Wikipedia Infiltrated by Intelligence Agents?

An anonymous reader writes "International Humanitarian Law professor Ludwig Braeckeleer thinks so. In an article published yesterday in the Korean newspaper OhMyNews, he reveals a discovery he made while researching a story on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. It turns out that a Wikipedia administrator named SlimVirgin is actually Linda Mack, a woman who as a young graduate in the 1980s was hired by investigative reporter Pierre Salinger of ABC News to help with the investigation. Salinger later came to believe that Mack was actually working for Britain's MI5 on a mission to investigate the bombing and to infiltrate and monitor the news agency. Shortly after her Wikipedia identity was uncovered, many of her edits to articles related to the bombing were permanently removed from the database in an attempt to conceal her identity. This discovery comes only months after another Wikipedia admin was caught lying about his credentials to the press. What can Wikipedia do about those who would use it for their own purposes?"

Comments

Shameful this made it to the front page

[Snowspinner]

It's shameful that this made it to the front page. The OhMyNews story that is cited isn't linked to. A quick glance at it (It's at http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?menu=c10400&no=374006&rel_no=1 ) shows why - the writer's only source for his claims about Slim Virgin is the evidence collected by Daniel Brandt, who cyberstalked her publicly on The Wikipedia Review, a board populated by the banned trolls of Wikipedia. The article makes clear the degree to which this "investigation" is based on rumors and lies, and proceeds to publicly state the alleged name and city of residence of this person.

I am appalled that Slashdot decided to participate in this public character assassination of a private citizen.

Re:Shameful this made it to the front page

[Snowspinner]

No, there are plenty of people who criticize the power structure of Wikipedia who are not banned.

On the other hand, there are fewer people who decide to criticize the power structure like Daniel Brandt does - stalking and outing the real names and cities of residence of Wikipedia editors. Those people, pleasantly, get banned.

Re:Transparency

[sepluv]

I have a better idea. Rather than an appeal-to-personal-authority based approach, maybe Wikipedia could adopt some policies regarding verifiability of claims, so as not to rely on the personal credibility of the submitter. Which, in case you weren't been sarcastic, is exactly how Wikipedia does work. Stuff that isn't common knowledge having to be referenced is the cardinal rule of Wikipedia. See the Wikipedia:Verifiability (WP:V) policy.

Also, the founder, Jimmy Wales, has commented many a time on the fact that Wikipedians should just remove unreferenced statements that are potentially controversial or that someone disagrees with.

In Wikipedia, appeals to personal authority don't work at all, unlike Britannica, which bases its entire approach on these. They are at either end of these extremes, andf both work to some extent. Being in the middle would like not work at all.

Re:I experienced this as well on Wikipedia

[DragonWriter]

CentCom I remember from the film "Control Room", they are the people trying to spin the Iraq war for the world (and especially the US) media.

While, certainly, there are people in the PR arm of Centcom (and the Pentagon itself, and the White House) doing that, Centcom is the United States "Central Command", the regional combatant command in whose area of operations both the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan are being fought, not simply a special-purpose spin shop.

This is CENTCOM's job - US taxpayer's dollars to rewrite history, so that the US can keep going overseas militarily.

being the part of the US military that is (in one particular area) overseas. Their job is fighting and winning wars, and preventing wars by having the capacity to fight and win them. Propaganda is part of that, of course, and no doubt they engage in some practices in the course of that against which there are legitiamte objections.

Re:Transparency

[sepluv]

Exactly. It is pretty difficult to make up references, and if someone did think it was made up they could dispute it. If you have paraphrased in the body of the article, it is also quite common to include the exact quote from the referenced text in the footnote with the reference so that other users can check you've interpreted it right.

Re:A Wikipedia sysop breaks this down

[makomk]

The last time I checked, Wikipedia sysops had no more ability to see deleted revisions of articles than anyone else (that is, they can't even see that they were deleted). Viewing deleted revisions required oversight powers. As an example of a deleted revision, Daniel Brandt claims that SlimVirgin's first edit to Wikipedia was an edit relating to her allaged real-workd identity and that it has since vanished. The edit in question now shows up as part of a later edit by CanisRufus with an unrelated edit summary, which is what exactly what we'd see if the revision in question had existed and had been oversighted.