NEW DELHI: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales schooled a user on micro-blogging site after she said the site was bribed to delete the “Tablighi Jamaat 2020 Coronavirus Hotspot” page.
A storm brewed when the Twitter user goes by the name Nicki Minach, unable to find the page on Tablighi Jamaat.
Conspiracy
She immediately arrived at the conclusion and wrote, “Just googled and found this,@Wikipedia how much were you paid for this? How much will our media and woke intellectuals hide their wrong doings?”
These assertions caught the attention of the founder of Wikipedia who subtly denying the allegation.
Jimmy took to his Twitter handle to respond to the question directly, “Hi Nicki, Wikipedia doesn’t work that way. We don’t accept payment to include things, nor to delete them (sic).”
Not convinced, the user asserted, “Hi Jimmy, this article was important for people to know the current hotspots in India, kindly restore the article, since it wasn’t islamophobic to mention the current hotspots. Regards (sic)” and even added that “the article was a rational and educative article. Thank you for replying, I’ll be posting the article again, since it’s imperative for the public to be aware. Thank you. 🙂 (sic).”
Jimmy answered, “I don’t recommend that you do that – it is important to join the discussion. In actual fact, the article was incredibly poorly written and has zero sources” while adding that “This isn’t about religious sentiments, it’s about not putting junk into Wikipedia.”
Answering another user who called out Wikipedia for this sudden edit, Jimmy tweeted, “Not “suddenly” – we’ve always been very strict. Anyone can try to edit – and cry their eyes out if they do it badly and their work is deleted. Nothing new in that (sic).”
To another troll he gave a befitting reply, “Most of the articles in Wikipedia have absolutely zero cited sources.” This is transparently false and easy to check. It isn’t really helpful to your cause, whatever it is, to make things up out of thin air.”