Wikipedia is the most popular educational platform, with billions of readers and millions of multi-language articles covering all areas of human knowledge. For many people, Wikipedia is a single source of truth, a reference point for learning about something new. People learn from Wikipedia articles, share them, and refer to them in online debates. Search engines, LLMs, and other AI-powered tools use Wikipedia content extensively.

Wikipedia has some limitations. It prohibits opinionated content and doesn’t engage readers as much as feature-rich, long-read journalism. However, Wikipedia provides free knowledge when it matters the most. It holds great value for any mission-driven effort to help people make informed life decisions. If updated regularly, Wikipedia articles age well and stay relevant indefinitely. Wikipedia also increases the outreach and impact of its source publications, such as independent research or investigative journalism.

The world has become extremely reliant on volunteer contributions to open-source software and free knowledge, which sometimes doesn’t end well (remember the xz backdoor). Wikipedians do a hard job developing the encyclopedia but often lack the time and resources to create comprehensive articles on complicated topics. We contribute by focusing expertise on critical areas of knowledge at the right time. As the proverb says, a spoon is dear when lunchtime is near.

Comprehensive encyclopedia articles are hard to write but easy to corrupt. A bad-faith editor can covertly remove crucial information, misquote the source publications, engage in cherry-picking, or alter the tone of voice. Wikipedia community easily deals with internet trolls and vandals, but many paid editors are, in fact, experienced wikipedians who are well-informed on how to outmaneuver the system.

We don’t really care for articles about regular companies or products, as they cause no harm. However, it becomes a concern when a third party manipulates sensitive articles about health, potentially harmful industries (fossil fuels, tobacco, etc.), politics, or war.

Wikiganda was created in response to such attacks. Over the years, we revealed a network of accounts concealing unfavorable information about tobacco companies and their products, caught ex-wikipedians operating dozens of accounts to whitewash Russian governors and manipulate elections in Wikipedia, and opposed large-scale disinformation attacks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We use a three-step approach. We identify attacks using Wikipedia’s built-in tools and our own platform, wikify.io. We investigate the cases, and pass our findings to Wikipedia administrators. Finally, we repair the damaged articles.

We follow the principles of effective altruism and focus on what has the biggest impact on human lives. We believe that our work helps people make evidence-based decisions regarding their health, politics, and more.

* Public health (tobacco consumption, HIV/AIDS)
* Environment (fossil fuels, plastics, conservation)
* Russia’s war in Ukraine (fighting disinformation)
* Open science, archivation, and digital public good

Our key targets are companies in potentially harmful industries, such as fossil fuels generation, tobacco, and poorly regulated pharma; non-democratic governments that engage in manipulation and propaganda; and organized conspiracy theorists.

We collaborate with independent journalists to cover stories about attempts to manipulate Wikipedia.

* The Great Wikipedia Edit War (published by the Important Stories in English in 2024)
* Uzbek propagandists have been cleaning Wikipedia (published by Radio Ozodlik in Uzbek in 2024)
* 'Ruwiki,' the democratic People's Encyclopedia of Russia (without LGBT+, Navanly, and Russian war crimes in Ukraine (published by Paper in Russian in 2024)
* Disinformation desk. The black hat public relations in the Russian Wikipedia (published by Proekt Media in Russian in 2020)
* Revenge of the editors (published by Meduza in English in 2019)

Wikiganda is a nonprofit without consistent funding sources. You can support us with a one-time or regular donation via Stripe or help us launch a new project (connect us via email at mail@wikiganda.org or Telegram.