The promise of accurate, neutral articles and privacy for contributors is often just a mirage, according to two insiders. They say they’ve been left battle-scarred after troubling personal encounters with the world’s most popular encyclopedia.
It’s billed as “the encyclopedia anyone can edit.” But for many, it’s the opposite.
Greg Kohs is among the blocked. Banned, he says, for challenging Wikipedia policies.
Kohs: Just in the past four hours, 500 IP addresses and users have been blocked from editing Wikipedia.
In 2012, Kohs helped start an opposing website called, “Wikipediocracy,” to expose what he calls Wikipedia’s “misinformation, defamation and general nonsense.”
Sharyl: So Wikipedia does censor users?
Kohs: Absolutely. In a given day, Wikipedia administrators typically are blocking about 1,000 different IP addresses.
Sharyl: 1,000 a day?
Kohs: 1,000 a day. Yes.
When Kohs ran afoul of Wikipedia, he was drawn into an unseen cyberworld. One where he says volunteer editors dole out punishment and retaliation, privacy is violated and special interests control information.
Sharyl: Most people don’t know what?
Kohs: Wikipedia is often edited by people who have an agenda.
As I wrote in SJWAL, the near-complete convergence of social media is the reason that it is necessary for the alt-right to develop superior, broad-spectrum alternatives to everything from Twitter and Tumblr to Facebook and Wikipedia.
There will be many challenges, not least of which is resisting the temptation to be bought out by these ludicrously well-funded profitless corporations. I have no doubt that Facebook, for one, will expertly play the Microsoft strategy of acquire and conquer. But those challenges must be met, all the same, because leaving the intersection of money, technology, and media under the control of SJWs means the intellectual enchainment of humanity.
And this behavior on the part of SJW Wikipedians goes well beyond creepy and reaches downright scary. Notice the typical SJW behavior of targeting their opponents’ jobs.
Kohs sees himself as an equalizer. His business helps clients, including supposed victims of unfair edits, navigate Wikipedia’s unbridled landscape. Wikipedia banned him for violating the policy against paid editing and when Kohs criticized the policy and continued under a borrowed account, Wikipedia editors targeted him.
They went to great lengths to track him, using inside information and computer addresses. They researched where Kohs grew up, and traced his movements all the way to Orlando, Florida, where he was making edits while on vacation.
Sharyl: Wikipedia editors that you didn’t know at the time were tracking your movements, speculating that you went home for Thanksgiving?
Kohs: That’s absolutely correct.
He only discovered that he was being tracked because somebody leaked internal Wikipedia discussions about him.
Kohs: And then somebody chimed in, ‘looks like someone went home for Thanksgiving to visit mom and dad,’ so you think you’re editing with some degree of privacy, but if they want to they can really start to investigate.