Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-10-19/Book review
The Editors
The Editors by Stephen Harrison, 412 pp.
Published by Inkshares, August 13, 2024
ISBN 978-1-950301-67-6
Smallbones
- Smallbones was the editor-in-chief of The Signpost from March 2019 through April 2022; he now writes the Disinformation report column, while also contributing to In the media. Disclosure: he received an electronic review copy of the book and in August received a signed paperback copy.
Stephen Harrison is a journalist and beat reporter who writes about Wikipedia and is likely the favorite such journalist of many of the editors of this encyclopedia. He knows his subject. He knows our complicated rules, our sometimes vicious politics, and the importance of getting to know the people involved.
His work has been published in Slate, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other media outlets. Now, though, he has also released his debut novel, The Editors.
It's not the first work of fiction about Wikipedia, but it is the first I've seen that is not science fiction, speculative fiction, nor likely to be seen as overly literary. Harrison is writing for normal curious readers about the actions of Wikipedians dealing with an extraordinary – but not unimaginable – situation.
The novel's encyclopedia is called Infopendium, and has slightly different rules than Wikipedia. But people who have never edited Wikipedia, or even thought of what goes on behind the article pages, will still learn about how the Wikipedia community works.
The Editors is a suspense novel, and a real page-turner: at 412 pages, you might be tempted to finish it in one or two days. If you take this book to the beach, be sure to take along a big bottle of SPF 50+ sunscreen.
Despite the fast-paced story, Harrison's ability to develop interesting characters – much of it done on-the-run – might be his most surprising skill. Several of his black-hat editors are presented very sympathetically; the careful reader can understand their motivations. Perhaps this is to keep the reader guessing about how the action will be resolved. Perhaps it's due to the influence of Wikipedia's oft repeated principle, "assume good faith". Or perhaps he just recognizes that all editors, like all people, are flawed mixtures with different cultural backgrounds, beliefs, interests, abilities, experiences and blind spots.
I'll also note that all readers are flawed and have different experiences. This review has turned out to be a very personal experience for me, as there are several situations in the book that feel familiar. Other readers may draw on their experiences of other situations. Wikipedians might see reflections of themselves in the book and of people they know, as well as situations they have worked in.
But make no mistake: the novel is not a disguised version of a specific event or of a specific editor's actions, or a roman à clef where a simple key will unlock the meaning of the whole story. Rather it is about situations such as the pandemic – that many editors have participated in over long periods – or situations such as conflict of interest editing that occur every day.
The characters are not cheeky portrayals of real individual editors, though you might wonder for a couple of pages after they are introduced, until the same character reminds you of a different editor you know. They might be a combination of several editors who have acted in similar ways in similar situations, or even just Harrison playing with the idea of "what would a character like User:Real Person do if their interests, beliefs, or experiences were different?"
I'll only reveal the seemingly apparent identity of one such real-world editor: Jimmy Wales, the founder of the encyclopedia in both the novel (as User:Prospero) and in real life, gives a keynote speech at Infopendium's annual conference. But after the speech, Prospero's actions will surprise almost any Wikipedian who thought they knew Jimbo. Harrison keeps you guessing.
Wikipedians have, however, seen many of the situations that pop up in the novel: for example, a young editor struggling through a request for adminship or attending the annual Wikimania conference.
Paid editing happens nearly every day on Wikipedia. Every active long-time editor has seen how Wikipedia reacted to the pandemic. We've all seen news items covered here, especially celebrity deaths. Regular readers of The Signpost should know how billionaires attempt to rewrite Wikipedia.
The novel's action starts right from the first sentence of the prologue. Harrison has reported on this phenomenon called "deaditing": a very notable person dies, and editors compete to report the death, revise the article, and just change the "is" in the lead section to "was".
Pay close attention here! Almost all the major characters in the novel are introduced in the first seven pages, as well as several of their sockpuppets (multiple deceptive accounts used by a single editor).
The first six chapters introduce a freelance journalist who is both a hard-bitten, experienced and dedicated hack, and a flighty young woman worried that she can't make a career in the dying newspaper business. While she might represent the entire industry, she doesn't strike me as a copy of any journalist that I've met. Perhaps it's her indecisiveness. She meets one of the heroes of the prologue, as well as the "editor of the year" and many others at the Global Infopendium Conference.
The conference is thrown into chaos during Prospero's welcoming speech by a hack of the conference's computer system, while the editor-of-the year is insulted on everybody's screens. A black-hat editor is reintroduced to readers, as is a newly-minted billionaire.
And then the action really starts, as the very existence of Infopedium is at risk. There's a wild road trip across North America, some gunplay, a break-in, some government intimidation of editors. There are even a couple of romances. It's not our usual daily routine by any means.
You might think that editors would never engage in gunplay... but you'd be wrong. Do governments intimidate editors? Unfortunately, it's fairly common. Long road trips are also fairly common, especially among photographers. So, yes, the situations are all well within the realm of possibility.
Casual Wikipedia readers, newbies, and disinformation journalists will learn more from this novel than from any edit-a-thon, instructional video, or how-to-edit manual. Experienced Wikipedians will enjoy the fresh view of ground they know well and of editors they feel like they might know.
According to two interviews, Harrison has already begun working on a new novel, this time about the U.S. Federal Reserve, where he formerly worked. I expect it to be similarly well-researched and grounded in reality (if not specific facts), as his epigraph modestly suggests, "This is a reported work of fiction."
He explains this sentence to the first interviewer with an example: he wants to write "a story based on themes that we're finding in our lives. Some of the fiction that I've always admired the most would be Tom Wolfe. The Bonfire of the Vanities is deeply reported."
He quotes William Faulkner to the second interviewer: "The best fiction is far more true than any journalism." In that sense, this is a very good piece of fiction.
Many Wikipedia editors will likely have their own personal reactions to the novel, but please remember that the book is not about you, it's not about me. It's about us, the editors, the Wikipedia community.
Enjoy!
Sgerbic
- Sgerbic leads the editing group Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia and was interviewed twice by Harrison, the journalist who is the author of the book. Disclosure: she received an advance copy of the book for review.
An announcement came across my desktop recently that Slate journalist Stephen Harrison had published a book called The Editors. His beat is Wikipedia (yes, that is a thing), so I was a bit surprised he would be writing about Wikipedia editors, but hadn’t reached out to interview my team members. Harrison knows about the Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia (GSoW) project, as he has interviewed me twice, most recently in 2023 for this article. To my surprise, I received an email from Harrison a few weeks ago, asking if I would be interested in an advance copy of his book. Of course I would! Keeping my ego in check and not asking why he didn’t interview any of my amazing editors for a book about Wikipedia editors, I gave him my home address, and soon I received a paperback advance reader copy. I found a sunny spot on the couch, the obligatory cats joined me and I settled in to see whom Harrison had chosen to interview. Caution: some vague mild spoilers are contained below.
I was surprised to learn that this is not a book interviewing Wikipedia editors; it is rather a novel about a group of editors who seek to keep misinformation off the fourth most viewed website, Infopedium. This group is called The Misinformation Patrol. Sound familiar?
With my three cats taking turns keeping me warm and settled on the couch, I finished the 414 pages mostly in a single five-hour reading session – yes, it was just that good. And completely not what I was expecting. It's Infopedium and not Wikipedia. Harrison selected new tenets, "Aim for Neutrality", "We Need Better Sources", "Anonymity Is Fundamental" and "Keep Developing", directly inspired by from Wikipedia's five pillars, like "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia... written from a neutral point of view", "free content", "respect and civility", and most important — and yet confusingly frustrating at times — "Wikipedia has no firm rules".
Everything else was very familiar. Discussions, edit history, administrator elections, ambiguous rules, conflict of interest issues, sock-puppets, paid editing problems, conventions, and edit-a-thons. But more than all of this, what Harrison really understood was the passion of the editing community: he has clearly been talking to real people.
The novel centers around user Alex718, who runs The Disinformation Patrol, and the journalist Morgan Wentworth (who is clearly Harrison's alter ego), focusing on the uncovering of a paid editing mystery of billionaire Pierce Briggs, who treats Infopedium as an extension of his media empire and seeks to control articles to protect his reputation and to influence the public. Briggs understands the power of Wikipedia... er, Infopedium, I mean. The story introduces other editors with their own agendas, such as DejaNu, a librarian whose mission is to create articles for women and people of color, despite being one of those "the ends justify the means" people who will bend the rules in order to right wrongs of the past. And to a community of people hellbent on following rules, DejaNu is a polarizing character (I didn't like her at all). Another editor, turtle~dragon, who has moved from Texas to China and started a business editing for pay, moves the storyline along: he begins working for Briggs, using sockpuppet accounts to influence articles, until the Chinese government finds out and forces him to cover-up a novel illness appearing in Wuhan.
And this is where Harrison's expertise with this platform really shows; a crowd-sourced, all-volunteer community can't be stopped from its mission, whether it is Infopendium or Wikipedia. The idea of writing an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit is just insane: it should not exist, it should be a mess, it can't possibly maintain itself without ads and masses of paid employees! Yet it does, and it thrives; issues with the software and head-butting with other editors notwithstanding, it works.
I saw the story of Morgan Wentworth – a freelance journalist who, out of desperation for a story, attends an Infopendium convention at Columbia University in New York – and the rest of the characters developed by Harrison as reflections of the Wikipedia editors he has interviewed over the years for Slate, VICE Sports, The Washington Post, The New York Times, OneZero and other media. A good chunk of his published articles are storylines in this novel: very clever. For instance, when in the novel editors turtle~dragon and KonaYeziq get wrapped up in censorship in Beijing, Uyghurs are sent to camps, and then there are the beginnings of a novel virus that the Chinese government tried to cover up, I knew Harrison's articles "The Coronavirus is Stress-Testing Wikipedia’s Systems", "Why China Blocked Wikipedia in All Languages” and "Why Wikipedia Banned Several Chinese Admins" were necessary research.
The inspiration behind character DejaNu, the librarian who wins the Editor of the Year award for her unwavering tenacity to right the wrongs of the past, by politically correcting articles to current standards and encouraging new editors to sign up, probably came from Harrison's articles "How Wikipedia Became a Battleground for Racial Justice" and "Closing Wikipedia’s Gender Gap". Character Alex718, whose unhygienic habits and obsession with Infopedium led him to create articles for trains and public transit since the age of seven, is probably based on this story Harrison wrote: "Wikipedia's Terrific Subway Railfans" about editors Ryan Ng and Shaul Picker, who have made hundreds of thousands of edits to Wikipedia, mostly about New York’s subways.
Harrison begins the novel with several pages of edit history for the article on billionaire Pierce Briggs, and introduces the cast of editors, which will set them on a spiral of intrigue to unmask who is behind the edits that are seeking to control information and spread misinformation. Personally, I found this an intriguing way to begin: maybe it's just me, but as I read the back-and-forth of the edits, I found myself in editor mode thinking, "How I would have handled some of these edits myself?" It was quite realistic.
Though the characters do become a bit of a caricature of an obsessive Wikipedia editor with a savior complex — think lots of missed meals, lack of relationships and days without showering — Harrison understands the passion, desire to be fair and neutral, rule-following, with free-information-to-the-masses attitude that I see in the Wikipedia editing community. It shows that Harrison has done his homework. At the end of the novel, the heroes of the story, who start out with many different agendas, find that they all share the same agenda. The storyline is fun, there is mystery and intrigue and the characters' individual stories and agendas seem plausible. I'm not giving away too much, because there are many twists and mysteries for even the non-Wikipedia editor to enjoy.
Coming back to GSoW for the moment, the group referenced in the novel, the Misinformation Patrol, focused on general problems with all articles, was made up of experienced editors who were recruited to join the Patrol and were operating anonymously with each other on Infopedium. Very different from the GSoW – we specialize in articles on science and pseudoscience. We also have created our own training program (that generally takes four months to complete), operate in many languages, and we are gathered off-Wikipedia in a private Facebook group called "The Secret Cabal", which allows us to know each other in real life. What Harrison is describing is more akin to WikiProjects, which exist all over Wikipedia, but are repositories of ranked lists of things to do, and are mostly dormant. Good intentions, but in my opinion, the anonymity of the users and the lack of mentorship and leadership are what kill these projects. GSoW not only trains one-on-one, but about half of our new people have never coded or worked in IT; we shun wall-of-text instructions and give lots of personalized feedback and mentoring. It's a different "vibe", which hopefully will keep us focused on our goals of making the best encyclopedia – the same goal that Harrison’s characters have with Infopedium.
One of Harrison's storylines involves a paid editing scheme from the viewpoint of a paid editor themselves falling victim to his "customer". Personally, I have dealt with several cases of someone in real life paying for an edit, then being blackmailed for more money to protect the edits from being removed. Something I warn professionals of often is that there is really no shortcut to having a Wikipedia article written about you, since it stands on its own or not, and money paid or special favors aren't going to help. Also different was the "training" that DejaNu tried to do at her library, which is something I suspect happens at Edit-A-Thons: brand new editors creating brand new Wikipedia articles in a couple hours with little instruction. Although I suspect this happens, it is not how I run my team. We start with minor edits and after much instruction over weeks and many small changes build up to a rewriting a stub article; never ever would we instruct someone new to create a brand new article in a few hours.
Overall, this is a fun read, with a very interesting sub-text and very well researched. I suspect Harrison would love to thumb his nose at a tennis-playing billionaire who treats Wikipedia as his own social network, and travel across country in a Scooby-doopedia Mystery Machine to uncover who is behind the misinformation. I wonder how Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales — if he ever reads this novel — would think of his character Gerald Budd’s home in Palo Alto with "half-eaten microwavable meals covering the coffee table" and "(T)iny gray hairs fram[ing] the drain of the bathroom sink, clinging stubbornly to the porcelain surface". But as I've never met Wales, I don't know; maybe he would get a good laugh out of it?
Just for the fun of it, if Harrison created characters and storylines from the people he has interviewed over the years, which of these characters might I have influenced? On page 34, while Morgan Wentworth is walking past a series of editors, she overhears these two conversations: first, a man in a fedora who says, "If a page presents false balance, that actually undermines the truth", and then a woman with a French accent who says, "We cannot return to the past and compose 'better sources' for those people who lacked power". If you blend those two random editors and add in a lot of imposter syndrome that someone like me could be running a project like GSoW, I think Harrison has me figured out. Plus my pure joy of training new editors.
Harrison’s The Editors and my GSoW project have more in common than not. We both revere this important encyclopedia, remove misinformation, admire journalists, respect the pillars of editing and the editors themselves. Hopefully this review inspires you to pick up a copy.
WereSpielChequers
- Disclosure: WereSpielChequers attended a book launch event and received a complimentary copy of the book.
The Editors is set in our world before and during the COVID lockdowns. But instead of Wikipedia, there is a similar online encyclopaedia, called Infopedium.
If the works of JRR Tolkien can be oversummarised as an exploration of the trope of the hero as orphan in a faux medieval setting, then Mr. Harrison's work is an estrangement of daughters in near modern times. But I'm sure readers of this publication will be more interested in the similarities and contrasts between the Infopedium of the book and Wikipedia. Imagine, if you will, a project as dominant on the Internet as Wikipedia was when twenty years old, but with the shonky business continuity practices of a much younger Wikipedia, long before dual sites, possibly even before that time when Wikipedia lost its main anti-vandalism defence for a weekend because the relevant volunteer needed his spare server for other purposes.
There are significant commonalities ranging from a very similar hell week, to sockpuppetry and malicious interference from foreign government. But there are also marked differences, including the age profile of retirees and schoolkids, as if the smartphone had not been invented (one assumes that Infopedium, unlike Wikipedia, has cracked mobile editing). While it isn't explicitly stated that Infopedium has decided to standardise on American English, its US focus and complete absence of any characters from the rest of the English speaking world are rather suggestive. The narrow cast of characters, repeatedly crossing each others' paths in very different parts of the site, gives the feel of a much much smaller community, more akin to that of the Georgian or Welsh language Wikipedias than what we are used to on EN Wiki. Another unsubtle difference between the two lies in editor motivation: yes, we've had our obsessives and hagiographers (a subset of POV warriors), but there are also people who edit Wikipedia because we enjoy it, and many of us manage to balance editing with other interests. An RfA candidate who appeared to be editing in all possible waking hours would likely be told to take a break, as the expectation at RfA is that you answer questions in order - but it isn't just a seven-day "open book" exam, it is one where it is normal for the candidate to absent themselves for twenty hours at a time.
Of course, it is possible that almost every character in this book is at least loosely based on a real current or former member of this community. But somehow I doubt I'd be the only Wikipedian who reads this book and concludes that they wouldn't be an Infopedian. All that said, in accordance with edicts from my wife, I now have to pick two books from my library to go to the charity shop because I've decided to keep this one, and yes, I'd buy the sequel, were there to be one.
Discuss this story
It seems like The Signpost in this issue have swapped the "Book review" and "Humour" section. Please clean up the mess. After the whitchunt of another author and novel, this coveage falls into the other ditch, apologeticly promoting a more wanted narrative.Andrez1 (talk) 10:59, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]