "tenured professor of religion at a private university" with a "Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law" when in fact he was a 24-year-old who held no advanced degrees.[3][4]
The 2012 scandals involving paid consultancy for the government of Gibraltar by Roger Bamkin, a Wikimedia UK board member,[5][6] and potential conflicts of interest have highlighted Wikipedia's vulnerabilities.[5] The presence of inaccurate and false information, as well as the perceived hostile editing climate, have been linked to a decline in editor participation.[7] Another controversy arose in 2013 after an investigation by Wikipedians found that the Wiki-PR company had edited Wikipedia for paying clients, using "an army" of sockpuppet accounts that purportedly included 45 Wikipedia editors and administrators.[8][9] In 2015, the Orangemoody investigation showed that businesses and minor celebrities had been blackmailed over their Wikipedia articles by a coordinated group of fraudsters, again using hundreds of sockpuppets. Controversies within and concerning Wikipedia and the WMF have been the subject of several scholarly papers.[10][11] This list is a collection of the more notable instances.
The nature of Wikipedia controversies has been analyzed by scholars. Sociologist Howard Rheingold says that "Wikipedia controversies have revealed the evolution of social mechanisms in the Wikipedia community";[10] a study of the politicization of socio-technical spaces remarked that Wikipedia "controversies ... become fully-fledged when they are advertised outside the page being debated";[11] and one college discusses Wikipedia as a curricular tool, in that "recent controversies involving Wikipedia [are used] as a basis for discussion of ethics and bias."[12]
Despite being promoted as an encyclopedia "anyone can edit", the ability to edit controversial pages is sometimes restricted because of "edit wars" or vandalism.[13] To address criticism about restricting access while minimizing malicious editing of those pages, Wikipedia has also tried measures such as "pending changes protection" which allows open editing of contentious articles, with the caveat that an experienced editor must approve new users' edits before they become visible to the public.[14][15]
2002
- February 2002 – In late February 2002, the Spanish Wikipedia community decided to break away ("fork") from Wikipedia to protest plans by co-founders Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger to sell advertising on Wikipedia sites.[16] The fork, set up by volunteer Edgar Enyedy, was hosted at the University of Seville under the name Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español.[17] Most of the Spanish volunteers followed Enyedy, producing over 10,000 articles within a year. As a result, the Spanish Wikipedia was virtually inactive until mid-2003.[17] Since this incident, the question of advertising has been a sensitive subject on Wikipedia.[17] In an interview with Wired in January 2011, Wales categorically denied having supported the plans for advertising,[18] prompting a public dispute with Sanger.[19] "The suggestion that I demanded ads and that Jimmy Wales was opposed to them is, I am afraid, yet another self-serving lie from Wales", wrote Sanger.[19] As late as 2006 Wales refused to deny that there would ever be advertising on Wikipedia. In January of that year he told a reporter from ClickZ that "the question is going to arise as to whether we could better pursue our charitable mission with the additional money [ads would bring]. We have never said there would absolutely never be ads on Wikipedia."[20]
- October 2002 – Derek Ramsey increased the number of Wikipedia articles by about 40% with the creation of a bot called Rambot that generated 33,832 Wikipedia stub articles from October 19 to 25 for every missing county, town, city, and village in the United States, based on free information from the United States Census of 2000.[21] In The Wikipedia Revolution, Andrew Lih called it "the most controversial move in Wikipedia history".[21]
2005
- September 2005
- The Seigenthaler incident[2] was a series of events that began in May 2005 with the anonymous posting of a hoax article in Wikipedia about John Seigenthaler, a well-known American journalist. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Additionally, the article erroneously stated that Seigenthaler had lived in the Soviet Union for 13 years beginning in 1971. Seigenthaler, who had been a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, characterized the Wikipedia entry about him as "Internet character assassination".[22] The perpetrator of the hoax, Brian Chase, who was trying to fool a coworker as a prank, was identified by Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt and reporters for The New York Times.[23] The hoax was removed from Wikipedia in early October 2005 (although the false information stayed on Answers.com and Reference.com for another three weeks), after which Seigenthaler wrote about his experience in USA Today.[22][24]
- Professional book indexer Daniel Brandt started now defunct Wikipedia criticism website "wikipedia-watch.org"[23] in response to his unpleasant experience while trying to get his biography deleted.[25]
- November/December 2005 – The IP address assigned to the United States House of Representatives was blocked from editing Wikipedia because of a large number of edits comprising a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia."[26] According to CBS News, these changes included edits to Marty Meehan's Wikipedia article to give it a more positive tone.[27] The edits to Meehan's article prompted a former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics to say that "[t]hat kind of usage, plus the fact that they're changing one person's material, is certainly wrong and ought to be at a minimum the focus of some disciplinary action".[26]
- December 2005 – Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales was found to be editing his own Wikipedia article. According to public logs, he had made 18 edits to his biography, seven of which were alterations of information about whether Larry Sanger was a co-founder of Wikipedia. It was also revealed that Wales had edited the Wikipedia article of his former company, Bomis. "Bomis Babes", a section of the Bomis website, had been characterized in the article as "soft-core pornography", but Wales revised this to "adult content section" and deleted mentions of pornography. He said he was fixing an error, and did not agree with calling Bomis Babes soft porn. Wales conceded that he had made the changes, but maintained that they were technical corrections.[28][29]
2006
- February 1, 2006 – The Henryk Batuta hoax was uncovered by editors on the Polish Wikipedia. Batuta, an entirely made-up person, was claimed to be a Polish Communist revolutionary who was an associate of Ernest Hemingway. The article was published for 15 months and referenced in seventeen other articles before the hoax was uncovered.[30][31] The hoax article was written by a group of Polish Wikipedia editors calling themselves the "Batuta Army". One of the group's members, who called himself "Marek", told The Observer that they had created the hoax article in order to draw attention to the ongoing use of the names of Soviet officials for streets and other public areas in Poland. Marek stated that "Many of these people were traitors and murderers who do not deserve such an honor".[30]
- March 2006 – Daniel Brandt found 142 instances of plagiarism on Wikipedia, arguing that the problem plagued the site.[32]
- Early to mid-2006 – A series of U.S. Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia were revealed in the press. These mostly involved various political aides trying to whitewash Wikipedia biographies of several politicians by removing undesirable information (including pejorative statements quoted, or broken campaign promises), adding favorable information or "glowing" tributes, or by replacing articles in part or whole by staff-authored biographies. The staff of at least five politicians were implicated: Marty Meehan, Norm Coleman, Conrad Burns, Joe Biden and Gil Gutknecht.[33] In a separate but similar incident the campaign manager for Cathy Cox, Morton Brilliant, resigned after being found to have added negative information to the Wikipedia entries of political opponents.[34]
- July 2006 – MyWikiBiz was founded by Gregory Kohs and his sister to provide paid editing services on Wikipedia.[35] Although Kohs, after some research, concluded that there were no Wikipedia policies forbidding this activity, his Wikipedia account was blocked shortly after the August publication of a press release announcing the establishment of the business. The salient Wikipedia policies were soon edited to regulate the kinds of activities in which MyWikiBiz was engaging. Jimmy Wales defended this decision and the permanent exclusion of Kohs from Wikipedia, even as he acknowledged that surreptitious paid editing continually occurred, saying that "[i]t's one thing to acknowledge there's always going to be a little of this, but another to say, 'Bring it on.'"[36][37]
2007
- January 2007
- In January 2007, English-language Wikipedians in Qatar were briefly blocked from editing by an administrator, following a spate of vandalism, since they did not realize that the entire country's internet traffic is routed through a single IP address.[38] Both TechCrunch and Slashdot reported that Wikipedia had banned all of Qatar from the site, a claim that was promptly denied by co-founder Jimmy Wales.[39]
- It was revealed that Microsoft had paid programmer Rick Jelliffe to edit Wikipedia articles about Microsoft products.[40] In particular, Microsoft paid Jelliffe to edit, among others, the article on Office Open XML.[41] A spokesman for Microsoft explained that the company thought the articles in question had been heavily biased by editors at Microsoft rival IBM and that having a seemingly independent editor add the material would make it more acceptable to other Wikipedia editors.[42]
- February 2007
- On February 13, 2007, American professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller sued the Miami foreign-credential evaluation firm of Josef Silny & Associates. The lawsuit alleged that defamatory statements had been edited into the Wikipedia article about Zoeller in December 2006 by someone using a computer at that firm.[43][44]
- Barbara Bauer sued the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the Wikipedia website,[45] claiming that information on Wikipedia critical of her abilities as a literary agent harmed her business. The Electronic Frontier Foundation defended Wikipedia[46] and the case was dismissed in July 2008.[47]
- On February 17, 2007, Taner Akçam, one of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, was detained in Canada at the airport in Montreal for nearly four hours after arriving on a flight from the United States.[48] Taner Akçam said that Canadian authorities had justified this detainment using a libelous Wikipedia article on Akçam from around December 24, 2006 as evidence. The article had allegedly been persistently vandalized by anonymous contributors intent on labeling Akçam as a terrorist. In response to Akçam's account of his border encounter, Jimmy Wales said the website contributors "deeply regret every error".[48][49]
- March 2007 – The Essjay controversy was sparked when The New Yorker magazine issued a rare editorial correction saying that a prominent English Wikipedia editor and administrator known as "Essjay", whom they had interviewed and described in a July 2006 article as a "tenured professor of religion at a private university" who held a "Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law", was in fact a 24-year-old who held no advanced degrees.[3][4][50] Essjay had invented a completely false identity for his pseudonymous participation in Wikipedia.[3][4][50] In January 2007, however, Essjay became a Wikia employee and divulged his real name, Ryan Jordan; this was noticed by Daniel Brandt of Wikipedia Watch, who communicated Essjay's identity to The New Yorker.[3][51] Jordan held trusted volunteer positions within Wikipedia known as "administrator", "bureaucrat", "checkuser", "arbitrator", and "mediator".[3] Responding to the controversy, Jimmy Wales stated that he viewed Essjay's made-up persona like a pseudonym and did not really have a problem with it: "Essjay has always been, and still is, a fantastic editor and trusted member of the community ... He has been thoughtful and contrite about the entire matter, and I consider it settled."[3] The incident caused wide-ranging debates in the Wikipedia community, and saw Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger challenge Wales: "Jimmy, to call yourself a tenured professor, when you aren't one, is not a 'pseudonym'. It's identity fraud. And the full question is not why you appointed Essjay to ArbCom, but: why did you ignore the obvious moral implications of the fact that he had fraudulently pretended to be a professor – ignoring those implications even to the point of giving him a job and appointing him to ArbCom – until now?"[3] As a result of the controversy, Wales eventually invited Jordan to relinquish his responsibilities on Wikipedia, which he did; Jordan also quit his job at Wikia.[51]
- June 2007 – In June 2007, a statement regarding Nancy Benoit's death was added to the wrestler Chris Benoit's English Wikipedia article fourteen hours before police discovered the bodies of Benoit and his family. This seemingly prescient addition was initially reported on Wikinews and later on Fox News Channel. The article originally read: "Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW World Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy." The phrase "stemming from the death of his wife Nancy" was added at 12:01 a.m. EDT on June 25,[52] whereas the Fayette County police reportedly discovered the bodies of the Benoit family at 2:30 p.m. EDT (14 hours, 29 minutes later). The IP address of the editor was traced to Stamford, Connecticut, which is also the location of WWE headquarters.[53] After news of the early death notice reached mainstream media, the anonymous poster accessed Wikinews to explain his edit as a "huge coincidence and nothing more."[54][55]
- August 2007 – It became known that Virgil Griffith, a Caltech computation and neural-systems graduate student, had created WikiScanner, a searchable database that linked changes made by anonymous Wikipedia editors to companies and organizations from which the changes were made. The database cross-referenced logs of Wikipedia edits with publicly available records pertaining to the internet IP addresses edits were made from.[56] Griffith was motivated by the edits from the United States Congress, and wanted to see if others were similarly promoting themselves. He was particularly interested in finding scandals, especially at large and controversial corporations. He said he wanted to, "create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what 'interesting organizations' (which I am neutral towards) are up to."[57] He also wanted to give Wikipedia readers a tool to check edits for accuracy[56] and allow the automation and indexing of edits.[58] Most of the edits Wikiscanner found were minor or harmless,[56] but the site was mined to detect the most controversial and embarrassing instances of conflict of interest edits.[59] These instances received media coverage worldwide. Included among the accused were the Vatican,[60][61] the CIA,[56][61] the Federal Bureau of Investigation,[57] the U.S. Democratic Party's Congressional Campaign Committee,[61][62] the U.S. Republican Party,[58][62] Britain's Labour Party,[62] Britain's Conservative Party,[58] the Canadian government,[63] Industry Canada,[64] the Department of Prime Minister, Cabinet, and Defence in Australia,[65][66][67][68][69] the United Nations,[70] the United States Senate,[71] the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,[72] the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,[72] Montana Senator Conrad Burns,[56] Ohio Governor Bob Taft,[73] Prince Johan Friso and his wife Princess Mabel of the Netherlands,[74][75] the Israeli government,[76] Exxon Mobil,[77] Walmart,[56][77] AstraZeneca, Diebold,[56][58][62] Dow Chemical,[58] Disney,[63] Dell,[77] Anheuser-Busch,[78] Nestlé,[58] Pepsi, Boeing,[58] Sony Computer Entertainment,[79] EA,[80] SCO Group,[78] MySpace,[58] Pfizer,[72] Raytheon,[72] DuPont,[81] Anglican and Catholic churches,[58] the Church of Scientology,[58][63] the World Harvest Church,[73] Amnesty International,[58] the Discovery Channel,[58] Fox News,[62][82] CBS, The Washington Post, the National Rifle Association of America,[58] News International,[58] Al Jazeera,[72] Bob Jones University,[72] and Ohio State University.[73] Although the edits correlated with known IP addresses, there was no proof that the changes actually came from a member of the organization or employee of the company, only that someone had access to their network.[61] Wikipedia spokespersons received WikiScanner positively, noting that it helped prevent conflicts of interest from influencing articles[57] as well as increasing transparency[61] and mitigating attempts to remove or distort relevant facts.[58] In 2008 Griffith released an updated version of WikiScanner called WikiWatcher, which also exploited a common mistake made by users with registered accounts who accidentally forget to log in, revealing their IP address and subsequently their affiliations.[83] As of March 2012, WikiScanner's website was online, but not functioning.[84]
- September 2007
- Auren Hoffman was noted by VentureBeat in 2007 as having edited his own Wikipedia profile under a pseudonym. Hoffman responded that he was editing his profile to remove inappropriate comments.[85]
- One thousand IPs were blocked in Utah in order to prevent further edits from a highly active user who had been banned from editing Wikipedia.[86][87]
- October 2007 – In their obituaries of then recently deceased TV theme composer Ronnie Hazlehurst, many British media organizations reported that he had co-written the S Club 7 song "Reach". In fact, he had not, and it was discovered that this information had been sourced from a hoax edit to Hazlehurst's Wikipedia article.[88][89]
- December 2007 – In December 2007, it became known that the Wikimedia Foundation had failed to do a basic background check and hired Carolyn Doran as its chief operating officer. Doran had criminal records in three states for theft, drunken driving and fleeing the scene of a car crash.[90][91] According to The Register, Doran left her position after yet another arrest for DUI; the Wikimedia Foundation lawyer, Mike Godwin, was quoted as saying, "We've never had any documentation of any criminal record on Carolyn Doran's part at all. As far as I'm concerned, I have no direct knowledge of [her criminal record] yet ... We have, in our records, no evidence of any such thing."[92] The Associated Press also reported that Doran had wounded her boyfriend "with a gunshot to the chest".[93]
2008
- February 2008 – A group of Muslims started an online petition demanding that Wikipedia remove images of the Islamic prophet Muhammad from Wikipedia articles about him since most followers of Islam believe that such images violate the precepts of the religion.[94] Protesters also organized an email campaign to pressure the English Wikipedia into removing the offending images.[95] By February 7, approximately 100,000 people had signed the petition and the article had been protected from editing by non-registered users. Jay Walsh, Wikimedia Foundation spokesman, told Information Week that "Noncensorship is an important tenet of the user community and the editing community" and Mathias Schindler, of Wikimedia Deutschland, said in response to efforts to have the images removed from the German language Wikipedia that "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a venue for an inter-Muslim debate."[96]
- March 2008
- Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales used Wikipedia to end a relationship he was having with conservative political columnist, television commentator and university lecturer Rachel Marsden, by adding a single sentence to his own Wikipedia user page stating "I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden."[97] This was interpreted as a wider Wikipedia controversy because of the suggestion (from released private chat logs purportedly between Marsden and Wales) that Wales had previously edited Marsden's biographical article on Wikipedia, at the request of Marsden (before they were romantically involved).[98]
- Jimmy Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied.[99] Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past".[100]
- It was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense".[101][102]
- May 2008 – A long-running dispute between members of the Church of Scientology and Wikipedia editors reached Wikipedia's arbitration committee. The church members were accused of attempting to sway articles in the church's interests, while other editors were accused of the opposite. The arbitration committee unanimously voted to block all edits from the IP addresses associated with the church; several Scientology critics were banned too.[103]
- June 2008
- In 2007, Jim Prentice, then member of the Parliament of Canada for Calgary Centre-North and Minister of Industry, introduced copyright protection legislation, which was compared by many to the DMCA.[104] The legislation was controversial and Prentice withdrew it in December 2007.[105] By June 2008 there was a great deal of speculation in the Canadian press that Prentice would eventually succeed Stephen Harper as Prime Minister of Canada.[106] Michael Geist, professor of internet law at the University of Ottawa, discovered that a series of anonymous edits to Prentice's Wikipedia article had been made in late May and early June from an IP address owned by Industry Canada, Prentice's ministry. The modifications removed critical mentions of Prentice's involvement with the copyright legislation and added generic positive claims about the minister.[107] Geist announced on his blog his findings about the modifications, which one Canadian commentator called "hagiographic palaver extolling Prentice".[104][106]
- Australian press stated that American law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft had threatened the Wikimedia Foundation on behalf of then-Telstra-CEO Solomon Trujillo.[108] The letter allegedly contained: "If Wikipedia and Wikimedia do not remove the improper language by that time (7pm on March 7), and take the steps necessary to block its being reinserted, Mr (Trujillo) intends to commence litigation ..."[109] and reportedly demanded that the editor responsible for the defamatory material be blocked.[108] Jimmy Wales denied that any such threat had been received, stating that "It is sad to see a media so irresponsible as to make it seem that Wikipedia would cave to a few lawyers letters objecting to legitimate criticism. It is even sadder to see Mr Trujillo attacked by that same irresponsible media for something he did not do."[110]
- August 2008 – Republican senator and then presidential candidate John McCain was accused of plagiarizing from Wikipedia some elements of a speech he gave about the Republic of Georgia. The Congressional Quarterly found that McCain's speech contained two passages which were substantially identical to passages in the Wikipedia article on the country and that a third passage "bore striking resemblances."[111] McCain's speech was written by speechwriters rather than by the candidate himself. After the Congressional Quarterly's report was released, McCain's aides released a statement that contained: "there are only so many ways to state basic historical facts and dates and that any similarities to Wikipedia were only coincidental".[112]
- November 2008 – New York Times reporter David Rohde was kidnapped by the Taliban while reporting in Afghanistan. The Times feared that reporting of the matter would endanger Rohde's life, so they did not mention it in their pages.[2] Statements about Rohde's kidnapping were edited into Wikipedia during the voluntary news blackout, however. Representatives of the Times called Jimmy Wales and asked him to suppress the information. He agreed to take care of it, but in order to avoid the scrutiny which attends his edits to Wikipedia, Wales asked an unnamed administrator on the site to delete the information instead.[113] Wales told Times media reporter Richard Pérez-Peña, "We were really helped by the fact that it hadn't appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source. I would have had a really hard time with it if it had."[114] The Christian Science Monitor reported that Wales's actions were the subject of much criticism from bloggers and journalists, who argued that information suppression undermined the credibility of Wikipedia.[114]
- December 2008
- In early December, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) added the Wikipedia page about the album Virgin Killer to its blacklist of online material potentially illegal in the United Kingdom because it contains an image of a naked prepubescent girl.[115] The IWF's blacklist is voluntarily enforced by 95% of British internet service providers. The issue eventually left most British residents unable to edit any page on Wikipedia.[116] The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) protested the blacklisting of the page even though, as the IWF stated at the time, "the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978", and, in an "unprecedented" move, the IWF agreed to remove the page from its blacklist.[117]Further information: Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia
- Professor T. Mills Kelly conducted a class project on "Lying About the Past", which resulted in the Edward Owens hoax. A biography was created about "Edward Owens" who was claimed to be an oyster fisherman that became a pirate during the period of the Long Depression, targeting ships in the Chesapeake Bay. It was revealed when media outlets began reporting the story as fact.[118][119]
- In early December, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) added the Wikipedia page about the album Virgin Killer to its blacklist of online material potentially illegal in the United Kingdom because it contains an image of a naked prepubescent girl.[115] The IWF's blacklist is voluntarily enforced by 95% of British internet service providers. The issue eventually left most British residents unable to edit any page on Wikipedia.[116] The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) protested the blacklisting of the page even though, as the IWF stated at the time, "the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978", and, in an "unprecedented" move, the IWF agreed to remove the page from its blacklist.[117]
2009
- January 2009 – The Wikipedia articles for United States senators Robert Byrd and Edward Kennedy were briefly changed to state, incorrectly, that they had died.[120][121]
- February 2009 – Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern created Wikipedia Art,[122] a performance art piece as a live article on Wikipedia. It was deleted 15 hours later as a violation of Wikipedia rules. The Wikimedia Foundation subsequently claimed that the domain name wikipediaart.org infringed on its trademark.[123] The ensuing controversy was reported in the national press.[124] Wikipedia Art has since been included in the Internet Pavilion of the Venice Biennale for 2009.[125] It also appeared in a revised form at the Transmediale festival in Berlin in 2011.[126]
- March 2009 – Hours after the death of French composer Maurice Jarre, someone added a phony quote to Jarre's Wikipedia article: "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear."[127] The quote then appeared in obituaries of Jarre published in newspapers around the world.[128][2]
- May 2009 – Wikipedian David Boothroyd, a UK Labour Party member, created controversy in 2009, when Wikipedia Review contributor "Tarantino" discovered that he committed sockpuppeting, editing under the accounts "Dbiv", "Fys" and "Sam Blacketer", none of which acknowledged his real identity. After earning Administrator status with one account, then losing it for inappropriate use of the administrative tools,[citation needed] Boothroyd regained Administrator status with the "Sam Blacketer" sockpuppet account in April 2007.[129] Later in 2007, Boothroyd's Sam Blacketer account became part of the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee.[130] Under the Sam Blacketer account, Boothroyd edited many articles related to United Kingdom politics, including that of rival Conservative Party leader David Cameron.[131] Boothroyd then resigned as an administrator[132] and as an arbitrator.[133]
- June 2009
- Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, was accused by the Virginia Quarterly Review of plagiarizing material for his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price from Wikipedia.[134] Anderson claimed that he had originally attributed the material properly but that due to disagreements with his publisher over formatting it had ended up in the published work without quotation marks. He took responsibility for the error, saying "That's my screw-up."[135] Anderson announced that the attribution errors would be corrected in the online version of the book and in future publications.[136] Anderson's book is not a defense of the notion of free information as exemplified by Wikipedia, but of the notion of zero-price digital works.[137] However, due to confusion over the concept of free as in freedom versus free as in zero monetary cost (although both concepts apply to Wikipedia), the fact that he plagiarized material for it was seen by at least one commentator as "riddled with savage irony."[135]
- James Heilman, a Canadian doctor, uploaded to Wikipedia copies of all 10 inkblot images used in the Rorschach test, on the grounds that copyright to the images had expired.[138] Heilman was widely criticized by psychologists who used the test as a diagnostic tool, because they were worried that patients with prior knowledge of the inkblots would be able to influence their diagnoses. In response to Heilman's posting of the images, a number of psychologists registered Wikipedia accounts to argue against their retention.[139] Later that year two psychologists filed a complaint against Heilman with the Saskatchewan medical licensing board, arguing that his uploading of the images constituted unprofessional behavior.[140]
- July 2009 – The National Portrait Gallery in London issued a cease and desist letter for alleged breach of copyright against a Wikipedia editor who downloaded more than 3,000 high-resolution images from the gallery's website to upload them to Wikimedia Commons.[141][142][143][144]
- November 2009 – Convicted German murderers Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber sued the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) in German courts, demanding that their names be removed from the English Wikipedia's article on their victim, Walter Sedlmayr.[145] German laws force compliance with such requests for suppression.[146] Alexander H. Stopp, the two men's lawyer, succeeded in forcing the German Wikipedia to remove their names. Mike Godwin responded on behalf of the WMF, stating that the organization "doesn't edit content at all, unless we get a court order from a court of competent jurisdiction. [I]f our German editors have chosen to remove the names of the murderers from their article on Walter Sedlmayr, we support them in that choice. The English-language editors have chosen to include the names of the killers, and we support them in that choice."[147]
- December 2009 – Actor Ron Livingston, star of the 1999 film Office Space, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court against a John Doe who had repeatedly edited Livingston's Wikipedia article to include statements that Livingston was gay and in a relationship with a (possibly notional) man named Lee Dennison.[148] The lawsuit also claimed that the John Doe defendant had set up phony Facebook profiles for Livingston and his putative partner.[149] The suit named neither Wikipedia nor Facebook, but was evidently intended to give Livingston the power to subpoena identifying information from the two organizations about the anonymous defendant.[150] The lawsuit was followed by a manifestation of the Streisand effect as Livingston was targeted with accusations of homophobia. Jay Walsh, then head of communication for the Wikimedia Foundation, said that "This is a serious issue. We take it quite seriously. We understand real people are reflected in these articles. ... Articles about living people are tough articles to manage. Someone who is a fan or an enemy might try to attack or vandalize those articles. This isn't a new scenario for us to witness."[151]