Runaway: Just Another Day on Wikipedia

When anyone can edit Wikipedia and it’s such a powerful site, there are bound to be crazy stories. Such as the American teenager with no understanding of Scots who wrote thousands of articles in a language he couldn’t speak or the college student who pretended to be a college professor.?

How about Sarah Palin taking on Paul Revere and then again, who can forget the fake Indian business school?

Now we can add the story of Camille Herron to the list - the Wikipedia version of I, Tonya.

Herron is an American long distance runner. She holds 12 world records in ultramarathon distances and is currently the only athlete to win all of the IAU Ultra Road World Championships (50 km, 100 km, and 24 hours). She and her husband were caught adding complimentary content to her article while also removing content from the articles of her competitors!

Let’s go back to the start.?

The Camille Herron article was created in January 2015 by an editor called RunCamille. Most of the edits RunCamille made were to the Camille Herron article?

RunCamille last edited the Camille Herron article on August 2016.

September 2016 saw the first edits for Temporun73 and the first article they edited? Camille Herron.

Had they edited within the guidelines, no one would have been any the wiser but Temporun73 pushed their luck in a big way. They insisted on adding content like “She is known for running with her hair down, a big smile, and eating tacos to fuel ultramarathons.”

On top of this, there was a great need from them to add Herron’s sponsors? to the article

In February 2024, Temporun73 was given a 1 week block from editing the article. Instead of regrouping, they immediately created a second account Rundbowie who within 24 hours of being created went to work on the Herron article adding extensive amounts of content, a lot of it marketing fluff.??

If that wasn’t enough they were removing content from the articles of fellow runners Courtney Dauwalter and Kilian Jornet on the grounds of puffery and duplicate information!

Rundbowie even went onto a runner’s article in Danish and edited it!

After leaving such an obvious trail, it wasn’t difficult to connect the dots.?Canadian Running did so and it wasn't a good look for Herron and her husband.

Herron’s husband Conor Holt confessed after he was caught.

"I kept adding back in the details, and then they blocked my account in early February of this year. Nothing was out of line with what other athletes have on their pages. Wikipedia allows the creation of another account, so I created a new account Rundbowie"?

"Camille had nothing to do with this. I am 100% responsible and apologize for any athletes affected by this and the wrong I did."

The fallout has been swift with Herron dropped by her sponsor Lululemon. Most likely, her reputation will never recover from this.

What’s ironic is that this controversy has mostly passed her article by. There is a line in the middle of her career section about it, but given the circumstances, it could be significantly worse.?

In Scooby Doo the villain of the week would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for the meddling kids

And here Team Herron could have gotten away with it if they hadn’t flown to close to the sun. Their editor could have positioned themselves as a ultramarathoning expert which would have given them the license to edit articles in this niche. But when they amped up the marketing content on her article to 11 while removing legitimate content from the other runners’ articles it was just too much. The second editor into the mix acting the same as the blocked editor added insult to injury.

One of the articles about this described this as WikipediaGate. The biggest surprise out of all of this is that WikipediaGate doesn't already exist!

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