Hundreds of Wikipedia pages were replaced with swastikas during the day on August 16
Thousands of swastikas when reading Wikipedia at breakfast: this was the surprise, to say the least, unpleasant, faced by followers of the online encyclopedia on Monday, August 16.
Spotted and banned until further notice by a group of Wikipedia moderators, an individual had simply replaced the article template used in many pages with another, containing the prohibited symbol.
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The vandal was targeted and banned
Incongruous event if any, on Monday August 16, Wikipedia readers discovered thousands of pages of the online encyclopedia vandalized by a huge black swastika on a white and red background. The symbol replaced the content of many pages of various personalities, celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, or even that of the President of the United States, Joe Biden.
If the image relayed by the political activist and writer Ann Coulter could have suggested at first glance to a major attack, it is in fact a single individual and not a hacker, whose account was created 10 days earlier on Wikipedia, who is behind this act of online vandalism. The author would have simply managed to modify an article template used on thousands of pages to add the photo of the swastika.
Spotted and then banned until further notice, the account in question and its holder should no longer be harsh…until the potential creation of another account. Despite reverting to the original template within minutes, this incident is reminiscent of the ease with which Wikipedia can be subject to damaging changes.
Wikipedia celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The opportunity to return to the more global role of the Wikimedia Foundation, which manages several projects that do not benefit from the same visibility as the encyclopedia, but which nevertheless contribute to the objective of the foundation: the sharing of knowledge.
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Source : Gizmodo
