Wikipedia:Fabricated articles and hoaxes of Russia in 2022

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WP:FAHR22

In June 2022, a large number of fictitious articles were found on the Chinese Wikipedia, where User:折毛 (Zhemao) was found to have created as many as 206 articles relating to late Medieval Russian history, with most of these articles being hoaxes. The Chinese Wikipedia community submitted requests for deletion for the articles she created, and they have all been deleted.

The English Wikipedia was also affected by this incident. One of the articles was translated from Chinese into English, and then from English into Arabic, Russian and Romanian by other Wikipedians, and finally from Russian into Ukrainian. These contributions have resulted in far-reaching misinformation and cross-wiki damage across multiple Wikipedia language projects.

Summary

Beginning

The incident began on June 16, 2022, when the Chinese Wikipedia's teahouse discussed the massive number of contributions belonging to a single user. Several articles created by User:折毛 were critiqued and identified as containing false information by commentators on Zhihu.^[1] The article zh:卡申银矿 (Kashin silver mine/Кашинский серебряный рудник; see historical archive) was allegedly falsified, and the community compared the geological sources and learned that they were misused. Thus, there was no evidence that any such silver mine existed in the history of late Medieval Russia. The article was then speedily deleted on the grounds of being a G3 hoax.

The Chinese Wikimedia community then launched a fact-check on these numerous fictional articles.

Fake sources

The second issue identified by the community involved the falsification of sources. The Chinese article zh:梁赞法 (Ryazan law) featured the following citation:

谢·米·索洛维约夫著，简国霖译. 《自远古以来的俄国史》第四卷. 北京: 北京人民出版社. 1983: 167.

In the above source, it has been confirmed that the Russian historian Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov wrote the Russian-language work ru:История России с древнейших времён.^[2] However, the Chinese Wikipedia community could not find a Chinese translation published by Beijing People's Publishing House in 1983, and the Chinese translator 简国霖 (Jian Guolin) is not available on the Internet. The article was subsequently deleted.

In the August 4, 2019 revision of the zh:脫劣勒赤 (Tuojilechi) article, one of the sources provided was "元史錄" (The Great History of Yuan). On November 16, 2020, Russian Wikipedia user Варвара Хан asked her whether the full text of the book was available while it was being translated into Russian. 3 days later, User:折毛 revised the article and changed the source to another book, "續弘簡錄元史類編" (Continuation of the Hongjianlu of the Yuan History). Although the Chinese Wikipedia community confirmed the existence of the book,^[3] it did not contain the source cited in Volumes 8 and 12. In addition, the text of the history book does not match the description of the text in the article.

Impact on English Wikipedia

According to the initial investigation, 折毛 also edited a number of articles on the English Wikipedia, and these edits also utilised forged content from real sources that had been tampered with. The Chinese Wikipedia community informed the English Wikipedia through the administrators' noticeboard.^[4]

There are four affected articles, where one of which is undergoing AfD discussion.

Siege of Borovsk (Deleted by G3; Wayback Archive)
False Dmitry I on "Death" section. (Removed)
Vasili IV of Russia on "Life" section. (Removed)
Deportation of Chinese in the Soviet Union (Kept, after consensus that hoax elements of the article had been resolved)

Impact on Russian Wikipedia

ru:Осада Смоленска (1286) - Siege of Smolensk (1286). Was on deletion discussion as a possible hoax, but later proved to have existed.
ru:Советская депортация китайцев - Deportation of Chinese in the Soviet Union. Marked as hoax.
ru:Торельчи-гургэн - Tuojilechi. The mislead source is removed.

Affected pages in other languages

The article Deportation of Chinese in the Soviet Union was selected as a featured article on the Chinese Wikipedia, and was then translated from Chinese into English, and later into Arabic, Russian, and Romanian by other Wikipedians, and finally from Russian into Ukrainian. All of these contained dubious content purported to be from real sources, and contain a lot of hoaxes.