{"id":15531,"date":"2020-01-27T06:56:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T06:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=15531"},"modified":"2020-01-28T00:04:28","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T00:04:28","slug":"wikipedia-signpost-crypto-and-bitcoins-and-blockchains-oh-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2020\/01\/27\/wikipedia-signpost-crypto-and-bitcoins-and-blockchains-oh-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikipedia Signpost: Crypto and bitcoins and blockchains, oh no!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Decrypt ran a nice article this week on cryptocurrency Decred’s\u00a0 decentralised efforts to fund a PR agency, Ditto, to get Decred sufficient publicity to rate a Wikipedia article. [Decrypt<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n

Ditto wisely demurred, saying that’s not how anything works — though Liz Bagot from Ditto did literally claim, and I quote: [Politeia<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n

The truth is, many crypto projects are having issues with Wikipedia because a few influential no-coiners have admin power and are intentionally censoring crypto pages.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I asked Trey Ditto to clarify precisely<\/em> who Ditto PR meant here, in this official public statement from his agency — and just how on earth that was actually supposed to work. I’m sure Trey or Liz will reveal their important information<\/em> on the Wikipedia nocoiner conspiracy, before the end of time.<\/p>\n

(Ditto got paid in Decred tokens, by the way.)<\/p>\n

This is completely standard \u2014 literally every crank field full of spammy idiots claims that there is an active conspiracy to keep them out of Wikipedia.<\/p>\n

And crypto is absolutely and thoroughly a field full of spammy cranks, who try it on at Wikipedia — to the point that a poll of Wikipedia administrators unanimously<\/em> supported harsh sanctions on the area.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia despises spam. If you try to buy your way into Wikipedia, we despise you too. [Signpost<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n

As it happens, Smallbones,<\/a> the editor of Wikipedia’s internal newsletter the Wikipedia Signpost,<\/a> has been nagging me for several months to write something about cryptocurrency and blockchain, and the Wikipedia view of the topic — the short version being that even the pro-crypto editors are sick of the firehose of spam.<\/p>\n

So I drafted about 500 words, spent the last two weeks running it past everyone — in the process of which it doubled in size — and here’s the piece: Crypto and bitcoins and blockchains, oh no!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

My audience is Wikipedia people — talking about the problems of trying to edit well in an area targeted by floods of spammy cranks. The answer that worked for us was to get strict on sourcing.<\/p>\n

“Off-wiki crypto advocates complain regularly, but the rule has stuck \u2014 because the Reliable Sources principle is solid, and what we’re applying here is basic Wikipedia rules.”<\/p>\n

If you want your fabulous project written up in Wikipedia … get actually<\/em> famous. You need genuine independent mainstream press — not just press-release churnalism — and maybe some peer-reviewed academic coverage too. Crypto sites aren’t enough — you need proper<\/em> coverage.<\/p>\n

Else, maybe you aren’t actually very noteworthy.<\/p>\n

\"Become<\/a>

Your subscriptions keep this site going. Sign up today!<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wikipedia despises spam. If you try to buy your way into Wikipedia, we despise you too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1403,1268,1641,209],"class_list":["post-15531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-decred","tag-ditto-pr","tag-liz-bagot","tag-wikipedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15531"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15567,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15531\/revisions\/15567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}