A Bored Chinese Housewife Spent Years Falsifying Russian History On Wikipedia

An anonymous reader writes: Posing as a scholar, a Chinese woman spent years writing alternative accounts of medieval Russian history on Chinese Wikipedia, conjuring imaginary states, battles, and aristocrats in one of the largest hoaxes on the open-source platform. The scam was exposed last month by Chinese novelist Yifan, who was researching for a book when he came upon an article on the Kashin silver mine. Discovered by Russian peasants in 1344, the Wikipedia entry goes, the mine engaged more than 40,000 slaves and freedmen, providing a remarkable source of wealth for the Russian principality of Tver in the 14th and 15th centuries as well as subsequent regimes. The geological composition of the soil, the structure of the mine, and even the refining process were fleshed out in detail in the entry. Yifan thought he'd found interesting material for a novel. Little did he know he'd stumbled upon an entire fictitious world constructed by a user known as Zhemao. It was one of 206 articles she has written on Chinese Wikipedia since 2019, weaving facts into fiction in an elaborate scheme that went uncaught for years and tested the limits of crowdsourced platforms' ability to verify information and fend off bad actors. "The content she wrote is of high quality and the entries were interconnected, creating a system that can exist on its own," veteran Chinese Wikipedian John Yip told VICE World News. "Zhemao single-handedly invented a new way to undermine Wikipedia."

Yifan was tipped off when he ran the silver mine story by Russian speakers and fact-checked Zhemao's references, only to find that the pages or versions of the books she cited did not exist. People he consulted also called out her lengthy entries on ancient conflicts between Slavic states, which could not be found in Russian historical records. "They were so rich in details they put English and Russian Wikipedia to shame," Yifan wrote on Zhihu, a Chinese site similar to Quora, where he shared his discovery last month and caused a stir. The scale of the scam came to light after a group of volunteer editors and other Wikipedians, such as Yip, combed through her past contributions to nearly 300 articles.

"As a punishment, Zhemao and her affiliated accounts were suspended permanently," adds VICE World News. "Most of her articles were deleted based on community consensus. Some Wikipedians even wrote to experts, seeking help to separate the wheat from the chaff." A spokesperson of the Wikimedia Foundation told VICE World News in an email that volunteers are still "continuing to review additional articles that may have been affected."

The report goes on to say that Zhemao speaks neither English nor Russian and is a housewife with only a high school degree. She came clean in an apology letter issued on her Wikipedia account last month. "The hoax started with an innocuous intention," reports VICE. "Unable to comprehend scholarly articles in their original language, she pieced sentences together with a translation tool and filled in the blanks with her own imagination. [...] Before long, they had accumulated into tens of thousands of characters, which she was reluctant to delete."

"The alternative accounts were imaginary friends she 'cosplayed' as she was bored and alone, given her husband was away most of the time and she didn't have any friends. She also apologized to actual experts on Russia, whom she had attempted to cozy up to and later impersonated."