Chapter 18
As he read through the email, he found himself trembling with a mixture of fear and embarrassment, in the way that you can only tremble if your livelihood, your marriage and the respect of your friends and peers are at risk of imminent disolution. He read it through again. It was scarcely believable. It was addressed to Andrew Frazer – his real name – at a throwaway googlemail address he used for messing around on the net, and which he had stupidly constructed from his own post code. It was dated 13 September 2008, copied to Cary Bass, a coordinator at the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco. “Please read what follows and believe it. You have no opening for significant negotiation”.
A British civil servant receives a letter containing a list of threats, including threats of violence, about what would happen if he did not disclose alternate accounts that he has used on Wikipedia and other Wikipedia projects. Later, they call it the Anvil email.
Anyone can create an account on Wikipedia. Anyone can create many accounts, called ‘sockpuppets’, and the problem they cause is one of the most serious that afflicts the project. This is the story of one of the most extreme attempts used by agents of the Foundation to deter sockpuppeteers: by threats of violence, contacting employers, relatives, and other means of intimidation.
It works in this case, but its aftermath cogently demonstrates how secrecy begets secrecy. Bad things happen, and are concealed. Evidence about the concealment emerges later, sometimes years later, and that evidence has to be concealed as well. Further evidence about the second concealment emerges, involving a third concealment. Usually this involves a progressively wider group of people having to become involved, in a way that begins to resemble a conspiracy. At some point, enough people know about it for it to become an ‘open secret’, and the bubble explodes.
The moral is clear: never edit Wikipedia from work, and never make enemies with its administration.
