A Forensic Qualitative Analysis of Contributions to Wikipedia from Anonymity Seeking Users

TL;DR

This study analyzes Wikipedia edits made by Tor users, revealing that despite their anonymity, many contributions align with Wikipedia norms, but trust issues and potential risks are significant concerns.

Contribution

It provides a detailed qualitative analysis of Tor users' Wikipedia contributions, highlighting their alignment with norms and identifying trust-related challenges.

Findings

Many Tor users' contributions align with Wikipedia norms

Trust issues can lead to disorder in anonymous editing

Risks to users and communities are identified

Abstract

By choice or by necessity, some contributors to commons-based peer production sites use privacy-protecting services to remain anonymous. As anonymity seekers, users of the Tor network have been cast both as ill-intentioned vandals and as vulnerable populations concerned with their privacy. In this study, we use a dataset drawn from a corpus of Tor edits to Wikipedia to uncover the character of Tor users' contributions. We build in-depth narrative descriptions of Tor users' actions and conduct a thematic analysis that places their editing activity into seven broad groups. We find that although their use of a privacy-protecting service marks them as unusual within Wikipedia, the character of many Tor users' contributions is in line with the expectations and norms of Wikipedia. However, our themes point to several important places where lack of trust promotes disorder, and to contributions where risks to contributors, service providers, and communities are unaligned.