I have been permanently blocked from editing Wikipedia, the website I named and led in 2001. Yes, really. I can hear you asking, “How? What’s going on over there?” The incident reveals something truly damning about “the encyclopedia that anybody can edit.” The irony is that not even a co-founder can edit it if he is attempting to implement his program of reform.
The bizarre event has captured the attention of the global internet, which has been surprised to learn that a relatively small clique of anonymous “administrators” apparently wields such irresistible authority that a founder of the site could be abused for three days and then banned as so many thousands had been before.
It’s true that there is an anonymous mob with practically unlimited power on the platform. But this is only one dimension of Wikipedia’s problems. Let me explain.
Ask the true believers, and they’ll share the site’s institutional fictions: It’s neutral. It’s written by well-meaning volunteers. It’s still the encyclopedia anybody can edit. Blocking accounts is done by a rational process, usually by the book. And no admin would ever stoop to accepting money for wielding their institutional clout.
It’s true that Wikipedia is written by volunteers, but what sort of volunteers? Even the vast majority of the site’s most influential players are entirely anonymous. As a result, our insight into Wikipedia’s power dynamics is limited.
It is not the case, as it turns out, that just anybody can edit it. Anybody can try. But as in my case, powerful admins routinely gang up on people who don’t fall in line, making and approving blocks that have no substantive justification.
Often, the blocked accounts receive the same vague, unprovable accusation I did: “Not here to build the encyclopedia.” What does this mean? In my case, admins said it was my failure to edit quite enough articles, but that of course is hardly a bannable offense. Rather, it is all about whether I am “on board” with the spirit — the propagandist bent — of the encyclopedia.
If it’s not just a peaceful collaboration among equals, how is power really exercised on Wikipedia? In place of a strict constitution, there are “five pillars,” “policies,” “guidelines,” and commentary “essays”; but no one is held rigorously to a community charter. Rather, editors and admins are strictly responsible only to each other, and above all to a small group of intimidating leaders, usually admins, who declare with stern confidence how the vague rules are to be interpreted. They get their authority from the “community,” but the “community” is in fact an anarchical mob.
By calling it a mob, or a blob, I do not mean to suggest that there is no center of power. In fact, Wikipedia is ruled by a few hundred anonymous demagogues who dominate the rest. They go by twee handles. It’s a dictatorship of the twee. But they wield their power through the je ne sais quoi of vague rules, vague threats, and vague alliances.
Maybe the alliances are clear to insiders. The leaders of the mob work a lot; some of them, probably, are paid by someone. Who? Who knows? Maybe different groups are working for different paymasters.
We do know that special-interest Wikipedia editorial groups exist offline, such as the so-called “Guerrilla Skeptics”; it is an open secret that they operate a back-channel discussion group. Similarly, as journalist Ashley Rindsberg has shown, editing patterns reveal a “Gang of 40”—accounts that together dominated articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with definite signs of off-wiki coordination. There sure are a lot of people who call themselves “anti-fascists” on Wikipedia. Probably, activist funding pays some of them to edit. But since they’re anonymous, how could we tell?
In any event, we do know that the Wikimedia Foundation directly funds a number of nonprofits that edit articles of keen interest to progressives. Just for example, one group is called “Whose Knowledge,” which runs edit-a-thons engaged in “centering the plurality of decolonial feminist practices.”
Indeed, it is uncontroversial that some money pays for wiki work; Wikipedians admit it and wring their hands over “paid editing,” wagging their fingers at PR firms like “Wiki-PR.” But how many powerful editors and admins are paid for their work? I wonder. Individual admins deny that paid editing is a serious problem in their ranks — but how could we know? Quis custodiet custodes?
The powerful take an interest in Wikipedia. Almost 20 years ago, Virgil Griffith’s WikiScanner showed that Langley, Virginia computers (CIA IP addresses) had edited the encyclopedia. Former Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher boasted at a 2021 Atlantic Council panel that Wikipedia had “taken a very active approach to disinformation” on Wikipedia “through conversations with government, of course, as well as other platform operators” during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election. This January, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that London PR firm Portland Communications had been rewriting Wikipedia for governments and billionaires. The firm’s clients included the state of Qatar, the Gates Foundation, and Libya’s sovereign wealth fund. Separately, TBIJ found that an anonymous editor was paid to downplay British cabinet minister Peter Mandelson’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
WHAT HAPPENED TO WIKIPEDIA’S NEUTRALITY?
Here, then, is the ugly picture that emerges. Wikipedia is decidedly not a lovely idealistic project staffed by students, scholars, and retirees who just want to share their knowledge to benefit the world. To be sure, there are people involved of whom this is true. But the site has manifestly been captured by a small clique of ideologically motivated bullies. They manipulate and intimidate the other participants, and anyone who does not fall in line — like me — is banned. They wield a lot of power in a petty and vicious way. Money clearly does change hands; in some cases, it resembles a shakedown. Considering the size of Wiki-PR and the like, it may be millions of dollars per year.
Wikipedia is one of the most powerful media platforms in history. It is past time we learned who really controls it.
Larry Sanger is the co-founder of Wikipedia. His “Nine Theses About Wikipedia” can be found at LarrySanger.org.