Is Wikipedia Really Free Encyclopedia ?

Read on ????

Years ago, my friend and I collaborated to write an investigative article on Wikipedia.

The plan was to expose the entrenched gang of Wikipedia editors who earn money by creating and editing Wikipedia pages.

A Bollywood producer helped me with the contact of an agency. The plan was to pose as the PR agency of a relatively unknown actress and create a wiki page as per our instructions on email. We will have email instructions predating the edits and then invoices of payments. So we will be able to prove that Wikipedia India is corrupt.

Our plan got changed along the way because we realised that Wikipedia relies heavily on publicly available news links and without them it is impossible to edit a page.So, it was decided to remove unwanted edits from the newly created page and keep only the favourable edits. As decided, we paid 10K to an agency to create a page of a male actor. Both me and my friend shared the amount. The total cost of creating and keeping the page for six months was 50K. The agency demanded an annual contract of 30K for keeping the page up and purge unwanted edits.We learnt that Wikipedia is a deceptive place. Nobody can go and edit a page as they like. You can edit a page but "they" reverse your edits if they don't like them.

A gang of about 50 Indian editors are on top of a chain of editors and they have complete control over Wikipedia.The top 50 editors are mostly from IT companies with much free time on their hands and they are on Wiki the whole day. They are on top of a chain of command. A team consists of about 10 editors. A newbie proposes an edit and a chain of command approves it and further edits it. The top editors are all anonymous and have enormous power because Google algorithm always rewards Wikipedia as the top page on Search. Google changes its algorithm frequently but they used to heavily favour Wiki because it is an open source, publicly edited charity platform. Wikipedia gets its reflected glory from Google which translates into business for these editors.

Here's a payment structure for these Wiki editors in the command chain:

• Top Editor: 30% (one)
• Senior editor: 25%
• Mid editor: 15%
• Young editor: 10%
• Agency: 20%

For 2 months we kept on adding favourable edits to a page based on frivolous press releases.

Anybody working with Bollywood actors know about such PR hangouts which contain favourable but innocuous information, like the news of an unknown award or bring a youth icon etc.

Some flop films were turned into average or semi-hits at the box office. All the information edited were complimentary & showed the page in good light. Every time the top editors approved the edits and they were never reversed. Even if somebody reversed it, they were brought back. We got a lot of info.

• The top editors make about 5 lakhs every month as "consultants".
• The agencies make about 3 lakh per month.
• Students are enrolled as interns and may later on become mid-level editors.

Wikipedia is a big business opportunity, hence tightly controlled

The Wikipedia editors ensure that all money is properly accounted for and it is electronically transferred. Tax is paid on the income as consultants.

But nowhere do they mention Wikipedia anywhere. It's all projected as IT related consultation of an Ad agency or a PR agency.

There is a major difference between media & Wikipedia. Here most editors mask their identity. So, it's difficult to figure who's attacking you. You might be a professor with a PhD on the subject but a first year student will reverse your edits if he's higher in the hierarchy

How does a Wiki editor climb up the ladder?

Ans: It takes years to climb up the hierarchy.

Wikipedia gives you badges, stars etc in recognition of your work. You won't get promotions unless you have the tacit support of the "gang". There is a very well-known process here. To climb up the hierarchy on Wikipedia, your edits needs to "stick". If your edits get reversed or deleted frequently then Wikipedia understands that you are not a talent. This is the game that is played on the platform. If they want you out, they will reverse your edits.

Picture this: You do a lot of research to edit a page on Wikipedia. Backed with data, you edit the article on Wikipedia only to find that it has been reversed the next day.

Imagine this happening to you frequently. Day after day. You get frustrated and angry. Right?

This is the why new editors have left Wikipedia out of frustration. What is the point of research and editing articles if they get deleted? Wikipedia has a system where you can "Talk" to your "seniors" about why your edits have disappeared. This is where the bullying happens. There are these "Talk" pages where you can ask why your edits have been deleted. These pages are public and the language is monitored. It is here that the senior editors will bully you by clever usage of words. They'll tell you that your edits were "pretty pointless" or "vague". You have the liberty of re-editing or seeking help from someone else but the bullies who are trying to block your edits, will patrol your Talk pages to figure out who you are talking to and what are you saying. If they find you intimidating, they will try to block you permanently. As Wikipedia attaches a lot of importance to citations, they attack your citations from publicly available sources. These editors ensure by one method or the other that their narrative on a particular page does not change. This is mainly the case with political pages. It's interesting to note that there are many Bengali and Malayali senior editors on Wikipedia who have been editing Wikipedia pages for years. They're staunch Leftists and their job is ensure that Wikipedia doesn't say nice things about non-left personalities and media. How do they vilify pages? Well that's another interesting thing.

For personalities, they will highlight their flaws. For example, create a separate section for an unverified allegation levelled against him just by citing a newspaper report. But for others, they would ignore it. For people who are known to have anti-left views, the attacks get more vicious.

They scour the internet for publicly available articles that show you in bad light. Once they get such an article, a new editor will edit and the senior editors will ensure that it sticks to the page. It's interesting how they organise the malicious edits. They will form a team. Usually such teams are formed on secret chat rooms outside of Wikipedia. They will ensure that the edits come from different locations. So it's impossible to figure out that it's a coordinated attack.

If seniors from Virginia, Kolkata, Vietnam, Karachi & Mumbai are saying the same thing about an article, then the edit sticks. No matter how much you try, you will not be able to modify it. Everytime new senior editors will come and block you from editing or will reverse the edit

Tired now. Will come back again and update the thread again.

Meanwhile, maybe you would like to check this write up along with its references.

https://winkreport.com/wikipedia-article-on-delhi-riots.../

Now check updated wiki page after people's outrage towards wiki writers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_East_Delhi_riots

but before this, there are 5 snapshots of the same page as well and check the difference in the tone of the first snapshot and current version.

https://web.archive.org/.../wiki/North_East_Delhi_riots

Also, you would like to check the page's talk section as well where how editors taking sides when it comes to mentioning of Tahir and others and different side when it comes to Kapil Mishra's role.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:North_East_Delhi_riots

Disclaimer: This is a compilation of research and opinions found on web and I would like to mention Soumyadipta Banerjee & Hemant Kulkarni alongwith. This report is created in pursuit of imparting information on a specific side of the Information Leader. Without wikipedia, early days of the information age would have meant no sense and I owe that fact to Wikipedia.