NEW DELHI, Nov 5: The Centre in a written notice to Wikipedia cited numerous complaints of bias and inaccuracies in information provided by it, and asked why it should not be treated as a publisher instead of an intermediary, official sources said on Tuesday.
The communication from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry said there was a view that a small group exercises editorial control on its pages. Wikipedia advertises itself as a free online encyclopaedia where user volunteers can create or edit pages on various subjects.
The popular online source of information is embroiled in legal cases in India over alleged inaccurate and defamatory content provided by it. The website most recently found itself in hot water with the news agency Asian News International (ANI), which took Wikipedia parent Wikimedia Foundation to the Delhi High Court for defamation, due to a description of the agency on its Wikipedia page, calling it a “propaganda tool for the incumbent government.”
During the proceedings, the Court had cautioned the Foundation and threatened to order the government to block Wikipedia in India if they did not provide details on who was/were responsible for this description.
Wikipedia globally abstains from any article-level control over its contents as demanded of online platforms. It instead defer to its vast network of volunteer editors. Having content run by volunteers opens the encyclopaedia up to such legal claims, while also risking vandalism: in 2022, for instance, then Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar called out the platform for derogatory remarks added to the cricketer Arshdeep Singh’s page.
Last month, ANI took Wikipedia parent Wikimedia Foundation to the Delhi High Court for defamation, due to a description of the agency on its Wikipedia page, calling it a “propaganda tool for the incumbent government” leading the court to threaten it of blocking in India if they did not rectify. This observation by the Delhi High Court is concerning as almost 80 crore users read, write, and edit articles on the world’s premier free encyclopaedia every month.
In August this year, India recorded the fifth-highest number of Wikipedia users — 78 crore — with the United States leading the list followed by Japan, Great Britain, and Germany. The “free encyclopaedia” includes articles in all but two of the 22 languages mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, namely Bodo and Dogri. Among them, the highest number of articles were in Urdu, at 2 lakh, followed by Tamil, at 1.5 lakh. Zooming out, globally, the English language had the highest number of articles.
(Manas Dasgupta)