Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-04/Op-Ed

Op-Ed

Estonian businessman and political donor brings lawsuit against head of national Wikimedia chapter

The author is the Executive Director of Wikimedia Estonia (WMEE), speaking for the WMEE. Their opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Wikimedia Foundation, The Signpost, or of other Wikipedians.

The Estonian businessman and Isamaa party sponsor Parvel Pruunsild has stated his dislike of the Wikipedia article about him and filed a claim in Tartu County Court to get it changed. This is the first time that an Estonian Wikipedian has been taken to court for his editing. The claim is directed against the chairman of Wikimedia Estonia Ivo Kruusamägi and two Reform Party politicians.

The main author of the article that triggered the lawsuit, Ivo Kruusamägi, says that this is a classical attempt to silence and censor Wikipedia. He points out that Wikipedia is not the original source of texts and investigations. "Wikipedia, like any other encyclopedia, publishes summaries of original sources. Those who do not like it are free to turn to, for example, the newspaper and demand they overturn their claims, and if they manage to convince the paper to do that, Wikipedia will report that the paper first said one thing about them and then something else," he offered.

The story goes back to a highly controversial pension reform that came into existence in Estonia in 2021. People were then allowed to take out their pension savings, and in September of that same year, around 1.3 billion euros exited retirement accounts. The reform was criticized by some, and even reached the Estonian Supreme Court. Estonian businessman and bank owner Parvel Pruunsild, on the other hand, was an avid supporter of this reform. The story gets interesting in 2022, when it was said in Estonian media that Pruunsild had much more influence in the political party Isamaa than was previously thought. In the wake of that public interest, a Wikipedia article was written about him, which mentioned news publications in 2019 expressing suspicions about why Pruunsild was supporting that pension reform. As a result, it was said that his bank could potentially gain millions in additional income. Newspapers even selected him as the 12th most influential man in Estonia in 2020, as a result of the pension reform passing in the parliament.

Prohibiting people from voicing their doubts about why a successful businessman is pushing an influential reform goes directly against the principle of freedom of speech. When that claim would be directed against the politicians, who argued that the likely reason for that reform might be a personal gain for Pruunsild, then it would be a classic strategic lawsuit against public participation. On this occasion, there was one additional step taken: Pruunsild also sued a Wikipedian who, in writing at Wikipedia, had the courage to refer to this topic, and who referred to the existence of his connection to the reform. What is even more unusual is that Pruunsild did not sue the journalists and newspapers who wrote about this topic in the first place in 2019. Wikipedia was only a secondary source, and only claimed that there were suspicions raised about his motivations.

Pruunsild's lawyers have admitted that before the filing of the lawsuit, they made several attempts to remove the section from Wikipedia by deleting it as anonymous editors (for example here). The paragraph, and its references, were restored three times, at which point Pruunsild's lawyers decided to take it to the courthouse. Estonian Wikipedians, on the other hand, have expanded the article even further and brought that directly to the attention of the media. It is not yet clear whether the court will accept the action, or when.

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It is to be hoped that someone will soon translate the article into English. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:36, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
From the Op-ed.
"Estonian Wikipedians, on the other hand, have expanded the article even further and brought that directly to the attention of the media."
Let's grab the popcorn and see what the Streisand effect can do. On the subject of the actual pension reform, one effect that has been seen elsewhere is that many pensioners withdrawing their pension savings then get bad advice and lose a lot of their pensions. If that happens here it will be interesting to see where fingers then start to point. Philh-591 (talk) 16:25, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There have been a number of court decisions that have ruled against Wikipedians and explicitly against Wikipedian anonymity (see previous Signpost issue for a French case, or the earlier case with User:Feliks in the German Wikipedia). In some German cases, courts have ordered that Wikipedia passages putting subjects in a false light be removed (which they have been, permanently).

Seen against this backdrop, I find this sentence, "Estonian Wikipedians, on the other hand, have expanded the article even further and brought that directly to the attention of the media", a little troubling.

The idea that Wikipedians can and will punish biography subjects who complain by expanding the coverage of whatever issue they are complaining about is apt to look an awful lot like an abuse of power by a mob of anonymous ill-wishers to outside eyes. That's really not the way to go. Allowing such perceptions to gain traction will ultimately bite this project in the arse. It also increases the legal risk for the Wikipedians involved.

We all know that it is quite possible to write a flawlessly sourced attack biography, simply by being selective, highlighting certain aspects in the lead, etc. Courts are beginning to get wise to this too. In the Feliks cases, they explicitly called out this kind of editing and used it as a justification for why revealing the Wikipedian's identity was in the public interest. They argued (not unreasonably) that if you are an activist working in the public sphere, of which Wikipedia is now a very major part, then you can't expect privacy, especially if your editing is noticeably tendentious. (See e.g. [1] [German]; the €8,000 damages were overturned on appeal, but the Wikipedian still lost tens of thousands of euros in court costs and had his identity revealed.)

Having said that, at the time of the diff quoted in the article, the Estonian bio seems to have looked perfectly fine to my mind. But the way it has been expanded since then it is beginning to look a lot like a WP:COATRACK, which is not good. Scrupulous adherence to WP:BLP policy, fairness, balance and neutrality should be the order of the day. Andreas JN 466 12:59, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Jayen466: does Estonian Wikipedia follow enwiki rules or does they have their own local rules? Just a curious question of mine. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 23:56, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. I can't off-hand find an Estonian equivalent of WP:BLP in the interwiki links of that policy page. However, all Wikipedias are subject to the 2009 Wikimedia Foundation board resolution on biographies of living people. Andreas JN 466 00:26, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Jayen466: So to you it seems ok when a wealthy businessman tries to use intimidation to hide factually proven information, but you see it as a problem if people resist to it? This article is perfectly in accordance with our highest standards. Not an easy feat to achieve when dealing with a person who has made his fortune by giving out loans at extremely high interest rates, and whose significant influence in politics has raised more than enough suspicions.

We don't have written out policies on all the topics. As practices are rather similar to what they are in English Wikipedia, then separate policy pages are not considered that important (importance lies more on the few differences than in many-many similarities). And as the number of editors is way smaller, then active editors know that anyway and can remember the discussions. The main difference is that the Estonian version is far more inclusive and with articles about people we don't mind if people edit articles about themselves as long as they stick to rules. Ivo (talk) 01:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is it just me or does a web translation from Microsoft Edge of the article https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parvel_Pruunsild change his name to Raft Brown Bridge? Tube·of·Light 14:01, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- "Pruunsild" is "brown bridge" in translation so it might indeed happen. Google Translate also provides some funny translation mistakes. Ivo (talk) 01:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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