Will Unethical Editing Destroy Wikipedia's Credibility?

By Eric Haas, AlterNet. Posted October 26, 2007.

Wikipedia is making a tremendous contribution to the democratization of information. But the release of WikiScanner has pointed out some flies in its operational ointment. It also reminded me of a joke about a man wanting to know what 2 + 2 equaled. Everyone told him four until he came upon an accountant who whispered, "What would you like it to be?" Nothing personal against accountants, it just seems that we have become so jaded by spin that we believe nothing is absolute. How then do we separate information that is truth from lies, damned lies, and statistics? Wikipedia has an opportunity to play an important role in answering this question in a way that reaches millions of people worldwide.

Wikipedia has been attempting to get to the truth by requiring the use of facts, not opinions, in its entries and relying on the integrity of open-source editors to adhere to its rules. As WikiScanner is demonstrating, this is not enough. More transparency safeguards should be put in place. But more importantly for the long run, Wikipedia will need to resolve some kinks in its understanding of the links between facts, neutrality, and truth.

Wikipedia seeks entries that are written from a "neutral point of view" (NPOV). Every editor has a point of view, so Wikipedia has some basic guidelines for editing that include a prohibition on creating or editing an entry about one's self or organization and a requirement that editors present "facts" -- which Wikipedia defines as "piece[s] of information about which there is no serious dispute." WikiScanner is documenting that some editors have been blatantly violating these rules.

The predominant violation is that people and institutions from politicians to the CIA to Diebold to ExxonMobil to the Democratic Headquarters have been anonymously changing their own entries or the entries of their opponents, to make them more positive or negative, respectively. These acts are clearly inappropriate, but, as a problem, they appear to have some ready solutions. Adding additional levels of editor identification will make Wikipedia more transparent and will likely make these rule violations more obvious and less likely. WikiScanner works well for this, and Wikipedia should encourage its use. More aggressive administrator oversight will help, too. It appears that Wikipedia administrators have been stepping it up, actively investigating suspicious edits and locking downs some entries with severe problems. Additional steps, like coloring young passages, might also become necessary as the extent of the violations emerges.

But another editing practice, what WikiScanner creator, Virgil Griffith, called "white washing" is more problematic, because it violates the logic, but likely not the letter, of Wikipedia's guidelines. In this way, it challenges Wikipedia's reliance on factual accuracy both as neutrality and as a means to truth.

White washing is where someone replaces negative or neutral adjectives -- words or phrases -- with more positive synonyms. Here's an example of the conundrum that white washing creates for the idea that one can achieve truth through neutrality derived from facts. In May 2005, someone at a Wal-Mart IP address changed a sentence in the Wal-Mart entry about employee wages. The original paragraph, with the key sentence in bold, read:

As with many US retailers, Wal-Mart experiences a high rate of employee turnover (approximately 50% of employees leave every year, according to the company). Wages at Wal-Mart are about 20% less than at other retail stores. Founder [Sam Walton] once argued that his company should be exempt from the [minimum wage]. (Palast, 121).

The new entry edited by Wal-Mart became this:

As with many US retailers, Wal-Mart experiences a high rate of employee turnover (approximately 50% of employees leave every year, according to the company). The average wage at Wal-Mart is almost double the federal minimum wage (Wal-Mart). However, founder [Sam Walton] once argued that his company should be exempt from the [minimum wage]. (Palast, 121).

There are two problems with these changes, and neither of them has to do with the facts. The facts are accurate, and that's actually part of the problem.

According to Wal-Mart documents, Wal-Mart paid its employees an average of $9.68 per hour in 2005. According to a well-documented report by Arindrajit Dube and Steven Wertheim of the University of California, Berkeley, Wal-Mart's average wage of $9.68 per hour was between 17% and 25% less than comparable general merchandise and large merchandise stores. So, the first statement is basically true. In 2005, the federal minimum wage was $5.15 per hour. So, the second statement is also basically true.

Leaving aside Wal-Mart's violation of the self-editing guideline, both sentences pass the undisputed fact test. But they also violate the logic of Wikipedia's rule: undisputed facts equal neutrality which leads to truth. Both statements made $9.68 per hour mean something different. The first made it a criticism of Wal-Mart as an exploitive corporation, while the second made it a positive attribute, portraying Wal-Mart as going way beyond its duties as an employer.

See more stories tagged with: wikiscanner, neutrality, wal-mart, facts, truth, wikipedia

Eric Haas is a senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute.

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