Confessions of a former Wikipedia Troll

Photo from Pixabay under CC0 Creative Commons

Wikipedia is one of the sites that I have been involved in for most of my life. I first joined Wikipedia in 2006 when a lot of the scrutiny about its legitimacy was all over the news. I also used to not be the best for internet etiquette and would participate in a lot of internet debauchery. Due to the news that Wikipedia was being trolled I decided to join in on the fun. It was really easy back then because their community wasn’t as tightly knit as it is now. I would spoof account (which you could do back then) because it would give your edits more credibility and then change the smallest details in hundreds of Wikipedia pages. Wikipedia finally caught on and started banning IP addresses that were known for doing it (including me). The only problem was that I had a VPN at that time so I just used that and could continue to troll. Wikipedia then created a counter troll movement which created the climate which we see today. I stopped shortly after but I still find that some of the best time for Wikipedia because we gave them the community that they have today, they got to spread their website more than it had, and we got to have a little fun at the same time.

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 10, 2017 at 12:25 PM

    I found your response to Wikipedia to be very interesting. I think you have an interesting perspective on Wikipedia, as you've seen if from a side that maybe the average person hasn't. I think it's important and also answers the question of Wikipedia's credibility. We're always told in school Wikipedia isn't reliable, but it seems they have a strong network trying to keep people from completely misguiding people all together. Thanks for sharing your insight!

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