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The full episode, in writing.
In May 2005, John Seigenthaler, a prominent American journalist, found himself the subject of a defamatory Wikipedia hoax article. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy and claimed he had lived in the Soviet Union for over a decade. These claims were entirely fabricated by an anonymous user as a prank directed at a coworker. The hoax remained online for months, raising widespread questions about the reliability of Wikipedia and other user-edited websites. Daniel Brandt, a critic of Wikipedia, identified the perpetrator, which led to coverage by The New York Times and, eventually, the removal of the hoax.
In March 2007, Wikipedia faced another controversy known as the Essjay incident. Essjay, a well-known editor and administrator on English Wikipedia, had falsely claimed to be a tenured professor with a Ph.D. in theology. In reality, Essjay was a 24-year-old without advanced degrees. His real name, Ryan Jordan, came to light after he accepted a job at Wikia, and journalist Daniel Brandt brought the truth to The New Yorker. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales initially downplayed the issue, viewing Essjay's claims as a pseudonym. However, criticism from co-founder Larry Sanger and public debate led to Jordan resigning from his Wikipedia roles and his Wikia job.
In late February 2002, the Spanish Wikipedia community split from the main project to protest rumors that Wikipedia co-founders Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger intended to introduce advertising to the site. Edgar Enyedy led the creation of Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español at the University of Seville. Most Spanish Wikipedia volunteers moved to this new platform, generating over 10,000 articles in one year. The Spanish Wikipedia was nearly inactive until mid-2003, and the issue of advertising became a long-standing sensitive subject for Wikipedia.
Another scandal erupted in 2012 involving Roger Bamkin, a Wikimedia UK board member. Bamkin provided paid consultancy for the government of Gibraltar while also promoting Gibraltar-related content on Wikipedia. This exposed vulnerabilities in Wikipedia’s policies regarding conflicts of interest and paid editing.
In 2013, the company Wiki-PR was discovered to have edited Wikipedia for paying clients using an "army" of sockpuppet accounts—at least 45 were identified among editors and administrators. These sockpuppets worked to manipulate content on behalf of clients, prompting an internal investigation by Wikipedia editors.
The 2015 Orangemoody investigation revealed that businesses and minor celebrities had been blackmailed by a group of coordinated fraudsters over their Wikipedia articles. Hundreds of sockpuppet accounts were used in this scheme, demonstrating that coordinated manipulation and extortion could exploit Wikipedia’s open-edit system for profit.
In March 2006, Daniel Brandt found 142 instances of plagiarism on Wikipedia, arguing that the issue was widespread. He used this finding to highlight the platform’s struggle to maintain content originality given its open-editing model.
In December 2007, the Wikimedia Foundation hired Carolyn Doran as chief operating officer without conducting a basic background check. Media later discovered that Doran had criminal records in three states and had previously wounded her boyfriend with a gunshot to the chest. The Foundation's lawyer, Mike Godwin, admitted they had no documentation of her criminal history at the time of hiring.