India Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has reportedly summoned Wikipedia executives over the vandalism of Indian cricketer Arshdeep Singh’s page after the India vs Pakistan Cricket match on September 4. Soon after the match. Arshdeep Singh’s page was edited to change the word India to Wikipedia to hurt India’s communal harmony.
A high-level panel will meet Wikipedia executives to question them about how such modifications are allowed on Wikipedia.
During the match, Arshdeep Singh dropped an important catch that became one of the reasons why India lost the match against Pakistan. Several users posted disappointment on social media but editing the Wikipedia page to label Arshdeep Singh Khalistani is a serious issue.
Wikipedia reverted the changes within 15 minutes and also marked Arshdeep Singh’s Wikipedia page semi-protected on September 11 to prevent further changes.
A social media user Anshul Saxena checked the edit history and found that the editing of the page was done from Pakistan. Wikipedia keeps an edit history with the IP address of the user who makes changes to a page.
Wikipedia has several contributors who can edit any page to update the information. So, the platform basically offers user-generated content. There are several user roles. Each update is checked by senior editors to verify if the updated information is reliable.
Wikipedia is the 7th most visited website with more than 5 billion page views per month. The website is used by most internet users for reliable information on any topic. But the platform is now losing its trust because it is now used to spread propaganda. There have been several cases when we saw how Wikipedia editors updated wrong content influenced by a special ideology.
