A Professional Wikipedia Editor’s Thoughts on the Daily Mail “Ban”

11 min readJan 2, 2021

Wikipedia, like any organisation, is not immune from both internal and external politics. Those who have locked horns with the platform or fallen foul of its policies often claim the platform has a political bias. I’ve heard frustrated netizens refer to Wikipedia as both neoliberal and libertarian, sometimes in the same breath. These allegations aren’t entirely unfounded. Wikipedia, with its open-source model, and a shared goal of free knowledge and quality education for all, regardless of economic or social status, is a political statement in itself. However, education is a non-partisan issue. Whether we sit on the left or the right of the political divide, most of us agree that education should be a right available to all, and not a luxury for the privileged few. It is this shared belief in free knowledge for all, which enables editors with opposing political views to coalesce around this shared ideology.

The backstory

Imparting neutral reportage of the spat between Wikipedia and the Daily Mail is not something that I thought my work as a professional Wikipedia editor would entail. However, as someone who works between the worlds of business, Wikipedia and the press, I am well positioned to give an overview and some thoughts on the deprecation situation as I see it.

Getting green listed on Wikipedia’s perennial source list is a big deal. As good as any seal of approval a newspaper can receive from any professional body. Reliable source status says this publication publishes stuff which is generally true. Publications earn perennial reliable source status by being the subject of at least two significant discussions where editors have agreed that the source is usually reliable. Wikipedia refers to a general agreement between its editors as a consensus.

As I mentioned in previous blogs, it is consensus, not precedent which informs Wikipedia’s policies. Wikipedians discuss whether a source is suitable for a particular subject or not either on the article’s talk page or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. Reliable source discussions use up a lot of volunteer resources and usually draw the same consensus over and over again.

Two gentlemen discussing something calmly in the British Houses of Parliament.

Therefore, to prevent encyclopaedic groundhog-day, Wikipedia’s most frequently discussed sources get an entry on the perennial source list. If the community considers a source to be generally reliable is shows up green, if the community finds the source to be marginally reliable it shows up orange and if the community thinks a source is proverbial-cajones it shows up red.

After years of deliberations reinforced by established practice culminating in an RFC, editors agreed that the Daily Mail is generally unreliable, and the publication now shows up red on the perennial source list.

Since 2017, there have been two more lengthy discussions, known as RFCs regarding The Mail’s red status. Recently, the discussion reignited with a third request for comment triggered by, David Gerard. Gerard, a Wikipedia administrator since 2004 interpreted the Daily Mail deprecation as a blanket red listing on all news sites hosted at the MailOnline Website, which includes The Mail on Sunday. Additionally, Gerard embarked on a quest to remove all content sourced from the MailOnline, including the Mail on Sunday, Irish Daily Mail and Irish Mail on Sunday.

RFC stands for, request for comment. RFCs are not new, nor are they exclusive to Wikipedia. Not only do RFCs predate Wikipedia, but these informal discussions also originate from the network architects of the 1970s. (Jemielniak, 2014) Contrary to all mainstream reporting on the supposed “ban” RFCs are not debates or ballots. RFCs are processes for requesting outside input on discussions which inevitably occur whilst writing a vast encyclopaedia. RFCs take place on noticeboards and bots randomly select editors with no prior involvement in the issue, to put forth their views.

The irony of it all…

In hindsight, reading back through the press coverage from 2017, it becomes apparent that it’s not just the right-wing press that suffers from misreporting issues. While much of the left-wing media were busy hammering the Daily Mail on their misreporting, they failed to realise that practically all the mainstream press outlets left and right of centre, misreported on this very issue themselves.

The left-leaning Independent described the request for comment as a fiery debate when in actuality, it was more of a civilised discussion with the homogenisation of views typically seen at RFCs.

Left-wing tabloid the Mirror did a little better, describing the RFC as a month-long debate within Wikipedia’s community. However, the Mirror wrongly claimed that Wikipedia accepts citations from Fox News and RT formerly known as Russia Today.

Starting with Fox News, the reliable sources list says, that Fox News is an acceptable source for news, “excluding politics and science”. Which practically deprecates 90% Fox News’ output.

Concerning, Russia Today. As of 2020, Russia Today is also a deprecated source in league with the Daily Mail and The Sun. However, there’s never been a clear consensus on RT’s reliability as a source. In fact, Wikipedians have deliberated over the Russia-backed news agency’s reliability for almost a decade.

A visual representation of the state of journalism in 2021.

When a source such as Fox News or Russia Today gets called into question so often, editors instinctively shy away from citing it. Through the practice of substituting RT for other sources, a policy emerges. Like the Daily Mail, there was no debate, no vote, and there is no ban. Encyclopaedia writers, who value epistemic responsibility above all else simply prefer not to use sources which may contain misinformation.

However, first prize for worst deprecation report must go to t he Guardian; a publication who pride themselves on fact-based reporting and routinely reproach other news outlets for misreporting.

Now just to be clear, I am not criticising the Guardian or the Observer’s overall output. Wikipedia would not be half the encyclopaedia that it is if it weren’t for the Guardian’s independent journalism and free distribution model. In my opinion, their coverage of business and notable people is equal to that of The Times, and I would not be able to do the job that I do without the fantastic work that mainstream broadsheet journalists do. That said, the Guardian really dropped the ball on this occasion.

Like its peers, they falsely postulated that Wikipedians cite Fox News and Russia Today as reliable sources: we don’t. However, worryingly their report expressed outdated views about Wikipedia’s reliability, “It allows anyone to make edits, sometimes leading to instances of false entries and vandalism of pages…” — Jasper Jackson.

While there might have been some truth in the above assertion some 15 years ago, today Wikipedia is a highly effective arbiter of the truth. Sure, it allows anyone with an Internet connection to exercise their epistemic rights. However, as a professional Wikipedia editor with several years experience on the platform, I can attest that false entries and vandalism get reverted within minutes. Wikipedia’s processes are as robust as they come. It is impossible to add false statements or misinformation to Wikipedia.

Furthermore, unfounded claims like The Guardian’s undermine public faith in The Wikipedia Project, at a time when humanity needs a reliable source of non-bias non-partisan information more than any other point in its history. The icing on the cake and the reason I am awarding the first prize in this misreporting contest to The Guardian is that Wikipedia’s founder and self-proclaimed monarch, Jimmy Wales, sat on the board of The Guardian from 2016 to 2017. Wales only quit The Guardian’s board due to a conflict of interest caused by the founding of his volunteer-created news outlet WikiTribune.

As far as I can see, it was only the non-profit indie news outlet Slashdot who took the time to report the situation correctly, without hyperbole or sensationalism. As Slashdot accurately reported, there is no ban on using the Daily Mail as a source, sure an automatic sensor will prevent you from accidentally citing it. But a deprecation is not the same as a ban. Wikipedians, who value truth and intellectual responsibility above all else have simply agreed that the publication is generally unreliable and of little use to their collaborative writing project. Suppose you’re writing about something that happened because of the Daily Mail or updating a page related to the right-wing tabloid. In that case, nothing is preventing you from using the publication as a primary source.

The Defendant’s Retort…

Because the Mail is the subject of the press coverage, I must disqualify them from my worst reporting on the deprecation competition. However, I have to say, the Daily Mail’s response was nothing short of hilarious and only confirmed Wikipedia’s reasons for the deprecation. Let’s start with that brilliant headline.

“The making of a Wiki-Lie: Chilling story of one twisted oddball and a handful of anonymous activists who appointed themselves as censors to promote their own warped agenda on a website that’s a byword for inaccuracy” — Guy Adams

Honestly, I’m not being facetious when I say that if I had just half of Adams’ writing-skills, I wouldn’t need to make a living smuggling paid content onto Wikipedia. I would literally be in league with Truman Capote and William Shakespeare and would probably have crashed my Tesla into my infinity pool several times over.

The only major gripe that I have with Adams’ coverage is that he wastes too many words roasting RFC instigator User:HillBillyHoliday for his taste in music and cultural iconography. Judging by his talk page Hillbilly was by no means “popular” on the platform, and has since been blocked. Sure, he was an oddball in a Cummingsesque sense, but hey, anyone who’s edited Wikipedia for more than a few hours without a break gets a little zany around the edges.

Personally, I don’t think that this Hillbilly character is typical of Wikipedians. Trying to find an example of an ordinary Wikipedian is like trying to find a unicorn burger in a health food shop. In my experience, Wikipedians are typically atypical. In all seriousness though, due to the strictness of Wikipedia’s content policies, who you are or what you do off-platform is irrelevant. A favourite meme of the Wikipedians is Peter Steiner’s 1993 cartoon for the New Yorker, On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. In the context of Wikipedia, it means, nobody knows or can tell what your beliefs or tastes or prejudices are unless you disclose them or breach neutral point of view. Indeed, not doing anything that might give Wikipedia’s anti-PR task force a reason to suspect that I am a communications professional is how I smuggle paid content onto the platform on behalf of my clients.

Wikipedians can’t assert political opinions, no more than they can use original research, so speculating about whether Wikipedians live in a castle with their basset hounds or a suburban nightmare with their parents is a waste of time.

I’m also not sure if anti-press zealot is an accurate description of the average Wikipedian, considering we mostly cite mainstream media organisations. If any of my fellow editors are anything like me, they consume mainstream media like the voracious news fiend that I am.

As for the notion that encyclopaedia writers are activists, while this may be true of early Encyclopaedist Denis Diderot who spent three months in prison for, among other things, a book about talking vaginas, I have never attended a protest or chained myself to anything. It’s not that I don’t care about social causes, I simply can’t be bothered. Some Wikipedians may chain themselves to things in their spare time, but generally, they put Wikipedia’s neutral point of view policy before any personal beliefs. Like I said at the start of this blog, Wikipedians are primarily concerned with making the entire sum of accepted knowledge freely available to everyone everywhere.

Other than that, the Daily Mail’s coverage of their deprecation is so hilarious I am willing to forgive them for wrongly portraying RFCs as a ballot or vote. Voting takes place in democratic organisations. Wikipedia is open about the fact that it is not a democracy. Some of the platform’s process are egalitarian while others are meritocratic, but voting is rare. They even have a saying, WP:VIE which stands for Voting Is Evil.

I am also willing to forgive the Mail for singling themselves out as, “the only major news outlet on the face of the Earth to be so censored”. Below is a list of deprecated publications;

· Anadolu Agency

· Baidu Baike

· Bild

· Blaze Media

· The Canary

· CelebrityNetWorth

· China Global Television Network

· CoinDesk

· The Daily Caller

· Daily Star

· The Daily Wire

· Discogs

· The Epoch Times…

…Authors note; I can’t be bothered to copy and paste the whole list because it goes on and on. To view, the full list of deprecated sources please click here. NB the deprecated sources are the ones highlighted red.

My favourite part of Adams’ article is the bit where he launches into an impassioned fulmination about censorship and freedom of speech in the Internet era. In my opinion, this article is some of the best writing in the history of modern English. If Guy Adams doesn’t receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour in the next ten minutes, I will probably become an anti-press zealot too.

Adams’ article points to Lord Justice Levison’s famous Levinson enquiry blunder where he wrongly informed readers that a Californian high-school student named Brett Straub created The Independent. However, if you or your organisation falls foul of some high-school student’s online prank, that’s on you. Wikipedia is not intended to be consumed passively by lazy researchers. Wikipedia is an interactive encyclopaedia designed to be read laterally. You are supposed to open the inline citations in your browser and fact-check as you go and if you discover horse droppings, clean them up. That’s why anyone can edit Wikipedia, even you.

Frankly, Lord Justice Levison’s research team should have known better. Levison’s blunder was not symptomatic of Wikipedia’s perceived unreliability but symptomatic of a broader phenomenon: laziness.

Which brings me nicely to the final kicker.

The Daily Mail banning its journalists from using Wikipedia as a source.

What kind of lazy, dull-witted, incompetent journalist uses an encyclopaedia, a tertiary source akin to a school textbook, as a source for their writing?

Now, to be fair, teenage me didn’t show up at many study skills lessons either. However, unlike those masquerading as journalists, teenage James Lawrie had no intention of becoming a professional writer, let alone a professional Wikipedia editor. Seriously, what kind of shenanigans are going down in a professional press office when the boss has to intervene and say, “now come on everyone don’t do that thing that you were trained not to do on your very first day of infant school”. The mere fact that the Daily Mail had to actively prohibit Wikipedia as a source sums up the differences in the two organisations. It’s not that one is better or worse than the other. As you can tell from this blog, I think the Daily Mail is the one funniest publications for gonzo journalism and semi-fictionalised depictions of reality ever to exist. The problem is the two organisations have little if anything to offer each other. It’s a simple fact of business that some organisations form formal or informal partnerships through paid or mutual reciprocity, while other organisations do not. In the same way, as a unicorn meat seller doesn’t have much to offer a vegan restaurant, Wikipedia has little to offer the Daily Mail and vice versa. This doesn’t mean the two organisations need to be at loggerheads, the Internet is that big that both organisations can peacefully co-exist without having anything to do with each other.

The end.

Works Cited

Jemielniak, D., 2014. Common Knowledge. 1st Edition ed. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.

A Professional Wikipedia Editor’s Thoughts on the Daily Mail “Ban”​