2007January 1stWikipedia
temporarily blocks the entire nation of Qatar by mistake.
January (early) (Essjay Controversy)'Essjay' is hired by Wikia.
January 7th (Essjay Controversy)Essjay posts autobiographical details on his user page at Wikia (not Wikipedia), giving his supposed real name (Ryan Jordan), age, and previous employment history from age 19, and his positions within various Wikimedia Foundation projects. These details differ sharply from previous assertions on 'Essjay's' Wikipedia user page about his academic and professional credentials.
January 18thThe Ottawa Citizen
examines the life of Wikipedia editor and arbitrator Simon Pulsifer, making light of the fact that he is unemployed and living with his parents.
January 20thIt is
revealed that Professor Tim Pierce of Northern Illinois University had instructed students to vandalize Wikipedia to demonstrate how simple it is to change information on the site, before restoring the articles to their previous state. Pierce devised the test after he was "getting a lot of Wikipedia cites last semester where students were citing really dubious information from there". Wikipedia administrator
ZoeÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
shoots off several angry emails to Pierce and the University's Office of Public Affairs claiming the act is a "federal offense" and threatens to go to the press to expose Pierce. The University replies that Zoe be "cautious about accusing individuals and public academic institutions of illegal actions" and advises that Wikipedia "consider making its website content more secure by assuring it cannot be changed by outsiders". Jimmy Wales dismisses Zoes' actions as "
highly inappropriate". Zoe
leaves the site.
Also January 20thJimmy Wales reverses a previous decision ignoring two polls to the contrary,
to automatically add "no follow" tags to all outward links on Wikipedia. Any site that used to be a destination from Wikipedia, and thus highly ranked, will abruptly fall in search engine rankings.
According to critic Nicholas Carr: "it turns Wikipedia into something of a black hole on the Net. It sucks up vast quantities of link energy but never releases any."
January 21st (Essjay Controversy)Daniel Brandt
contacts the author of the New Yorker article about discrepancies in 'Essjay's' biography. Brandt
asks 'Essjay' to explain himself on Wikipedia but receives no response.
January 23rdNotorious Wikipedia administrator JzG
hands out a "community ban" to the already banned Gregory Kohs of Wikipedia Review for using multiple accounts.
January 24thMicrosoft employees
explain that the company paid a blogger to edit certain Wikipedia pages relating to Open Office standards. According to one Microsoft employee, the step was taken to avoid Wikipedia's Conflict Of Interest policy, and because articles were previously "heavily written by people at IBM, a rival standard supporter, and that Microsoft had gotten nowhere flagging mistakes to Wikipedia’s volunteer editors."
also January 24thJournalist Brian Bergstein
interviews Wikipedia Review founder Gregory Kohs on his travails with Wikipedia over paid editing.
January 28thWikimedia Foundation
announce the creation of an Advisory board. The board includes Angela Beesley, wiki inventor Ward Cunningham, and pro-Wikipedia Tech journalist Clay Shirky.
January 29thIt is revealed that US courts are
increasingly citing Wikipedia in court cases.
February 5thSeveral Wikipedia Arbitrators
make a formal statement warning against the growing power of Wikipedia's Internet Relay Chat channel for administrators. The private channel was set up by Jimmy Wales, and is inaccessible to non-administrators, some of whom accuse the channel of being a haven for organized retributions against other editors.
February 10thWikipedia editor 'Worldtraveller'
writes the essay "Wikipedia is Failing".
February 16thDistinguished Turkish scholar Taner Akçam is
wrongly detained at the Montreal airport on the basis of false anonymous insertions in his Wikipedia biography.
(see Wikipedia Review thread)February 22ndFuzzy Zoeller sues a Miami firm due to
defamatory posts made on Wikipedia.
February 23rd (Essjay Controversy)Jimmy Wales announces the appointment of 'Essjay' to Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom). Wales
later asserts that the appointment was "at the request of and unanimous support of" ArbCom.
Also February 23rdThe Daniel Brandt biography
is deleted five more times, and undeleted six times in 24 hours. The article remains, but the editors are chastised by Jimmy Wales.
February 26th (Essjay Controversy)The New Yorker
publishes a correction for its July 31 issue. Jiimmy Wales is quoted on Essjay's false persona, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.â€
March 3rd (Essjay Controversy)After an
outpouring of rage from Wikipedians, and much negative publicity in the major media, Wales asks Essjay to resign his "positions of trust". Essjay promptly retires from Wikipedia altogether and later resigns from his position at Wikia. In his initial apology, Essjay
makes an extraordinary claim that New Yorker journalist Schiff had offered to pay him during his interview, which was flatly denied. Essjay also suggested that his false identity was designed to protect himself from Daniel Brandt, though it was created long before Brandt's involvement in Wikipedia.
March 7thJimmy Wales
gives interviews to the media announcing that Wikipedians should only be allowed to cite some professional expertise in a subject if those credentials have been verified.
March 8thJimmy Wales
drafts a "Credentials Verification" policy.
March 8thJimmy Wales
announces plans for Wikia's proposed search engine ("Search Wikia") to rival those of Google and Yahoo. According to Wales, "The idea that Google has some edge because they've got super-duper rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now."
March 12thJimmy Wales
tells the New York Times that "some version of his [credentials verification] proposal would begin on the site in a week†in an article titled '
After False Claim, Wikipedia to Check Degrees'. The proposal is never implemented, and
now reads as "currently inactive" retained only for "historical reference".
March 16thWikipedia
falsely claims that US entertainer 'Sinbad' has died. Rumors begin circulating after the posting, and Sinbad first hears about it himself via a telephone call from his daughter.
March 19thCary Bass (
BastiqueÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
)
is hired by the Wikimedia Foundation as Volunteer Coordinator.
March 20thJimmy Wales
unilaterally reverts the merger of three core Wikipedia policies into one (WP:ATT), stating that the merger is "a monumentally bad idea". The merger had been organized and pushed by editor
SlimVirginÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
causing significant controversy among editors.
March 22ndBrad Patrick
resigns as General Counsel to the Wikimedia Foundation. Danny Wool also
quits as Wikimedia Foundation "grants coordinator" and resigns his roles on Wikipedia. Both Wool and Patrick
cite disagreements with the Board of Trustees.
(Further Commentary here.) March 23rdJimmy Wales unblocks Gregory Kohs of Wikipedia Review again saying "he asked nicely, i think the issue is completed". Wales was apparently unaware that Wikipedia Review had been "community banned" by notorious administrator JzG a few months earlier.
March 29thGregory Kohs of Wikipedia Review is
banned again for a variety of unclear reasons.
April 1stJimmy Wales is interviewed on TV by Ellen Fanning for Australia's Nine Network. Fanning points out a blatant falsehood in her Wikipedia biography, which leads Wales to
later complain of "getting hammered" during the interview. Also during the discussion (
audio file of interview), Wales calls the Seigenthaler defamation "amusing" and appears to blame the journalist for the controversy. Having heard the recorded interview, Seigenthaler
describes Wales as "duplicitous", and concludes that "it all demonstrates again that Wikipedia is beset by flaw and fraud".
April 4thWikipedia Review
placed on a de facto Wikipedia blacklist. This means the site can't be linked to from any part of Wikipedia on pain of sanctions against any person who does so.
April 11thLarry Sanger
announces in an interview with the press that Wikipedia is “broken beyond repair†and no longer reliable.
also April 11thUK education secretary, Alan Johnson,
comes under fire from teaching unions after recommending the use of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia for schoolwork. According to the general secretary of the NASWUT union, the union itself had been the victim of scurrilous claims on Wikipedia, and she would not recommend the site to pupils.
April 13thJohn Seigenthaler
gives a speech at Florida State University. Seigenthaler details his experiences with Wikipedia, giving some 30 examples of defamation. According to Seigenthaler, "When I explained that it was speech protected by section 230 of the the CDA and that these defamers were hiding behind veils of anonymity and virtually untraceable IP numbers there was astonishment."
April 19thWales
grants ArbCom the right to review his decisions.
April 27thInternet figure Jason Scott
gives a speech to Notacon 4 in Cleveland, Ohio focusing on the negative exploitable nature of Wikipedia.
April 30thBacklogs of tasks needing attention
continue to grow, including the number of articles lacking any sources.
May 7thFour administrator accounts with weak passwords
are hacked. The perpetrator(s) goes on a spree of adding erroneous content to articles, and banning other users. A fifth administrator also "goes rogue", and is discovered to be an account of a previously banned user who had created a new character and surreptitiously risen up the Wikipedia hierarchy for such a purpose.
May 15thCitizendium, Larry Sanger's rival wiki project,
decides to place NOINDEX tags on their project pages. This means that any defamatory statements made on talk pages are henceforth unable to be located by search engines. Wikipedia refused to do the same until pressure mounted two years later.
May 17thDue to edits on Wikipedia, Google's entry description for Wikipedia's much viewed article on George Washington
reads, “George Washington Had a shit on a stick and then told people that it was ok to have unprotected sex…â€.
May 19thMore BADSITES. An attempt is made (but quickly reverted) to take off a link to Kelly Martin's blog on her user page because it contains criticisms of individual Wikipedians.
May 21stThe Wikipedia biography of co-founder Larry Sanger is
downgraded to "mid-importance" priority by Wikipedia's bureaucracy. This places his article below articles on
Jimmy Wales (T-H-L-K-D),
Wikimania (T-H-L-K-D) and even
Wikipedia Review (T-H-L-K-D).
May 23rdAn editor
is opposed for adminship after admitting he thought it "unhelpful for editors to either add or remove links [to Wikipedia Review] merely to make a point". The opposition is orchestrated by administrator SlimVirgin. Her actions are described as an attempt to implement the controversial BADSITES ban on linking to critical sites "via the backdoor".
May 27thWikipedia editor
Will BebackÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
requests that all links to and mentions of Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog
Making Light be removed from Wikipedia as an "attack site" or 'BADSITE', after an entry in one of the site's forums criticises Wikipedia's treatment of science fiction writer Kathryn Cramer. An edit war ensues. Will Beback also demands that the criticisms on Making Light be removed before the links can be restored. Well known internet figure Cory Doctorow jumps to the defense of Making Light and Cramer stating, "You are a Wikipedia editor; this does not confer upon you the right to edit other peoples' websites, too."
June 1-3Wikimedia Foundation
board meeting. Sue Gardner and Mike Godwin are visitors, and the decision is made to hire the pair.
June 4thDisputes
continue to rage over "single-incident biographies" and their relationship to the policy of Biographies of Living People.
June 5thWriter Andrew Keen releases the book "
Cult of The Amateur", a critique of the enthusiasm surrounding user generated content, peer production, and other Web 2.0-related phenomena including Wikipedia.
June 7thMore BADSITES incidents. An edit war attempts (unsuccessfully) to remove links to Wikitruth from the article about the site.
June 14thDaniel Brandt biography is
finally deleted on the 14th attempt. It is not recreated. Seth Finkelstein, who wrote "
I'm on Wikipedia, get me out of here" argues successfully to see his biography
deleted the same day.
June 15thVarious links to Conservapedia within the Wikipedia article are redacted on the basis of BADSITES.
June 25thA statement is added to the biography of Pro-Wrestler Chris Benoit
describing the death of his wife, fourteen hours before police discovered the bodies of Benoit and his family.
June 26thThe media
reports that the German government plan to improve entries to the German Wikipedia, via the private-sector Nova Institute.
July 3rdWikimedia Foundation
announce Mike Godwin as the new General Counsel and Legal Coordinator.
July 6thRegister journalist
Cade Metz writes his
first article exposing Wikipedia's combative subculture.
July 9thFlorence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikipedia Foundation,
states, "It's possible one day I'll be more proud of Wikipedia than of the kids."
July 12thWikimedia Board of Trustees incumbents Erik Möller (Eloquence) and Kathleen Walsh (Mindspillage)
are re-elected for a two-year term, with Frieda Brioschi (Frieda) narrowly edging out incumbent Oscar van Dillen (Oscar) for the third and final seat.
July 26thLudwig De Braeckeleer
distributes an article on administrator SlimVirgin. The article features Daniel Brandt's assertion that SlimVirgin (who started the Wikipedia biography of Brandt) the user name of a former ABC News Reporter thought to be embroiled in the investigation the Lockerbie Pan-Am terrorist attack of 1987. The article is picked up by Slashdot and other sites, and SlimVirgin
is portrayed as a "Spy infiltrating Wikipedia".
August 14thEpisode 2 of Richard Dawkins's
Enemies of Reason TV series
is aired. In the documentary, Dawkins gives a grave critique of the erosion of evidence based thinking in front a scrolling screen of Wikipedia pages. According to Dawkins, "Wikipedia world creates great opportunity and great danger."
August 17thWikiScanner released. This is a tool created by Virgil Griffith which consists of a publicly searchable database that links millions of anonymous Wikipedia IP edits to the organizations where those edits apparently originated.
August 20thDue to the newly launched Wikiscanner, the media begin to highlight edits made from many leading organizations causing "minor public relations disasters". The inhouse Wikipedia magazine
Signpost writes; "Durova, who works extensively with sleuthing 'the dark side' of Wikipedia, has implied that many more major stories await tech-savvy reporters who know how to comb Wikipedia's logs efficiently. The next generation of Wikipedia manipulation stories may be more than just 'minor public relations disasters'."
August 24th (Naked Short Selling controversy)A link to Judd Bagley's antisocialmedia.net
is removed per BADSITES where it was being used to display evidence of sockpuppetry. After some edit-warring, it was replaced by a link to a page at another URL that copied the relevant information.
Links to Michael Moore's official site
are removed and edit warred over per BADSITES, because the site contains criticisms of Wikipedia editor Ted Frank.
September 4th (Naked Short Selling controversy)Spokesperson for Wikimedia UK David Gerard
blocks an IP range in Utah to prevent Judd Bagley making his case on Wikipedia against account abuse by Mantanmoreland. Later he
writes "ps. fuck off Bagley". Gerard also
blocks the IP address of a
Wikipedia contributor in Basingstoke, England as an "apparent open proxy being abused by Judd Bagley".
September 9th (Naked Short Selling controversy)Controversial administrator JzG adds Judd Bagley's antisocialmedia.net to the English Wikipedia spam blacklist "
without any discussion whatsoever".
September 12thWikipedia arbitrator Fred Bauder admits "There has been extensive discussion [about the spam blacklist addition], although not in a public forum. We have had enough of Judd Bagley and his site." and "The group who discussed this included the arbitration committee, the staff of Foundation, and SlimVirgin and others who have from time to time been victims of harassment or stalking. We listened particularly to the advice of those who have have been harassed."
Fred Bauder, controversial administrators SlimVirgin, JzG, Durova and others create a secret "
Cyberstalking email list" on Wikia to discuss matters. Included on the list are Mantanmoreland and at least one of his sockpuppets. The list is administrated by SlimVirgin.
September 23rdDuring a heated
BADSITES hearing at Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, founder of the committee Fred Bauder
makes a formal proposal to redirect biographies of people who maintain "external sites" which criticize Wikipedians to the article "Clown".
September 19thJimmy Wales's tiny (misspelled)
article entry on
Mzoli's Meats, a South African restaurant and gathering place
is deleted per process as 'non-notable'. Wales complains bitterly, and the article is restored by Wales's supporters. Debate
rages about favortism and Wales's influence over the site.
(See Wikipedia Review thread) October 8thJimmy Wales
explains that he gets about 10 emails a week from "students who end up in trouble because they cited the online encyclopedia in a paper and the information turned out to be wrong", but he has little sympathy for them.
October 12thA link to a Slate Magazine article
is removed per BADSITES, because it contains an interview with Daniel Brandt.
October 20th(Naked Short Selling controversy)Durova blocks the respected editor Cla68 for making an uncontroversial edit to the biography of Gary Weiss. Jimmy Wales
approves of the block, writing: "Durova and Guy have my full support here. No nonsense, zero tolerance, shoot on sight. No kidding, this has gone on long enough"
November 1stWikimedia Foundation
prevail in a lawsuit brought by three people over defamation on the French Wikipedia. According to the plaintiffs, they had contacted the foundation to complain. But no record of their complaint could be found.
November 3rd - November 10thA secret "
Investigations email list" is created by prominent controversial Wikipedia administrators including Durova "to separate discussions about general sockpuppetry from the cyberstalking list".
November 18thWikipedia editor
!!Â
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
is temporarily blocked by Durova based on secret evidence. The incident is later nicknamed the "Durova Dustup."
Documented here. When asked about the block, Durova states that it cannot be discussed in public. The Wikipedia editor turns out to be an innocent new account of a former respected editor.
November 21stA New Jersey Middle School
begins a campaign of "Just Say No to Wikipedia" by putting signs over the computers in the school library. Apparently, teachers and students at the school found at least two cases of incorrect information while using Wikipedia, and white supremacist information in the entry for Martin Luther King.
November 22ndA leak from the secret "Investigations email list"
is published. The leak contains Durova's incorrect rationale for the block of User:!!, and exposes the methods a clique of administrators were using to control other editors. Durova's "evidence" contains various fantastical claims about Wikipedia Review tactics based on evidence of the behavior of innocent users who were not even members of Wikipedia Review at the time.
Wikipedia is
in turmoil over the revelations.
November 28thSue Gardner
appointed as Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation.
December 4thThe Register publishes the article "
Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia" which describes the Durova / Secret list scandal. The story hits the international news.
More in-depth timeline here.December 5thAlex Roshuk, the lawyer who assisted Jimmy Wales in writing the Wikimedia Foundation's bylaws and in setting up the Foundation as a 501-c (3) organization,
describes Wales as "flaky" and someone who "does not keep his word".
December 6th (Naked Short Selling controversy)The Register publishes the article
Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain which covers Wikipedia's Naked Short Selling controversy. The piece includes interviews with Judd Bagley, and describes the blanket bans of Overstock.com affiliated accounts, as well as anyone who supports their point of view in the controversy.
December 7thAccording to the BBC, Jimmy Wales
dismissed teachers who refused students access to Wikipedia as "bad educators" in a speech in London.
December 8thFlorence Devouard, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation,
writes, "I can not help thinking that the rather ugly atmosphere that developped[sic] on enwiki is largely due to the very large and uncontrolled use of the checkuser tool by a minority."
December 9thThe Guardian publishes an article by Jenny Kleeman based on statements by arbitrator
Charles MatthewsÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
which claims that Carl Hewitt, associate professor emeritus in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "disrupted Wikipedia". Hewitt later
complains about the article and other critics accuse Matthews of breaking confidentiality. Matthews is also accused of "creating the news" by contacting Kleeman himself with stories about Hewitt's editing. Matthews had previously been interviewed by Kleeman and the journalist had become an informal press contact.
December 11thJimbo Wales
testifies before Congress. Before his testimony, he
protected Sen. Lieberman's article using the rationale "bad day for vandalism" and
promptly unprotected the article after the hearing was over. The article is immediately hit by defamatory statements after unprotection.
December 13thThe Register
reveals that Carolyn Doran, Chief Operating Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, is a convicted felon for shooting a former boyfriend, and was still on parole for another offense. See
full timeline here.
December 16thVoting closes for
elections to the Arbitration Committee. The elected winners include
NewyorkbradÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
,
FT2Â
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
, and
Sam BlacketerÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
. Though new arbitrators are expected to provide personal details to the Wikimedia Foundation, the identities of the new arbitrators remain a mystery to the wider community and outsiders.
December 17thErik Möller
resigns from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, and is named the Deputy Director of the Foundation.
December 26thWikipedia editor David Shankbone
visits Wikipedia at the invitation of the Israeli Foreign Ministry in the hope of reversing a "one-dimensional view of Israel".