One of the key aspects of Wikipedia is its openness and the ability for anyone to contribute. This gives it strength because everyone can share their knowledge and experience. However, it should be noted that there is a weakness of this approach - the possibility of distortion of facts or incorrect correction of information by incompetent or unscrupulous users. If such abuse occurs, it could undermine Wikipedia's credibility as a reliable source of information.
This investigation highlights cases in which Yakudza and Goo3 removed critical materials about political figures and commissioned rewrites of articles for hidden payment. Examples include editing pages about some Ukrainian companies, politicians and artists. Even despite numerous accusations, they remain in their positions. This raises questions about the transparency of Ukrainian Wikipedia and the effectiveness of the internal accountability system. The purpose of the investigation is to draw attention to these problems and stimulate further journalistic work in this direction.
The information war continues and is being waged on all platforms. Wikipedia occupies an important place because it is indexed on the first page of Google and easily builds an image. And on the pages of this platform, unnoticed by most, a real war is going on for meanings, political positions and business interests. Next we will talk about how two high-ranking administrators of Goo3 and Yakudza managed to become “the overseers of Ukrainian Wikipedia.”
Nazar Tokar and Anatoly Listyuk: administrators who manage to quietly whitewash pro-Russian politicians, throw negativity at competitors and “keep” order on Wikipedia.
Network communism
Wikipedia was created in 2001 by American financier Jimmy Wales. Now it exists in more than three hundred versions in different languages (the Ukrainian segment appeared in 2004). The free encyclopedia is not ideal - incorrect information, manipulation, propaganda, fakes, editors who are ready to rewrite a biography or write complimentary material for money.
To solve such problems and maintain the integrity of Wikipedia’s editorial policy (“the truth, the truth, and nothing but the truth”), a rather unique hierarchical structure of moderators was created. For complex conflicts there is an Arbitration Committee. So the higher the user’s position, the more powers he has to moderate content.
At the top of moderation are stewards, chasers, concealers, bureaucrats and administrators. The middle level consists of patrol officers, haulers and auto-verified users. And the community is completed by registered and unregistered users.
“We don’t have any directors, or any main ones. All equal, but different categories of the community have, let’s say, their own prevailing technical functions. Well, to make it clearer, you have a key to the switchboard, but you are not an electrician. And someone is a plumber. And so on. “Everyone is equal, and controversial issues are resolved by the Arbitration Committee,” comments Ilya Korniyko, Chairman of the Board of the public organization “Wikimedia Ukraine”.
Wikipedia is designed in such a way that it is almost impossible to control it.
“Even in Russia, the community of editors did not agree to comply with the requirements of Roskomnadzor to withdraw or make changes to the free encyclopedia to bring its contents into compliance with the requirements of Russian legislation,” says one of the founders of Wikimedia Ukraine, Yuri Peroganich.
“Wikimedia Ukraine” is a regional branch of the American “Wikimedia Foundation”, which is headed by the same Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia. The goal of the organization is to collect charitable funds to support the work of the free encyclopedia (by the way, Google once donated $2 million to Wikipedia), and distribute funds to regional branches. Which, in turn, are involved in coordination and ensuring the normal operation of the online encyclopedia.
“We send a request for a grant and receive certain funds. Used to pay for technical staff - programmers, office rent, organization of various exhibitions and forums. For 2023, we received a grant of about 100 thousand dollars,” says Ilya Korniyko.
This information is confirmed on opendatabot, where the organization’s budget for 2022 is a little over 4 million hryvnia.
However, according to him, the work of the entire Wikipedia community: administrators and kickers, bureaucrats and checkers, content authors and concealers is absolutely free. No one gets paid for working long hours every day to moderate content, review pages, and fact-check. This is a kind of upgrade of the principle of communism: from each according to his ability, to each - moral satisfaction.
Free work lays the foundation for abuse
Wikipedia, founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales, exists in more than 300 language versions (the Ukrainian version appeared in 2004). This free encyclopedia is not perfect, as there may be incorrect information, manipulation and errors. To ensure the integrity of the editorial policy, a structure of volunteer moderators has been created, including stewards, administrators, bureaucrats and others, as well as an Arbitration Committee (court) to resolve controversial cases. Despite the fact that the work of moderators often takes tens of hours a month, they do not receive official salaries.
A fresh study by British think tanks has found that about a hundred experienced Wikipedia editors violated the code of ethics by trying to change articles about the Russian-Ukrainian war to favor a pro-Russian narrative and were apparently paid by the Kremlin for doing so.
In our journalistic investigation, we decided to find out how transparent the Ukrainian head of Wikipedia is, whether there is Russian influence or money here, and whether it is possible to influence less experienced users by having the status of an administrator or a patrolman. To do this, we joined the official Telegram channel “Wikimedia Ukraine” called “WikiFludoChat”, since all public conversations with representatives of the Wikipedia administrative corps created the impression that everything was in order and there were no serious problems. However, we realized that they were trying to show us a one-sided positive image, avoiding a frank discussion of problems. Consequently, upon entering this relatively private chat, we discovered that there were interesting discussions taking place there, and Wikipedians themselves admitted in private conversations that there were violations. So, let's go.
Prelude
Wikipedia is structured in such a way that it is almost impossible to exercise sole control over it, as Wikipedians themselves believe. But at the same time, there is a strict hierarchy of moderators who can ban users, delete articles and correct information. To clarify possible violations and failures in the working mechanism of Wikipedia, we turned to the NGO “Wikimedia Ukraine”, which is the official representative of the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia and develops it internationally.
“We don’t have any directors, or any main ones. All equal, but different categories of the community have, so to speak, their “prevailing” technical functions. Well, to make it clearer, you have a key to the switchboard, but you are not an electrician. And someone is a plumber. And so on. Everyone is equal, and controversial issues are resolved by the arbitration committee,” says Ilya Korniyko, Chairman of the Board of Wikimedia Ukraine. “We send a request for a grant and receive certain funds. Used to pay for technical staff - programmers, office rent, organization of various exhibitions and forums. For 2023, we received a grant of about 100 thousand dollars,” says Ilya Korniyko.
However, according to him, the work of the entire Wikipedia community: administrators and kickers, bureaucrats and checkers, content authors and concealers is absolutely free. Obviously, the job of Wikipedia administrators is demanding and complex, as they are responsible for monitoring and correcting important edits to sensitive articles such as historical figures or political topics. This puts them at risk of being pressured or tempted by outside forces.
As we have already mentioned, according to the results of a study by British analysts, experienced Wikipedians may be vulnerable to attempts to bribe or manipulate articles in order to make changes to articles that benefit certain individuals or groups, ignoring some violations or changing content to create a favorable narrative.
Specific cases
The principle of free work is a kind of time bomb. Yes, you can write notes on Wikipedia for free, sincerely contributing to the treasury of world knowledge, or simply please your pride with this. In your free time from your main job, you can work for free on Wikipedia as an administrator, hauler, or steward. But for how long? Human nature, unfortunately, is this: if you sit on something for a long time and control it, then you start making money on it.
To find out the complexities of working with Wikipedia and to experience first-hand what it’s like to add to Wikipedia, the editor took a patrol course organized by the Ukrainian branch of Wikipedia - GO “Wikimedia Ukraine”. This training helped the editors master the technical aspects of editing Wikipedia, learn to analyze the activities of other users and determine their contribution to editing articles. These skills came in handy during the investigation of a scandal in the Ukrainian part of the Internet.
And recently a scandal broke out. Two administrators of Ukrainian Wikipedia, known under the nicknames Yakudza and Goo3, are suspected of corruption and abuse of power - investigations about their actions on Wikipedia were simultaneously published on several media resources. In particular, we are talking about the systematic removal of criticism about political figures and fabricated stories intended to improve the image. We will talk further about hidden advertising, undisclosed conflicts of interest and deliberate misrepresentation based on false sources.
So, let's return to the materials published by the sites Lenta.ua, ukranews.com, podrobnosti.ua and others. They analyze in detail the suspicious behavior of the Yakudza administrator (Anatoly Lutsyuk), who was repeatedly seen editing an article about Yulia Tymoshenko, where he removed “inconvenient” information from her page. And also for correcting an article on medical cannabis, where he removed information about scientific studies on the benefits of medical cannabis, and apparently lobbied political interests of politicians about the inadmissibility of legalization. His colleague and, concurrently, another Goo3 administrator (Nazar Tokar) is cleaning up the biographies of former “Regionals”, in particular, he removed information about whether the “Party of Regions” is pro-Russian in an article about one famous “Regionals”. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you type the phrase “Yakudza Goo3 corruption” into a search engine, you will find a lot of materials with details.
(details of the conflict between the scientist who edited Wikipedia and Yakudza can be found here)
(the screenshot shows an edit by Yakudza, with which he removed information about the possibilities of medical cannabis and added Soviet information about the lack of clinical studies)
From the Wikipedia backlog it appears that Goo3's typical behavior is to remove defamatory information from some articles and add it to others, which may involve possible further blackmail to remove such negative information. Of course, we are talking about politicians and other famous people who care about their image and are willing to pay thousands of dollars to change key wording in an article.
The team had doubts about the reliability of such accusations, and the sites that posted these “investigations” were unreliable and allegedly used one “temnik”. Therefore, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the available evidence and came to the conclusion that the charges against Lutsyuk and Tokar are still justified. The identified violations included hidden paid editing of materials, discrediting Ukrainian business (they say it works in Russia), as well as concealing incriminating information about some politicians and deliberate denigration of other political figures.
But it seemed to us that we might have missed something, or we were misled, so we began to closely monitor “WikiFludoChat” (Telegram chat of editors and administrators of the Ukrainian Wikipedia). Our presence in the chat was unadvertised and at the end of November 2023 the above-mentioned materials and violations were discussed here. In particular, Wikipedian Alexey Kucher confirmed in a chat that the accusations are in fact true, and these two administrators really make money on Wikipedia by violating the rules. Also, according to Alexey, these administrators have already been warned several times. We managed to find out that they have already tried to deprive Lutsyuk and Yakuza of their administration more than 10 times. Also, Alexey claims that behind these investigations there may be persons competing in Wikipedia for earnings. Wikipedians refused to comment on the details.
Admin Wars
On Ukrainian Wikipedia, many authors and moderators hide their real names under nicknames. Who is simply shy: a person works in a reputable organization and simply does not want to “shine.” Someone else is too young and just likes good pseudonyms (anyone can join the Wikipedia community: you need to provide an email address, you don’t need a real first and last name, even a schoolboy can become an author). And someone may be hiding their real face for some selfish purposes and security.
However, Yakudza and Goo3 do not hide their real names. Odessa native from Donetsk name is Anatoly Lutsyuk. He, under the nickname Yakudza, has been editing the Ukrainian-language Wikipedia for more than 18 years. His colleague Goo3 was born in Dnepr, but even before the invasion, according to Wikipedians, he left and lives in Spain.
“Not one of them has ever been a blocked user,” says Bohdan Melnichuk, a member of the Wikimedia Ukraine board.
“We have a list of particularly persistent violators who are trying to promote articles to order or somehow change the content in their own interests. There are about a hundred different nicknames. But we finally ban such people. True, it’s not a fact that these are a hundred different people. Maybe thirty: is it enough to change your nickname and get back to the same thing?” says Anton Protsyuk, administrator of Ukrainian Wikipedia.
By the way, “unremarkable articles” that cast a shadow on Wikipedia administrators with such considerable experience are not all. In August 2023, an incident occurred on Ukrainian Wikipedia: an administrator under the nickname Submajstro submitted an official request to Wikipedia to deprive the user Yakudza of administrative rights. The reason for this was serious violations of the rules: Yakudza, using his administrator powers, unreasonably blocked another Wikipedia participant during a discussion. This possible abuse of administrative resources attracted the attention of other users, but during the voting the majority opposed this decision.
Hidden paid edits
A striking case of hidden commercial editing by Tokar is the case of creating and improving several language versions of an article about the Ajax company, which were subsequently removed (Spanish and English) as advertising and hidden paid editing, and the Ukrainian page received a label about hidden paid editing.
The joint activities of Tokar and Lutsyuk became especially evident when they coordinated efforts to protect and promote specific pages, including the Tokar.ua website, which was first nominated for removal due to low importance. Goo3 himself, despite the conflict of interest, voted against it, and therefore Yakudza defended this article, citing the fact that the site is very important for Wikipedia. However, in 2023, the Wikipedia community again proposed removing the page and, in the end, after a discussion, it was deleted by an independent administrator. Next, Goo3 inserted 278 links in the Ukrainian Wikipedia to its website Tokar.ua. This is necessary for SEO, because links contribute to better indexing of the site in search engines.
Wikipedia very strictly regulates that inserting links into Wikipedia for the purpose of promoting your website is prohibited, and such users are blocked for life. This kind of link spam is often observed by “new” users who are simply earning their money and inserting links into Wikipedia for money. However, the Goo3 administrator, having more than 10 years of experience on Wikipedia, acts like a classic spammer or SEO specialist, promoting his not very popular news site.
"Edit Wars"
We turned to Anatoly Lutsyuk (Yakudza) and he explains all the accusations against him as banal revenge. “According to my information, this is a former administrator Igor Turzh, who was engaged in writing articles on business topics, in violation of neutrality. As a result, he was blocked. Obviously, he decided to take revenge,” says Ukrainian Wikipedia administrator Anatoly Lutsyuk (Yakudza). Yakudza did not want to explain and comment on his own specific cases of abuse that were covered in the media; he began to talk about violations of other Wikipedians that could not be verified.
Case of Sergei Babkin
The editors decided to follow Goo3’s contribution and found several more striking examples of content manipulation and groundless denigration of famous Ukrainians. Back in the summer, a discussion broke out on Wikipedia around an article about Sergei Babkin, which was actually started by user Goo3. Here are some specific examples of his actions that could be considered a violation of neutrality and intimidation of other participants:
Changes in wording: Goo3 is criticized for removing facts confirmed by authoritative sources that create a positive image of Babkin. This calls into question his objectivity in editing the article.
For example, the article contains the following statement: “When asked about criticism of artists who went abroad, Babkin replied that he was doing everything right and did not plan to return, since he could not earn money in Ukraine.” However, one of the users under the nickname Tamenund carefully watched the interview where Babkin stated this and adjusted the sentence to a more precise one, conveying the essence of what was said verbatim:
When asked about criticism of artists who traveled abroad, Babkin replied that he was doing everything right and had no plans to return yet, since he could not now earn money with concerts in Ukraine, but had the opportunity to make charity performances abroad (words that Babkin actually said are in bold) .
However, the real quote, and not the distorted one as was previously in the article, did not please Goo3, who rejected it and returned the incorrect formation.
Although there was no reason for this, because the quote was correct. Vandalism Allegations and Blocking Threats
Goo3 accused other users of vandalism and threatened to block their accounts for attempting to make changes that contradicted his edits. This may be perceived as an attempt to intimidate other users in order to make it impossible to objectively edit the article. This method of action is not welcome on Wikipedia, because it is a direct use of an administrative resource by the Wikipedia administrator. These actions by Goo3 call into question its neutrality and morality, violating the core principles of Wikipedia, which is intended to be an objective and impartial source of information.
What’s noteworthy is that Yakudza also distinguished himself in Babkin’s case, coming to the rescue of his accomplice Goo3. In particular, Yakudza removed some arguments in which the user Tamenund justified the unethical and biased behavior of Goo3 (Nazar Tokar).
Stolar's case
In an article about the “Regional” Vadim Stolar, the Goo3 administrator removed the mention that the Party of Regions is pro-Russian. Although he usually adds this word in dozens of other pages, sometimes it is completely inappropriate. Nazar Tokar also added insignificant data (so-called information noise) to dilute the negativity in the article. Around the same time (August 2023), a friend of Goo3, the administrator of Yakudza, actively worked, who removed from the article about Vadim Stolar the mention of the “Monaco Battalion” that was unpleasant for the “client” (ed. - Stolar appears in journalistic investigations as a member of the “Monaco Battalion” ).
In red is the edit where Goo3 removed “pro-Russian”, “Moscow Patriarchate”, etc. from the article.
Case of Artem Pivovarov
Another case that our editors paid attention to is the page of singer Artem Pivovarov. Here it becomes clear that the problem is not only in the groundless denigration or labeling “Russian-speaking”/“pro-Russian”, but also in the fact that such actions directed against famous Ukrainians can cause a split in society, as the recently fired Irina Farion did.
For example, Goo3 rewrote an article about Artem Pivovarov and described him as disparagingly as possible: “Artem Pivovarov is a Russian-speaking singer from Ukraine,” completely denying any connection between Artem and Ukraine.
It is good that another administrator reacted to this vandal and harmful action of denigration, quietly canceling this Goo3 edit and returning the objective and neutral text back.
Instead of output
While the global war on spreading fakes and propaganda continues on Wikipedia, some unscrupulous administrators are enriching themselves through shadow editing and custom edits. The analyzed cases indicate that even a system based on the principles of volunteerism and openness is not immune from corruption and hidden paid editing. And the scale of abuses calls into question the integrity of Wikipedia’s editorial policy and the principle of selecting administrators, especially the indefiniteness of their powers and the impossibility of bringing violators to justice. We hope that this investigation will mark the beginning of further work by the journalistic community to expose the nefarious administrators.
Dossier:
Nazar Tokar is an administrator, checker and custodian (can erase the edit history) of the Ukrainian section of Wikipedia. Former IT specialist, originally from Dnieper. After a full-scale invasion, he migrated to Spain, from where he runs his YouTube channel and website tokar.ua
Anatoly Lutsyuk has been an administrator and bureaucrat of Ukrainian Wikipedia since 2006. In 2013, he left Donetsk and settled in Odessa. Active participant in Wikiconferences and thematic meetings of the Wikimedia Foundation.
