Wikipedia: seven militant contributors for Éric Zemmour banned

Europe 1 with AFP 11:45 a.m., February 23, 2022, modified at 11:45 a.m., February 23, 2022

Wikipedia administrators pronounced Wednesday the "banishment" of seven contributors, accused of campaigning for the candidate Éric Zemmour by trying to influence the content of this digital encyclopedia.

A book by journalist Vincent Bresson,

(Goutte d'Or editions), revealed in mid-February that one of the biggest French contributors to Wikipedia, "Cheep", was part of an online "cell". associated with Eric Zemmour's campaign team, to try to influence the content of the Wikipedia pages devoted to the presidential candidate, his party, his supporters...

The strongest sanction of the Wikipedia community

Relatively rare, banishment is the strongest sanction in the Wikipedia community.

A banned person is prohibited from any return among the contributors, even with a new account, a sanction superior to the simple blocking, which is much more frequent.

About 60 contributing administrators - experienced volunteers elected by the community - have spoken out in favor of banning "Cheep" and six other accounts.

Samuel Lafont, Eric Zemmour's digital strategy manager, regrets that "people don't understand how Wikipedia works, which is a participatory encyclopedia".

"It doesn't matter, we have several cells and a lot of people. We continue to campaign everywhere on the internet," says the 30-year-old.

Contacted by AFP, "Cheep" did not wish to react.

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"Cheep" was the 64th most contributor in French

It is common for political activists of all persuasions to try to make changes to pages, which are usually immediately corrected by the Wikipedia community.

The particularity of this team, called "Wikizedia", was to count in its ranks Gabriel alias "Cheep", 64th largest contributor to Wikipedia in French, a respected account, registered for more than fifteen years with more than 150,000 contributions to the counter.

Among his attempts at modifications, he had tried in October 2021 to lower the expression "classified on the far right" on Eric Zemmour's page and to qualify it as follows: "Classified on the far right in France by most of the French media or within the + right outside the walls + by historians and political scientists".

In December 2021, he also tried to remove from the page the controversy over the use of unauthorized images from films or television channels in the candidate's campaign entry clip.

"Cheep" also captioned a photo of Pétain and Laval saying that their "responsibility in the Holocaust in France is subject to debate".

Removed since, these modifications had earned him a series of criticisms.