One of the Nine Theses on Wikipedia series

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6. Reveal who Wikipedia’s leaders are.

It is a basic principle of sound governance that we know who our leaders are. So why are the 62 Wikipedia users with the most authority—“CheckUsers,” “Bureaucrats,” and Arbitration Committee members—mostly anonymous? Only 14.5% of such users reveal a full, real name. These high-ranking individuals obviously should be identified by their real and full names, so they can be held accountable in the real world. After all, Wikipedia is now one of the world’s most powerful and well-funded media platforms. Wikipedia’s influence far exceeds that of major newspapers, which follow basic standards of transparency and accountability. Such standards are not mere ideals but real requirements for any media organization of Wikipedia’s stature. As of 2023, Wikipedia’s endowment was $119 million, its annual income $185 million. Therefore, if safety is a concern, funds should be used to indemnify and otherwise protect publicly identified editorial leaders. Wikipedia, admit that your leaders are powerful, and bring them out into the open; great power requires accountability. If you continue to stymie accountability, government may have to act.

The Problem

Most of Wikipedia’s editorial leaders go by silly handles and opt not to reveal their real-world identity. They don’t have to. So, they are anonymous. Most people don’t know this, but it is absolutely true.

I am not referring to the leadership of the Wikimedia Foundation—the CEO, General Counsel, other employees, and the Board of Trustees. Those people are identified by name, but they rarely exercise any real control over Wikipedia’s content. As with other publishing operations, and especially online “platforms,” there is, by policy, a line drawn between editorial matters and corporate matters.

I mean, instead, the leaders of Wikipedia’s powerful community. Wikipedia’s editorial work is self-managed by a group of volunteers—or what is presented as such.¹ If we compare Wikipedia-land to a little country, its police are called Administrators; [a] its chief court is the Arbitration Committee [a] (or ArbCom). Those who wield the most executive power are mostly in two groups. There are the Bureaucrats, [a] who can install and remove Administrators. And there are the CheckUsers, [a] who have the ability to check the IP address of a problem user—which is a power they may use even against Administrators. But who checks the CheckUsers?

Wikipedia presently has 833 Administrators and 62 accounts that belong to one or more leadership groups, i.e., ArbCom (15 accounts), Bureaucrats (16 accounts), and CheckUsers (49 accounts).²

My chief complaint: These small but powerful groups are mostly anonymous.

Consider ArbCom. As of September 2025, just two of the 15 members are named on their user pages, with first and last names. These could be pseudonyms, for all I can tell. Six members, it seems, use a first name (that is not admitted to be a pseudonym), and four have photos of themselves on their user page. Now, this does not necessarily mean that the accounts are wholly anonymous. Probably, most if not all of these people are known to each other by their real-life identities, and some Wikipedians do treat their identities as “open secrets”: not often shared, but not well hidden, either. It seems that ten ArbCom members share some personal information, such as their nationality, occupation, or a first name, but almost never is there any uniquely identifying information.³ One account, at present writing, possesses the trifecta—he or she is a member of ArbCom as well as being a CheckUser and Bureaucrat. But all that we can glean from the user page is that this person did a degree at Glasgow. There are two accounts that, as far as I can ascertain, neither share a name nor any sort of personal information at all.

When we consider the larger set, i.e., the “Power 62” accounts that are in at least one of the leadership groups, only nine (14.5%) use what appear to be their real, full names. The conclusion is inescapable: The vast majority of Wikipedia’s top editorial leadership is anonymous, at least to the public.

But, you might ask, why does it matter that these people reveal their identities? It is just a volunteer community, a sort of gamified writing club, isn’t it? Wikipedia community pages seem to want you to think so. User pages in general tend to be gratingly cute. They have all the originality and spirit of a 1990s chat room.⁴ But you might expect the pages of the leadership of Wikipedia to be different, considering that it is arguably the most powerful public information resource in the world. But you would be wrong. The user pages of Wikipedia’s Power 62 are excellent examples of the genre. Look [a] for [a] yourself. [a] These are presented as the people who are ultimately responsible for Wikipedia. Think what that means: these pages are often the top Google search results; they are cited as a reflection of public opinion according to court cases; and multiple generations of students have crammed for exams with this information. You might think this state of affairs would change with AI, but AI itself is trained with data from Wikipedia—only further concentrating the power of the platform and upping the stakes.

More importantly, Wikipedia’s claims are taken to be facts by many people who still have not learned about the appalling biases of Wikipedia—facts about things that matter, such as personal reputation, medical information, and public policy.

Wikipedia-derived factoids can be so important that there is a well-known feedback loop, called citogenesis, in which the mainstream news finds some claim made in a Wikipedia article, and publishes it (without citing Wikipedia). Then Wikipedia itself makes use of the news article. By means of this loop, an ultimately “sourceless” factoid gains a spurious authority.⁵ This shows just how seriously Wikipedia is often taken.

Here, then, is the point. The sort of casual game-playing I described earlier fits very poorly with the deadly serious project of compiling authoritative information. The attitudes involved are not acceptable anymore. It is time for Wikipedians to grow up—and that begins with its leaders. Part of growing up is being willing to accept real-world responsibility for your decisions. Now, Wikipedians are doing important journalism: they document the world. But real journalists have reputations that can be tarnished, ruining their writing careers. That is as it should be, and that means that journalists must generally be known by their real names. This is especially important for the people who wield power. The proverb does not lie: knowledge is power. Yet the most powerful editors on the world’s single most powerful information platform? They are anonymous.

Let us get very clear on this point: Wikipedia is not just a game. Its influence exceeds that of major media institutions. After resigning from the WMF as CEO, Katherine Maher became CEO of NPR; it was a sideways move or even a step down. During COVID-19, Maher told [a] the Atlantic Council that she “took a very active approach to disinformation” and did so “through conversations with government”. The WMF partnered [a] with the World Health Organization to “expand access to trusted information about COVID-19.” Wikipedia is widely reported to be a major source of LLM (AI chatbot) training data. It is well-known that Google makes use of Wikipedia content in its knowledge panels as a key component in its search results. In short, the WMF is able to raise $185 million per year because it has massive media clout.

Indeed, Wikipedia is no game.

Thus my question: If it has this world-class influence, why do the people entrusted with content decisions on Wikipedia go by twee handles like “CaptainEek,” “KrakatoaKatie,” and “WereSpielChequers”?

Yet even the accounts of apparently middle-aged editorial leaders convey this studied silliness. Why have these habits never changed? Perhaps it is difficult to change this institution’s culture—but it’s not that difficult, and the leadership of other internet institutions of a similar age (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn) have grown up and gotten serious in ways Wikipedia has not.

Part of the reason, I suspect, is defensive: An infantile and anonymous self-presentation trivializes the power that the top “users” wield. It disarms criticism, as if they were saying, “Who, us? We’re just a bunch of silly, harmless college students and geeks who mainly care about comma placement and our quirky hobbies. We’re just janitors.”

Bullshit.

The serious consequences of Wikipedia’s real-world power was brought home to me when, quite out of the blue in 2005, I received a telephone call from John Seigenthaler, Sr., former editor and publisher of the Tennessean and founding editorial director of USA Today. He had a serious complaint, [a] and his ire was directed at me. He made me feel quite guilty, actually, although I had been gone from Wikipedia for three years. I didn’t blame him for being mad. The problem was that the Wikipedia article invented, out of whole cloth, accusations that he was, somehow, complicit in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby. There were never any such accusations made against Seigenthaler.⁶ He was one of the most distinguished newspapermen of his generation. (He died in 2014.) When Seigenthaler first reached out to me, I think Wikipedia had still not repaired the defamation, although they did soon enough.

This was the first—but far from the last—time a famous person complained directly to me about defamation by Wikipedia. I continue to receive such complaints; some years, I received perhaps 30 or 50 grievances. Usually, the victim had tried to fix the problem through ordinary channels, with no recourse; by the time they tried contacting me, they usually knew I was long gone from Wikipedia, but they reached out anyway, because they were at their wits’ end. Another victim was novelist Philip Roth. Wikipedia bizarrely refused to correct its mistaken claims about the inspiration behind Roth’s novel The Human Stain. It seems Wikipedia required secondary sources and deemed Philip Roth himself insufficient.⁷ So, he went to The New Yorker to kill two birds with one stone: he gave Wikipedia a secondary source, and he documented [a] the absurd difficulties he went through in getting the record corrected. (Roth died in 2018.)

These famous victims of Wikipedia’s stupidity and bias still do reach out quite regularly. What I often tell people is that there is nothing I can do personally, as my involvement would likely hurt more than help. Sadly, in most cases, it seems the most reliable way to get errors corrected is by hiring a PR firm that specializes in editing Wikipedia.⁸ Bribes might also be necessary, as Wikipedians themselves were reported to have uncovered—to their deep shock, I’m sure—in scandals such as Operation Orangemoody.⁹

Those who are libeled by Wikipedia articles have tried lawsuits. But they face a dilemma. On the one hand, there is no legal entity called “Wikipedia.” The owner is the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), a nonprofit corporation that hides behind Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act; this act shields internet platforms from liability for user-generated content. (According to the statute, such indemnity is available only when the owners are not counted as publishers or speakers.) On the other hand, if the victim of libel attempts to sue the editors responsible, this usually proves impossible. For one thing, multiple accounts can be responsible for defamation, and it can be difficult (for someone unfamiliar with the system) to track down exactly which users are responsible for which edits. Even if the culprit is quite clear, Wikipedia user accounts tend to be anonymous, as we have seen. The platform’s powerful CheckUser accounts refuse to release an IP address to the victim of libel: that would be a violation of privacy, you see. So it is difficult to bring a lawsuit. Whom is the would-be plaintiff supposed to sue?

Perhaps the WMF, despite Section 230? Well, the number of cases in which the WMF itself has been successfully sued, or forced to remove defamation through other means, is very small, and all outside of the U.S. It has been successfully sued in the U.K., [a] Germany, [a] Portugal, [a] and France; [a] and that appears to be all.

There is another reason to regard anonymous authority on Wikipedia as a terrible idea: conflicts of interest. There is irony here, because Wikipedia forbids the subjects of articles to write about themselves, even frowning on editing the talk page of the article about themselves. The irony here is that anyone with a beef against a person with a Wikipedia page can make an anonymous account—and smear away. They need only persuade others, who might also be biased, that their claims are fair and in line with the “Biographies of Living Persons” [a] (BLP) policy. In situations where an editor has enough clout, or where an enemy has paid off such an editor, this is not a high bar, even though the BLP policy sounds properly cautious. One thing you must understand about Wikipedia editors is that, for all their twee silliness, they tend to apply policies in frequently vicious ways, evidently serving their own hidden purposes. They shamelessly ignore rules when they don’t serve their biases, turning ruthlessly efficient at enforcing them when in their favor.¹⁰

These failures demand reform. I say that power demands transparency and responsibility.

So, what exactly can be done?

The Reasonable Solution

If the Wikimedia Foundation wishes to be a responsible player in the media scene, it must begin to act like one. Therefore, let the reputation of the most powerful Wikipedia editors rise or fall based on merit, and let it be tied to their real and full name. This is the standard for real-world journalism. Wikipedia must rise to that standard.

(1) The WMF should require top-level Wikipedia functionaries to use real names. When a volunteer-run account is installed in a position of sufficient responsibility, then the account owner must enter into a formal agreement with the WMF. If there is any doubt about the scope of the policy—extended as it might be to Bureaucrats, CheckUsers, Stewards, Oversighters, and likely all Administrators—it should err on the side of greater transparency and accountability. The owner’s real (legal) name and public biography must be displayed on the user page, placed there by the WMF.

(2) The WMF should offer free assistance to volunteers who face threats, stalking, or other security concerns. That is, the WMF should assign staff to track problems, help with police reports, and, if necessary, pay for legal assistance. While I doubt this is apt to be a significant problem for many, for some it might be. As anyone in the public eye knows, various kinds of harassment can come with the territory. Even I have been subjected to it over the years. Nevertheless, it is the price anyone operating in public, with responsibility over powerful public information, must accept. After all, the work does involve directing many others who edit articles, which directly affect the reputation and earning potential of people and enterprises. This is a serious responsibility and should be treated as such. If this is too much to ask, there are plenty of activities in the world that are more private. Choose one!

If the platform has difficulty attracting enough qualified Administrators under such a scheme, this problem can be handily solved by offering a stipend:

(3) Optionally, consider compensation. I am sure that many people would be more interested in working toward and volunteering for a more responsible Administrator position if it brought in some extra income. This is only an option, and it might not be necessary. There is one potential downside, namely, that if the WMF actually gets involved in the selection and vetting of candidates, and they are basically working as employees, then this might well have the effect of stripping the project of its Section 230 immunities. This problem might be finessed if the money is distributed not based on any WMF decision but based on the volunteer community’s determination. Alternatively, such a stipend might be made not directly through the WMF but through intermediaries such as local Wikimedia chapters. [a] Perhaps the safest option, for purposes of retaining Section 230 immunity, is that individual editors might be “tipped”—and the project would encourage this—and the WMF or chapters might facilitate it (e.g., by setting up the payment processing) while never directly touching the money.

(4) Make the editor-to-Administrator path smoother. The current process for applying and being accepted as an Administrator is difficult and time-consuming. In various ways, the process could be made easier, at least for applicants, to finish. This alone might secure a much greater number of active Administrators, even if they all had to use their real-world identities.

(5) The WMF should indemnify named Wikipedia functionaries. In order to behave responsibly toward its “volunteer” users, Wikipedia should use some of its funds to indemnify named editors by purchasing Errors and Omissions (E&O) Insurance for them, and agreeing to legal representation in case of lawsuits. In so doing, the WMF will be following the professional practices of serious, responsible journalistic enterprises in the West. Such indemnification would not necessarily entail an admission that the WMF is acting as a publisher that would remove its Section 230 protections. Purchasing general or professional liability insurance for volunteers is common among larger nonprofits. This is not an act of generosity, but of moral and professional necessity.

Long ago, we used to brag that Wikipedia was written by a wide-ranging, self-selecting pool of volunteers, that everything was above-board, and that nothing important behind the scenes determined how articles were worded. It was all quite democratic and honorable, we said. Such sanguine opinions have long since been abandoned; nobody even bothers to make such claims anymore. It is now obvious to all that authority on Wikipedia is wielded in secret by anonymous power players. Many of the most powerful, very probably, are already on the take, so no one should be shocked by the preceding proposals.

If Wikipedians really do not like this state of affairs—they claim not to—then we should ask them a question. Would the profitability of paid Wikipedia work increase or decrease if editorial leadership had to declare its identity? The answer seems obvious. Why then would Wikipedians resist a culture of leadership accountability?

Now, the last proposal is rather different, directly tackling the problem by allowing public response:

(6) Allow subjects of articles a prominently placed official response page. Wikipedia could allow the subjects of articles to write official responses to articles about them. This might be permitted if a person is the subject of an article; or is an estate’s principal heir; or if a person is the officially designated representative of some enterprise.¹¹

Exactly how this would be achieved remains to be worked out, but here are a few ideas.

Careful thought should be given to where links to the response articles are placed. Such links must not be hidden inside menus. Rather, they should probably be highlighted at the top of the page, with a template. Wikipedia volunteers and WMF staff should, in general, not touch the response; but there might be circumstances in which a very light touch is appropriate (e.g., when the author is unresponsive or has died, and this fact must be noted). There would probably have to be WMF staffers to act as coordinators. Among the things such coordinators might do is determine whether the latest version of an article renders the language of a particular response irrelevant, confusing, etc. Then the coordinator might reach out to the article subject (or representative) for an updated version, and, while waiting, post a notice at the top of the response to the effect that the response concerns an older version of the article and might be outdated. By the way, if there are multiple, competing articles (per Thesis 2), then each different article might have a separate response.

Let us take a step back now.

There is something particularly contemptible about a project run by anonymous volunteers that fails to permit the distinguished victims of its own libels to respond, publicly, to such treatment, particularly when there is no legal way (at least, in the United States) for them to seek relief. This is not a thing I ever would have supported when founding this project, of course. I repudiate it and, for myself at least, I apologize to them for my role in inflicting this engine of libel on the world. But now, the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the Wikimedia Foundation and the volunteer community.

For shame, Wikipedia, for shame.¹²

The least Wikipedia can do

If the WMF shamelessly refuses to solve the problem by implementing these or similar solutions, the general public should take this as a frank admission that, as a platform, Wikipedia utterly rejects standard journalistic norms.

If all more responsible solutions are dismissed, then a minimal—inadequate—fall-back position would be to adopt a disclaimer. Already, Wikipedia has long disclaimed its own reliability. [a] But I think it must do more than that when it comes to articles that might contain uncorrected libel. The distinguished subjects of Wikipedia articles have no legal recourse against such libel, and their enemies can anonymously pay to place it there.

On all pages concerning public figures and enterprises, there should be a disclaimer at the top of the page roughly to this effect:

Wikipedia is written by anonymous volunteers, which fact means it cannot be trusted for claims that impact the reputation of persons, enterprises, and institutions. Rather, it should be taken no more seriously than any other website in which anonymous actors with hidden conflicts of interest may coordinate to distort public perception of facts concerning politics, business, and other matters.

Wikipedia’s anonymity means that its authors have unknown conflicts of interest. Therefore, because self-serving inaccuracies may be deliberately inserted, Wikipedia’s claims below should be met with extreme skepticism.

There is no third way. Either Wikipedia grows up and embraces responsibility or, in the interests of justice and decency, it admits that it cannot be trusted.¹³

What if the Wikimedia Foundation does nothing?

Many people—and even governments—have brought the serious and ongoing problem of unchecked defamation to Wikipedia’s attention. The foregoing plan is a realistic solution. So the WMF is without excuse. It certainly has the power and authority to address this intolerable situation. Moreover, the problem is structural: it is a consequence of a specific combination of policies. As a result, the WMF must accept responsibility for the problem; the nonprofit corporation bears responsibility for the fact that Wikipedia is an engine of defamation.

It follows, then, that the corporation must be subject to civil liability for defamation. At some point, the problem is no longer Wikipedia’s or the WMF’s, but the U.S. government’s continued inaction. It is, after all, Wikipedia’s Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230) protections that both immunize the WMF from liability and permit powerful Wikipedia editors—who, in some cases, we know to be doing work for hire, for unknown persons and unknown purposes (see above)—to libel people anonymously. The public must be given some avenue for justice if the WMF refuses to act.

The nuclear option, it seems, would be to remove the WMF’s Section 230 immunity. The question is how to do this in a way that affects Wikipedia (and others that might be in a similar situation) without posing a serious threat to online freedom of speech. I acknowledge fully the deep importance of Section 230 to securing online freedom of speech. But defamation has always been regarded, by clear legal thinkers, as an exception to free speech rights.

You might think that the best way forward would be something like a class action lawsuit that could be brought against Wikipedia to remove its Section 230 immunity—but this is based on a confusion about how the law works. Courts do not make global determinations of publisher status under the statute.

Other options also seem unlikely to be available. The FTC does not typically regulate genuine nonprofits, so we should not expect it to investigate Wikipedia for unfair practices. State legislative options are hamstrung by Section 230 itself, which gives platforms broad immunity and preempts state law. Therefore, we should probably not rest our hopes in such strategies.

The proper avenue of attack, therefore, is the statute that causes the problem. Hence:

Congress could create a narrow statutory carve-out that addresses Wikipedia’s unique situation. The law might be amended in the following sort of way. If (a) an organization generates in excess of $100 million in revenue; (b) the platform hosts anonymously sourced content; (c) such content is presented as factual and neutral, yet routinely and demonstrably defames members of the public; and (d) the platform refuses to identify key content decision-makers; then the organization should not be entitled to Section 230 immunity. While such a carve-out would have multiple conditions, it is narrowly tailored to handle a generalizable problem that Wikipedia illustrates.

Under no circumstances should this proposal be understood as advocating for making anonymity online illegal. I am a strong proponent of online anonymity. It is an essential component of free speech and privacy online, and must not be abrogated in any arduous way.

If a platform (like Wikipedia) features many anonymous accounts, and the rest of (a)–(d) apply, then the statute must further specify that the public be given the right to have defamation claims heard by some identified platform authority. Then that authority would become liable under the statute. Perhaps the WMF would itself take such responsibility; if not, they might accept the above plan, identify the Administrators, and indemnify them, again per the plan.

As part of the argument for this amendment, we might point out that the WMF acts as a publisher in many ways. Let us count them:

1. The WMF coordinates with governments on “disinformation” and its CEO implied that such coordination led to changes on the platform (see above).
2. Wikipedia as a brand is presented as a unified product, rather than a collection of individually signed, piecemeal work by named authors. Qua unified product, its owner and operator must be understood to be the WMF.
3. Wikipedia curates viewpoints through source blacklists. It makes broad editorial decisions about what constitutes reliable sources, which must be respected by large numbers of participants. The WMF could address the situation, but does not.
4. The WMF refuses to take steps helping to reveal the identity of its most powerful editors or to override decisions by editors. Given that policy, when torts arise, the owner should be required to take responsibility.

The point is not that the WMF is a publisher under Section 230. The WMF may argue that it is not materially contributing (i.e., co-creating or editing) to illegal or actionable information, and thus is not a publisher under the current statute. But that’s fine. The point is to advance a principle by which new legislation can be justified: If a platform owner sets rules of anonymity, even for its most powerful editors, and those rules permit actionable defamation (and similar torts),¹⁴ then the law ought to deny Section 230 immunity to the platform owner.

The essential point—which neither Congress nor the WMF may ignore—is that responsibility must fall somewhere. This is a fundamental principle of justice: ubi jus ibi remedium (where there is a right, there is a remedy). So, if there is a tort, the law must provide a way to discover the identity of the defendant. If, for any reason, the law determines that liability cannot be made to fall on the actual author of a defamation, then it must fall on the entity that is responsible for the author’s anonymity. That is a reasonable and narrowly focused principle that justifies a statutory carve-out. This is consistent with how Congress has previously amended Section 230 (i.e., the FOSTA-SESTA exception [a] for sex trafficking platforms) when specific, demonstrable harms are present.

Appendix: The Power 62

To help readers understand the situation better, here is a list of the “Power 62” accounts (as of September 17, 2025) holding top-level authority. Either they are on the Arbitration Committee or they have CheckUser or Bureaucrat permissions (or they are in two or three of these groups). My proposal would require that the owners of the accounts listed below reveal their real-world identities, because they wield significant real-world power. The Wikimedia Foundation should also legally indemnify the named editors; of course, the editors should be allowed to step down without being named.

Separately, I hereby call upon each of the persons responsible for these 62 accounts to accept personal responsibility and reveal their names and identities to the public—or resign.

I do not want them to be doxxed, however. I do not want their identities to be revealed without their permission; I am asking everyone to respect their anonymity. If anyone does doxx them, it will be against my explicitly stated wishes.

1. 28bytes [a] (bureaucrat)
2. Acalamari [a] (bureaucrat)
3. AmandaNP [a] (checkuser, bureaucrat)
4. Aoidh [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
5. Avraham [a] (bureaucrat)
6. Barkeep49 [a] (checkuser, bureaucrat)
7. Bibliomaniac15 [a] (bureaucrat)
8. Blablubbs [a] (checkuser)
9. Cabayi [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
10. Callanecc [a] (checkuser)
11. CaptainEek [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
12. Cecropia [a] (bureaucrat)
13. Daniel [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
14. DatGuy [a] (checkuser)
15. Dbeef [a] (checkuser)
16. Dreamy Jazz [a] (checkuser)
17. Dweller [a] (bureaucrat)
18. EdJohnston [a] (checkuser)
19. Elli [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
20. Girth Summit [a] (checkuser)
21. Guerillero [a] (checkuser)
22. HJ Mitchell [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
23. Ivanvector [a] (checkuser)
24. Izno [a] (checkuser)
25. Jpgordon [a] (checkuser)
26. KrakatoaKatie [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
27. Ks0stm [a] (checkuser)
28. L235 [a] (checkuser)
29. Lee Vilenski [a] (bureaucrat)
30. Liz [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
31. Mailer diablo [a] (checkuser)
32. Materialscientist [a] (checkuser)
33. Maxim [a] (bureaucrat)
34. Mkdw [a] (checkuser)
35. Moneytrees [a] (checkuser)
36. Mz7 [a] (checkuser)
37. NinjaRobotPirate [a] (checkuser)
38. Oshwah [a] (checkuser)
39. PhilKnight [a] (checkuser)
40. Ponyo [a] (checkuser)
41. Primefac [a] (checkuser, bureaucrat, ArbCom)
42. Reaper Eternal [a] (checkuser)
43. Risker [a] (checkuser)
44. RoySmith [a] (checkuser)
45. Salvio giuliano [a] (checkuser)
46. ScottishFinnishRadish [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
47. Sdrqaz [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
48. Spicy [a] (checkuser)
49. Stwalkerster [a] (checkuser)
50. Theleekycauldron [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
51. TheresNoTime [a] (checkuser)
52. ToBeFree [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
53. UninvitedCompany [a] (bureaucrat)
54. Useight [a] (bureaucrat)
55. Versageek [a] (checkuser)
56. WereSpielChequers [a] (bureaucrat)
57. Worm That Turned [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
58. Xaosflux [a] (bureaucrat)
59. Xeno [a] (bureaucrat)
60. Yamla [a] (checkuser)
61. Z1720 [a] (checkuser, ArbCom)
62. Zzuuzz [a] (checkuser)

One of the Nine Theses on Wikipedia series

Footnotes

1. The extent to which powerful accounts are actually working for pay is unknown and, it may be argued, basically unknowable.[↩]
2. Note, the number of Administrators has been declining for years. In 2021, the number was over 1,100. Power has been concentrated in fewer hands.[↩]
3. Except, perhaps, for detective types. Every one of the “Power 62” might be identifiable by a sufficiently motivated sleuth; I am not sure. What I do know is that many such people do take considerable care in hiding their personally identifiable information, and some of them are technically savvy enough to make the task very difficult.[↩]
4. This is probably because they are the inheritors of the style of wikis, which were filled with 1990s gamer types; the earliest Wikipedia reflected their quaint online culture.[↩]
5. This is not merely hypothetical, but has been documented dozens of times by Wikipedia itself. See List of citogenesis incidents. [a][↩]
6. To be clear, the person who made up the accusations was named Brian Chase; as the AP reported in December, 2005, Chase had the admirable decency to admit [a] to simply making it up; he reached out and apologized to Seigenthaler for what Chase characterized as a “a joke that went horribly, horribly wrong.” Kudos to Chase for that.[↩]
7. On Wikipedia’s silly rules regarding primary and secondary sources, see Thesis 3 and Thesis 4.[↩]
8. For much more about this, in fascinating detail potentially relevant to attorneys general and plaintiff’s counsel, see Ashley Rindsberg, “How Wikipedia is Becoming a Massive Pay-to-Play Scheme,” [a] Pirate Wires, October 7, 2024. Rindsberg introduces the flourishing industry of paid Wikipedia editing, in which both “black-hat” and “white-hat” firms shape articles for clients ranging from corporations to media executives.[↩]
9. See “Wikipedia bans 381 accounts for secretly promoting brands,” Wired.com, posted [a] Sep. 1, 2015.[↩]
10. One other thing exacerbates this problem. Wikipedia features strangely overzealous rules [a] against conflict of interest. This incentivizes people to edit anonymously, forcing their self-defense underground. This further contributes to an underground market for Wikipedia editing that might not exist but for these unreasonable rules.[↩]
11. This would extend to for-profit and nonprofit corporations, governments and branches thereof, educational institutions, church organizations, sports and other clubs, etc.[↩]
12. Of interest, in relation to both the problem and the solution, is this old blog post: [a] I have been talking about this problem since at least 2012.[↩]
13. If it should happen, however, that Wikipedia fails to adopt any of these proposals, then the natural next step is for browsers and browser extensions to insert such messages onto Wikipedia pages—being sure, of course, to clarify that the messages are generated by the browser rather than by Wikipedia itself.[↩]
14. A broader case might, possibly, be extended to include election interference.[↩]