Wikipedia editors confront tough choices on arms trade pages

Around 270,000 active volunteers shape what appears on Wikipedia, the world's most-read online encyclopedia, yet countless topics remain underrepresented. Among the neglected areas is the global arms industry, and a growing group of new editors is working to change that.

Editing for transparency

In a central London classroom last week, roughly two dozen participants gathered around laptops, sharing free vegan Ethiopian meals at what organizers call a "wikithon" — a hands-on, collective Wikipedia editing session. The attendees ranged from seasoned contributors in their 70s to students who had never created an account. Their focus included subjects like Palantir, Project Maven and Nitro-Chem. "Wikipedia pages about the arms industry, in general, are not always super-detailed," said co-founder Agnes Cameron. According to the specialist technician, the event — launched by fellows from the n-Space programme at Somerset House Studios — aimed "to put better quality and more well organised information on the arms industry in the public domain". Newcomers to the monthly gathering receive instruction on contributing to the internet's most popular reference site. Editing itself is remarkably straightforward — publishing a change takes only a few clicks — but ethical questions surface rapidly. "The interesting thing about Wikipedia editing is that you're encouraged to edit things you care about," Cameron noted. "What it looks like to have a conflict of interest is an interesting question." While she personally enjoys editing food-related pages, her motivations are also political. "We're toeing quite a difficult line," she said. "Difficult lines are important to toe."

Balance and good faith

Even with personal and political reasons for wanting to circulate information about weapons manufacturers and dealers, maintaining journalistic neutrality requires editing Wikipedia in good faith. Cameron emphasized that because of the subject matter chosen by participants, it was "really important" they adhere strictly to Wikipedia's standards. "This is not an anti-arms industry campaigning event. This is an event really about factual information on Wikipedia," she said. Wikipedia's rules prohibit original research and forbid editors from drawing conclusions. The primary aim of the arms industry wikithon was therefore to consolidate publicly available information from existing sources into a single location. The platform has faced repeated criticism over the lack of diversity among its editors and its coverage. It has been accused of geographical bias favoring the west, with most articles centered on the US and western Europe. Only 19% of the site's biography entries cover women. In 2018, physicist and female Nobel laureate Donna Strickland was judged "not important enough" for a Wikipedia entry. With a broader mix of ages, genders and racial backgrounds at the wikithon, the trainee editors were helping to rebalance the scale, said co-founder Hannah Cobb. "There's a very specific idea of who edits Wikipedia … that doesn't tend to be the demographic of who shows up," she said. "There's a really broad interest in Wikipedia in general. Everyone remembers that at school you were taught not to trust it because anyone could write it."

Growing interest and future plans

Earlier arms industry wikithons organized by Cameron and Cobb in Manchester and London have attracted more than 60 aspiring Wikipedians at a time, including activists, journalists, Quaker members — and even Cameron's own mother. Newcomers were drawn by curiosity about how Wikipedia might broaden public understanding of complicated geopolitics, Cobb said. "There is a sense of powerlessness when it comes to countering the narrative by big tech, by governments, by the military industrial complex at large," she said. For the arms industry page editors, those feelings can dissolve within a few hours: "When you write something on Wikipedia, it appears immediately on the internet. I think that experience alone is quite empowering for people." Cobb described a sense of wonder "when people realise how easy it is to actually contribute", though attendees respect Wikipedia's dedication to rigor and quality control. Despite their commitment to accuracy, the group avoids publicizing specifics of its edits, fearing bad-faith editors might undo the work. Cameron said it remains uncertain whether Wikipedia's broader editorial culture would object to how the event operates. Wikithons are not new, but the ambiguous boundary between activism and accurate information dissemination tests the platform's rules. Real-world politics frequently spill onto Wikipedia, and editors often clash publicly over changes. The site has also been covertly exploited as an informational battleground. Veteran editor Ksenia Coffman made extensive edits to remove what she identified as flattering and sympathetic entries about Nazi party officials across Wikipedia, and in 2021, the Croatian-language version was found to have been commandeered by nationalist, far-right organizers who made ideologically motivated edits. Cameron hopes the regular meetings can be formalized into a WikiProject, where organized groups of editors collaborate to improve specific topic pages. She expressed hope that her group could be adopted by WikiProject Military history, which she called "far and away the most active project on Wikipedia by miles. It's amazingly well run." The London wikithon will continue for another session in the winter, and Cameron and Cobb's faith in encyclopedia editing as a political tool is steadfast. As Cameron said: "Wik