Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-12-04/Disinformation report

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Just the idea of running a sock farm seems exhausting. I doubt anyone could do it sustainably without funding and lots of help. Just imagine the page-owners who would flock to check the linkbacks and categories and all the other stuff your pages need to continue to exist. I am sure dedicated disinfo trolls would agree, and they rarely make new pages but just manipulate existing ones. Just pondering the problem makes feel sorry for the paid trolls (of which there are many, I am sure). Jane (talk) 11:11, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I would suggest the real power over notability and noteworthiness has shifted to the boutique public relations firms who offer to compose and submit news articles on potential clients' small businesses to major publications considered reliable at WP:RSP as freelance work. One such firm offered to do that for me about five months ago, for which they would charge $5,000 only if they were able to secure publication. Sadly there was no incentive to secure articles in multiple reliable sources or to secure the publication of certain facts or approximations thereof about which I might be particularly concerned. While the offer obviously intrigued me, I doubted a Wikipedia article would do much for my sole proprietorship consultancy LLC with a very low traffic business card website. I'm willing to share further details with reputable disinformation researchers, Signpost writers, or the like. Sandizer (talk) 11:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Sady that seems to be a common approach (sort of like the common scam phone calls that still exist though fewer people have landlines these days). Wikipedia articles are only really needed for academici whose institutions add that to their list of qualifications. It's ironic, because those are the places that seem to dislike Wikipedia the most (probably because they get a lot of trash articles). I don't think other occupations require it and for small businesses it can be very hard to remove negative content, so it may even be detrimental. Kind of scary even. Jane (talk) 13:55, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@Jane023: I also feel sorry for the low level "newby socks" who wander into that job, probably simply because the need some quick money and "paid sock" seems like a job that any literate person could do. In reality, they're probably less likely to be successful than most "good faith newbys" around here. See the essay in this issue. If they don't have previous experience editing here, they are bound to fail in a few months. Who's to blame if not the paid socks themselves? The people who hire them, both the ultimate client (who might not exactly know they are breaking our rules - but should be able to guess) and the employer, the folks who put the clients and socks together. To a lesser extent, I blame the WMF who don't often spread the word that undeclared paid editing is a real threat to Wikipedia. Other people who could let the world - including the clients and newby socks - know what's going on include some Wikipedians who are able to get the word out, but don't; and some in the mass media who will write about vandals and amateur socks on Wikipedia, but don't take the next step. Sorry, if I'm getting angry about this again. Anybody who has good information on socks should feel free to email me thru the Wikipedia email system (e.g. on my user page) for those who are signed up for the Wikipedia email system. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:23, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Glad you liked the tip that emerged from WikipediaSucks, SB. (Thank globally-banned Strelnikov.) It was the 14-hour days the unreliable narrator put in and the gut reactions his farming fictions were sure to engender which made me think "hysterical memory" a likely resonance... do see the New Yorker (§, §) if only for the lanternflies (another plague of low-costs?) -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 18:05, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@SashiRolls: I hadn't seen the mediocracy website's take on it until I read your note. I can't dispute their conclusions, but will say that I think there would be a lot of false positives doing a complete investigation of this. And a complete investigation might take more effort than the Wiki-PR one did. I found out about the Harper's story on Google News (search for Wikipedia) on the day after our last issue. So I was a bit behind them. For now I'll be happy that this article is done and can be checked by future Wiki historians in our archives. My guess on their reaction when 1st reading it will be like mine was "they confessed to what?!". Of course if anybody has any evidence for a possible followup story, I'd love to see it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:41, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Don't confuse WPO with WS: two totally different sites. You gave me the impression I'd introduced you to the story last month. My mistake. :) -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 19:50, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Well I didn't disabuse you of the notion that you introduced me to it. I'd just read it, so what would have been the point? Quite strangely, while trying to process that huge text I was thinking of Wikipedia as being governed by The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, and when you mentioned the kind doctor I just had to poke a bit and see what you knew.

I hadn't seen WS before - it's too depressing for me in any case - as is WO. Is the idea that people who aren't civil enough to join WO get to move on to WS? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

After reading Lerner's "fiction" I find myself frustrated. This sort of behavior does the project – and the trust within – no good. Even this weasel confession is lacking any awareness of the harm done. Ckoerner (talk) 20:27, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I think It was not about dominating or manipulating, but about empowering and illuminating. pretty much sums up the harm done Aaron Liu (talk) 14:57, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

What is for real, really, and how to make that stick. The short story was a funny reading with layers upon layers of slightly reframed 'facts', crossreferenced whitin the framework of the fiction. Linguistics, post-structuralism, why not a Ontological turn, wikipedia as a "Borgesian" Multiverse?

Why not? me screaming to the universe, is that going against the common misconceptions on what is for real? What do you feel? I am fine thank you. I may have Acquired a taste for ambiguity on the way.--Andrez1 (talk) 15:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Update

On December 18, 2023 [1]WBUR's radio show Here & Now's reporter Scott Tong interviewed Lerner on the same topic as this article. (rebroadcast by NPR and its member radio stations). It's difficult to say how much Lerner confirmed or denied my conclusions, we weren't exactly on the same page, but pretty much on the same chapter. For example, he mentioned how he first learned about Wikipedia, but left out the part about his new girlfriend, the student who abused Wikipedia was in Lerner's class. He talked about methods to manipulate an article, e.g. establishing "primacy" (what is placed at the top of an article) and framing. The interview does suffer from switching back and forth between the reporter's point of view, Lerner's current and former points of view, and the story's narrators's point of view, much like the Harpers story does. By the end of the interiew you might feel that your conclusions about the article are strengthened, or that new questions have been raised. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:06, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Heard. Hindsight is easy, there is little in that interview that legitimizes a reading of the original short story as a confession.

Mistaking fiction for fact and setting off a moral panic in search of culprits; What did this story trigger in some readers?

Underlying premises in the WP universe's view of knowledge, the view of neutrality, how a so-called fact is bound to the person who understands and his framework. And can be reframed. (Given a non-essentialist point of view.) It was not thought along those lines.

Could it be that to the one who has a hammer, everything looks like nails?Andrez1 (talk) 17:27, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

The best evidence of a confession is above, but I'll repeat it:

bl: I've written a short story—or a kind of fictional essay (it's based on a real project of mine but all the facts have been altered)—about a young man's efforts to manipulate Wikipedia for the good (so he thinks) through the construction of multiple online identities.

Could that be any clearer? The interview just adds a few details, plus gives him an opportunity to say something like "sorry, it was just a joke." Which he didn't do. Instead, he says (approx.) the he "was just conducting an experiment."

Adding:I thought I should document that approx. quote. It's really about framing with the interviewer stating (at about 20 seconds) Wikipedia's rules "led one enterprising journalist to test just how much one editor could manipulate entries." Obviously referring to Lerner, never denied by Lerner. That frame carries through the entire interview. version with timer

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bit 'em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.
Thus every poet, in his kind,
Is bit by him that comes behind.
Jonathan Swift, On Poetry: A Rhapsody (1733)

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:53, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

As you have earlier stated: "WBUR's radio show Here & Now's reporter Scott Tong interviewed Lerner on the same topic as this article." The angel given, the framing; was also the same.

Lerner never denied. Why should he? How could he? He have produce a piece of fiction and is helpful in giving clues on how it is written and how it may make sense to a reader.

Have you stopped beating your wife? The two journalists Tong & Smallbones does not take no for an answer.

Lets go for the details, there must be something here(?/!). I have seen that film before! Dejavue, Blowup all over again? Andrez1 (talk) 21:22, 2 January 2024 (UTC)