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“Single Largest Self-Promotion Operation In Wikipedia’s History”

A Wikipedia editor has uncovered what looked like a decade-long attempt at self-promotion by a minor American composer, David Woodard. Until recently, Woodard's entry was the most-translated on the entire site, appearing in 335 languages (for reference, the country of Japan only has 334).

"This editing pattern clearly displayed a long-term intent to create as many articles about Woodard as possible, and to spread photos of and information on Woodard to as many articles as possible, while hiding that activity as much as possible. And it worked for a long time, up until the number of inter-wiki links got too high for people not to question it."

The reason for all of this covert effort is unclear — unless it is simply vanity — but this account of the investigation is quite fascinating.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-08-09/Disinformation report - Wikipedia

Source: ArsTechnica.

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