Ethereum researcher alleges Wikipedia of biased Solana coverage

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Ethereum researcher Emmanuel Awosika posted allegations on X that Wikipedia has an anti-crypto stance, with its coverage of Solana, in particular, being unfair. The allegations made by Awosika also put into questions regarding the involvement of Molly White in editing crypto-related articles on the platform.

“[…] people have complained about Wikipedia’s coverage of the crypto industry, but I never grasped the problem until someone made a “Wikipedia Is Going Great” joke referring to Molly’s potential involvement in editing crypto-related articles,” Awosika said on X.

Awosika is referring to Molly White’s project, Web3 is going just great, which tracks ostensibly questionable events in the crypto industry which “aren’t actually going as well as its proponents might like you to believe.”

The Ethereum researcher later branded Wikipedia’s editing style as “absolute garbage” and went on to say that such a framework for coverage wouldn’t be reliable. The images shared in Awosika’s post show the historical coverage of Solana, where Wikipedia cites articles from Reuters, The Verge, and Fortune Crypto. The most recent edit on the Solana page is dated March 17, 2024.

“No way I’d be touching that project if Wikipedia was my first source of information,” Awosika argued.

Molly White responded by claiming that while her involvement with Wikipedia is public knowledge, decisions in the organization are independently made and are done “in the open.”

Awosika argued that Wikipedia has a “clear anti-crypto stance,” highlighting its refusal to accept crypto donations and an alleged history of failing to report on crypto-related subjects. White countered this claim by noting that the Wikimedia Foundation does not accept donations of livestock either, but still manages to “write articles on cows.”

Awosika shared images of Wikipedia’s Solana page that detail lawsuits, outages, and hacks related to the platform, as well as its suffering due to the collapse of FTX. He questioned whether there was more to a protocol like Solana than just negative events.

White is a known critic of the crypto industry and writes perspectives on disinformation and free and open access values. White recently published an essay on Bloomberg claiming that crypto’s underlying technology “doesn’t have much to offer the average person in their day-to-day life.”

“[…] feel free to go look at how i’ve been involved, rather than just speculating on what you assume i’ve done. i don’t think it’s true that wikipedia has a “clear anti-crypto stance,” White said.

Awosika insinuates that White’s involvement with Wikipedia influenced the platform to reject crypto donations in May 2022, claiming that these were “extremely risky” and “inherently predatory.”

White pointed out that her involvement in editing the Solana Wikipedia page was limited to a single grammatical edit, correcting the miscapitalization of “non-fungible-token.” This represents 0.2% of the total edits made to the page.

White explained that most information about crypto projects, even large ones like Solana, is limited to industry publications, which generally do not pass the bar for reliable sourcing on Wikipedia. She emphasized that Wikipedia articles are based on what reliable, secondary sources have to say about a topic, not what a topic has to say about itself.

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