Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-09-09/In the media
US Congress probes, mayor whitewashed, AI stinks
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US Congress probes Wikipedia
The Hill reports in Republicans investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias that the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating Wikipedia, looking at "alleged organized efforts to inject bias into Wikipedia entries." Quoting the committee's letter to WMF CEO Maryana Iskander, they added that the effort is part of an investigation into "foreign operations and individuals at academic institutions subsidized by U.S. taxpayer dollars to influence U.S. public opinion."
The committee wants documentation about Wikipedians who have violated Wikipedia policy, and how Wikipedia enforces the policies, citing a report from the Anti-Defamation League alleging anti-Israel bias and another report from the Atlantic Council alleging pro-Russian editing by what they call the Pravda network (see previous Signpost coverage of the pro-Russian editing network).
Specifically, the committee asked for the following information in its letter dated August 27, 2025:
To assist the Committee’s oversight of this matter, we request the following information, covering the period January 1, 2023 to present, as soon as possible but no later than September 10, 2025:
- Records, communications, or analysis pertaining to possible coordination by nation state actors in editing activities on Wikipedia.
- Records, communications, or analysis pertaining to possible coordination within academic institutions or other organized efforts to edit or influence content identified as possibly violating Wikipedia policies.
- Records of Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) including but not limited to all editor conduct disputes and actions taken against them.
- Records showing identifying and unique characteristics of accounts (such as names, IP addresses, registration dates, user activity logs) for editors subject to actions by ArbCom.
- Documentation of Wikipedia’s editorial policies and protocols including those aimed at ensuring neutrality and addressing bias as well as policies regarding discipline for violations.
- Any analysis conducted or reviewed by the Wikimedia Foundation (or by a third-party acting on its behalf) of patterns of manipulation or bias related to antisemitism and conflicts with the State of Israel.
In a statement quoted by The Hill, a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson said the Foundation had received the request and were reviewing it:
"We welcome the opportunity to respond to the committee's questions and to discuss the importance of safeguarding the integrity of information on our platform"
Common Dreams, a very liberal source, emphasizes that the committee could dox Wikipedia editors in their GOP Investigation Pressures Wikipedia to Reveal Identities of Editors Accused of 'Bias' Against Israel. They highlight a previous attempt to dox Wikipedians by the Heritage Foundation. (See previous Signpost coverage here.)
The conservative New York Post makes a telling mistake in its headline Trump admin launches probe into Wikipedia over alleged ‘bad actors’ manipulating opinions about the US. The Trump administration is currently the executive branch of the federal government, but the committee is part of Congress, the legislative branch. The Post does not mention the efforts of the former acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, who had sent a similar letter to the WMF in May. The controversial and inexperienced Martin could not be confirmed by the Senate for the post. Despite the rules and traditions of the Department of Justice he only embarrassed himself by later asserting that, if he couldn't find that the WMF had broken any laws then he would use his position to embarrass the WMF (see previous coverage).
JNS interviewed Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, who said, "I am glad that Congress is investigating the use of foreign and U.S. government funds to pay for biased editing on Wikipedia." In March Sanger tweeted Elon Musk the accusation that Federal employees were being paid to edit Wikipedia, and later sent the same message directly to President Trump. The Signpost examined this accusation and asked Sanger to provide some evidence. But without input from Sanger, we were able to find only minor cases of Federal employees making edits on Wikipedia. Sanger provides his statement to JNS on his blog "for the use of Congress and the public."
Other media reports include:
- Gizmodo: MAGA Puts Wikipedia in Its Crosshairs, 28 August 2025
- USA Today: Republicans in Congress open probe into Wikipedia for alleged bias, 27 August 2025
SF mayoral wiki-washing?
The San Francisco Standard reports A mysterious Wikipedia editor is scrubbing Daniel Lurie’s page of controversy in a very good analysis of possible paid editing. Mayor Lurie, an heir through his step-father to part of the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune, is suspected of using his personal PR consultants to eliminate coverage of his mother's $1 million donation to his mayoral campaign, his Jewish religion, his Republican supporters, and in general "purge Lurie's Wikipedia page of criticism and controversy and highlight his accomplishments as mayor."
Joseph Reagle, an academic who co-edited the book Wikipedia @ 20 was quoted saying "this seems purposeful and intentional" and "probably inappropriate." Former WMF board of trustee's member Dariusz Jemielniak was quoted saying the edits were "trying to find an angle that is more positive than it originally was". Even a Wikipedia spokesperson chimed in.
Expect to see updates on this story. My brief review of the evidence shows that the editor in question is attributed 54.5% of the article's authorship, but have made only two edits. There are blocked editors and sockpuppets among the article's authors, as should be expected in most political articles, but only a small handful. – S
The antithesis of Jimbo's thesis
404 Media reports on Jimbo's talk page to see how the community viewed Jimbo's AI related idea that Articles for creation could use some AI to better respond to draft articles on borderline notable topics, specifically to a draft of Howard Ellis Cox Jr. Over five years the draft was declined four times using exactly the same words, from the same template. The first reviewer was the late DGG, followed by Sulfurboy, Hatchens, and JesusisGreat7. A KCBS podcast (via Audacy) sums up the arguments in 4 minutes. – S
The Verge verges on a complete history of Wikipedia 2025
The Verge published (archive) a 9,000 word article that covers everything that's happened politically and in the courts to Wikipedia this year.
In an interesting graphic the headline starts as "Wokepedia is resilient because it is biased" then appears to be edited to "Wikipedia is resilient because it is boring".
The author, Josh Dzieza, gives a lively telling of all this material, but appears to favor the edited headline. He starts with Elon Musk's (disputed) Nazi salute and after a short detour to the Erfurt latrine disaster runs through a February meeting in San Francisco where Wikipedians calmly discussed attacks on Wikipedia in the media. After another detour to a 1967 New Yorker article by Hannah Arendt about "an inherent conflict between politics and facts".
Followed by a February report by Media Research Center "claiming that 'Wikipedia Effectively Blacklists ALL Right-Leaning Media.'" Followed by controversy over the Reliable sources/Perennial sources page. And then Larry Sanger, Asian News International, A.I. and so on.
The best part is the end where Jimmy Wales appears in unusual attire, talks about a working group to strengthen the rule on neutral point of view, and how we now have an opportunity to improve Wikipedia. Like the last eight months, the article is very interesting but exhausting. – S
All hail Grnrchst!
Ars Technica reviews User:Grnrchst's article, "The article in the most languages", from the last issue of The Signpost. Ars Technica deputy editor Nate Anderson wrote the approximately 1200-word story that highlighted both Grnrchst's investigation, and the ideological leanings of the subject of the apparent self-promotion, which included comparing Timothy McVeigh to Jesus Christ, and a deep interest in a South American colony that "was designed to let German culture flourish away from the influence of European Jews". The Ars piece concludes with a bit of op-ed concerning those who engage in "polluting open or public-facing projects for their own ends". Kudos to Grnrchst! – B
Two different takes on an essay; or, AI: the good, the bad, and the ugly
Two websites offer different takes on the advice page Wikipedia:Signs of AI writing.
TechSpot leaves out AI's good and summarizes some of the advice page's points in its short review of the very long page. It doesn't really say much else, so why not skip directly to reading the advice page? It's neither bad nor ugly, unlike AI writing.
Meanwhile, Fast Company's take asks us "Want to disguise your AI writing? Start with Wikipedia’s new list." Perhaps not what the advice page was written to advise about, but hey, death of the author and all that; you're welcome to use it however you want. Just not on-wiki, please.
In brief
- Which would be worse, AI writing articles or a paid editor who won't stop creating adverts?: Answer: a paid editor who uses AI to write on-Wiki adverts, and who also uses AI to write advertising for his own services (including SEO and reputation management). Otherwise he uses Upwork (only $10 per hour, 67% of 7 projects completed successfully (sic)), Kwork, and Legiit to attract clients. He doesn't need us to advertise his services, so we won't provide a link (except to a limited number of admins).
- RAGtime blues for some sites, good news for Wikipedia...: Retrieval-augmented generation may be directing AI search (i.e. ChatGPT) traffic to Wikipedia in favor of other online content, due to its higher trustworthiness [1]
- ...or maybe the blues for all websites? Columbia Business School reports "ChatGPT Is Stealing Readers From Wikipedia"; Tom's Guide published an analysis of the Columbia study. (See also our review of this paper in the March 22 Signpost issue: "So again, what has the impact of ChatGPT really been?", and some follow-up discussion on concerns about its statistical methodology.)
- 404 podcast: 404's own podcast about AI slop on wiki.
- Unexpected in Houston: Houstonia discovers that edit-a-thons sponsored by ImagiNoir/BLMHTX, the Menil Collection, and Rice University contribute to Houston's quality of life, in "The Unexpected Ways in Which Houstonians Have Helped Shape Wikipedia."
- Spin spun?: "Wikipedia set to pick Spin as first social media agency" (paywalled) ([2] archive) in Campaign and sister publication Adweek ("Wikipedia Hires Spin for Its Social Marketing Needs") assert that social media agency Spin has been selected to "create social-first video content for the online encyclopedia." Could this be what we need just in time for Wikipedia's 25th anniversary? Nope! Spin seems to have jumped the gun. The Campaign article has been retitled to change "Wikipedia" to "Wikipedia parent", and the Adweek article has apparently been withdrawn.
- "Street cred" for the work of physicists: APS News reports on the American Physical Society program "Wiki Scientist" that encourages professional physicists to become Wikipedians.
- Wikipedia rules (because of AI): HackerNoon published an article titled "Wikipedia Rules Everything Around Me" by Drew Chapin, asserting that because of its prominence in AI training corpuses, "Wikipedia is the only digital strategy [for promoting businesses] that matters in the next few years. Everything else is nice to have or simple noise."
Discuss this story
Hah! I never noticed the changing headline. Banner blindness, possibly. How the heck am I supposed to get that into |title= ? I could just use a / I suppose... Long but interesting, I recommend it. Well, I'm off to Jimmy_Wales#Personal_life to add that according to Wales, he does not normally dress like a leprechaun. Our readers should now this, if they can be arsed to read that far. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:09, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Columbia Study