Can Wikipedia resist an orchestrated Russian attack?

[CrowsNest]

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-te ... -attackthe

Wikipedia has resisted information warfare, but could it fight off a proper attack?
Carl Miller, New Statesman.

It's the rather familiar idea that Wikipedia can somehow be subverted by an orchestrated army of people posing as established and good faith editors, using sock-puppets with plausible deniability as force multipliers. The controlling mind here of course being the Russians, but that piece of Jack Ryan fueled nonsense aside, it is clear such a strategy might appeal to anyone with the money and resources.

The author claims no such schemes have ever been discovered before, but that is obviously not correct. Eastern Europe and Israel-Palestine are two areas where large scale subversive coordination has been discovered.

However you design or implement them, such schemes are doomed to failure of course, since they incorrectly assume that the bedrock of Wikipedia is adherence to the rules, and that their trust in each other derives from such probity. Nothing could be further from the truth. If a single powerful Wikipedian smells a rat, if he senses the deck is being stacked, then it really, really doesn't matter if it appears everything else is correct.

They will always find a way to get the content back to the way it should be, which is of course not to say neutral. All that matters is ensuring Wikipedia hosts content that broadly supports the positions it has become infamous for supporting (which is of course a far better explanation for why it is constantly under seige, than the Russians expanding their efforts to include Wikipedia).

If it means ignoring every rule in the book, they are not above that.* In extremis, indeed even as part of their normal everyday, it is not the Russians or any other external threat you should fear using back channels and sock-puppetry to manage Wikipedia content in ways the rules seemingly don't allow, it is the London and faithful hardcore of experienced and unassailable Wikipedians themselves. History has shown what they are capable of when it comes to their sole task, keeping Wikipedia biased towards their house POV.

(*) - do not mistake this as a legitimate invocation of the Wikipedia doctrine of 'ignore all rules' (if it benefits the encyclopedia), since that is not and never has been seen as a license to break the rules against deceiving your fellow editors, even if you do suspect they are all secret agents trying to deceive you.

[Dysklyver]

There are plenty of admins who are actually agents for the Kremlin friendly Russians, really the Wiki would be screwed if they wanted to "subvert" a low-traffic topic.

Maybe the high traffic topics not so much.

[Paul Bedson]

I tried one with RaRaRasputin that was fun but eventually resisted (after I altered the Rasputin page with significant evidence that British Secret Service were behind the real Rasputin's murder).

The "irrelevant discussion" box is of course the most interesting and relevant to click on.