Welcome to the Ministry of Truth in the Wiki Age.
“Is this really happening?” was tweeted to me yesterday as nChain announced it’s arrival into the Bitcoin scene, bringing with it the controversial man who made headlines last year after upset staff ‘outed’ him as Satoshi Nakamoto.
Craig Wright, he’s back and I attempted to edit his wikipedia page by uploading documents, to correct information and present some truths.
“Want to try writing a page…
Based on quotes from the code?”
The conversation started after I received a link to Satoshi’s White paper, drawing my attention to the quote shown on the laptop image above. It got me thinking, why isn’t this common knowledge? Why isn’t it known that nodes are miners? I went to the bitcoin wiki to educate myself, and found the information there confusing.
“Does that make nodes that are not mining, lightweight nodes?”
I asked after reading the explanation.
“No, it makes them a wallet.”
I quoted from the wiki….. Which “does not contribute to bitcoin’s economic strength”
“Yes. Lightweight is not a node. You are a wallet if you do not mine.”
Ok, if a lightweight node is a wallet, why isn’t it called… a wallet? And why is the lightweight node page empty? If nodes are miners and miners are nodes, why isn’t it stated so clearly in the wiki, and why hasn’t anybody changed it?
“I did not write the wiki.
Core manage the wiki.”
“Try to fix it, with references to the code and my quotes.
See how long it lasts.”
Whilst working out how to register and verify my bitcoin wiki account so I could edit in the necessary changes, images of his degrees started arriving.
“Try and see what happens if you link the Masters degrees… and counter the press with evidence and facts.”
“Let us see what this results in”
Verification to the bitcoin wiki looked like it would take 24+hrs, instead I went to his wikipedia page to update their claims:
“Wright is the founder of cryptocurrency company DeMorgan Ltd, which received $54 million AUD in tax incentives via AusIndustry.”
by replacing with the truth:
“Wright is the founder of cryptocurrency company DeMorgan Ltd., which was due to receive $54 million in AUD in tax incentives via AusIndustry when the Australian Tax Office changed the rules of Bitcoin overriding a Private Ruling and withholding the funds.”
I uploaded 8 documents proving (some of) Craig’s degrees:
Master Of International commercial Law, University of Northumbria
Master of Science, Sans Technology Institute
Master of Statistics, University of Newcastle, Australia
Master of Information systems security, Charles Sturt University
Master of Networking and System Administration, Charles Sturt University
Master of (information technology management), Charles Sturt University
Master of Science (Information Systems Engineering) Sans Technology Institute
Doctor of philosophy certification, Charles Sturt University
After listing them all as external links, and cheekily adding TheBitcoinDoco interview how weird that it is neglected from his wiki page, I diligently and patiently sorted thru the coded text to find specific sentences and correct more errors:
“But the university told Forbes that it only awarded him two master’s degrees and not a doctorate”
to:
“Forbes stated that the university only awarded him two master’s degrees and not a doctorate when they failed to check the research site on the university’s website. It was not known that Craig Wright used multiple student accounts at the time to complete several degrees simultaneously”
An email arrived with evidence of the judgement from “2004, Wright was convicted of contempt of court by the Supreme Court of New South Wales when he argued with a judge over the nature of how SMTP servers work. He was sentenced to 28 days in jail for breaching an injunction that prevented him from approaching customers of DeMorgan Information security Systems, which he resigned from in 2003 pending a shareholder meeting. The case was decided in Dr. Wright’s favour in 2013. The sentence was suspended on condition of performing 250 hours of community service. Dr Wright completed and lodged 500 hours of service to which the opposing parties argued he was still showing contempt against the court. Dr. Wright completed this time for Uniting Care Burnside painting and rebuilding a community centre for single parent families.”
As I clicked save for the last time, something strange happened, red text appeared showing that the page was being edited by somebody else… and that somebody else was wiping ALL my edits. Every single one.
Links *GONE* the whole page reverted back to scratch, with direction to a page explaining that I’d violated policy and probably would be hating the administrator who deleted my work.
Reality was any respect I had for wikipedia disappeared in that moment.
This was my first experience of blatant internet censorship, being wiped out for adding documentation that substantiated Craig’s credentials. What happened reinforced why I was drawn to bitcoin, an internet architecture that bypasses centralised authorities. I’m over biased information and people being censored from publishing the truth, it’s really time for our current infrastructure to be challenged with a workable peer to peer frame that allows people to connect, on our own terms… for me this experience further cemented the need.
It also left me wondering, what is going on?
Why is Craig deliberately being blocked by the ‘core’ of what he created?
Why is he such a threat?
And, what is MaxwellBack&Co so scared of?
I signed out knowing that the truth WILL prevail.
- Update*
still no verification allowing me to edit bitcoin wiki pages. The last verification I can see on bitcointalk was 22 December 2016 — is it still active? - Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder and Wikia co-founder — his (well, really Gregory Maxwell’s) thoughts on Craig Wright — https://www.quora.com/Is-Craig-Wright-Satoshi-Nakamoto
