Opinion Why the case against Wikipedia in India is a challenge to freedom of speech and information

This doesn’t mean that Wikipedia is perfect. Sources can be biased. In the world of fake news where information manipulation has become the norm, it is easy to believe in and cite false sources or incorrect information. The idea of what is neutral can be strongly contested because the lived experience, the language sources being cited, and the local understanding of events, situations, or even recipes – do have a look at the ferocious edit wars around the origins of Falafel – do not always match documented sources. The difference between “I don’t know this for a fact, but I know it to be the truth” is where the grey zones of Wikipedia knowledge production lie.

However, the platform persists, and the margin of error is low because the editors are not only bound by the neutrality and citation principle but because they are truly multi-vocal. When new editors or vested companies and organisations try to insert manipulated information, a combination of AI driven bots and human editors descend on it to check, verify, correct, and edit it so that it produces a neutral point of view. This takes time. Sometimes, in languages where the number of editors is smaller, or algorithmic check resources are lesser, manipulated or biased information can go undetected for much longer than is good. However, Wikipedia is not a static information platform. It is a living information platform where information mutates, transforms, and changes as the world in which it lives changes. In an ideal world, when we come across information on Wikipedia that sounds erroneous, we can either check the sources, supply new sources, or make edits so that the information gets updated. It is the dual nature of wisdom of crowds combined with the logic of “citation, citation, citation” that has made Wikipedia endure different generations of the Internet as the de facto source of global information.

In a recent Delhi High Court case, news agency Asia News International (ANI) complained that Wikipedia pages about ANI carried “false and misleading” content. The edits on the Indian English language Wikipedia page characterised ANI as having served as a “propaganda tool for the incumbent government”.

When ANI tried to change that information, other editors questioned their self-representation and doubled down on their narrative, citing secondary sources that support their argument. Justice Navin Chawla has ordered Wikipedia to disclose the identity of the people who made these allegedly defamatory edits to the ANI Page so that ANI can charge them with legal action. When Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit organisation that supports Wikipedia) failed to provide the desired information, a contempt notice was issued and Justice Chawla issued a contempt notice and reportedly said, “If you don’t like India, please don’t work in India… We will ask government to block your site”.

I keep on wondering if there is a failure to understand the nature of Wikipedia. An edit on Wikipedia can be an act of vandalism, but it is not just an individual act. Edits are collectives. They are made by communities that have standards of citation, sourcing, and presentation. Even when new editors or bot accounts try and manipulate pages, they are subject to communities of scrutiny and attention that keep on meticulously correcting the information. A page on Wikipedia is never final. It is a draft. Multiple people collaboratively work on it. It would be better if the work of counter citations is done, edit-discussions, and good-faith challenging and reworking of the information is carried out, rather than just going to court.

The court’s decision to hold some members accountable and punish a community of volunteers by disclosing their private information seems to be a challenge to freedom of speech and information. The effect this would produce, where any form of critical information that powerful organisations do not like can be censored, or indeed become grounds for punishment would discourage future generations of knowledge warriors who relentlessly and selflessly work on producing free knowledge for the world to use. The complaint and the judgment both seem to miss out on the fact that Wikipedia is not a platform, a site, or an app. It is a movement that believes that information should be free and that there is space for dialogue and conversation in a world that is increasingly polarised and clamping down on the ideals of freedom of speech and expression.

The writer is professor of Global Media at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, Harvard University, USA