Misplaced Pages

Latest revision as of 07:37, 18 December 2024

Croatian Misplaced Pages

Screenshot Croatian Misplaced Pages's Main Page on 17 January 2021
Type of site	Internet encyclopedia project
Available in	Croatian
Owner	Wikimedia Foundation
URL	hr.wikipedia.org
Commercial	No
Registration	Optional
Launched	16 February 2003; 21 years ago (2003-02-16)
Content license	Creative Commons Attribution/ Share-Alike 4.0 (most text also dual-licensed under GFDL) Media licensing varies

The Croatian Misplaced Pages (Croatian: Wikipedija na hrvatskome jeziku) is the Croatian language version of Misplaced Pages, the free encyclopedia, started on 16 February 2003. This version has 224,471 articles and a total of 7.1 million edits have been made. It has 323,400 registered users, out of which 500 have been active in the last 30 days, and 14 administrators. Throughout 2014, fewer than two dozen editors made more than 100 edits a month; around 150 made more than 5 edits a month. As of July 2024, there were about 135 editors making at least 5 edits a month. Around 750 articles are ranked as selected (Croatian: Izabrani članci).

In the period from 2013 to 2021, the Croatian Misplaced Pages was caught in the spotlight for promoting far-right ideas, including anti-LGBT propaganda and bias against Serbs of Croatia by Holocaust revisionism, particularly negating or whitewashing the atrocities of the Ustaše regime.

Apart from whitewashing the atrocities of World War II war criminals, the same has been done for contemporary Croatian politicians and public figures. Such falsified content on Croatian Misplaced Pages has been backed up by a wide range of dubious sources, all of which were condemned by the Croatian government, media and historians.

Several editor accounts involved in those actions on Croatian Misplaced Pages throughout the 2010s were either banned or demoted in 2021, when it was found that one of the most active administrators took control of the site with 80 sockpuppet accounts. The process also exposed the systemic issues of Misplaced Pages which have yet to be addressed.

2011 reliability analysis

In a study by Kubelka and Šoštarić from 2011, the reliability of the Croatian Misplaced Pages was compared to the Croatian Encyclopedia – the Croatian national encyclopedia. Twenty-four reviewers, experts in specific fields, analyzed a representative selection of articles according to the parameters of informativeness, accuracy of presented information, sufficiency, direction and objectivity. Articles were analyzed in 11 thematic categories: arts and culture; history and biographies; medicine and health; technology and applied science; geography; religion; science; mathematics and logic; philosophy; sport and society; and social sciences. Articles were sorted into categories using machine learning techniques, and feature weight statistics were calculated using tf–idf. A total of 500 articles in 250 pairs were randomly chosen and sorted into categories to serve as representative samples.

In both samples, facts were manually enumerated – 3015 from the Croatian Encyclopedia and 3315 from Croatian Misplaced Pages. Comparison for factual accuracy showed that for every error in the Croatian Encyclopedia, 2.25 errors were found in Croatian Misplaced Pages. Analysis by individual categories showed that most errors in Croatian Misplaced Pages were in the philosophy category, where on average two errors in ten articles were found. The only category where the Croatian Encyclopedia had more errors was natural sciences, where the ratio was 1.25:0.75 in favor of Croatian Misplaced Pages. Of those factual errors, the ratio was 21:12 for major errors, and 34:23 for minor errors. The overall ratio for minor factual errors was thus lower, the only exception being the society and social sciences category, where the minor error ratio was 3:1.

The reliability analysis for Croatian Misplaced Pages indicated that 74% of articles were error-free, and 11% had minor errors. Major factual errors were found in 5% of articles, while 4% of articles had both major and minor errors. Overall 85% of articles were deemed "satisfactory" (error-free and containing minor errors), while in comparison 92% of articles in the Croatian Encyclopedia achieved the same rating. Forty percent of articles in Croatian Misplaced Pages were assessed as sufficiently informative, as opposed to sixty-two percent of articles in the Croatian Encyclopedia. Sixteen percent of Croatian Misplaced Pages articles were assessed as "insufficiently informative", as opposed to five percent of articles from the Croatian Encyclopedia. The criterion of objectivity measured the neutral point of view in articles; 91% of Croatian Misplaced Pages articles were assessed as being neutral, as opposed to 98% in the Croatian Encyclopedia. Two percent of Croatian Misplaced Pages articles were assessed as non-neutral, as opposed to zero in the Croatian Encyclopedia. According to their subjective preference, reviewers chose 53% of articles in the Croatian Encyclopedia as their preferred article version, while only 19.5% of Misplaced Pages articles were preferred, with 27% of articles being assessed as equal in quality.

Controversy about right-wing bias

Media reports about bias

In September 2013, complaints about right-wing bias of administrators and editors on the Croatian Misplaced Pages began to receive attention from the media, following the launch of a Facebook page titled Razotkrivanje sramotne hr.wikipedije (Exposing the disgraceful Croatian Misplaced Pages) which was created with the intent of bringing attention to the issue. According to Jurica Pavičić, a professor at the University of Split and Jutarnji list columnist, the gradual takeover of the Croatian Misplaced Pages was started in 2009 by "a small group of conservative administrators" who blocked editors for having "liberal-to-moderate views on controversial topics". Reported examples of bias include historical negationism such as watering-down and denial of the crimes committed by the Ustashe regime, and equating anti-fascism with forms of totalitarianism. Other issues included the bias against Serbs of Croatia and the LGBT population. Editors who tried to remove the biased sections were reportedly being harassed by administrators and quickly received permanent blocks under various pretexts. The issue was reported by Croatia's daily Jutarnji list and even made its print edition's front page on 11 September 2013.

Government reaction

Two days later, Croatia's Minister of Science, Education and Sports, Željko Jovanović, called for pupils and students in Croatia to avoid using the Croatian Misplaced Pages. In an interview given to Novi list, Jovanović said that:

the idea of openness and relevance as a knowledge source that Misplaced Pages could and should represent has been completely discredited – which, for certain, has never been the goal of Misplaced Pages's creators nor the huge number of people around the world who share their knowledge and time using that medium. Croatian pupils and students have been wronged by this, so we have to warn them, unfortunately, that a large part of the content of the Croatian version of Misplaced Pages is not only dubious but also obvious forgeries, and therefore we invite them to use more reliable sources of information, which include Misplaced Pages in English and in other major languages of the world.

Jovanović also commented on the Croatian Misplaced Pages editors – calling them a "minority group that has usurped the right to edit the Croatian-language Misplaced Pages". Misplaced Pages's co-founder Jimmy Wales said that complaints about the bias of the Croatian Misplaced Pages were "nothing new", but that Jovanović's denunciation was alarming. Wales also reiterated his opinion that the existence of separate Croatian and Serbian Wikipedias is wrong, as they "in fact use the same language".

Interviews with historians

In 2013, in an interview given to Index.hr, Robert Kurelić, a professor of history at the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, commented that "the Croatian Misplaced Pages is only a tool used by its administrators to promote their own political agendas, giving false and distorted facts". Some examples he listed include the Croatian Misplaced Pages's coverage of the term Istrijanstvo (Istrian identity), defined as a "movement fabricated to reduce the number of Croats", and antifašizam (anti-fascism), which according to him was defined as the opposite of what it really means. Kurelić further advised,

that it would be good if a larger number of people got engaged and started writing on Misplaced Pages administrators want to exploit high-school and university students, the most common users of Misplaced Pages, to change their opinions and attitudes, which presents a serious issue.

Also in 2013, Snježana Koren, a historian at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, judged the disputed articles as "biased and malicious, partly even illiterate", in an interview with Croatian news agency HINA. She further added that "These are the types of articles you can find on the pages of fringe organizations and movements, but there should be no place for that on Misplaced Pages", expressing doubts on the ability of its authors to distinguish good from evil. Koren concluded that the ulterior motive of such writings was to rehabilitate the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state of Nazi Germany, and that "there is no other way to characterize such efforts than as Ustashe movement".

The Croatian Misplaced Pages page on the Jasenovac concentration camp was regarded as a prime example of its historical negationism and distortions. The Croatian version of the page referred to the WWII Jasenovac concentration camp as a "collection camp" and labour camp, downplayed the crimes committed there as well as the number of victims, and relied on "right-wing media and private blogs" for "a large number" of its references. Hrvoje Klasić, also a historian at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, stated to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in 2018 that "although Jasenovac was in part a labour camp, referring to it as that alone is misleading", arguing that "referring to Jasenovac as simply a collection and labour camp is to use 'the same language' as Ustasa propaganda", and also added that "a number of articles and topics are done in a completely revisionist manner , with highly emphasised nationalist and, I would dare to say, pro-Ustasa sentiment".

Disinformation assessment by Wikimedia Foundation

In 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation posted a job ad for a disinformation evaluator position, with the aim to further examine disputed content on the Croatian Misplaced Pages. In March 2021, a number of changes were made to remove administrative access from a group of editors considered responsible for the entire affair, some of whom had their names published in Croatian media. One of these was exposed to be a known far-right web portal editor, who passed off his self-published materials as "reliable sources" on Croatian Misplaced Pages. In April 2021, an article was published by the Western Balkans edition of Radio Free Europe stating how the situation of the Croatian-language Misplaced Pages has finally changed and that the correction of problematic articles was in progress. Editing activity picked up from 2020 through early 2022, with over 200 editors making at least 5 edits a month. As of July 2024, there were about 135 editors making at least 5 edits a month.

In June 2021, Wikimedia published its Croatian Misplaced Pages Disinformation Assessment. It concluded that "A group of Croatian language Misplaced Pages (Hr.WP) admins held undue de facto control over the project at least from 2011 to 2020. During that time, the group intentionally distorted the content presented in Croatian language Misplaced Pages articles in a way that matched the narratives of political organisations and groups that can broadly be defined as the Croatian radical right." According to the assessment, the administrators had abused their power to ban dissidents and selectively enforced and broke rules, resulting in project capture.

References

1. "Glavna stranica". Misplaced Pages (in Croatian). Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 31 October 2011.
2. "Misplaced Pages Statistics Croatian". stats.wikimedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
3. ^ "Wikistats - Statistics For Wikimedia Projects". stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 28 July 2024.
4. "Izabrani članci". Croatian Misplaced Pages (in Croatian). Wikimedia Foundation. 20 April 2020. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
5. ^
   • "These Far-right Nationalists Didn't Like What They Read Online About World War II – So They Rewrote History". Haaretz. 4 August 2021. Retrieved 17 October 2024. A recent probe by the online encyclopedia Misplaced Pages reveals major historical revisionism by far-right forces in its Croatian and Serbian versions. But it also exposes the dangerous overlap between nationalism and disinformation online.
   • "How Croatian Misplaced Pages Made a Concentration Camp Disappear". Balkan Insights. 26 March 2018. Retrieved 17 October 2024. Unlike Misplaced Pages in other languages, the Croatian version refers to the WWII Jasenovac concentration camp as a "collection camp" - as well as playing down fascist crimes and ignoring right-wingers' controversies.
6. Grabowski, Jan; Klein, Shira (9 February 2023). "Misplaced Pages's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust". The Journal of Holocaust Research: 133–190. doi:10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939. ISSN 2578-5648. Retrieved 14 October 2024. a group of committed Misplaced Pages editors have been promoting a skewed version of history Misplaced Pages's articles on the Holocaust in Poland insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), blame Jews for their own persecution, and inflate Jewish collaboration with the Nazis It would also behoove the Wikimedia Foundation to look into the wide-scale distortion on the English Misplaced Pages, as it did recently in the case of the Croatian Misplaced Pages.
7. "The shocking truth about Misplaced Pages's Holocaust disinformation". The Forward. 14 June 2023. Retrieved 15 October 2024. To our dismay, we found dozens of examples of Holocaust distortion advanced a Polish nationalist narrative People who read these pages learned about Jews supporting the communists to betray Poles. A handful of distortions have been corrected since our publication, but many remain Wikimedia Foundation needs to intervene, as it has already done to stem disinformation in Chinese Misplaced Pages, Saudi Misplaced Pages and Croatian Misplaced Pages, with excellent results. It must do so in English Misplaced Pages as well. |"Exposing the Holocaust Lies on the Dark Side of Misplaced Pages". Chapman University News. 17 November 2023. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
8. ^ Dewey, Caitlin (4 August 2014). "Men's rights activists think a "hateful" feminist conspiracy is ruining Misplaced Pages". The Washington Post. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
9. "Što nas Misplaced Pages uči o medijskoj pismenosti: Kako su pali Daily Mail, Breitbart i InfoWars". Faktograf.hr (in Croatian). 18 October 2018.
10. ^ Jarić Dauenahuer, Nenad (23 March 2021). "Hrvatska Wikipedija konačno prestaje biti ustaško ruglo". Index.hr (in Croatian). Retrieved 10 July 2021.
11. ^ "Jovanovićeva poruka učenicima i studentima: Ne koristite hrvatsku Wikipediju!" [Jovanović's message to pupils and students: Don't use Croatian Misplaced Pages!]. Index.hr (in Croatian). 13 September 2013. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
12. ^ "Croatian Misplaced Pages Disinformation Assessment-2021 – Meta". Meta Wikimedia. Retrieved 14 June 2021. Many articles created and edited by the members of this group present the views that match political and socio-cultural positions advocated by a loosely connected group of Croatian radical right political parties and ultra-conservative populist movements. The group has been using its positions of power to attract new like-minded contributors, silence and ban dissenters, manipulate community elections and subvert Misplaced Pages's and the broader movement's native conflict resolution mechanisms.
13. "Wikimedia bans admin of Misplaced Pages Croatia for pushing radical right agendas". therecord.media. Retrieved 11 January 2024.
14. Krnić, Lovro. "Početak kraja Endehapedije". Portal Novosti. Retrieved 11 January 2024.
15. Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013.
16. Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 124-125.
17. Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 127.
18. Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 128.
19. Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 129.
20. ^ Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 130.
21. Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 131.
22. Sampson, Tim (1 October 2013). "How pro-fascist ideologues are rewriting Croatia's history". dailydot.com. Retrieved 1 July 2015.
23. "Fascist movement takes over Croatian Misplaced Pages?". InSerbia News. Archived from the original on 29 September 2013. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
24. Trolls hijack Misplaced Pages to turn articles against gays Archived 2018-07-08 at the Wayback Machine, Gay Star News
25. Tko prepravlja LGBT Hrvatsku na Wikipediji?
26. "Kako je hrvatsku Wikipediju uzurpirala ustašoidna desnica" [How did pro-Ustasha right-wing editors take Croatian Misplaced Pages]. Tportal (in Croatian). 11 September 2013. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
27. "Desničari preuzeli uređivanje hrvatske Wikipedije" [Right-wing editors took over the Croatian Misplaced Pages]. Jutarnji list (in Croatian). 10 September 2013. Archived from the original on 25 March 2016. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
28. ^ "Jovanović: Djeco, ne baratajte hrvatskom Wikipedijom jer su sadržaji falsificirani" [Jovanović: "Children, do not use the Croatian Misplaced Pages because its contents are forgeries"]. Novi list (in Croatian). 13 September 2013. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
29. Penić, Goran (14 September 2013). "Osnivač Wikipedije govori za Nedjeljni: 'Srbi i Hrvati ne smiju imati odvojene Wikipedije'" [Misplaced Pages Founder Talks to Sunday News: 'Serbs and Croats must not have separate Wikipedias']. Jutarnji list (in Croatian). Retrieved 8 April 2020. Wales je u raspravi iznio zanimljiv, ali i kontroverzan stav oko hrvatske i srpske Wikipedije. On se, kaže, oduvijek zalagao da na području Balkana ne trebaju postojati dvije odvojene Wikipedije, srpska i hrvatska, jer da je zapravo riječ o istom jeziku, samo drugačijem pismu. [During the argument, Wales made an interesting, but controversial point about the Croatian and Serbian Wikipedias. He says he has always supported the idea of not having two separate Wikipedias, a Serbian and a Croatian one, in the Balkans region, as they in fact use the same language, albeit with different scripts.]
30. ^ "Hr.wikipedija pod povećalom zbog falsificiranja hrvatske povijesti" [Croatian Misplaced Pages under scrutiny for fabricating Croatian history]. Novi list (in Croatian). HINA. 15 September 2013. Archived from the original on 21 December 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
31. "Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion". International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Retrieved 17 October 2024. Distortion of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to:
    
    • Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the impact of the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany
    • Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources
    • Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide
    • Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event. Those statements are not Holocaust denial but are closely connected to it as a radical form of antisemitism. They may suggest that the Holocaust did not go far enough in accomplishing its goal of "the Final Solution of the Jewish Question"
    • Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups
32. • "The Hunt for Misplaced Pages's Disinformation Moles". Wired. 17 October 2022. Retrieved 17 October 2024. Misplaced Pages has been battling inaccuracies and false information for 21 years. One of the most long-running disinformation attempts went on for more than a decade after a group of ultra-nationalists gamed Misplaced Pages's administrator rules to take over the Croatian-language community, rewriting history to rehabilitate World War II fascist leaders of the country.
    • Tabarovsky, Izabella (14 August 2024). "Essay: Misplaced Pages's Jewish Problem". Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. Retrieved 17 October 2024. Last year two historians published a bombshell paper demonstrating how a group systematically distorting Polish Jewish history across multiple Misplaced Pages articles to align it with far-right Polish nationalist preferences. Working in concert, the group falsified evidence, promoted marginal self-published sources, created fake references, and advanced antisemitic stereotypes Another case involved Croatian-language Misplaced Pages. There, a right-wing group whitewash the history of World War II-era Croatian fascist organisation Ustaše, its Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia (NDH), and the Jasenovac extermination camp.
33. "Wikipedija u obračunu s dezinformacijama na hrvatskom: Objavili oglas za novo radno mjesto". tportal.hr (in Croatian). Retrieved 31 January 2021.
34. Krnić, Lovro (16 March 2021). "Početak kraja Endehapedije". Novosti (in Croatian). Retrieved 10 July 2021.
35. Zebić, Enis (6 April 2021). "Demontaža revizionističkih sadržaja u hrvatskoj Wikipediji" [The dismantling of revisionist content on Croatian Misplaced Pages]. slobodnaevropa.org (in Serbo-Croatian). Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved 27 July 2024.

• Kubelka, Ozren; Šoštarić, Petra (2013), "Wikipedija nasuprot Hrvatskoj enciklopediji, kvalitativan odnos slobodno i tradicionalno uređenoga enciklopedijskoga sadržaja na hrvatskom jeziku" [Misplaced Pages opposite the Croatian Encyclopedia, a qualitative relation between a freely and a traditionally edited encyclopedic text in Croatian], Studia lexicographica (PDF) (in Croatian), 9, Zagreb: Miroslav Krleža Lexicographical Institute: 119–133, retrieved 20 July 2018

Further reading

• "Hrvati koji pišu najveću svjetsku enciklopediju". Jutarnji list (in Croatian). 18 February 2007. Archived from the original on 21 October 2012.
• Simić, Tanja (12 December 2005). "Hrvatski junaci Wikipedije" [Croatian heroes of Misplaced Pages]. Nacional (in Croatian). Archived from the original on 13 June 2011. Retrieved 7 July 2012.

External links

• Official website (in Croatian)

• Wikipedias in Slavic languages
• Croatian online encyclopedias
• Internet properties established in 2003
• Croatian-language websites
• Misplaced Pages controversies
• Historical negationism
• Croatian encyclopedias