In September 2019 an anonymous editor of the English-language edition of Wikipedia made the following statement in a discussion on the entry about Gdańsk: ‘Gdańsk is a Polish city.’ What does that really mean? ‘Gdańsk is a city in Poland’ would sound less nativist and reflect the fact that Gdańsk/Danzig had a far more diverse history than simply being a Polish city (as it is today).’[1] This is just one example of how political – and emotional – historical entries on Wikipedia can be.
Wikipedia – its English-language as well as Polish-language edition – was created in 2001. In the years that followed, in addition to the growing number of entries and increasingly complicated editing rules, successive disputes and conflicts, including those concerning history and memory, emerged among the growing community of editors (mostly male with some representation of females[2]). One of the fiercest debates in this period was, starting in 2005, the so-called ‘Editing War’ over the city of Gdańsk, a port city in northern Poland. In this debate different stakeholder groups, appealing to historical experience, tradition and utility, clashed. The discussion on the spelling of the title of the article about Gdańsk in the English-language edition of Wikipedia (Gdańsk, Gdansk or Danzig) has continued to this day. Why is this important? The version chosen for the title may be of fundamental importance, given Wikipedia’s reach and knowledge-generating role. According to the information available since 2015, the entry[3] has been viewed more than 4.5 million times in the last decade, read daily by around 1,300 Wikipedia users and has had more than 1,400 edits.[4]
Has Gdańsk always been Polish or German?
The Editing War over Gdańsk was described by Dariusz Jemielniak in his book Life of Virtual Savages: Wikipedia Netnography.[5] The entry dedicated to Gdańsk was created as early as 2001 and in the same year the arguments about the spelling began. The author quotes one comment from that time:
For an English speaker, the city was not called Gdańsk until 1939. When one reads history books in English describing the city’s history [up] until 1945, Danzig is the name most commonly used in them. This has nothing to do with whose city it was – most English speakers either don’t care or don’t know about it (in the sense that they don’t say it to themselves ‘Danzig … aha, it must be German’). Why don’t you let go for a while and listen to what well-informed people, i.e. locals with adequate education, have to say. It’s not about the Polish-Prussian issue, it’s about what title suits best an encyclopaedia written in English (p. 103).
In 2003 the dispute escalated as new Wikipedia editors, hitherto uninterested in the topic of Gdańsk, joined the discussion. As Jemielniak writes, ‘between January 2003 and February 2005, almost 1,400 changes were made to the Gdańsk article’.[6] In the absence of the requisite consensus, on the basis of which it is customary to determine the content of Wikipedia entries, it was decided in March 2005 that a vote would be held to determine the spelling of the city’s name, not only for the entry’s title but also for its individual sections.[7] Fraudulent methods were employed in the vote (for example, using newly created accounts to vote), while in discussions references were made to scholarly literature and sources, usability issues (for example, the use of diacritical marks) or the need to take into account one’s own national and political perspective.
When analysing this dispute, Jemielniak was able to delineate the main sides of the conflict:
- German and Prussian nationalists, who maintained that Danzig had belonged to Prussia/Germany for millennia and thus should be described by that name,
- Polish nationalists, who demonstrated that Danzig had been a Polish city all that time, only temporarily under the German rule,
- pragmatists, who recommended that the name to be used should be the one that appears most frequently in the sources,
- editors, insisting on a compromise and trying to withdraw the most controversial editions of the article.[8]
During the Editing War over Gdańsk, the diverse memory of history, not only the most recent, was directly revealed in the space of the online encyclopaedia, one of whose guiding principles is a neutral point of view.
| The principle of a neutral point of view[9] |
| Writing from a neutral point of view means that you impartially describe different, often controversial, points of view, even if you yourself adhere to one of them only. |
| By communicating knowledge in a neutral way, Wikipedia does not impose a single view – it allows readers to make a free choice and form their own opinions. |
| All points of view must be presented using a neutral language, avoiding value judgements that suggest which point of view is the right one. |
| Neutrality requires that each article faithfully represents all relevant viewpoints – published in credible sources – in proportions that reflect the validity of each viewpoint, i.e. with ‘due weight’. |
Exercise/task for reflection
Using the recommendations describing Wikipedia’s principle of a neutral point of view, analyse a selection of comments from the discussion on the form of the Gdańsk entry.[10] Which of the comments should be taken into account and which should be rejected? Which historical arguments can be accepted and which should be totally rejected in this discussion?
Challenging historical consensus
The dispute over Gdańsk on Wikipedia is an example of a much broader phenomenon: digital conflicts of memory. The digital revolution has triggered a real memory boom – a phenomenon that has radically changed the way we tell and commemorate history, especially concerning conflicts. Digital technologies have not only developed the ways in which various forms, actors and messages of memory come together, but they have also allowed memory to be created and communicated in new ways, at hardly any cost and with much potential outreach.[11]
This is an opportunity, but also a huge challenge. Content related to memory is today extremely diverse, impermanent and susceptible to disappearance – which makes it difficult to research, archive and analyse. Moreover, it is not only a question of scientific analysis but also of recognising and countering disinformation and manipulation. The Editing War over Gdańsk has left many traces – comments, editing information and archival versions of the entry are documented and still available. This type of an archival layer is absent from the vast majority of popular online platforms, including above all social media. In social media, such material disappears without a trace – and the discussion often dies.
The ease of online publishing and potentially unlimited reach of published content make it very easy to post memorial propaganda online, especially if done in an organised manner and with adequate resources. Sometimes the aim is just to cause confusion or dispute and to undermine previously established consensuses. As one expert puts it: ‘[Russians] They’re often producing narratives that feel like they’re throwing spaghetti at a wall. If they can get more people on the Internet arguing with each other or trusting each other less, then in some ways their job is done.’[12]
Disinformation strategies on Wikipedia
This kind of activity can also occur on Wikipedia, despite the technical ability to record changes and discussions. In 2022 two UK think tanks, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the Centre of the Analysis of Social Media (CASM), produced a report on the interference of Russian editors in the content of Wikipedia articles. Eighty-six accounts that made 681 edits of the entry on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine posted on the English-language edition of Wikipedia were analysed. The edits examined were consistent with the Kremlin’s narrative and were even cited coming directly from Kremlin’s press releases.[13] Experts quoted in the report argue that Russian activity on Wikipedia occurs not only in its Russian and Ukrainian versions but also in other language versions, and does not necessarily involve changing the content of entries: ‘According to one interviewee, paid editors tried to block the renaming of the article about Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, in order to preserve the incorrect spelling. Another example of pro-Kremlin paid editing was the article about time zones where the added map depicted Crimea as part of Russia. The interviewee believes that paid editing is also likely to occur in topics related to Russian and Ukrainian history.’[14]
| In March 2018 the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched the KyivNotKiev campaign. Its goal was one: to make the world use the name Kyiv. In English, Kyiv is derived from the Ukrainian name Київ, while Kiev from Russian Киев. Although it may seem like just a linguistic nuance, in fact the city’s name has become a symbol of the struggle for Ukrainian subjectivity. |
| As a result of the KyivNotKiev campaign the Western media started to apply the Ukrainian name of the city as widely as possible, thus emphasising the sovereignty of this state and nation, viewed as a national, cultural and political part of Russia in Putin’s propaganda.[15] As in the case of Gdańsk/Danzig, the name of the city of Kyiv was a testament to changing historical realities and the target of propaganda efforts. |
The literature[16] describes two standard practices by which editors acting in favour of the Russian historical and political narrative were able to influence the content of entries on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while also citing counter-actions undertaken by Ukrainian editors. Wikipedia became a narrative battlefield. Russian tactics included so-called ‘wiki-legitimising’ (Wiki-lawyering), that is, manipulating Wikipedia’s rules in order to push through their own edits:
Several editors sympathetic to Russia have repeatedly argued for the addition of disclaimers to negative reports about the Russian army, while advocating the inclusion of one report about sexual violence perpetrated by the Ukrainian military. The editors repeatedly raised these issues on the article’s talk page, citing Wikipedia’s principles, such as a neutral point of view and verifiability, to support their position.[17]
Another tactic was to create short entries of poor quality that did not meet Wikipedia’s standards. For example, one editor sympathetic to Russia created low-quality articles about minor battles and skirmishes in Russia’s war with Ukraine. Such articles contained unnecessary details, used Russian spelling of geographical names and often misquoted sources.[18]
As a result, the visibility of the Russian perspective was increased while the quality of the entire thematic category was reduced. The analysis also highlighted the fact that many editors sympathetic to Russia were people who uncritically accepted the Russian media propaganda, albeit they were not necessarily paid by the Russian state.[19]
How to study Wikipedia as a memory site?
The memory of the Second World War is still socially viable, although the generation that personally experienced its reality is passing away. In this context, Wikipedia can be considered as an attempt at the collective interpretation of recent history, in which various contexts and interest groups clash, with the aim of legitimising a certain vision of history. Such activities do not always need to take the form of a coordinated action organised by the institutions of an authoritarian state, but may simply be the expression of a desire to dominate the historical narrative. Given the popularity and reach of Wikipedia, if only in schools, it is a medium ideally suited to build such domination.
Research into this phenomenon has a long history. An important part of it focuses on, for example, content analyses of historical entries from different language editions of Wikipedia. For example, in a study devoted to the memory of the 1943 Battle of Kyiv (the USSR’s westward offensive) on Wikipedia,[20] the following methods were applied:
– comparing the content of the entry’s titles, table of contents (section names) and the iconography posted on the entry’s page,
– the analysis of the context in which the entry was published (for example, the categories in which it was entered),
– the analysis of the editors’ activity regarding a given entry (number of edits and comments),
– the analysis of editing dynamics over time.
When investigating memory processes and historical manipulation on Wikipedia, one can apply the tools provided by its community, such as PageViews, which enables the investigation of changes in the popularity of an entry [https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/]. This tool was used by the authors of the study on the ‘systematic and deliberate distortion of the Holocaust history in the English-language edition of Wikipedia’.[21] This is what they added to the catalogue of research methods:
- collecting statistical data on the authorship of selected entries,
- identifying the most influential editors and characterising them on the basis of publicly available information (also from social media and direct contacts with editors),
- classic narrative (content) analysis of entries,
- the analysis of citations in entries combined with the analysis of the scientific quality of the cited authors (based on generally recognised citation indexes),
- the analysis of the administrators’ behaviour with regard to changes in the content of entries.
This catalogue can also be expanded by sets of methods and tools associated with digital humanities and natural-language processing.
| The concept of digital humanities refers to a broad trend of using digital methods and tools to carry out research in humanities and social sciences. These methods and tools expand research possibilities by, for example, increasing its scope – instead of a few dozen texts, as many as several million texts can be analysed. |
| Digital humanities apply natural language processing methods and tools. These are ways of machine text analysis, for example, extracting keywords, categorising or evaluating text overtones (positive, negative or neutral). |
Conclusion
Wikipedia as a space for memory disputes and disinformation activities, unlike social media platforms, does not leave users helpless. First, they have access to a full editing history, detailed author attribution and discussions on the content of entries. Secondly, all Wikipedia data, including entry content, metadata and comment content, is publicly available for machine processing. Thirdly, a number of methods have been developed to enable easy machine processing and the analysis of Wikipedia content.
For social scientists as well as for teachers, Wikipedia can be an interesting source of data on memory and history interpretation. In contrast to academic books or textbooks, it can reveal, with an even greater bluntness, stereotypes, simplifications and even historical manipulations, regardless of the guiding principle of a ‘neutral point of view’. However, Wikipedia as a source used for the study of memory must be placed in context – firstly, it is an encyclopaedia, and secondly, it is created by a certain community. Entries in Wikipedia are therefore neither a simple translation of the pop understanding of history nor an aggregate interpretation of academic works in history. Let’s try to take advantage of this feature of Wikipedia to achieve our own aims.
Source: J. Grabowski and J., S. Klein, ‘Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust’, The Journal of Holocaust Research, 37(2), 2023, p. 156 (accessed 20 May 2025).
Analyses show a clear difference between who Wikipedia cites and who has real influence in the world of science. The most frequently cited authors in entries devoted to the Holocaust are those with a marginal position in the professional academic circulation – less frequently recognised historians and experts with indexed scientific publications. This shows that visibility on Wikipedia does not always mean substantive importance – and the choice of sources cited may reflect not so much scientific consensus as the preferences of specific editors.
Source: J. Grabowski and J., S. Klein, ‘Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust’, The Journal of Holocaust Research, 37(2), 2023, p. 156, https://www.tandfonline.com/cms/asset/f18831e6-3348-4444-84eb-6c2b5489cda5/rdap_a_2168939_f0006_oc.jpg (accessed 20 May 2025).
Footnotes
[1] Discussion page concerning the article on Gdańsk, Talk:Gdańsk, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gda%C5%84sk (accessed 16 December 2024).
[2] According to the data of 2008, just 13% of Wikipedia editors are women. R. Glott et al,, Wikipedia Survey – Overview of Results (2010), https://web.archive.org/web/20100414165445/http:/wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_Overview_15March2010-FINAL.pdf (accessed 16 December 2024). Today, almost half of Wikipedia’s readers are women, but they make just 13% of active editors. See A. Alikhan, ‘Wikipedia Needs More Women’, (accessed 8 March 2024), https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2024/03/08/wikipedia-needs-more-women/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gda%C5%84sk (accessed 20 May 2025).
[4] Source: https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&range=all-time&pages=Gda%C5%84sk (accessed 16 December 2024).
[5] D. Jemielniak, Life of Virtual Savages: Wikipedia Netnography (Warsaw, Poltext, 2013).
[6] D. Jemielniak, Życie wirtualnych dzikich. Netnografia Wikipedii, największego projektu współtworzonego przez ludzi (Warsaw 2013), p. 106.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gda%C5%84sk/Vote (accessed 20 May 2025).
[8] Ibid., p. 105
[9] On the basis of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view (accessed 16 December 2024).
[10] Discussion page concerning the article on Gdańsk, Talk:Gdańsk, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gda%C5%84sk (accessed 16 December 2024).
[11] M. Makhortykh, ‘Remediating Violence: Second World War Memory on Wikipedia’, in Remembrance and Solidarity. Violence in 20th-century European History:
Commemorating, Documenting, Educating (Warsaw 2018), pp. 124–25, https://enrs.eu/uploads/media/5b805f8546522-studies-2018-www.pdf (accessed 16 December 2024).
[12] S. Bond, This is what Russian propaganda looks like in 2024, NPR, https://www.npr.org/2024/06/06/g-s1-2965/russia-propaganda-deepfakes-sham-websites-social-media-ukraine (accessed 16 December 2024).
[13] C. Miller et al., Information Warfare and Wikipedia, 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20230709030349/https://files.casmtechnology.com/information-warfare-and-wikipedia_v2.pdf (accessed 16 December 2024).
[14] Ibid., p. 12.
[15] Kyiv, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv (accessed 20 May 2025). See also M. Rice-Oxley, ‘How to pronounce and spell ‘Kyiv’, and why it matters’, Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/how-to-pronounce-and-spell-kyiv-kiev-ukraine-and-why-it-matters (accessed 16 December 2024).
[16] L. Kurek et al., ‘Wikipedia in Wartime: Experiences of Wikipedians
Maintaining Articles about the Russia-Ukraine War’, 2024, https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.02304 (accessed 16 December 2024).
[17] Ibid., p. 9.
[18] Ibid., p. 10.
[19] Ibid., p. 12.
[20] M. Makhortykh, op. cit.
[21] J. Grabowski, S. Klein, ‘Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust’, The Journal of Holocaust Research, 37(2), pp. 133–90, https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939 (accessed 20 May 2025).