Single-handedly undermining Wikipedia
July 13, 2022 2:00 PM   Subscribe

From Rachel Cheung writing in Vice: Posing as a scholar, a Chinese woman spent years writing alternative accounts of medieval Russian history on Chinese Wikipedia, conjuring imaginary states, battles, and aristocrats in one of the largest hoaxes on the open-source platform. The scam was exposed last month by Chinese novelist Yifan, who was researching for a book when he came upon an article on the Kashin silver mine.

Discovered by Russian peasants in 1344, the Wikipedia entry goes, the mine engaged more than 40,000 slaves and freedmen, providing a remarkable source of wealth for the Russian principality of Tver in the 14th and 15th centuries as well as subsequent regimes. The geological composition of the soil, the structure of the mine, and even the refining process were fleshed out in detail in the entry.

Yifan thought he’d found interesting material for a novel. Little did he know he’d stumbled upon an entire fictitious world constructed by a user known as Zhemao. It was one of 206 articles she has written on Chinese Wikipedia since 2019, weaving facts into fiction in an elaborate scheme that went uncaught for years and tested the limits of crowdsourced platforms’ ability to verify information and fend off bad actors.

...“They were so rich in details they put English and Russian Wikipedia to shame,” Yifan wrote on Zhihu, a Chinese site similar to Quora, where he shared his discovery last month and caused a stir.
posted by Bella Donna (4 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Double. -- travelingthyme



 
Truly remarkable. As someone who occasionally edits Wikipedia, this is not an easy feat. The oversight (in all its faults and biases) can be suffocating there.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 2:19 PM on July 13, 2022 [1 favorite]




Dammit! Thanks for flagging this as a duplicate, escape from the potato planet! I swear I checked if this had been previously posted but clearly I did not check closely enough. I will ask a mod to delete this.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:49 PM on July 13, 2022


the first double of something of mine! great minds and all, Bella Donna... you obviously have excellent taste
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 2:56 PM on July 13, 2022 [1 favorite]


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