The Chinese national who contributed to Wikipedia under the pseudonym “Zhemao” has spent a decade contributing content to a popular online encyclopedia of Russian stories she created herself. A user who even falsified his biography to inspire confidence, came to share more than 200 false articles and contributed to hundreds already published. Wikipedia, however, has not yet caught on.
The Wikipedia Foundation, which runs the aforementioned platform, wouldn’t really have noticed if it wasn’t for Yifan, a fantasy writer who turned to articles by a Chinese citizen for inspiration for her next story. Yifan realized that some events did not add up or were even completely invented. The find was picked up by the Asian S.sixth tonewho told the story before the organization conducted an internal investigation.
Zhemao, in particular, since 2010 publication of up to 206 fictional Russian stories about wars and historical events in the country that never happened. He did so in a particularly technical tone, in line with other similar—and real—stories posted on Wikipedia. In fact, the Chinese citizen indicated in her profile that she was the daughter of a Russian diplomat and married to a Russian citizen. He also said that he has a degree in Russian history.
However, Yifan realized that the stories published by Zhemao on the Chinese Wikipedia were significantly longer than those that could be read in the Russian-language or English-language Wikipedia. “Characters that are not on the Anglo-Russian Wiki appear on the Chinese Wiki, and these characters are mixed with real historical figures, so that the real ones cannot be distinguished from the fake ones. Even the long Moscow-Tver war revolves around the non-existent Kashinsky silver mine,” the writer commented on the Chinese Q&A portal.
Wikipedia has already deleted most of Zhemao’s posts
The Wikipedia Foundation has finally confirmed that Zhemao’s publications contain fictitious historical data. They found out that he also posted some real articles to add fake content. Both his profile and most of his content have been removed from the portal.. Some of them, according to the aforementioned media, are still available thanks to the cooperation of other users who eliminated the invented strings.
Zhemao, for his part, used his English-language Wikipedia profile to talk about what happened. The citizen claims that she is in fact a full-time housewife and that He only has a secondary education. He also took the opportunity to write a few lines as an apology.
“I didn’t want to delete the hundreds of thousands of words I had written, but as a result, I lost millions of words and the circle of scientist friends fell apart. The problems I caused are hard to compensate for, so perhaps the only option is a permanent ban.. My current knowledge is not enough to make a living. So in the future, I will learn the craft, work honestly, and never do such vague things again.”
According to him, despite the problem that may have been caused by the alteration of real stories by fictional events, many users encouraged “Zhemao” to write novels similar to the stories he wrote on Wikipedia. Sixth tone.
Source: Hiper Textual
