Photo: Steven Wright/Unsplash.
Anyone can post on Wikipedia. I even tried it once myself. But volunteer editors are always checking that you obey the rules. My post on the neglected artist Lucille Corcos was removed because at that time, citations from online links were not allowed.
Today’s story shows what can happen if your Wikipedia entries are mainly another no-no: self-promotion. There’s a lot of self-promotion on Wikipedia, but this guy was especially sneaky.
Nate Anderson writes at Ars Technica, “Quick — what are the top entries in the category ‘Wikipedia articles written in the greatest number of languages‘?
“The answer is countries. Turkey tops the list with Wikipedia entries in 332 different languages, while the US is second with 327 and Japan is third with 324. Other common words make their appearance as one looks down the list. ‘Dog’ (275 languages) tops ‘cat’ (273). Jesus (274) beats ‘Adolf Hitler’ (242). …
“A couple months back, something would have been different. Turkey, the US, and Japan were still in the same order near the top of the leaderboard, but the number one slot was occupied by an unlikely contender: David Woodard, who had Wikipedia entries in 335 different languages. …
“Woodard is a composer who infamously wrote a ‘prequiem’ — that is, a ‘pre requiem’ — in 2001 for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who had murdered 168 people with a truck bomb. The piece was to be performed at a church near McVeigh’s execution site in Terre Haute, Indiana, then recorded and played on the radio so that McVeigh would have a chance to hear it.
“According to the LA Times, which spoke to the composer, ‘Woodard’s hope in performing the 12-minute piece, he said, is to “cause the soul of Timothy McVeigh to go to heaven.” ‘ …
“Woodard also had a scheme to help save Nueva Germania, an 1880s colony in Paraguay that was designed to let German culture flourish away from the influence of European Jews. … ‘As an artist who is fed up with much of the pretentious nonsense that has come to define Western culture,’ Woodard told SF Gate, ‘I am drawn to the idea of an Aryan vacuum in the middle of the jungle.’
“So what was a guy like this doing with articles in 335 different languages? Inquiring minds want to know, which is why people have posted questions to sites like Reddit over the last year asking about the Woodard situation. …
“A Wikipedia editor who goes by ‘Grnrchst’ recently decided to find out, diving deep into the articles about Woodard and into any edits that placed his name in other articles. The results of this lengthy and tedious investigation were written up in the August 9 edition of the Signpost, a volunteer-run online newspaper about Wikipedia.
“Grnrchst’s conclusion was direct: ‘I discovered what I think might have been the single largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia’s history, spanning over a decade and covering as many as 200 accounts and even more proxy IP addresses.’
“A network of accounts with an unusual interest in Woodard was identified, and its activities over the last decade were mapped. Starting in 2015, these accounts inserted Woodard’s name ‘into no fewer than 93 articles (including “Pliers,” “Brown pelican,” and “Bundesautobahn”), often referencing self-published sources by Woodard himself.’ And that was just in the English version of Wikipedia.
“From 2017 to 2019, the accounts ‘created articles about David Woodard in at least 92 different languages, creating a new article every six days on average .… They started off with Latin-script European languages, but quickly branched out into other families and scripts from all corners of the globe, even writing articles in constructed languages; they also went from writing full-length article translations, to low-effort stub articles, which would go on to make up the vast majority of all translations (easily 90 percent or more).’ …
“After a reduction in activity, things ramped up again in 2021, as IP addresses from around the world started creating Woodard references and articles once more. For instance, ‘addresses from Canada, Germany, Indonesia, the UK and other places added some trivia about Woodard to all 15 Wikipedia articles about the calea ternifolia.’
“Then things got ‘more sophisticated.’ From December 2021 through June 2025, 183 articles were created about Woodard, each in a different language’s Wikipedia and each by a unique account. These accounts followed a pattern of behavior: They were ‘created, often with a fairly generic name, and made a user page with a single image on it. They then made dozens of minor edits to unrelated articles, before creating an article about David Woodard, then making a dozen or so more minor edits before disappearing off the platform.’
“Grnrchst believes that all the activity was meant to ‘create as many articles about Woodard as possible, and to spread photos of and information on Woodard to as many articles as possible, while hiding that activity as much as possible. … I came to believe that David Woodard himself, or someone close to him, had been operating this network of accounts and IP addresses for the purposes of cynical self-promotion.’
“After the Grnrchst report, Wikipedia’s global stewards removed 235 articles on Woodard from Wikipedia instances with few users or administrators. Larger Wikipedias were free to make their own community decisions, and they removed another 80 articles and banned numerous accounts. …
“In the end, just 20 articles about Woodard remain, such as this one in English, which does not mention the controversy.”
More here.
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