this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
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They're all publicly viewable edits aren't they? Revert them and ban the IP ranges they come from? I thought that was the standard practice for abuse of Wikipedia?
The problem lies in noticing them in the first place. If you make a thousand legit edits to various articles and then make some slight changes on some rich clients page chances are nobody will register this. Then again we're on the internet so there's always at least one guy who'd hyperfocus on monitoring something like this. The hero we need.
That's the thing, there's only about 3000 billionaires worldwide, but 8 billion other people. Let's say out of those 8 billion, there are maybe 20 who really, really hate Bill Gates. All it takes to undermine all Bill Gates' attempts to launder his reputation is for a few of those 20 to keep an eye on his Wikipedia page in their spare time, and challenge any changes that try to whitewash his reputation.
Trickle down economics doesn't work well, but at least this causes a trickle down effect. Gates spends millions with PR firms to keep his reputation clean, including vandalizing Wikipedia. Those PR firm employees are unethical assholes, but they're not billionaires. Gates (indirectly) pays their wages. These PR firm assholes then spend Gates' money to buy BMWs and prostate massagers. That ends up trickling down to car mechanics and massager manufacturers.
So, every time you edit Wikipedia with unflattering but true information about billionaires and middle eastern oil states, you're causing some wealth to leak out of the billionaires' pockets as they fight to contain that information. And you can do this damage while just sitting on a toilet.
Exactly. I remember reading an article about a Nazi who was tried in the UK, apparently Winston Churchill himself vehemently defended this guy because he was a Nazi who fought the Soviets, and Churchill really hated the Soviets. He pushed hard for the charges to be dismissed, had his life sentence reduced to a few decades, and then eventually had his sentence commuted so he was released. I found this article around the time that the main guy behind the Nuremberg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, passed away, however when I went searching for the article a couple months later it was nowhere to be found.
I suspect the article was deleted under Wiki's general rule where they don't like having articles about individuals, and instead prefer articles about events. However this individual's story was the event, and this could have been an excuse by those looking to colour Churchill's history how they felt it should be presented.
Let's not forget, it took years for Wikipedia to even notice Neelix, the Wikipedia admin who made over 80,000 pages/links about titties.
He was just out there spreading the word of boobah but yeah this stuff can go under the radar for a while.
How so? Did no one go tat for his tit then?
Not just the Internet, but Wikipedia. It's catnip to people who hyperfocus on topics.
IP bans are ineffective against anyone who isn’t a 13yo using their parents’ WiFi.
Thing is the vast majority of people using wiki won't think. They will just consume so the message gets through.
Can confirm. I use wiki and don't know how to think.
I don’t understand. Someone read this to me.
Idk about banning ip ranges. I have never edited a wiki page as such amd my ip is blocked from even viewing the edits or talk.
It is unfair to others improperly blocked, my ip is also on a blacklist somehow do not know if that is related. Some kind of ratfuckery is afoot on the latter.