Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-04/Disinformation report

I'm honestly shocked that you would treat the former Editor in Chief of Signpost this way. Santos has single-handedly written thousands of articles and all we receive is a smear piece. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shushugah (talk • contribs)
 * What do you mean? That's ridiculous. Everybody knows that George Santos wrote this article himself! jp×g 22:09, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok, I admit it - I am George Santos! But seriously, if anybody thinks I went too easy on him, please reread the first 3 sentences (and the sentences immediately following for the references). We've got several rules that I have to observe here, e.g. WP:BLP, WP:Harass, and WP:Outing among them. Admins and even some arbs have warned me about following these rules, and they enforce the rules unevenly. They do have a chilling effect. But what is stated here is what I know and can support with confidence, references and diffs. The non-Wikipedia part of the article is overwhelming, and true, and documented. The Wikipedia part is quite concerning, and may be a bit understated (consistent with WP:BLP). But ultimately the evidence related to such a publicly discussed accusation against one of our alleged editors, needs to be discussed dispassionately on Wikipedia. I am a bit concerned that the news articles that will be coming out soon about Santos will be biased against him because every newspaper knows that they can't be sued for defamation by Santos (I am not a lawyer and not offering legal advice here). Smallbones( smalltalk ) 03:18, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Despite the fact I consider Santos a lying [expletive deleted], I found your moderate take on him in this article a refreshing change from the usual coverage. After all, the man has shown himself to be a compulsive liar time & again -- what more can be said on that accusation? Providing just the facts avoids repeating this well-known judgment. -- llywrch (talk) 08:54, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yep. That's what thought too.  Andreas  JN 466 09:24, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Funniness aside, is this the first high-profile instance of a sitting U.S. congressman attempting to edit their own Wikipedia page? I'm sure other prominent or state-level politicians have done so. If so, I wonder how much we should be worried about this becoming increasingly frequent. Admittedly, we have time; most incumbent congressmen skew so old that the internet itself, much less Wikipedia, is a foreign concept. But as the inevitable weight of mortality pushes in a new generation of tech-savvy politicians, I'm curious as to how well-fortified Wikipedia is against attempts to self-edit articles by—let's face it—people more competent than Santos. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 22:25, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It would appear to be redundant to try to embarrass Santos, as he has already done it pretty comprehensively himself. Truly a self-made man, just way to the left on the Dunning-Kruger curve. &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 09:36, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Could I at least have been credited as the one who found that three possible Santos socks had edited the article? And note the interesting fact that the Georgedevolder22 sock had been created in early 2019, long before his first run for office, long before his first edit. Daniel Case (talk) 20:50, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Off the top of my head, I can't name any other US Representatives who have edited their own pages, but there are lots that are very close. The IPs for the entire US Capitol were banned for awhile in the very early Wikipedia but I don't have details at hand. I believe the excuse was "silly staffers!" Lots of candidates or their head media people have been close to the line. e.g. the head PR guy for Newt Gingrich's primary presidential bid got into a fairly public discussion (as I recall) with Jimbo after some unpaid Wikipedians complained, he'd complained about their complaining. In 2008?
 * An unsuccessful Virginia senatorial candidate (and later unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate) became notorious after bragging about his staffer's wiki edits to CNN.
 * A couple US cabinet secretaries have been mentioned (hush, hush) on Wikipedia. There's much more.
 * There's a couple that really stick in my craw.
 * A former president's business operation clearly edited Wikipedia openly a very long time ago, politely asking pesky editors to step out of the way and providing his work email and phone number. A 2nd case for the same organization seemed even more obvious to me, but ...
 * There's a pretty well-known former state legislator who has been credibly accused of statutory rape/sexual assault (by one of his relatives) but it was quite difficult for me to put the full story in his Wikipedia article. There have been extensive investigations (plural), new developments (focusing on campaign finance funds), international reporting, but no indictments yet. What sticks out to me was that he (or somebody with a very suggestive username) was the leading editor to his article. Many of his edits were adding Christmas card style photos every year showing him and his large family and beautiful wife. I guess I'll have to wait for any indictments.
 * The UK bats above its weight in political UPE.
 * One difficulty in all of this is that it seems that everybody has very strong opinions about the candidates during an election year, amateurs and professionals alike. So it's difficult to know the players without a scorecard. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 00:52, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Smallbones( smalltalk ) 00:57, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

My favorite bit of George Santos "lore" is that he claimed to be a "producer" on Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the famously disastrous Spider-Man musical that kept injuring its actors. He would have been 22 years old at the time of its premiere. Of all the well-known musicals to claim credit for... why this one????? Axem Titanium (talk) 02:32, 7 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Krisgabwoosh, you asked, "Is this the first high-profile instance of a sitting U.S. congressman attempting to edit their own Wikipedia page?" Good question! In 2012 or thereabouts, someone wrote a script that tracked whenever there were edits from IP address blocks assigned to Congressional offices. The script then posted the relevant IP address and WP mainspace page name to Twitter. The account name was @CongressEdits (via WMF Labs). Both parties were brazen, and activity increased sharply around lunch time, Eastern Standard Time. I don't recall whether Twitter or Congress interceded, or perhaps if the feed continues to exist. The editing was quite prolific! Many edits were not to BLPs of Congress people but plenty were, or to other pages that raised eyebrows. Surreptitious Congressional editing also occurred in 2006, prior to Twitter.--FeralOink (talk) 13:49, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I hadn't realized there was already a whole article about the subject! My worry is of these kinds of edits getting "smarter" for lack of a better word. It's quite easy when the editor is a staffer with an IP right in their boss's office, or when the editor openly states that they're work for U.S. reps. This stems from a lack of knowledge of what "anyone can edit" actually means. I loathe the day a politician hires a true professional to touch up their biography. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 16:42, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Bzzzt, it's been going on, wholesale and in a well documented way, since at least 2011 (details via conflict of interest noticeboard). Take a gander at all the reputation management firms listed at WP:PAIDLIST if you want more evidence. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:52, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Along those lines, I fought a SPA way back in 11 May 2006 who was trying to get material relating to Lost (TV series) into Wikipedia as fact, not as acknowledged fiction. (ISTR, one of the people who made those edits left a petulant note on my talk page complaining that I had nominated the article for deletion, but I can't seem to find it.) So fighting the forces to subvert fact on Wikipedia have been around longer than many current Wikipedians. (Ugh.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:16, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, it's like Colin said on SNL ... what kid grows up and has as their life aspiration to be a star on the Baruch volleyball team? "It's like asking a kid what he wants to be when he grows up and he says 'I dunno ... assistant manager at Kohl's, maybe?'". Seriously, I think, having worked heavily on the Santos article and knowing all the ins and outs of the story, that Santos was just, as many serial fabulists of his ilk do, appropriating someone else's story (his former manager at LinkBridge) into a context convenient for him at the time. Putting himself on S:TotD actually is consistent with his other lies. He's smart enough not to tell things so incredible as to invite withering scrutiny, so he says he produced a failed musical, not a successful one, so people will be less likely to check. Likewise, telling people in the New York area you went to Baruch and Stern then worked on Wall Street is generally going to be taken on faith, in a way that it wouldn't if he'd claimed to have attended Harvard and Yale (but that, of course, is pretty much what he did with his employment history, as Goldman and Citi are pretty much the equivalent). He was also very smart not to pretend he had a military career ... compare with that guy who was running against Marcy Kaptur and turned out to have been greatly exaggerating his Air Force service (claimed to have been working ground crew in Afghanistan where he "couldn't shower for 40 days" when he was actually in Qatar on a relatively plush post). Daniel Case (talk) 21:05, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Might as well get a list
We can start with this: Smallbones( smalltalk ) 19:54, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * List of political editing incidents on Wikipedia
 * United States congressional staff edits to Wikipedia
 * Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia