Wikipedia: Difference between revisions

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===Orangemoody scandal===

On 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/wikipedia-rocked-by-rogue-editors-blackmail-scam-targeting-small-businesses-and-celebrities-10481993.html|title=Wikipedia rocked by 'rogue editors' blackmail scam targeting small businesses and celebrities|last=Merrill|first=Jamie|work=[[The Independent]]|date=September 2, 2015|access-date=September 3, 2017|archive-date=September 13, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150913220528/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/wikipedia-rocked-by-rogue-editors-blackmail-scam-targeting-small-businesses-and-celebrities-10481993.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Scots Wikipedia scandal===

On 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 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 |last1=McDonald |first1=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=inews.co.uk |access-date=August 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200826132225/https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scots-wikipedia-language-articles-native-speaker-mistakes-610689 |archive-date=August 26, 2020 |language=en |date=August 26, 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Brooks |first1=Libby |last2=Hern |first2=Alex |title=Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia |website=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=August 26, 2020 |date=August 26, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=McCarthy |first1=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]] |access-date=August 26, 2020 |language=en |date=August 26, 2020}}</ref>

==References==

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 ===Orangemoody scandal===
 On 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/wikipedia-rocked-by-rogue-editors-blackmail-scam-targeting-small-businesses-and-celebrities-10481993.html|title=Wikipedia rocked by 'rogue editors' blackmail scam targeting small businesses and celebrities|last=Merrill|first=Jamie|work=[[The Independent]]|date=September 2, 2015|access-date=September 3, 2017|archive-date=September 13, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150913220528/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/wikipedia-rocked-by-rogue-editors-blackmail-scam-targeting-small-businesses-and-celebrities-10481993.html|url-status=live}}</ref>
+===Scots Wikipedia scandal===
+On 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 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 |last1=McDonald |first1=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=inews.co.uk |access-date=August 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200826132225/https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scots-wikipedia-language-articles-native-speaker-mistakes-610689 |archive-date=August 26, 2020 |language=en |date=August 26, 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Brooks |first1=Libby |last2=Hern |first2=Alex |title=Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia |website=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=August 26, 2020 |date=August 26, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=McCarthy |first1=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]] |access-date=August 26, 2020 |language=en |date=August 26, 2020}}</ref>
 ==References==