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===Scots Wikipedia scandal===
===Scots Wikipedia scandal===
In August 2020, a [[Reddit]] user publicized that a prolific Scots Wikipedia administrator did not speak the Scots language; tens of thousands of articles were in fact English with eye dialect spellings to suggest a Scottish accent, or word-by-word machine translations of articles from the English Wikipedia. Wikimedia users debated recruiting fluent speakers of Scots to repair the articles, reverting all edits from the administrator in question, or — as the latter would entail removing nearly half the articles in the encyclopedia — even deleting and restarting Scots Wikipedia afresh. ''The Guardian'' attributed the problem to systemic issues in Wikipedia culture, suggesting that some administrators are afforded effectively unchecked power based on sheer volume of edits (rather than the quality of their work). Robyn Speer, chief scientist at Luminoso, expressed concern that artificial intelligence corpora which used Wikipedia for language-training data had been corrupted by the pseudo-Scots.<ref name="inews">{{Cite web |last=McDonald |first=Karl |title=Scots Wikipedia taken over by American teenager who wrote thousands of 'very odd' articles without learning language |url=https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scots-wikipedia-language-articles-native-speaker-mistakes-610689 |website=The i Paper |date=26 Aug 2020 |access-date=15 Feb 2026 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200826132225/https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scots-wikipedia-language-articles-native-speaker-mistakes-610689 |archive-date=26 Aug 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last1=Brooks |first1=Libby |last2=Hern |first2=Alex |title=Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia <!-- sic. --> |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia |website=The Guardian |date=26 Aug 2020 |access-date=15 Feb 2026 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.ph/usWnt |archive-date=26 Aug 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=McCarthy |first=Kieren |title=Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles |url=https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/26/scots_wikipedia_fake/ |website=The Register |date=26 Aug 2020 |access-date=15 Feb 2026 |url-status=live |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20260211102214/https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/26/scots_wikipedia_fake/ |archive-date=11 Feb 2026}}</ref>
In August 2020, a [[Reddit]] user publicized that a prolific Scots Wikipedia administrator did not speak the Scots language; tens of thousands of articles were in fact English with eye dialect spellings to suggest a Scottish accent, or word-by-word machine translations of articles from the English Wikipedia. Wikimedia users debated recruiting fluent speakers of Scots to repair the articles, reverting all edits from the administrator in question, or — as the latter would entail removing nearly half the articles in the encyclopedia — even deleting and restarting Scots Wikipedia afresh. ''The Guardian'' attributed the problem to systemic issues in Wikipedia culture, suggesting that some administrators are afforded effectively unchecked power based on sheer volume of edits (rather than the quality of their work). Robyn Speer, chief scientist at Luminoso, expressed concern that artificial intelligence corpora which used Wikipedia for language-training data had been corrupted by the pseudo-Scots.<ref name="inews">{{Cite web |last=McDonald |first=Karl |title=Scots Wikipedia taken over by American teenager who wrote thousands of 'very odd' articles without learning language |url=https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scots-wikipedia-language-articles-native-speaker-mistakes-610689 |website=The i Paper |date=26 Aug 2020 |access-date=15 Feb 2026 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200826132225/https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scots-wikipedia-language-articles-native-speaker-mistakes-610689 |archive-date=26 Aug 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last1=Brooks |first1=Libby |last2=Hern |first2=Alex |date=26 Aug 2020 |title=Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia <!-- sic. --> |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200826163024/https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia |archive-date=26 Aug 2020 |access-date=15 Feb 2026 |website=The Guardian}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=McCarthy |first=Kieren |title=Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles |url=https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/26/scots_wikipedia_fake/ |website=The Register |date=26 Aug 2020 |access-date=15 Feb 2026 |url-status=live |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20260211102214/https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/26/scots_wikipedia_fake/ |archive-date=11 Feb 2026}}</ref>


==References==
==References==

Latest revision as of 16:34, 18 March 2026

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Wikipedia
Basic Information
Release Year 2001
Product Type Education
In Production Yes
Official Website https://wikipedia.org/

Wikipedia is a digital encyclopedic platform which was founded in 2001 and is currently operated by American non-profit organization Wikimedia Foundation.

Consumer impact summary

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The encyclopedia is a major destination for readers to access information about any given topics, ranging from natural sciences to political fields. Theoretically, the encyclopedia is open for editing by anyone, meaning that readers can become producers and editors at any time.[1]

Monopoly

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Although Wikipedia formally enshrines the right to fork contents from them in order to start a new encyclopedia, it has been reported that Wikipedia effectively operated as a de facto monopoly among online encyclopedias for a long time, and Wikipedia had received privileged positions by various search engines such as Google on their search results. Social media service TikTok included similar information from Wikipedia in their search results. Besides that, Wikipedia is one of the top sources for AI chatbots.[2][3][4][5]

Consequently, Wikipedia's monopoly had generated significant downstream effects where Wikipedia had played crucial roles in shaping medical decisions, economic outcomes, scientific publications, and perhaps judicial rulings.[6][7][8][9] Wikipedia is even included among long-termist knowledge preservation initiatives such as the Arch Mission's The LEO (Low Earth Orbit) library, The Lunar Library I on the failed Beresheet lunar lander, The Lunar Library II on the failed Astrobotic Peregrine lander, The Galactic Legacy Archive on a successful Intuitive Machines moon lander mission, and The Pyramid Library on the successful Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander mission.[10][11][12][13][14]

Incidents

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This is a list of all incidents, especially those related to consumer protection, that this platform is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Wikipedia category.

Orangemoody scandal

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In September 2015, Wikipedia was hit by the Orangemoody blackmail scandal, as it came to light that hundreds of businesses and minor celebrities had faced demands for payment from rogue editors to publish, protect or update Wikipedia articles on them.[15]

Scots Wikipedia scandal

[edit | edit source]

In August 2020, a Reddit user publicized that a prolific Scots Wikipedia administrator did not speak the Scots language; tens of thousands of articles were in fact English with eye dialect spellings to suggest a Scottish accent, or word-by-word machine translations of articles from the English Wikipedia. Wikimedia users debated recruiting fluent speakers of Scots to repair the articles, reverting all edits from the administrator in question, or — as the latter would entail removing nearly half the articles in the encyclopedia — even deleting and restarting Scots Wikipedia afresh. The Guardian attributed the problem to systemic issues in Wikipedia culture, suggesting that some administrators are afforded effectively unchecked power based on sheer volume of edits (rather than the quality of their work). Robyn Speer, chief scientist at Luminoso, expressed concern that artificial intelligence corpora which used Wikipedia for language-training data had been corrupted by the pseudo-Scots.[16][17][18]

References

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  1. ↑ McGrady, Ryan (14 May 2025). "What Attacks on Wikipedia Reveal about Free Expression". Tech Policy Press. Archived from the original on 14 May 2025. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
  2. ↑ "Wikipedia:Content forks". Wikipedia. 16 October 2025. Archived from the original on 19 Oct 2025. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
  3. ↑ Tezuka, Shuichi (11 December 2023). "Introducing Justapedia". Quillette. Archived from the original on 14 Jan 2026. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
  4. ↑ Sato, Mia (13 Sep 2023). "TikTok has quietly been inserting Wikipedia snippets into search results". The Verge. Archived from the original on 1 Jan 2026. Retrieved 21 Nov 2025.
  5. ↑ Schaul, Kevin; Chen, Szu Yu; Tiku, Nitasha (19 Apr 2023). "Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 19 Apr 2023. Retrieved 15 Feb 2026.
  6. ↑ Beck, Julie (5 Mar 2014). "Doctors' #1 Source for Healthcare Information: Wikipedia". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2 Feb 2026. Retrieved 21 Nov 2025.
  7. ↑ Hinnosaar, Marit; Hinnosaar, Toomas; Kummer, Michael; Slivko, Olga (10 Mar 2021). "Wikipedia matters" (PDF). Journal of Economics & Management Strategy. pp. 657–669. doi:10.1111/jems.12421. Archived from the original on 9 Jul 2024. Retrieved 15 Feb 2026.
  8. ↑ Neil, Thompson; Douglas, Hanley (13 Feb 2018). "Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence From a Randomized Control Trial". Social Science Research Network. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3039505. Archived from the original on 1 Jun 2018. Retrieved 21 Nov 2025.
  9. ↑ Thompson, Neil; Flanagan, Brian; et al. (1 Aug 2022). "Trial by Internet: A Randomized Field Experiment on Wikipedia's Influence on Judges' Legal Reasoning". Social Science Research Network. Archived from the original on 20 Nov 2025. Retrieved 21 Nov 2025.
  10. ↑ "The LEO Library: Constellation 1". Arch Mission Foundation. Archived from the original on 30 Sep 2025. Retrieved 15 Feb 2026.
  11. ↑ "The Lunar Library: Genesis". Arch Mission Foundation. Archived from the original on 15 Feb 2026. Retrieved 15 Feb 2026.
  12. ↑ "Lunar Library II". Arch Mission Foundation. Archived from the original on 24 Dec 2024. Retrieved 15 Feb 2026.
  13. ↑ "Galactic Legacy Archive". Arch Mission Foundation. Archived from the original on 17 Feb 2026. Retrieved 15 Feb 2026.
  14. ↑ "Galactic Legacy Archive". Arch Mission Foundation. Archived from the original on 13 Jan 2024. Retrieved 21 Nov 2025.
  15. ↑ Merrill, Jamie; Owen, Jonathan (2 Sep 2015). "Wikipedia rocked by 'rogue editors' blackmail scam targeting small businesses and celebrities". The Independent. Archived from the original on 13 Sep 2015. Retrieved 15 Feb 2026.
  16. ↑ McDonald, Karl (26 Aug 2020). "Scots Wikipedia taken over by American teenager who wrote thousands of 'very odd' articles without learning language". The i Paper. Archived from the original on 26 Aug 2020. Retrieved 15 Feb 2026.
  17. ↑ Brooks, Libby; Hern, Alex (26 Aug 2020). "Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 26 Aug 2020. Retrieved 15 Feb 2026.
  18. ↑ McCarthy, Kieren (26 Aug 2020). "Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles". The Register. Archived from the original on 11 Feb 2026. Retrieved 15 Feb 2026.
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