Wikipedia Watch

Wikipedia Watch is a website created by Daniel Brandt through his organization Public Information Research on October 13, 2005. The site had published some logs from Wikipedia Internet Relay Chat channels and has listed dozens of examples of plagiarism by Wikipedia editors on the English version.

On the website, Brandt advances his view that a site whose content is copied as widely as that of Wikipedia should have higher standards of accountability, and that those who contribute or edit articles should therefore make their identities public; this includes the facilitation of article subjects bringing litigation against editors. Brandt considers Wikipedia to be a privacy risk, and stated, "It [Wikipedia] needs to be watched closely." Brandt's view is that the creation of biographical articles on Wikipedia is broadly unacceptable due to the inaccuracy of information included and a lack of accountability.

In November 2006, the Associated Press reported Brandt's claim to have uncovered 142 "examples of suspected plagiarism" among the 12,000 Wikipedia articles he searched to illustrate the need for "Wikipedia to conduct a thorough review of all its articles." According to the report, "Wikipedia editors have been reviewing the 142 articles in question and have declared a handful to be OK because copied passages came from the public domain. Editors found others where Wikipedia appeared to be the one plagiarized. But editors found extensive problems in several cases, with many still not yet fully checked."

Wikipedia Watch maintains a "hivemind" page where he discloses the real identities, often including cities of residence and dates of birth, of over one hundred Wikipedia administrators. It had previously maintained a running log of disputes Brandt had had with many of those same administrators, primarily over the unauthorized biography Wikipedia had maintained about him.

Brandt played a leading role in identifying Brian Chase as the person who added false information to the Wikipedia article on John Seigenthaler, Sr. during the 2005 controversy.

In addition, Brandt played a key role in the Essjay controversy by reporting Essjay's real identity as Ryan Jordan to The New Yorker author Stacy Schiff.