Misplaced Pages

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Ever since its launch in January 2001, Misplaced Pages's open nature has led to various concerns, such as the quality of writing, the amount of vandalism, and the accuracy of information. The media have been drawn to cover various controversial events related to Misplaced Pages, owing to either articles containing false or inconsistent information, or some of the personalities associated with Misplaced Pages becoming embroiled in contentious behavior. The 2012 scandals involving paid consultancy for the government of Gibraltar and potential conflicts of interest have highlighted Misplaced Pages's vulnerabilities. The presence of inaccurate and false information, as well as the perceived hostile editing climate have been linked to the declines in editor participation. Controversies on and concerning Misplaced Pages have been subject of several scholarly papers.

Overview

The nature of Misplaced Pages controversies has been analyzed by many scholars. For example, sociologist Howard Rheingold says that "Misplaced Pages controversies have revealed the evolution of social mechanisms in the Misplaced Pages community"; a study of the politicization of socio-technical spaces remarked that Misplaced Pages "controversies... become fully fledged when they are advertised outside the page being debated"; and even one college discusses Misplaced Pages as a curricular tool, in that "recent controversies involving Misplaced Pages as a basis for discussion of ethics and bias."

Despite being promoted as an encyclopedia "anyone can edit", the ability to edit controversial pages is sometimes restricted due to "edit wars" or vandalism. To address criticism about restricting access while still minimizing malicious editing of those pages, Misplaced Pages has also introduced measures such as "pending changes" that open contentious articles up for more people to edit then subject their contributions to approval from members of the site.

2004

• August, 2004 – Alexander Halavais, then assistant professor at SUNY Buffalo, decided to test claims regarding the speed at which errors in Misplaced Pages were corrected by deliberately introducing thirteen errors into Misplaced Pages articles. The errors were corrected within three hours and Halavais was warned by other editors to "refrain from writing nonsense articles and falsifying information." Halavais's methodology has been criticized as being tainted by an "association effect" since, once it was noted that he had introduced one error, his other introduced errors were discovered by checking the contributions of his account.

2005

• September 2005 – The Seigenthaler incident, was a series of events that began in May 2005 with the anonymous posting of a hoax article in the online encyclopedia Misplaced Pages about John Seigenthaler, a well-known American journalist. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Then 78-year-old Seigenthaler, who had been a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, characterized the Misplaced Pages entry about him as "Internet character assassination". The perpetrator of the hoax, Brian Chase, was identified by Misplaced Pages critic Daniel Brandt and reporters for the New York Times. The hoax was removed from Misplaced Pages in early October 2005 (although the false information stayed on Answers.com and Reference.com for another three weeks), after which Seigenthaler wrote about his experience in USA Today.
• September 2005 – Professional book indexer Daniel Brandt started Misplaced Pages criticism website wikipedia-watch.org in response to his unhappy experience while trying to get his biography deleted.
• November/December, 2005 – The IP address assigned to the United States House of Representatives was blocked from editing Misplaced Pages because of a large number of edits comprising a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia." According to CBS News these changes included edits to Marty Meehan's Misplaced Pages article to give it a more positive tone. The edits to Meehan's article prompted a former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics to say that "hat kind of usage, plus the fact that they're changing one person's material, is certainly wrong and ought to be at a minimum the focus of some disciplinary action".
• December, 2005 – In December 2005 Misplaced Pages co-founder Jimbo Wales was caught editing his own Misplaced Pages entry. According to public logs, he had edited his biography 18 times, seven times altering information about whether Larry Sanger was a co-founder of Misplaced Pages. It was also revealed that Wales had edited the Misplaced Pages article of his former company, Bomis. "Bomis Babes", a section of the Bomis website, had been characterized in the article as "soft-core pornography," but Wales revised this to "adult content section" and deleted mentions of pornography. He said he was fixing an error, and didn't agree with calling Bomis Babes soft porn. Wales conceded that he had made the changes, but maintained that they were technical corrections.

2006

• February 1, 2006 – The Henryk Batuta hoax was uncovered by editors on the Polish Misplaced Pages. Batuta was claimed to be a Polish Communist revolutionary who was an associate of Ernest Hemingway. It was referenced in seventeen other articles before the hoax was uncovered.
• March 2006 – Misplaced Pages critic Daniel Brandt discovered 142 instances of plagiarism in Misplaced Pages articles. Brandt told the Associated Press after his discovery that "hey present it as an encyclopedia. They go around claiming it's almost as good as Britannica. They are trying to be mainstream respectable."
• Early-to-mid 2006 - The congressional aides biography scandals came to public attention, in which several political aides were caught trying to influence the Misplaced Pages biographies of several politicians to remove undesirable information (including pejorative statements quoted, or broken campaign promises), add favorable information or "glowing" tributes, or replace the article in part or whole by staff authored biographies. The staff of at least five politicians were implicated: Marty Meehan, Norm Coleman, Conrad Burns, Joe Biden, Gil Gutknecht. In a separate but similar incident the campaign manager for Cathy Cox, Morton Brilliant, resigned after being found to have added negative information to the Misplaced Pages entries of political opponents. Following media publicity, the incidents tapered off around August 2006.
• July 2006 - In July 2006 Joshua Gardner was exposed as a fake Duke of Cleveland with a Misplaced Pages page.

2007

• January 2007 - In January 2007 English-language Wikipedians in Qatar were briefly blocked from editing, following a spate of vandalism, by an administrator who did not realize that the country's internet traffic is routed through a single IP address. Multiple media sources promptly declared that Misplaced Pages was banning Qatar from the site.
• January, 2007 – It was revealed that Microsoft had paid programmer Rick Jelliffe to edit Misplaced Pages articles about Microsoft products. In particular, Microsoft paid Jelliffe to edit, among others, the article on Office Open XML. A spokesman for Microsoft explained that the company thought the articles in question had been heavily biased by editors at Microsoft rival IBM and that having a seemingly independent editor add the material would make it more acceptable to other Misplaced Pages editors.
• February 2007 – On February 13, 2007, American professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller sued the Miami foreign-credential evaluation firm of Josef Silny & Associates. The lawsuit alleged that defamatory statements appeared in the Misplaced Pages article about Zoeller in December 2006, originating from a computer at that firm.
• February 2007 In February 2007, The New Yorker magazine issued a rare editorial correction that a prominent English Misplaced Pages editor and administrator known as "Essjay", had invented a persona using fictitious credentials. The editor, Ryan Jordan, became a Wikia employee in January 2007 and divulged his real name; this was noticed by Daniel Brandt of Misplaced Pages Watch, and communicated to the original article author. (See: Essjay controversy)
• February, 2007 - In February 2007, Barbara Bauer, a literary agent, sued Wikimedia for defamation and causing harm to her business, the Barbara Bauer Literary Agency. In Bauer v. Glatzer, Bauer claimed that information on Misplaced Pages critical of her abilities as a literary agent caused this harm. The Electronic Frontier Foundation defended Misplaced Pages and moved to dismiss the case on 1 May 2008.
• February, 2007 - In February 2007 Taner Akçam, a Turkish academic who was one of the first to acknowledge and openly discuss the Armenian Genocide, was detained in Canada at the airport in Montreal for nearly four hours after arriving on a flight from the United States. He was due to give a lecture at the invitation of the McGill University Faculty of Law and Concordia University. In explaining his detention, Taner Akçam says that Canadian authorities referred to an inaccurate version of his biography on Misplaced Pages from around December 24, 2006, which called him a terrorist.
• March 2, 2007 – The Essjay controversy was an incident concerning a prominent Misplaced Pages participant and salaried Wikia employee, known by the username Essjay, who later identified himself as Ryan Jordan. Jordan held trusted volunteer positions within Misplaced Pages known as "administrator", "bureaucrat", "arbitrator", and "mediator". On July 24, 2006, a thread titled "Who is Essjay?" (later retitled "Who is Essjay?, Probably he's Ryan Jordan" after Jordan's self-disclosure) was started on forum site Misplaced Pages Review, the ensuing discussion bringing to light the contradictions, yet five days later The New Yorker published an interview with Essjay, complete with the falsehoods. The New Yorker later appended their story with an editor's note.
• June 2007 - In June 2007 a statement regarding Nancy Benoit's death was added to the Chris Benoit English Misplaced Pages article fourteen hours before police discovered the bodies of Benoit and his family. This seemingly prescient addition was initially reported on Wikinews and later on Fox News Channel. The article originally read: "Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW World Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy." The phrase "stemming from the death of his wife Nancy" was added at 12:01 a.m. EDT on June 25, whereas the Fayette County police reportedly discovered the bodies of the Benoit family at 2:30 p.m. EDT (14 hours, 29 minutes later). The IP address of the editor was traced to Stamford, Connecticut, which is also the location of WWE headquarters. After news of the early death notice reached mainstream media, the anonymous poster accessed Wikinews to explain his edit as a "huge coincidence and nothing more."
• August, 2007 - In August of 2007 it became known that Virgil Griffith, a Caltech computation and neural-systems graduate student, created a searchable database that linked changes made by anonymous Misplaced Pages editors to companies and organizations from which the changes were made. The database cross-referenced logs of Misplaced Pages edits with publicly available records pertaining to the internet IP addresses edits were made from.

  

  Griffith was motivated by the edits from the United States Congress, and wanted to see if others were similarly promoting themselves. He was particularly interested in finding scandals, especially at large and controversial corporations. He said he wanted to, "create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what 'interesting organizations' (which I am neutral towards) are up to." He also wanted to give Misplaced Pages readers a tool to check edits for accuracy and allow the automation and indexing of edits.Most of the edits Wikiscanner found were minor or harmless, but the site was mined to detect the most controversial and embarrassing instance of conflict of interest edits. These instances received media coverage worldwide. Included among the accused were the Vatican, the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US Democratic Party's Congressional Campaign Committee, the US Republican Party, Britain's Labour Party, Britain's Conservative Party, the Canadian government, Industry Canada, the Department of Prime Minister, Cabinet, and Defence in Australia, the United Nations, the US Senate, the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Environmental Protection Agency, Montana Senator Conrad Burns, Ohio Governor Bob Taft, the Israeli government, Exxon Mobil, Walmart, AstraZeneca, Diebold, Dow Chemical, Disney, Dell, Anheuser-Busch, Nestlé, Pepsi, Boeing, Sony Computer Entertainment, EA, SCO Group, MySpace, Pfizer, Raytheon, DuPont, Anglican and Catholic churches, the Church of Scientology, the World Harvest Church, Amnesty International, the Discovery Channel, Fox News, CBS, The Washington Post, the National Rifle Association, News International, Al Jazeera, Bob Jones University, and Ohio State University.Although the edits correlated with known IP addresses, there was no proof that the changes actually came from a member of the organization or employee of the company, only that someone had access to their network.Misplaced Pages spokespersons received WikiScanner positively, noting that it helped prevent conflicts of interest from influencing articles as well as increasing transparency and mitigating attempts to remove or distort relevant facts.In 2008 Griffith released an updated version of WikiScanner called WikiWatcher, which also exploited a common mistake made by users with registered accounts who accidentally forget to log in, revealing their IP address and subsequently their affiliations. As of March 2012 WikiScanner's website was online, but not functioning.

• September, 2007 - In September 2007 changes were made about Prince Johan Friso and his wife Princess Mabel of the Netherlands, which were traced back to their palace.
• October, 2007 - In October 2007, in their obituaries of recently deceased TV theme composer Ronnie Hazlehurst, many British media organisations reported that he had co-written the S Club 7 song "Reach". In fact, he hadn't, and it was discovered that this information had been sourced from a hoax edit to Hazlehurst's Misplaced Pages article.

2008

• March, 2008 – In March 2008 Misplaced Pages co-founder Jimmy Wales used Misplaced Pages to to dump his lover, Rachel Marsden, by adding a single sentence to his own Misplaced Pages article stating "I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden."
• March, 2008 – In March 2008, Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied. Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past".
• March, 2008 – In March 2008 it was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Misplaced Pages entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense".
• April, 2008 In April 2008 Phorm deleted material related to a controversy over its advertising deals.
• May, 2008 – In May, 2008 a long-running dispute between members of the Church of Scientology and Misplaced Pages editors reached Misplaced Pages's arbitration committee. The church members were accused of attempting to sway articles in the church's interests, while other editors were accused of the opposite. The arbitration committee unanimously voted to block all edits from the IP addresses associated with the church; several Scientology critics were banned too.
• December, 2008 – In early December the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) added the Misplaced Pages page about the album Virgin Killer to its blacklist of websites containing material potentially illegal in the United Kingdom because it contains an image of a naked prepubescent girl. The IWF's blacklist is voluntarily enforced by 95% of British Internet Service Providers and their action left most British residents unable to edit any page on Misplaced Pages. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) protested the blacklisting of the page even though, as the IWF stated at the time, "the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978," and, in an "unprecedented" move, the IWF agreed to remove the page from its blacklist.Further information: Internet Watch Foundation and Misplaced Pages
• December, 2008 – Professor T. Mills Kelly conducts a class project on "Lying About the Past", which results in the Edward Owens hoax. A biography was created about "Edward Owens" who was claimed to be an oyster fisherman that became a pirate during the period of the Long Depression, targeting ships in the Chesapeake Bay. It was revealed when media outlets began reporting the story as fact.

2009

• January 20, 2009 – The Misplaced Pages article for West Virginia senator Robert Byrd was briefly edited to state, incorrectly, that he had died. Senator Edward Kennedy's article was also changed at this time to reflect his notional death. Shortly thereafter Jimmy Wales was quoted by Fox News as saying "This nonsense would have been 100% prevented by Flagged Revisions".
• February, 2009 – In February 2009, Scott Kildall and collaborator Nathaniel Stern created Misplaced Pages Art, a performance art piece as a live article on Misplaced Pages. Site editors quickly concluded that the project violated Misplaced Pages's rules and opted to delete it 15 hours after it was initially posted. A month later, Kildall and Stern received a letter from a law firm representing the Wikimedia Foundation, claiming the domain name, wikipediaart.org, infringed on their trademark. The ensuing controversy was reported in the national press. Misplaced Pages Art has since been included in the Internet Pavilion of the Venice Biennale for 2009. It also appeared in a revised form at the Transmediale festival in Berlin in 2011.
• March, 2009 – Mere hours after the death of French composer Maurice Jarre, Irish student Shane Fitzgerald added a phony quote to Jarre's Misplaced Pages article. The quote said "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear." The quote was quickly copy/pasted by journalists and incorporated into numerous obituaries of Jarre published in newspapers around the world, including The Guardian and The Independent.
• May, 2009 - In May 2009 Wikipedian David Boothroyd created controversy in 2009 when it was discovered that he edited Misplaced Pages under the user names Dbiv, Fys, and Sam Blacketer and eventually became part of the site's policy-enforcing Arbitration Committee. After earning Administrator status with one account, then being de-sysopped for inappropriate use of the admin tools, Boothroyd regained Administrator status with the "Sam Blacketer" sockpuppet account. A Labour Party member, after being sleuthed out by Misplaced Pages Review contributor, "Tarantino", Boothroyd outted himself for having used sockpuppets in the course of obtaining his position and for having edited the article of Conservative Party leader David Cameron.
• July, 2009 - 14 July 2009, the National Portrait Gallery issued a cease and desist letter for alleged breach of copyright, against a Misplaced Pages editor who downloaded more than 3,000 high-resolution images from the NPG website, and placed them on Wikimedia Commons. See National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute for more.

2010

• April, 2010 - In April, 2010, Misplaced Pages's co-founder, Larry Sanger, informed the FBI that a large amount of child pornography was available on Wikimedia Commons. Sanger told Fox News that “I wasn’t shocked that it was online, but I was shocked that it was on a Wikimedia Foundation site that purports to be a reference site.” Co-founder Jimmy Wales responded by claiming that a strong statement from the Wikimedia Foundation would be forthcoming. In the weeks following Sanger's letter, Wales responded by unilaterally deleting a number of images which he personally deemed to be pornographic. Wales's unilateral actions led to an outcry from the Wikipedian community, which in turn prompted Wales to voluntarily relinquish some of his user privileges.
• July, 2010 - In July 2010, following the football World Cup the FIFA president Sepp Blatter was awarded the Order of The Companions of O R Tambo for his contribution over the World Cup. The South African Government's webpage announcing the award referred to him as Joseph Sepp B******d Blatter, the nickname having been taken from his vandalized wikipedia article.

2011

• June, 2011 -In June 2011 PR Week reported on a 'fixer', a known but unnamed London-based figure in the PR industry who offered services to 'cleanse' articles. Misplaced Pages entries this person was accused of changing included "Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross, Von Essen Group chairman Andrew Davis, British property developer David Rowland, billionaire Saudi tycoon Maan Al-Sanea, and Edward Stanley, 19th Earl of Derby. According to PR Week, 42 edits were made from the same IP address, most of them removing negative or controversial information, or adding positive information.
• September, 2011 - In September 2011 British writer and journalist Johann Hari admitted using Misplaced Pages to attack his opponents by editing the online encyclopedia's articles about them under a pseudonym.

2012

• January, 2012 –In January 2012, British MP Tom Watson discovered that Portland Communications had been removing the nickname of one of its clients' products ("Wife Beater", referring to Anheuser-Busch InBev's Stella Artois beer) from Misplaced Pages. Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) CEO Jane Wilson noted, "Stella Artois is on the 'wife-beater' page because it is a nick-name in common currency for that brand of strong continental lager. The brand managers who want to change this have a wider reputational issue to address, editing the term from a Misplaced Pages page will not get rid of this association." Other edits from Portland's offices included changes to articles about another Portland client, the Kazakhstan's BTA Bank, and its former head Mukhtar Ablyazov. Portland did not deny making the changes, arguing they had been done transparently and in accordance with Misplaced Pages's policies. Portland Communications welcomed CIPR's subsequent announcement of a collaboration with Misplaced Pages and invited Jimmy Wales to speak to their company, as he did at Bell Pottinger. Tom Watson was optimistic about the collaboration: "PR professionals need clear guidelines in this new world of online-information-sharing. That's why I am delighted that interested parties are coming together to establish a clear code of conduct."
• March, 2012 – In March 2012, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism uncovered that UK MPs or their staff had made almost 10,000 edits to the encyclopedia, and that almost one in six MPs had had their Misplaced Pages article edited from within Parliament. Many of the changes dealt with removing unflattering details from during the 2009 expenses scandal, as well as other controversial issues. Former MP Joan Ryan admitted to changing her entry "whenever there’s misleading or untruthful information been placed on it." Clare Short said her staff were "angry and protective" over mistakes and criticisms in her Misplaced Pages article and acknowledged they might have made changes to it. Labour MP Fabian Hamilton also reported having one of his assistants edit a page to make it more accurate in his view. MP Philip Davies denied making changes about removing controversial comments related to Muslims from 2006 and 2007.

• July, 2012 – In July, 2012, Wikimedia UK chairperson and Misplaced Pages sysop Ashley van Haeften was banned from the English Misplaced Pages. He was only the ninth Misplaced Pages sysop to be banned. In August 2012, van Haeften resigned as chairperson of Wikimedia UK.

• September, 2012 – In September, 2012, author Philip Roth published an open letter to Misplaced Pages, describing conflicts he experienced with the Misplaced Pages community while attempting to modify the Misplaced Pages article about his novel The Human Stain: although the character Coleman Silk had been inspired by the case of Melvin Tumin, many literary critics had drawn parallels between Silk and the life of Anatole Broyard, and Roth sought to remove statements that Broyard had been suggested as an inspiration; however, Roth's edits had been reverted on the grounds that direct statements from the author were a primary source, not a secondary. Misplaced Pages administrator and community liaison Oliver Keyes subsequently wrote a blog post criticizing both Roth and his approach, and pointed out that even prior to Roth's attempts to modify the article, it had already cited a published interview in which Roth stated that the inspiration for Coleman Silk had been Tumin rather than Broyard. Keyes also pointed out that the edits had been made via an anonymous IP address, with no evidence provided to support the claim that Roth was actually involved.

• September, 2012 – Gibraltarpedia, a project inspired by Monmouthpedia, was set up where editors created articles about Gibraltar that would then be linked from QR code plaques at spots around the island. The project came under scrutiny due to concerns about a Wikimedia UK board member who was head of the project, Roger Bamkin, having a professional relationship with the government of Gibraltar in connection with Gibraltarpedia. Of primary concern was that the site's main page "Did You Know" section was allegedly being used for the promotional purposes of Bamkin's clients. Bamkin, under pressure, eventually resigned as a Board Trustee

• October, 2012 – In October 2012, Asian soccer's governing body was forced to apologize to the United Arab Emirates soccer team for referring to them as the "Sand Monkeys"; the spurious nickname had been taken from a vandalized Misplaced Pages article.

• October, 2012 – In October 2012, the Occupy Melbourne article was edited from City of Melbourne IP address to altering language about recent protests, on the heels of the election of lord mayor Robert Doyle.

• November, 2012 – In November 2012, Lord Justice Leveson wrote in his report on British press standards, “The Independent was founded in 1986 by the journalists Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Brett Straub...” He had used the Misplaced Pages article for The Independent newspaper as his source, but an act of vandalism had replaced Matthew Symonds (a genuine co-founder) with Brett Straub (an unknown character). The Economist said of the Leveson report, "Parts of it are a scissors-and-paste job culled from Misplaced Pages."

2013

• January, 2013 – The discovery of a hoax article on the "Bicholim conflict" caused widespread press coverage. The article, a meticulously crafted but completely made-up description of a fictitious war in Indian Goa, had been listed as a "Good Article" on Misplaced Pages for more than five years – a quality award given to fewer than 1 percent of all articles on the English Misplaced Pages.
• January 2013 In January 2013 Jimbo Wales created a controversy, when he restricted the discussion regarding his friendship to Tony Blair and the government of Kazakhstan on his talk page.
• February, 2013 – In February 2013, prison company GEO Group received media coverage when a Misplaced Pages user under the name Abraham Cohen edited the entry on the company regarding naming rights to Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Stadium; GEO Group's Manager of Corporate Relations at the time was named Abraham Cohen, also an FAU alumnus. The majority of these edits had been made under a Misplaced Pages account named "Abraham Cohen".
• March, 2013 – Controversy arose in March 2013 after it emerged that large segments of the BP article had originated from a corporate employee who was a Misplaced Pages editor
• March, 2013 - In March of 2013 it became known that during the 2008 US presidential race, changes made by both Barack Obama and John McCain's campaigns made the news and there were suspicious updates to Sarah Palin's biography after the announcement that she would run for the vice-presidency.

• April, 2013 – In April 2013, the French secret service was accused of attempting to censor Misplaced Pages by threatening a Misplaced Pages volunteer with arrest unless "classified information" about a military radio station was deleted.
• April, 2013 – In April 2013, it was confirmed by a spokesperson for the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media that Misplaced Pages had been blacklisted over the article 'Cannabis Smoking' on Russian Misplaced Pages. . On March 31, 2013 the New York Times reported that Russia was beginning 'Selectively Blocking Internet'.
• April, 2013 – In April 2013, The Sun alleged that in 2007 Chuka Umunna, using the Misplaced Pages Username Socialdemocrat, created and repeatedly edited his own Misplaced Pages page. Umunna told the Daily Telegraph that he did not alter his own Misplaced Pages page, but the paper quoted what they called "sources close to Umunna" as having told the newspaper that "it was possible that one of his campaign team in 2007, when he was trying to be selected to be Labour's candidate for Streatham in the 2010 general election, set up the page." On 11 April 2013, the Evening Standard alleged that an edit in January 2008 was made on a computer at the law firm at which he then worked. Umunna said that he had "no recollection" of doing so.

See also

• Censorship of Misplaced Pages
• Conflict of interest editing on Misplaced Pages
• Reliability of Misplaced Pages

References

1. ^ Eric Goldman (October 5, 2012). "Misplaced Pages's "Pay-for-Play" Scandal Highlights Misplaced Pages's Vulnerabilities". Forbes.
2. Angwin, Julia; Fowler, Geoffrey (November 27, 2009). "Volunteers Log Off as Misplaced Pages Ages". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
3. The Future of the Internet: Ubiquity, mobility, security, by Harrison Rainie (et al), Cambria Press, 2009, page 259.
4. Digital Cognitive Technologies: Epistemology and Knowledge Society, edited by Claire Brossard (et al), John Wiley & Sons, 2013, page 325.
5. Using Misplaced Pages, Gould Library of Carleton College, Using Resources guide.
6. Brodkin, Jon (11 January 2011). "Misplaced Pages celebrates a decade of edit wars, controversy and Internet dominance". Network World. Retrieved 17 April 2013.
7. Beaumont, Claudine (15 June 2010). "Misplaced Pages rolls out 'pending changes'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 17 April 2013.
8. Frewin, Jonathan (15 June 2010). "Misplaced Pages unlocks divisive pages for editing". BBC News. Retrieved 17 April 2013.
9. Brian Cubbison (September 15, 2004). "How Syracuse Became Test of Online Credibility". Post-Standard.(subscription required)
10. Alex Halavais (August 29, 2004). "The Isuzu Experiment". A Thaumaturgical Compendium. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
11. Brock Read (October 27, 2006). "Can Misplaced Pages Ever Make the Grade?". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
12. P. D. Magnus (September 1, 2008). "Early response to false claims in Misplaced Pages". First Monday. 13 (9).
13. Cohen, Noam (August 24, 2009). "Misplaced Pages to Limit Changes to Articles on People". The New York Times. Retrieved April 7, 2012.
14. ^ Seigenthaler, John. "A false Misplaced Pages 'biography'." USA Today. November 29, 2005. Retrieved on September 14, 2009.
15. ^ Katherine Q. Seelye (December 11, 2005). "A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Misplaced Pages Prank". New York Times. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
16. "Misplaced Pages joker eats humble pie". BBC News. BBC. December 12, 2005. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
17. "Misplaced Pages". St. Petersburg Times. December 27, 2005.
18. ^ Evan Lehmann (January 27, 2006). "Rewriting history under the dome". Lowell Sun. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
19. Hillary Profita (February 1, 2006). "Around The 'Sphere: Of Wiki Controversies, Personal Blogs And War Reporters". Retrieved April 16, 2013.
20. Evan Hansen (19 December 2005). "Misplaced Pages Founder Edits Own Bio". Wired.
21. MITCHELL, Dan (04 December 2005). "Insider Editing at Misplaced Pages". New York Times. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)(subscription required)
22. Tammet, Daniel (2009). Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind. Simon and Schuster. p. 206. ISBN 1416576185.
23. Paul Jay (April 19, 2007). "The Misplaced Pages experiment". CBC News. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
24. Anick Jesdanun (March 11, 2006). "Misplaced Pages critic finds copied passages". MSNBC. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
25. See for example: this article on the scandal. The activities documented were:

    Politician	Editing undertaken	Sources
    Marty Meehan	Replacement with staff-written biography	Congressional staffers edit boss's bio on Misplaced Pages
    Norm Coleman	Rewrite to make more favorable, claimed to be "correcting errors")	"Web site's entry on Coleman revised Aide confirms his staff edited biography, questions Misplaced Pages's accuracy". St. Paul Pioneer Press(Associated Press). {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)
    Conrad Burns Montana	Removal of quoted pejorative statements the Senator had made, and replacing them with "glowing tributes" as "the voice of the farmer")	Williams, Walt (1 January 2007). "Burns' office may have tampered with Misplaced Pages entry". Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Retrieved 13 February 2007.
    Joe Biden	Removal of unfavorable information	Congressional staffers edit boss's bio on Misplaced Pages
    Gil Gutknecht	Staff rewrite and removal of information evidencing broken campaign promise. (Multiple attempts)	On 16 August 2006, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reported that the office of Representative Gil Gutknecht tried twice — on 24 July 2006 and 14 August 2006 — to remove a 128-word section in the Misplaced Pages article on him, replacing it with a more flattering 315-word entry taken from his official congressional biography. Most of the removed text was about the 12-year term-limit Gutknecht imposed on himself in 1995 (Gutknecht ran for re-election in 2006, breaking his promise). A spokesman for Gutknecht did not dispute that his office tried to change his Misplaced Pages entry, but questioned the reliability of the encyclopedia. ("Gutknecht joins Misplaced Pages tweakers", Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, 16 August 2006. Retrieved 17 August 2006). Multiple attempts, first using a named account, then an anonymous IP account.

26. Information included the mention of an opponent's son's arrest in a fatal drunk driving accident, and the allegation of questionable business practices of another. Ralph Thomas (April 28, 2006). "Online postings changed; ex-Gregoire aide resigns". The Seattle Times.
27. "Misplaced Pages Founder Refutes Claims That It Banned Qatar" by Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek, 2 January 2007
28. Catherine Elsworth (January 26, 2007). "Microsoft under fire in Wiki edit war". The Telegraph. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
29. Dylan Bushell-Embling (February 26, 2008). "Bias claim on big Office vote". Sydney Morning Herald.
30. Brian Bergstein (January 25, 2007). "Microsoft in trouble over Misplaced Pages pay offer". Mail & Guardian. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
31. "Golfer Zoeller sues law firm for Misplaced Pages posting" (February 22, 2007), MiamiHerald.com
32. Golfer Sues Over Vandalized Misplaced Pages Page. (February 22, 2007), The Smoking Gun
33. ^ Schiff, Stacy (24 July 2006). "Annals of Information: Know It All: Can Misplaced Pages conquer expertise?". The New Yorker. Retrieved 16 April 2007. Cite error: The named reference "New Yorker" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
34. Finkelstein, Seth (8 March 2007). "Read me first". Technology. London: The Guardian. Retrieved 16 April 2007.
35. "Bauer v. Wikimedia et al. | Electronic Frontier Foundation". Eff.org. Retrieved 13 April 2010.
36. "EFF and Sheppard Mullin Defend Misplaced Pages in Defamation Case | Electronic Frontier Foundation". Eff.org. 2 May 2008. Retrieved 13 April 2010.
37. ^ Fisk, Robert (April 21, 2007). "Any political filth or personal libel can be hurled at the innocent" (PDF). The Independent. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
38. Jay, Paul (2007-06-22). "A question of authority". CBC News. In Depth: Technology. Retrieved 2008-05-16.
39. See: Misplaced Pages userpage of Essjay
40. "Who is Essjay?, Probably he's Ryan Jordan"
41. Edit to Chris Benoit Misplaced Pages entry on June 25, 2007, 04:01 UTC
42. Bachelor, Blane (2007-06-28). "Web Time Stamps Indicate Benoit Death Reported About 14 Hours Before Police Found Bodies". Fox News Channel. Retrieved 2008-05-21.
43. "Anonymous poster comments on Wikinews".
44. "User admits 'death' editing on Misplaced Pages 14 hours before bodies found". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 2007-06-28. Archived from the original on 2008-02-28. Retrieved 2008-05-21.
45. ^ Borland, John (2005-11-17). "See Who's Editing Misplaced Pages - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign". Wired.
46. ^ Mikkelsen, Randall (2007-08-16). "CIA, FBI computers used for Misplaced Pages edits". Reuters. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
47. ^ "Misplaced Pages and the art of censorship". Belfast Telegraph. 2007-08-18. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
48. Poulsen, Kevin (2007-08-13). "Vote On the Most Shameful Misplaced Pages Spin Jobs - UPDATED | Threat Level". Wired. Retrieved 2012-04-01.
49. "Did Vatican alter Misplaced Pages info on Adams?". Belfast Telegraph. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
50. ^ Fildes, Jonathan (2007-08-15). "Technology | Misplaced Pages 'shows CIA page edits'". BBC News. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
51. "CIA caught rewriting Misplaced Pages biographies". Daily Mail. 2007-08-15. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
52. ^ Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent (2007-08-14). "Companies and party aides cast censorious eye over Misplaced Pages". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-02-12. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
53. ^ "Government computers linked to Misplaced Pages edits | CTV News". CTV News. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
54. "Government buffing Prentice's Misplaced Pages entry". CBC News. 2008-06-04. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
55. "Defence blocks staff's Misplaced Pages access - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)". ABC News. 2007-08-24. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
56. August 23, 2007 11:30PM (2007-08-23). "PM's staff edit Misplaced Pages entries". Adelaide Now. Retrieved 2012-02-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
57. "PM's Dept denies making Misplaced Pages changes - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)" (in Template:Zh icon). ABC News. 2007-08-24. Retrieved 2012-02-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
58. "PM 'not behind Misplaced Pages edits'". ABC News. 24 August 2007.
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59. "PM's staff sanitise Misplaced Pages - Technology". Sydney Morning Herald. 2007-08-24.
60. "`Wikiscanner' reveals source of edits". Taipei Times. 2012-03-11. Retrieved 2012-03-18.
61. Heffernan, Virginia (2008-11-21). "WIKISCANNER". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-03-18.
62. ^ "Behind the e-curtain". The Boston Globe. 2007-08-26. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
63. ^ "Misplaced Pages 'editors' have vested interests | The Columbus Dispatch". Dispatch.com. 2007-09-06. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
64. Books (2007-08-20). "Misplaced Pages and the art of censorship - Lifestyle". Independent.ie. Retrieved 2012-03-23.
65. ^ "Big Name Firms Accused Of Wiki Cover-Up | Business | Sky News". News.sky.com. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
66. ^ Hafner, Katie (2007-08-19). "Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Misplaced Pages Edits". The New York Times.
67. computerandvideogames.com Andy Robinson (2007-09-04). "Xbox News: SCEE caught editing Halo 3 wiki". ComputerAndVideoGames.com. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
68. computerandvideogames.com Stuart Bishop (2007-08-16). "News: EA caught fiddling Misplaced Pages". ComputerAndVideoGames.com. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
69. Biuso, Emily (2007-12-09). "Wikiscanning - New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
70. "Misplaced Pages is only as anonymous as your IP - O'Reilly Radar". Radar.oreilly.com. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
71. "The Wiki-Hacker Strikes Again". Forbes.com. 2008-07-19. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
72. "WikiWatcher.com". Retrieved 2012-03-15.
73. "Royal couple edited own Misplaced Pages entry". Daily Times. 3 September 2007.
74. Braindead obituarists hoaxed by Misplaced Pages Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 3 October 2007
75. Gardner, David (04 March 2008). "Misplaced Pages founder used his website to dump his lover - and SHE used eBay to get revenge". Mail Online. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)(subscription required)
76. "Lover is deleted online". Daily Record. March 5, 2008.(subscription required)
77. Moses, Asher (March 5, 2008). "Misplaced Pages's Jimmy Wales accused of expenses rort". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved October 17, 2009.
78. Kim, Ryan (March 5, 2007). "Allegations swirl around Misplaced Pages's Wales". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved October 31, 2008.
79. Moses, Asher (March 11, 2008). "More woes for Misplaced Pages's Jimmy Wales". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved March 11, 2008.
80. "Wiki boss 'edited for donation'". BBC News. March 12, 2008. Retrieved October 31, 2008.
81. Williams, Christopher (8 April 2008). "Phorm admits 'over zealous' editing of Misplaced Pages article". The Register.
82. Moore, Matthew (30 May 2009). "Church of Scientology members banned from editing Misplaced Pages". The Daily Telegraph.
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83. Struan Robertson (December 11, 2008). "Was it right to censor a Misplaced Pages page?". Financial Times.(subscription required)
84. "Internet watchdog backs down over naked girl image". Agence France-Presse. December 10, 2008.(subscription required)
85. "IWF lifts UK Misplaced Pages ban". Guardian Unlimited. December 9, 2008.(subscription required)
86. Howard, Jennifer (18 December 2008). "Teaching by Lying: Professor Unveils 'Last Pirate' Hoax". The Chronicle of Higher Education.(subscription required)
87. Jon Brodkin (January 14, 2011). "The 10 biggest hoaxes in Misplaced Pages's first 10 years". Network World. Retrieved May 17, 2012.
88. Jake Stump (January 28, 2009). "Misplaced Pages mistakenly reports Byrd dead". The Times West Virginian. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
89. "Misplaced Pages May Make Itself Harder to Edit". Fox News. January 27, 2009. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
90. "Misplaced Pages Art". Misplaced Pages Art. 2011. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
91. "Giga Law Firm Letter" (PDF). Misplaced Pages Art. 2011. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
92. Mijuk, Goran (2009, July 29). "The Internet as Art". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 3 March 2011. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
93. Bruce, Sterling (2009, May 30). "The Internet Pavilion at the Venice Biennale". Wired. Retrieved 3 March 2011. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
94. "Transmediale: Open Web Award 2011 Nominees Announced!". Transmediale. 2011. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
95. "Student's Misplaced Pages hoax dupes newspapers". ABC News. May 7, 2009. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
96. Shawn Pogatchnik. "Student hoaxs world's media on wikipedia". NBC News. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
97. Noam Cohen (August 24, 2009). "Misplaced Pages to Limit Changes to Articles on People". New York Times. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
98. Metz, Cade (26 May 2009). "Sockpuppeting British politico resigns from Wikisupremecourt". The Register. Retrieved 2009-05-27.
99. Maev Kennedy "Legal row over National Portrait Gallery images placed on Misplaced Pages". The Guardian. 14 July 2009.
100. BBC "Gallery in Misplaced Pages legal threat". BBC News. July 15, 2009. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
101. "National Portrait Gallery sues Misplaced Pages". Metro.co.uk. 14 July 2009. Retrieved 13 April 2010.
102. BBC Misplaced Pages painting row escalates 17 July 2009
103. Jana Winter (April 27, 2010). "Misplaced Pages Distributing Child Porn, Co-Founder Tells FBI". Fox News. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
104. "The Porn on Commons Must Go". slashdot.com. May 6, 2010. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
105. Emma Barnett (May 11, 2010). "Misplaced Pages porn row sees founder give up his editing privileges". The Telegraph. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
106. Dave Masters (July 15, 2010). "Blatter gets an OBE (Order of the Bellend)". The Sun. Retrieved April 16, 2013. {{cite news}}: line feed character in |title= at position 30 (help)
107. Murray Wardrop (July 15, 2010). "Sepp Blatter given embarrassing nickname on World Cup award". The Telegraph. Retrieved April 16, 2010.
108. "'Fixer' cleans Misplaced Pages entries for senior business figures | PR & public relations news". PRWeek. 9 June 2011.
109. Johann Hari (September 15, 2011). "Johann Hari: A personal apology". The Independent. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
110. Joel Gunter (September 27, 2011). "Orwell Prize will not pursue Hari over failure to return money". journalism.co.uk. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
111. Wilson, Jane (6 February 2012). "Misplaced Pages: the real public relations opportunity". The Huffington Post.
112. Oliver Wright (4 January 2012). "Lobbying company tried to wipe out 'wife beater' beer references". The Independent.
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113. "Portland welcomes CIPR's plans to work with Misplaced Pages on industry guidelines | PR & public relations news". PRWeek. 12 January 2012.
114. "Cipr To Work With Misplaced Pages". Corp Comms. Retrieved 14 March 2012.
115. Furness, Hannah (9 March 2012). "MPs Misplaced Pages pages 'changed from inside Parliament'". The Daily Telegraph.
116. ^ "Misplaced Pages: 'Bob Crow, The Lord of the Rings and Notable DJs': TBIJ". Thebureauinvestigates.com. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
117. Eddie Wrenn (2012-03-09). "MPs and their staff make 10,000 changes to Misplaced Pages pages in bid to hide embarrassing information | Mail Online". Dailymail.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
118. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/9447161/Wikipedia-charity-chairman-resigns-after-pornography-row.html
119. Who’s Misplaced Pages? What’s Philip Roth? The digital culture war, at Yahoo News, by Virginia Heffernan, published September 13, 2012; retrieved April 16, 2013
120. Philip Roth and Misplaced Pages, published September 15, 2012; retrieved April 16, 2013
121. "Gibraltarpedia" (PDF). Government of Gibraltar. 13 July 2012. Retrieved 23 September 2012.
122. Blue, Violet (18 September 2012). "Corruption in Wikiland? Paid PR scandal erupts at Misplaced Pages". CNET.
123. "Asian soccer body blames Misplaced Pages for slur of UAE team", USA Today, July 31, 2006.
124. Grubb, Ben (20 February 2013). "Melbourne council computer made 'controversial' edits to Misplaced Pages page". Bendigo Advertiser.
125. Andy McSmith (30 November 2012). "Leveson's Misplaced Pages moment: how internet 'research' on The Independent's history left him red-faced". The Independent. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
126. "The Leveson Inquiry. Hacked to pieces". The Economist. 8 December 2012. Retrieved 26 December 2012.
127. ^ http://www.dailydot.com/news/wikipedia-bicholim-conflict-hoax-deleted/
128. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2257482/The-war-Misplaced Pages-fooled-years-Bicholim-Conflict-article-elaborate-4-500-word-hoax.html
     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/wikipedia-hoax-bicholim-conflict_n_2432633.html
     http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/06/an-imaginary-war-a-wikipedia-hoax/
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129. N Chrsitopher Williams [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/9764719/Wikipedia-co-founder-Jimmy-Wales-restricts-discussion-of-Tony-Blair-friendship.html
130. Kurtenbach, Dieter (2013-02-21). "Nothing to see here: Is GEO Group editing its Misplaced Pages page?". Sun-sentinel.com. Retrieved 2013-03-23.
131. Takei, Carl. "Private Prison Company Doctors Its Own Misplaced Pages Page and Fabricates Facts to Fight Bad Publicity". Aclu.org. Retrieved 2013-03-23.
132. Violet Blue, "Big Oil's Misplaced Pages cleanup: A brand management experiment out of control", ZDNet, 27 March 2013. Retrieved 28 March 2013
133. Natasha Lennard Salon, March 21, 2013. Retrieved 28 March 2013
134. "Staffs for US presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama caught making questionable edits to Misplaced Pages". Mister-Info.com. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
135. Noam Cohen (1 September 2008). "Editing - and re-editing - Sarah Palin's Misplaced Pages Entry". The New York Times.
136. "French secret service accused of censorship over Misplaced Pages page". The Guardian. 7 April 2013. Retrieved 9 April 2013.
137. http://en.ria.ru/russia/20130405/180469665.html
138. http://rbth.ru/news/2013/04/05/russian_media_regulator_confirms_wikipedia_blacklisted_24706.html
139. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/technology/russia-begins-selectively-blocking-internet-content.html?_r=0
140. Heighton, Luke (6 April 2013). "Chuka's Wiki'd act". The Sun. Retrieved 2013-04-07.
141. Kember, Billy (12 April 2013). "Flattering 'British Obama' edit on Misplaced Pages raises questions for MP Chuka Umunna". The Times (London). Retrieved 2013-04-12.
142. Hope, Christopher (7 April 2013). "Labour star Chuka Umunna admits his aides probably set up and edited his own Misplaced Pages page". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2013-04-08.
143. Watts, Joseph (11 April 2013). "Mystery deepens over who changed Misplaced Pages entry of Labour star Chuka Umunna". Evening Standard. Retrieved 2013-04-11.

• Articles with failed verification from February 2007
• History of Misplaced Pages
• Controversies