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Wikipedia Admin's Manipulation "Messed Up Perhaps 15,000 Students' Lives"

Posted by Soulskill on from the going-for-the-high-score dept.

Andreas Kolbe writes: Recently, "ArbCom", Wikipedia's highest court, banned an administrator account that for years had been manipulating the Wikipedia article of a bogus Indian business school – deleting criticism, adding puffery, and enabling the article to become a significant part of the school's PR strategy. Believing the school's promises and advertisements, families went to great expense to send sons and daughters on courses there – only for their children to find that the degrees they had gained were worthless. "In my opinion, by letting this go on for so long, Wikipedia has messed up perhaps 15,000 students' lives," an Indian journalist quoted in the story says. India is one of the countries where tens of millions of Internet users have free access to Wikipedia Zero, but cannot afford the data charges to access the rest of the Internet, making Wikipedia a potential gatekeeper.

32 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Anyone who believes Wikipedia by IWantMoreSpamPlease · · Score: 5, Insightful

    without further fact checking, is a complete idiot.
    Or as Ronald Reagan once said, "Trust, but verify."

    --
    So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
    1. Re: Anyone who believes Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Or as honest Abe said, "Anyone can make up quotes on the internet."

    2. Re: Anyone who believes Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify :)

    3. Re:Anyone who believes Wikipedia by tpwade · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not hard to image that the families thought they had done their fact checking. From the summary: "tens of millions of Internet users have free access to Wikipedia Zero, but cannot afford the data charges to access the rest of the Internet". So a person, who is saving every last bit of money they can (i.e. not paying data charges) gets a flyer that says: "attend our awesome business school", and they "fact check" using the only source easily available to them: Wikipedia. It's easy to critisize them from our priveledge position in the west, with dozens, if not thousands of independent sources freely and easily available to us, but the situation is different elsewhere.

    4. Re:Anyone who believes Wikipedia by Andreas+Kolbe · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's not so easy. With Wikipedia Zero and Facebook Zero, tens of millions of Indians in rural areas do not have access to anything else. They get Wikipedia and Facebook free as part of their mobile phone deal, but would need an expensive data plan to access anything else on the Internet. The situation is the same in many other third-world countries. What you have then a is a large captive audience who can only consume Wikipedia, but cannot check its sources or access alternative sources. Hence the concerns voiced by AccessNow and the Electronic Frontier Foundation about Facebook and Wikipedia becoming gatekeepers: keeping information out as much as bringing information in. The potential for manipulation is stupendous, because only political and business elites will have read-write access to Wikipedia. This case illustrates why people in developing countries need affordable access to the entire internet, not a Wikipedia and Facebook band aid.

    5. Re:Anyone who believes Wikipedia by dave420 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They trusted two sources - the flier from the institution, and the Wikipedia article on it. So you are saying they should trust at least three sources? What if 2/3 of the sources agree, and one does not? Go for a fourth?

    6. Re: Anyone who believes Wikipedia by ArhcAngel · · Score: 3, Funny

      I saw the report Brian Williams did on that.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
  2. caveat emptor by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Here in the US, colleges still send thick glossy booklets full of pretty pictures of campus locations students will hardly ever see in rare weather conditions with attractive and diverse people they'll never meet. Then we wonder why we have millions of non-STEM graduates serving coffee and whining about "student debt relief" for their useless degree(s). To me, all the "extra" college grads we have in the country are a much bigger deal than "just" 15K people getting a little wiser on how the world really works.

    1. Re:caveat emptor by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      One of the problems is this bit from TFS:

      India is one of the countries where tens of millions of Internet users have free access to Wikipedia Zero, but cannot afford the data charges to access the rest of the Internet, making Wikipedia a potential gatekeeper

      A bunch of poor people, with limited access to the internet, turn to one of the only sources of information they have.

      And it turns out that source isn't trustworthy.

      How is the consumer supposed to know otherwise when they have no access to better information?

      Yes, we all know that wikipedia isn't always an authoritative source. But for people who only can get to wikipedia through their basic cell phone plans .... that was the only source of information.

      Given the available sources of information, I'd like to see you arrive at a better conclusion.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:caveat emptor by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, it fucking wasn't. Are you fucking retarded? Information only comes on cell phones now? Really? idiot.

      Look, asshole.

      Think about this. The average person in India has very little access to things like the internet. They have cheap ass cell phone plans which give them free access to Wikipedia, and not much else. What the fuck do you think "Wikipedia Zero" is? It costs them nothing to access it, whereas a data plan might be a months pay. Which they might want to spend on food and housing.

      There are only so many places to try to glean information, and places to apply effort.

      So you can sit in your comfortable first world life and be a smug douchebag, or you can try to accept that people in poor third world countries have access to FAR less sources of information without it costing them dearly. Which means they place far more reliance on the sources they have.

      So go shove your attitude up your punk ass, and save me your bullshit.

      This notion that people have perfect access to information to make perfect choices is completely bullshit when the only sources they have available to them are dishonest, or would cost far more than they'd be able to afford without a better job like they were trying to find.

      Don't me such a smug little prick. Mostly it makes you sound like an idiot who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:caveat emptor by mongothesecond · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If Wikipedia is a necessary utility for the Indian population, wikipedia should charge or be funded by that government. Otherwise free is what it is, neighbor.

    4. Re:caveat emptor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      The elephant in the room is the fact that colleges and forced cheap, easy student loans are being used to keep unemployment numbers down in the recession. Many millions of US student are in college because they couldn't find a good job. Many of them would stop attending immediately if a good job were offered.

      It's not education, it's welfare.

      The elephant in the room is that you don't automatically get a good job offer with a Bachelor's degree. A career is something you build. A job is something you get. While I understand the desire of baby-boomer's to give their children everything they didn't have, i.e., job-free college, I think something important is missing from their children's lives. You see, you can't expect a really good paying job even if you have a Masters degree if you haven't worked a day in your life. Don't get me wrong, college is hard, but working for money is different. You're expected to produce, not merely pursue your interests and hope they align with the company's goals.

      I have yet to meet a programmer out of college that was ready to work a job. My guess is that's true of most professions. You have to learn about TPS reports and such. That's why entry level jobs don't pay too well. You're still learning. As you gain experience, you make more money. That's how "working" works.

  3. Most degrees from India... by OneSmartFellow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... are bogus as far as I can tell.

    I've worked with plenty of Indian engineers (mechanical, electronic, and software) over the past 30+ years, and my general impression is that at least 50% have no knowledge of the subject matter at all. As far as I could tell they simply purchased a document claiming they had a degree. So, this appears to be just another example.

    1. Re:Most degrees from India... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Corrupt institutions in India are the NORM, not the exception. Long before Wikipedia existed, the country was filled with fake diploma mills and a million other institutional scams. The parents in this case are just looking for a convenient scapegoat (and playing their favorite game of "Blame the evil American/European companies for all our shitty country's problems!").

    2. Re:Most degrees from India... by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That is very unfair. It could be that just the ones that are willing to work for cut rate contractors have limited skill sets... Who would have guessed.
      India has a lot of very educated people in the tech fields. After all they have do have nuclear weapons, launch vehicles, and aerospace industry. All of which go very wrong very quickly without educated engineers working on them.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    3. Re:Most degrees from India... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We have Indian applicants for the web developer jobs we have open at the moment, and invariably they all seem to have achieved degrees with honours in less than 2 years, often more than one degree in the same time. I refuse to believe that any degree achievable in less time than an equivalent UK degree is worth anything, let alone two.

      And then, the number of those applicants who then claim to have achieved another major qualification in a London college or university in only a few months... Especially when you can link those London colleges to visa fraud stories in the national media.

      It would take a lot for me to take an Indian graduate at face value.

    4. Re:Most degrees from India... by Jaime2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I used to do a lot of contractor hiring. I started with the attitude "if you lie on your resume, I won't even consider you". After realizing that I would never hire anyone - I backed off on the attitude. The interview process became an exercise in determining what the candidate knows, while the candidate made every attempt possible to deceive me. It was very disheartening and I hated hiring someone who lied to my face for 60 minutes straight because he lied less than everyone else and was the most likely of the bunch to get the job done.

      BTW, this was at a really big company and 99% of the resumes that HR sent me were educated in India and came to the US to work in the previous three to five years.

    5. Re:Most degrees from India... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      99% of the resumes that HR sent me were educated in India

      Well, as they say on Mythbusters...there's your problem right there. Searching for honest employees and then only looking at resumes from Indians is like searching for sober employees and then only looking at resumes from Russians.

    6. Re:Most degrees from India... by hey! · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'll see your anecdote and raise you some speculation.

      I've worked with a number of young Indian engineers and found them to be roughly comparable to American engineers with the same level of experience; if anything they have a slightly higher level of textbook knowledge because (I speculate) their educational system puts a higher premium on memorization. That turns out to be awesome when you're lucky enough to be hiring someone with that certain spark of talent it takes to be great at the job. On the other hand it also means you can easily end up hiring a dud who interviews great because he happens to have a prodigious memory. When the VC my company worked with asked us to take on some surplus H1B engineers he'd sponsored I had a range of experiences from absolutely top-notch talent to total cement-heads with an encyclopedic recall of the GoF book.

      But what I've never run into an Indian H1B who didn't know anything at all about his field, although I'm sure it happens. Given the size and level of economic development in India I'd be shocked if there were not at least a few diploma mills, but you'd be a fool to turn your nose up at a diploma from U of Mumbai or IIT/Delhi.

      It can be tricky evaluate a candidate from a different country and culture than you, so you've got to expect that a conscientious company may end up hiring a few clunkers. But if your Indian colleagues were *all* ignoramuses, it suggests to me the companies you worked for were incompetent or bottom-feeders when it comes to recruiting engineering talent.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  4. verifiability not truth by Iamthecheese · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Verifiability not truth" is the shelter biased and power-hungry Wikipedia editors hide behind. Post an article or fact they don't like and they'll do their level best to claim it's not a good source using nebulous definitions and intra-Wiki politics. The author of a cited article can himself say, "that's not what I meant" and it will be rejected. One symptom of this source problem is a lack of consistently followed, useful guidelines for source material. Oh, there are guideline, they're just not consistently followed and entrenched interests have allowed their definitions of a good source to slide to support various point of view various editors want to push. NPOV is a religion they follow like a Baptist in his cups.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
  5. Re:Well if Wikipedia said it, it must be true by thaylin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the problem is that there is a lose affiliation. Wikipedia is responsible for what its employees, paid or unpaid do. The administrators are not just members of the general public, wikimedia gives them special privileges. The administrator in this case seems to have had an affiliation with the school, and was doing things at wikipeida to lie for/about the school.

    --
    When you cant win, ad hominem.
  6. controversial, but worth stating. by nimbius · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ive worked with numerous indian H1B holders. The ones that are smart enough to apply for citizenship and get the hell out of whatever indentured servitude theyve been thrust into are the ones I love working with. Eloquently spoken as always, they will be the ones that bring insight and technical expertise along for any meeting or project.

    On the other hand, ive had many experiences with ESL H1B holders that amounted to nothing short of a phone tech in the states. Any H1B hired for any oracle product for example is a roll of the dice. Ive worked with a senior level RDBM that after an entire year of working on a project and requesting funding, quit when it was revealed the funding had all been directly applied to Oracle Gold support and remote hands. H1B sysadmins that just reboot servers all day long to fix problems, or feverishly post to message boards with an irate "please respond immediately" seem to be the bulk of what ive encountered in linux and unix. Ive been present for meeting room meltdowns and phantom disappearances where H1B holders just quit showing up for a project as well.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  7. Maybe you should have read more than one sentence? by mha · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here, just for you, a quote from the Slashdot headline itself, not even the article:

    > India is one of the countries where tens of millions of Internet users have free access to Wikipedia Zero, but cannot afford the data charges to access the rest of the Internet, making Wikipedia a potential gatekeeper.

  8. wikipedia have not only messed that by ruir · · Score: 3, Informative

    Their facebook page is driving a pro-feminist agenda, and welcoming women-only posts in wikipedia under the guise of promoting "gender diversity". Last time I checked, promoting a diversity of something is welcoming from all sides, and nobody ever was preventing some sexes to use wikipedia. It is really a nice strategy to flip the bird to the people who most helped you grow. I have contributed to wikipedia in the past, but I am done with them.

    1. Re:wikipedia have not only messed that by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If Wikipedia wants more women to contribute, they really need to change the way that it works. All too often a single person will essentially take control of a page and reject any other contributions (and even improvements) from other people. That kind of adversarial behavior isn't something that most women tend to like working around. Even if their efforts to promote women to join are successful, I don't think it will have any long-term success as they, like many others will run into some asshole that won't work collaboratively.

      Wikipedia really needs to change the way it operates and remove the ability for individuals to monopolize and control a page. I think if they moved to a system where multiple editors would work together to collaboratively make changes to a page over several weeks before pushing out the changes to the live version. While that isn't going to eliminate the petty squabbles, it at least results in a less hostile environment that prevents one power-tripping idiot from reverting all of your changes and trying to ban you.

      Pandering to women while keeping the same environment that has been shown to drive so many women away isn't going to fix the problem. It's just trying to slap a band-aid on top of a gaping wound. Worse, it's a waste of resources that could otherwise be spent actually addressing the underlying cause of the problem.

  9. Re:Well if Wikipedia said it, it must be true by Andreas+Kolbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are lots of Wikipedia admins who are social entrepreneurs of one form or another. This should be clear if you think about the fact that they are not getting paid for this. Sure there are idealists; but there are also lots of admins who get their reward out of the fact that they can use Wikipedia to influence public opinion – via the top Google search result – in line with their social, commercial or political agenda, and do so anonymously. No one should be surprised by this. You get what you pay for.

  10. Another take on the same story ... by Andreas+Kolbe · · Score: 3, Informative

    can be found in this article by Mridula Chari on scroll.in: Wikipedia bans editor for consistent bias in favour of Arindam Chaudhuri's IIPM. Includes some more details on goings-on in the Indian-language Wikipedias (Marathi etc.)

  11. Re:Maybe you should have read more than one senten by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The impoverished people living in rural areas, without affordable access to the Internet, and the people that can afford to send their kids to this school, are probably disjoint sets.

  12. Re:Maybe you should have read more than one senten by Trepidity · · Score: 3, Informative

    One might even blame Indian journalists, like the one who is quoted in this article blaming Wikipedia, for not better informing the public about legitimate and scam educational institutions.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  13. Re:Maybe you should have read more than one senten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem with your perspective is that you want one party to carry all the blame. Pointing out that someone made a stupid decision (your label of "blaming the victim") does not mean that the other parties do not have responsibility.

    Spread the blame to everyone that made poor choices: Indian Institute of Planning and Management, Wikipedia and those that enrolled without verifying their expectations.

    Victim idolizing has got to stop.

  14. Re:Maybe you should have read more than one senten by Jahoda · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, the Just World Hypothesis (link ironically to Wikipedia) can help to explain the cognitive process behind the behavior that you observe with regards to "victim blaming". I found it fascinating when I first read about it (probably here on /.)

  15. Re:Maybe you should have read more than one senten by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Spoken like someone who can't even begin to imagine living somewhere that doesn't have ubiquitous communication with the outside world.