Chinese woman spent years writing fake Russian history on Wikipedia
Zhemao
In one of the biggest frauds on the open-source platform, a Chinese lady posing as a historian spent years creating alternate stories of Medieval Russian history on Chinese Wikipedia, inventing fictitious governments, battles, and nobility. Chinese author Yifan, who was conducting research for a book when he came across an article about the Kashin silver mine, revealed the swindle last month.
According to the Wikipedia site, the mine, which was found by Russian peasants in 1344, employed more than 40,000 slaves and freedmen and served as a notable source of income for the Russian principality of Tver in the 14th and 15th centuries as well as for succeeding regimes. The essay went into great detail to describe the construction of the mine, the geological makeup of the soil, and even the refining procedure.
Yifan believed he had discovered intriguing material for a book. He had no idea that he had stumbled onto an entire fictional universe created by a user going by the name of Zhemao.
She has published 206 entries on Chinese Wikipedia since 2019, each one fusing reality with fiction in a sophisticated strategy that went undiscovered for years and challenged the limits of crowdsourced platforms' capacity to weed out dishonest users.
Yifan was alerted when he investigated the sources Zhemao provided and ran the silver mine narrative by Russian speakers, only to discover that the pages or editions of the books she claimed did not exist. Her lengthy entries on ancient Slavic wars—conflicts that could not be located in Russian historical records—were likewise criticised by the people he contacted.
After a group of volunteer editors and other Wikipedians, including Yip, went through her prior contributions to over 300 articles, the scope of the scam became apparent.
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(With inputs from agencies)
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