A Chinese woman created more than 200 fictional alternative and made-up history articles from late medieval Russia on Chinese Wikipedia.
For ten years, a mysterious Chinese collaborator of Wikipedia who calls himself “Zhemao” published on the portal fictitious entries regarding the history of Russia, writing more than 200 items and contributing to hundreds of others, reports the Chinese English-language publication Sixth Tone.
As reported by Futurism, the woman was limited to reinvent parts of Russian historyand also Chinese, to fantasize regarding Slavic rivalries or convincing stories regarding the Qing dynasty.
According to the media, the web of lies woven by Zhemao, who used multiple accounts to create these false entries, or add false details to the real ones, sometimes to add authenticity to his false entries, is “an amazing work, even if it is completely invented”.
Now, Wikipedia editors have reportedly become aware of the spoofed accounts and the fake posts have been deleted.
Unmasked mysterious Chinese woman from Wikipedia
The user Yifan de Zhihua Chinese question-and-answer website, turned to Wikipedia for some historical inspiration while writing a novel.
Yifan, a fantasy novelist, found an entry regarding the silver mine in Killingwhich operated with 40,000 workers, which seemed like an interesting gold mine for his book.
“After discovering this information,” he wrote on Zhihu, “I had a keen eye for showing it to a group of friends, and then I ran into trouble.”
The Kashen silver mine, his friends informed him following a little investigation, did not exist. Investigating the user who created the page, they soon discovered that the Chinese versions of the Russian history entries she had edited were often much longer and more detailed than her Russian counterparts. Many of the details were simply lies.
“Chinese Wikipedia entries are more detailed than English Wikipedia and even Russian Wikipedia”Yifan wrote.
“Characters that did not exist in the English version of the Wiki appear in the Chinese Wiki. These characters were mixed with real historical figures, so it was almost impossible to tell the real from the fake,” he added.
public apology
After Wikipedia caught wind of the Chinese woman’s ruse, thanks to the investigative work of Yifan and his friends, Zhemao issued a public apology.
“As the saying goes, to tell a lie, you have to tell more lies”, reads the apology, as translated by Chinese state media Sixth Tone.
“I resisted erasing the hundreds of thousands of words I wrote, but as a result, I ended up losing millions of words, and my circle of academic friends collapsed,” he added.
“Answering motivation and details: The main motivation is wanting to really learn, so learning from other people,” she wrote, as reported by IFL Science, also admitting to pretending to be Taiwanese online.
“The problems I’ve caused are hard to make up for, so maybe a permanent ban is the only option. My current knowledge is not enough to earn a living, so in the future I will learn a trade, work honestly, and never do illusionary things like this once more.”
Zhemao added that he will not try to circumvent the ban by using VPNs. He stated that “I am regarding to give birth, and my family is under great financial pressure”, which makes editing Wikipedia with other fabricated details impossible in terms of time management.
