You are the author of the first news story about  Henryk Batuta hoax, uncovered four years ago in the Polish Wikipedia. Do you remember when did the authors of the hoax first come to you? Was it just before the publication or earlier? The hoax was uncovered on January 20th and the story was published on February 9, so there was a period of time between those two dates... I found them myself. Accidentally. I was looking for new, interesting stories about the Internet. My newspaper colleague Robert Sankowski told me he had heard somewhere about a friend of a friend who had been doing some huge scam in Wikipedia. Step by step, I had traced that person. This was a few months before the publication, back in the late 2005. A representative from Batuta's Army asked me to hold on with publication, even though the article had already been visible in Wikipedia for many months. In your story you wrote they wanted to show how thoughtless  people of Warsaw were when it came to names of streets and neighborhoods. Now it turns out it was more about Wikipedia and its mechanisms. The second one was the attitude towards streets and generally Poland's communist past. As one could easily guess, Batuta's Army had rather right-wing political views, most probably close to IPN (translator's note: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej/IPN, English: National Memory Institute / is a governmental agency in Poland conducting both criminal investigations and scientific research into the country's communist past ) , which fights against communist streets' namesakes. And there was a third reason. As I'm sure you remember, in the 90. conspiracy theories concerning Jews were popular in Poland. As some of the people of such origin had changed their names,  conspiracy theory made people see Jews nearly everywhere. Such lists were printed on paper and later they got published on the Internet. Don't exaggerate. I've written just one such article. But thanks to this  I've realized how important Wikipedia had become. I don't think there is single journalist who doesn't use it. File photo of Konrad Godlewski from 2009 Yes, it's actually my high school nickname – conew. Sadly, after some time I stopped. My family got bigger and I didn't have enough time to make the entire humanity happier. When we were talking soon after your publication, you wrote to me you  hoped there would be some positive effects of your story. Do you think you've initiated a landslide change? However, I think the most important was the impact on the other side – the readers. Even the best editorial system lets some mistakes pass undetected. I know it, I've worked in several newspapers. Batuta's case reminds us the old truth: dubito ergo sum. There are mistakes in respected encyclopedias and books as well. Sometimes those are "Dawkins-like" mistakes, if you remember the chapter about memes in "The Selfish Gene". My favorite example is the one about Michał Boym, Polish Jesuit and one of the first sinologists. He had done a great job with his descriptions of Chinese plants and animals. His works were later published in Europe. Sometimes his text were stolen from him and published under other people's names. There was a case of "green-furred turtle". Boym wrote about it because it was extremely bizarre: a turtle with green fur. In fact it was a kind of seaweed growing on the turtle's shell. Boym described it in his Latin text as "viridium". And printers from Vienna made it "vindium" which can be translated as "floating in air". This slight typing mistake made people in the West believe there were flying turtles in China. What's more, there were pictures showing this unusual thing. I had thought so  but fortunately the Wikimedians woke up right in time and put an end to this. Today the original Batuta article is like an antibody in a vaccine – accompanied by a secure commentary, it can be used by anyone for the sake of his/her own immunity against such a "virus". However, another "Jewish conspiracy" theory it still thriving. It has something to do with Batuta's article, as in the hoax he was a communist activist with you-know-what origin. The theory I'm talking about was made popular by Okhrana (Russian secret police from the tzars times) with the publication of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". It has made its way as far as to Japan. Recently I've been following its spread in China. A book called "The Currency Wars" has recently been published there. The author used to work at American financial institutions. When he came back to China, he wrote the book describing how America's finances are under control by a group of friends with common ancestry. I don't think there's any way of defense against a good hoax. I'm sure at least a few such Batutas are hiding somewhere in Wikipedia. It's a classical evolutionary arms race. When media published a story about a hoax concerning  false product (medicine for hangover), they praised the company for visionary marketing, despite the fact it came down to a deception. Why in the conflict between citizens and business, the media represent the corporations? It's a question of marketing and public relations. Google, as any modern company, spends a lot of money to create and maintain the image of both itself and its products. And Wikipedia is a bunch of Internet users who tries to set its own order by democratic means. It's part of democaries ' nature that they need years to earn their own ethos, image and culture of organization. Just compare Polish and British democracy. Ok , so I classically thank you for talking to me.
You are the author of the first news story about the Henryk Batuta hoax, uncovered four years ago in the Polish Wikipedia. Do you remember when did the authors of the hoax first come to you? Was it just before the publication or earlier? The hoax was uncovered on January 20 and the story was published on February 9, so there was a period of time between those two dates... I found them myself. Accidentally. I was looking for new, interesting stories about the Internet. My newspaper colleague Robert Sankowski told me he had heard somewhere about a friend of a friend who had been doing some huge scam in Wikipedia. Step by step, I had traced that person. This was a few months before the publication, back in late 2005. A representative from Batuta's Army asked me to hold on with publication, even though the article had already been visible in Wikipedia for many months. In your story you wrote they wanted to show how thoughtless the people of Warsaw were when it came to names of streets and neighborhoods. Now it turns out it was more about Wikipedia and its mechanisms. The second one was the attitude towards streets and generally Poland's communist past. As one could easily guess, Batuta's Army had rather right-wing political views, most probably close to IPN e.d. note: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej/IPN, English: National Memory Institute is a governmental agency in Poland conducting both criminal investigations and scientific research into the country's communist past , which fights against communist streets' namesakes. And there was a third reason. As I'm sure you remember, in the 90s, conspiracy theories concerning Jews were popular in Poland. As some of the people of such origin had changed their names, the conspiracy theory made people see Jews nearly everywhere. Such lists were printed on paper and later they got published on the Internet. Don't exaggerate. I've written just one such article. But thanks to this , I've realized how important Wikipedia had become. I don't think there is single journalist who doesn't use it. File photo of Konrad Godlewski from 2009 Yes, it's actually my high school nickname – conew. Sadly, after some time I stopped. My family got bigger and I didn't have enough time to make all of humanity happier. When we were talking soon after your publication, you wrote to me you had hoped there would be some positive effects of your story. Do you think you've initiated a landslide change? However, I think the most important was the impact on the other side – the readers. Even the best editorial system lets some mistakes pass undetected. I know it, I've worked in several newspapers. Batuta's case reminds us the old truth: dubito ergo sum. There are mistakes in respected encyclopedias and books as well. Sometimes those are "Dawkins-like" mistakes, if you remember the chapter about memes in "The Selfish Gene". My favorite example is the one about Michał Boym, Polish Jesuit and one of the first sinologists. He had done a great job with his descriptions of Chinese plants and animals. His works were later published in Europe. Sometimes his text were stolen from him and published under other people's names. There was a case of "green-furred turtle". Boym wrote about it because it was extremely bizarre: a turtle with green fur. In fact it was a kind of seaweed growing on the turtle's shell. Boym described it in his Latin text as "viridium". And printers from Vienna made it "vindium" which can be translated as "floating in air". This slight typing mistake made people in the West believe there were flying turtles in China. What's more, there were pictures showing this unusual thing. I had thought so , but fortunately the Wikimedians woke up right in time and put an end to this. Today the original Batuta article is like an antibody in a vaccine – accompanied by a secure commentary, it can be used by anyone for the sake of his/her own immunity against such a "virus". However, another "Jewish conspiracy" theory is still thriving. It has something to do with Batuta's article, as in the hoax he was a communist activist with you-know-what origin. The theory I'm talking about was made popular by Okhrana (Russian secret police from the tzars times) with the publication of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". It has made its way as far as to Japan. Recently I've been following its spread in China. A book called "The Currency Wars" has recently been published there. The author used to work at American financial institutions. When he came back to China, he wrote the book describing how America's finances are under control by a group of friends with common ancestry. I don't think there's any way of defense against a good hoax. I'm sure at least a few such Batutas are hiding somewhere in Wikipedia. It's a classical evolutionary arms race. When media published a story about a hoax concerning a false product (medicine for hangover), they praised the company for visionary marketing, despite the fact it came down to a deception. Why in the conflict between citizens and business, the media represents the corporations? It's a question of marketing and public relations. Google, as any modern company, spends a lot of money to create and maintain the image of both itself and its products. And Wikipedia is a bunch of Internet users who tries to set its own order by democratic means. It's part of democracies ' nature that they need years to earn their own ethos, image and culture of organization. Just compare Polish and British democracy. OK , so I classically thank you for talking to me.
A
the
R
20th
20
D
the
A
the
R
(translator's
e.d.
D
/
D
)
R
90.
90s,
A
the
A
,
R
the entire
all of
A
had
A
,
R
it
is
A
a
R
represent
represents
R
democaries
democracies
R
Ok
OK