In her beautiful essay on Patheos entitled “Marc Gafni Wiki — How Wikipedia is used for Internet abuse“, Co-Founder of Unique Self Coaching Claire Molinard writes about “how, by skillfully navigating some of Wikipedia’s biases and mastering the art of editing on Wikipedia, anyone can defame someone’s public image by hijacking their page.”
In her article, she uses “as an example some snippets from the story of American Philosopher Marc Gafni Wikipedia’ s page, to demonstrate how Wikipedia’s self-serving parties have tried to shape Marc Gafni‘s public image for the sake of their own hidden vendettas.”
Claire writes:
Ironically, when I asked “Is Wikipedia reliable?” on Google, the highest-ranking results were Wikipedia articles that dispute its own credibility. The Internet abounds with articles that condemn the fact that anyone can write or edit a Wikipedia article by writing anonymously or under a pen name. Most sources across the web agree that while academic articles on Wikipedia are generally reliable, articles about political or cultural matters are much less so and more prone to bias and slander.
And a little later:
To understand how it’s possible to take control of a Wikipedia page, it’s necessary to understand the art of editing a Wikipedia page to support not truth but the narrative the editor wants to convey. The editor, when skilled, is able to write seemingly objective statements that will surreptitiously get readers to believe a certain biased perspective of any given story. In theory, any fact that is stated in an article requires that sources be cited. But in practice, the reliability of those sources or the professed expertise of the writers themselves is not always well documented or verified. Unlike academic journals for example, Wikipedia does not require that a second impartial expert verify the information added before it is shown to the public.