The issue of manipulating Bosnian-language content on Wikipedia has been causing a lot of controversy within the scientific community for several months now.
“As historians and political scientists began to add records of the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) using credible academic sources, it was quickly discovered that Wikipedia administrators deleted much of their work – sometimes within seconds,” as was found out.
Deleting content and imposing identity
The problem of deleting content in the Bosnian language is an issue that some portals wrote about in June, which clearly pointed out the abuse of power of Wikipedia administrators whopersistently denied the BiH national identity and emphasized other national identities for the citizens of BiH.
What does Wikipedia say?
On the occasion of the whole case, Wikimedia Foundation spokeswoman, Samantha Lien also spoke, telling that the academics’ concerns would be shared with volunteers on the BiH Wikipedia for their assessment of this whole case.
“Volunteers will assess potential problems and determine if measures are needed to address them – for example, by setting up warnings or blockades,” she noted.
Muhasilovic stressed that the professors contacted the administrators and emphasized that they do not have bad intentions but that they want to enrich the content in the Bosnian language with facts.
“We explained to the administrators that we are not a group with bad intentions. We have degrees in history, political science and we would like to contribute to the Bosnian-language Wikipedia since it is the least extensive in the region in terms of content,” said Muhasilovic.
That there are evident manipulations is also shown by the report where many irregularities were pointed out.
“In the case of the Croatian-language Wikipedia, articles affected by historical revisionism and manipulation of facts have been online and have affected the public sphere for more than a decade,” it was said.
Organized disinformation campaign
The Wikimedia report mentioned an organized disinformation campaign, in which it was said that there was a systematic distortion of the facts about war criminals condemned by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in the entire spectrum of the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian language.
“Articles by convicted Croatian and Serb war criminals, such as Slobodan Praljak and Ratko Mladic, have been portrayed positively,” it was mentioned.
At the end of the conversation, Muhasilovic explained that young people were exposed to the nationalist narrative through Wikipedia, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
