News 3 March 2025

“When you join Wikipedia, it’s to make the world better, not to torment or shatter it”

A column by Samuel Le Goff, published in "Le Nouvel Obs" on 25 February 2025

Under fire from Elon Musk, the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is now under attack in France. ‘Criticism that should worry all defenders of freedom’, says our president Samuel Le Goff, former president of Wikimedia France. In this article for Le Nouvel Obs, he denounces the virulent attacks on Wikipedia, particularly those by the newspaper Le Point, which in mid-February launched a wave of articles, open letters and denunciatory articles against the platform.

“From the outset, Wikipedia has been a digital commons, a self-managed organisational UFO that proudly claims to be non-commercial. We’re light years away from the models advocated by a radical right that lives in the cult of vertical authority, tradition and the exclusion of the Other, seen as a threat”, explains Samuel Le Goff.

“Many of the persons who have joined the petition recently launched by ‘Le Point’ have a complicated history with Wikipedia, and for many, a deep-seated resentment. Elon Musk’s attacks partly fall into this category. He also resented not having control over the content of his page, which mentions, among other things, his Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony. Since the encyclopedia is totally out of his hands, since it’s not for sale, he got angry, which makes the ideological attacks even more spectacular”, he continues.

In the face of these repeated attacks, Wikipedia has both strengths and weaknesses, explains Samuel Le Goff. To find out more, read his full article here.

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