This Story was Published on India.com edited by Zarafshan Shiraz.
The millennials have grown up copy pasting their school and college projects from Wikipedia with blind trust on the subject and recently, CEO of the company, Jimmy Wales was seen taking full responsibility of the content as he schooled a Twitter user on “putting junk” related to Tablighi Jamaat onto his site. The founder was accused of taking a bribe for pulling down articles on Tablighi Jamaat which he, in his defense, called “incredibly poorly written and has zero sources.”
A storm brewed on the micro-blogging site when the Twitter user, unable to find the page on Tablighi Jamaat, 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?” 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).” Taking authority of the content that goes onto his website, 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.”
As some people emerged to back the aforementioned Twitter user, Jimmy patiently answered their trolling with facts. 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.”
