Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-02/News and notes
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Massive paid editing network unearthed on the English Wikipedia
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The oligarchs' socks
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Speak to any Wikipedian experienced in new-article patrolling, ask them how big the paid-advocacy problem is, and they'll likely all tell you the same thing: it's out of control. The community has just been given a stunning reminder of this, with the release of evidence of an enormous network of 381 undisclosed promotional paid editors in what is being provisionally dubbed the Orangemoody case, after the username chosen by the first sockpuppet identified as a part of this case. The network (visualized above) is so large and so extensive that a dedicated bot, EgressBot, had to be created and activated to handle all of the necessary blocks.
The full list of users blocked as a part of the investigation includes a few gems like Medicalresearchassistant, Myusernameismohan, Wikiconfession, Youinmyeyes and, disturbingly, Wikipediaismadebypeoplelikeus. To "prevent article subjects from continued shakedowns by bad actors who are causing significant harm to the reputation of this project", almost all of the articles created by the accounts have been deleted en masse. In summarizing this position, Risker stated that: Template:Signpost quote
The socks act in two modes: either as "article creation" socks that were creating the articles in the userspace or in the draft space, or as "helper" socks that were completing series of useless edits to acquire autoconfirmation, using that right to rehost the articles to article space. The sophistication of the operation is striking. Orangemoodies would sift through declined articles for creation submissions and pick out those with financial promise—usually where there had been notability concerns or promotional content—and develop them in userspace or draft space. The sockmasters were then contacting the organization responsible for attempting to bring the content onto Wikipedia and, claiming to be experienced Wikipedians, were offering to move the more developed version of the article to the mainspace—for a fee. After payment, the article would be moved into namespace; soon after, another autopatrolled helper sock would mark the page in question "reviewed", to deflect the new pages patrol.
Some time later the paying party was again contacted and "advised" that for a monthly fee the "editor" would continue to protect the article from vandalism and deletion. This link in the chain may well constitute extortion; there are several known cases of deceit in which other socks successfully requested the deletion of networked pages—the articles were neither notable nor sufficiently developed to escape close scrutiny, and the artificially high deletion rates are suspected of serving to motivate others to pay the "service charge" ($30 per month in confirmed examples).
The network was well-organized and well-executed enough to deceive both the community and potential clients, but the Orangemoodies were nevertheless ultimately caught. The investigation that unearthed the network originated in the aggregation of allegations of demands for payment and complaints of article deletion in spite of payment that accumulated across three different channels: in anonymous comments placed on deletion discussions, in emails to the movement's OTRS system, and in complaints directed at individual administrators. Jalexander-WMF and Kalliope of the WMF's Community Advocacy team were directly involved in working with article subjects and complainants. The network was blocked all at once.
What now? There remains work to be done by the members of the community in undoing the mess that's been made of the pages in which the network was involved. The 254 deleted articles have been compiled and an OTRS info queue, info-orangemoody
wikipedia.org, has been set up. But in a manner of speaking the Orangemoody sockmaster was never caught. Accounts and IPs can be blocked from editing but individual users, particularly those who are malevolent and financially motivated, cannot.
Though the recommendations of the investigation page state that users should "Continue to be vigilant for allegations of similar schemes"—and though the corresponding blog post states, in an almost cheery tone, that "with this action, volunteer editors have taken a strong stand against undisclosed paid advocacy"—a concern is whether even cleverer or more robust schemes are as yet undiscovered. It is significant, for instance, that we are not told that any of the paying individual or organizations (billed as "victims in this situation") came forward unilaterally to bring the situation to the Foundation's attention; instead it was complaints of extortion, the third-party element in the sockmaster's plan, that led to its undoing (The Independent, in an excellent analysis of the situation, reached out to and fielded frustrations from several of the "victims"). In a morally ambiguous scenario, it's hard to determine which of the individuals and businesses targeted by the scam had the uncomfortable feeling that not all was right, which of them simply didn't know better, and which of them felt they had no better choice. Had the sockmaster been less greedy, they may still have been active incognito; there's little to stop this individual or group of individuals from regrouping and returning, possibly with a modified strategy.
Further discussion of this case occurred at the administrator's noticeboard, where T5233 and T106930 were mentioned as possible counteractions; new community-elected WMF Board trustee Doc James has started an ideaboard for brainstorming about the case. For more on the significant media coverage of this case, see this week's "In the media". For more on the fraught history of paid editing on Wikipedia, see the sidebar.
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Strategic consultation concludes as community capacity building winds up
In March the WMF kicked off strategic planning consultation with the Wikimedia community. The first strategic plan was the Foundation's Goliath growth projection project, begun in 2009 and published in 2011 (Signpost coverage here, here, and elsewhere), yet it ultimately proved flat-footed at best. The Foundation began this process of self-definition anew this year (as part of a general shift towards an increasing focus on impact and impact metrics), starting with a large-scale community consultation. As we reported at the time, the WMF is trying to make the document into "what will become a discipline of ongoing strategic inquiry, assessment, and alignment. This more agile, adaptable process will directly inform and update our priorities and goals and help us maintain a strategic direction that is consistent with the Wikimedia vision, supports the Wikimedia projects, and is sensitive to the changing global environment."
The Foundation has finished digesting the outcomes of the consultation, and chief operating officer Terence Gibley has published a blog highlighting the findings. Part of this month's metrics meeting was dedicated to these findings, and a full deck of slides—119 pages of them—is is available on Commons.
The consultation was organized around two questions: Template:Signpost quote
Gibley highlights the following findings:
- Mobile and app: Mobile-related comments reveal an opportunity to improve our existing mobile offerings for both editors and readers and raise awareness about our native apps. Participants (mostly anonymous users) urged us to “make an app,” when one is already available for iOS and Android devices. We also saw comments that stressed the importance of mobile editing, formatting for smaller (mobile) screen sizes, article summaries for different usage patterns, and the value of “going mobile.”[3]
- Editing and collaboration: In this category, we find requests to make editing simpler, ideas for enhancing collaboration among editors, suggestions for editing tools, and proposals to build editor rating and qualification programs. This is one of the few categories in which logged-in comments, at 56%, outnumber comments from anonymous and new users. This category provides valuable insight for improvements in editor support including Wikipedia’s visual editor and future projects in the newly created Community tech team, as well as potential new editor support initiatives.
- Rich content: Participants requested more rich content on Wikimedia sites, suggesting more video, audio, video, and images. 80% of these comments were submitted by anonymous and new users. One US-based participant commented: “is there any major website in the world with less video?”
- Volunteer community: We saw a particular interest in improving “community climate” in this category, with a focus on interpersonal dynamics and culture. Participants identified a need to increase diversity (in particular, gender diversity), improve processes and workflows, and address bureaucracy-related challenges. This is another category in which logged-in comments, at 54%, outnumber comments provided by anonymous and new users.
- Wikimedia Foundation feedback: This category focused on the relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and the volunteer community and includes suggestions of how the Foundation might change its practices and priorities to align with the volunteer community. These comments are from mostly logged-in users (88%), most of them highly experienced users with an average edit count of more than 64,000 edits. Suggestions included providing better support to editors in a variety of ways and continuing to ask for feedback from core community members.
- Content quality (accuracy): These comments emphasized the importance of content accuracy, trustworthiness, and reliability. Comments focused on citation quality, the use of expert editors, and even restricting editing (so that “not everyone can edit”). Most (73%) of comments in this category were from anonymous and new users, signaling an opportunity to communicate to readers about the accuracy and trustworthiness of the content within Wikipedia and sister projects.
- Education and universities: These comments reflected both a concern about the perception of Wikipedia as a (non)credible source for academic inquiry, and also recognition of the growing opportunity for Wikimedia to extend its content, brand, and global presence into online education by developing courses, curricula, and partnering with other online educational resources. 76% of the comments in this category came from anonymous and new users, whereas only 24% originated from logged-in users.
- Translation and languages: We saw a collective interest in this category from logged-in, anonymous, and new users. Key suggestions included a focus increasing translation capabilities and tool, expanding into more languages, and developing the ability to easily translate across projects. These comments validate the need for the Content Translation tool, which is now available on 224 language-versions of Wikipedia as a beta feature.
In related news, the Foundation is now engaging in what it calls a community capacity development project. According to an an email to the mailing list posted by the WMF's senior program officer, emerging Wikimedia communities Asaf Bartov, the Foundation is allocating staff time to "deliberate capacity-development projects with interested communities in six capacity areas: community governance; conflict management; on-wiki technical skills; new contributor engagement and growth; partnerships; [and] communications". "Community capacity" is defined as "the ability of a community to achieve ... very diverse [goals that] span issues that affect one or all Wikimedia communities." It is, in effect, a trial of a more hands-on approach on the part of the Wikimedia Foundation in recruiting ideas from the community, following along the lines of earlier breakout efforts, most prominently this year's "Inspire" campaign.
Brief notes
- Philippe Beaudette leaving the Foundation: Long-time Wikimedian and director of community advocacy Philippe Beaudette is leaving the Foundation. Beaudette was brought on in 2009 as a facilitator for the Strategic Planning project that was ongoing at the time—by his own count, he was employee number 16—making him one of the most senior of the officers still with the WMF. In the intervening six years, Beaudette served variously as facilitator of strategic planning, head of fundraising (as part of the 2010 Annual Giving campaign), and head of Legal And Community Advocacy. Before that he had served as an administrator on the English Wikipedia.
- IEG round: The Individual Engagement Grants grantmaking program is holding a submission round from August 31 to September 29. The IEG program is the funding platform of choice for small individual or team-based research, development, and engagement projects. Two of the program's grant officers will he holding Google Hangouts—the first on September 8, to answer proposal questions and to help polish grants that could benefit from feedback and development at the IdeaLab.
- Metrics: The next WMF Metrics and activities meeting will be on Thursday, September 3.
- Develop the Digital Library Card Platform: The Wikimedia Library program has been growing at a fast clip and now finds itself in need of a stronger core platform. Last week saw the announcement of the opening of a position for a developer experienced with web applications and open-development frameworks who can build a Wikimedia Library "Digital Library Card Platform tool". A lengthier description as well as a point of contact for interested parties is available here.
- Mobile legalese: The WMF has published a set of guidelines for mobile developers using the Wikimedia trademark, presented in condensed form in a recent blog post.
- August in Edu: The August edition of the Education Newsletter has now been published.
- RfC on the 2015 ArbCom election: A request for comment on the upcoming Arbitration Committee election has been opened. The RfC was created to "provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the December 2015 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules."
- WLM banner saga continues: A referral for comment has been spun up on the meta-wiki regarding the time conflict between Foundation fundraising the Wikimedia Loves Monuments movement. Given the lopsided nature of the vote, as well as the loaded questions being asked by the RfC organizers, your author considers it yet more evidence of the inflammatory feedback loop between Foundation non-communication and community worked-up-ness. For more coverage see this week's Discussion report.
- New administrators: Wbm1058 is this week's newest administrator.
- 100K: The Belarusian Wikipedia reached 100,000 articles this week. Keeping in the tradition of things the encyclopedia uploaded a unique 100,000-themed take on the Wikipedia logo.
Discuss this story
employee, sorry user from Philadelphia might not need to be told that.--92.238.57.40 (talk) 13:27, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]