Did Simu Liu write his own Wikipedia article?
or: how much publicity does a man need
In July 2013, a Wikipedia editor submitted an article draft for Simu Liu, then an up-and-coming actor years away from his Marvel-powered cinematic breakthrough.
The draft was submitted via the Articles for Creation process, which allows inexperienced editors to receive feedback on their writing. Soon after the draft was submitted, it was reviewed by another editor. Although the draft was quickly rejected, the reviewer left an encouraging message on the new editor’s talk page, inviting them to reach out for advice on how to productively contribute to the Wikipedia community.
The Wikipedia editor who had submitted the draft was silent for more than two years. In September 2015, the editor tried again: they submitted a fresh draft to Articles for Creation, another attempt to document the career of Simu Liu, who now had a few more credits to his name but still had not quite reached his moment of stardom.
On September 25, the draft was returned. It had been declined a second time; the reviewer specifically highlighted the fact that the included references failed to demonstrate Simu Liu’s notability in line with Wikipedia editing policy. A topic is presumed to be notable if it receives significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. An actor who has appeared in a handful of shows may have simply not attracted enough attention from media outlets to qualify for Wikipedia notability.
However, the reviewer who responded to this draft had also noticed something unusual. The Wikipedia editor who had submitted the Simu Liu article draft had chosen for themselves the username Sliu253. That sounded like more than a coincidence.
Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia is hardly new. During the early days of the project, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales edited his own biography several times. In 2007, a tool called WikiScanner was released, resulting in the discovery that IP addresses linked to Congressional offices had edited Wikipedia articles related to American politics. A year later, Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee voted to block edits from IP addresses associated with the Church of Scientology after it emerged that affiliates of the church were improperly influencing Wikipedia articles. Slowly but surely, the community began to develop policies which strongly discouraged conflict-of-interest editing.
It wasn’t long before public relations firms got in on the action. Bell Pottinger extensively edited Wikipedia on behalf of clients for years until eventually collapsing amidst scandal; the firm was accused of breaching British professional standards by fomenting unrest in South Africa. Portland Communications was hired by Anheuser-Busch to edit the Wikipedia article on Stella Artois, removing the beer’s nickname of “wife beater” from the page. Corporations, billionaires, and celebrities have been caught red-handed by members of the Wikipedia community, their edits reverted, their accounts blocked.
Perhaps the most brazen incident of conflict-of-interest editing — let’s call it “COI editing” for brevity’s sake — was revealed in May 2019. Advertising company Leo Burnett Tailor Made (now Leo Burnett Worldwide) had been hired by The North Face to improve the visibility of that brand. To that end, Leo Burnett extensively edited Wikipedia (and its companion site, Wikimedia Commons) to replace photographs of various outdoor locations with new photographs depicting people wearing North Face-branded apparel. Smiling models carrying North Face backpacks were briefly featured in the lede of articles for various parks and landmarks. The guerilla advertising campaign was certainly a creative one, albeit flagrantly in violation of Wikipedia site policy.
Was it uncovered by a lengthy investigation from diligent Wikipedia contributors? Nope. The campaign was revealed in a press release from Leo Burnett which described, in boastful detail, the innovative techniques they’d used to insert their client’s product into the world’s largest open-source encyclopedia. They must not have expected the response: accounts banned, edits reverted, older images restored, and a massive outpouring of criticism from Wikipedia and from the general public. Eventually, both The North Face and Leo Burnett acknowledged their missteps in a series of apologies.
On August 6, 2019, months after the Leo Burnett scandal, Simu Liu tweeted: “Wondering if it is safe to finally admit that I wrote my own Wikipedia article in 2015.” He later appeared to walk back those remarks. The next day he claimed that “the article today is totally not me anymore.” The day after that, he remarked: “You make one joke and all of a sudden you’re flagged on Wikipedia…”
But while his Twitter followers amused themselves, the Wikipedia article in question had long been under scrutiny. Shortly after failing to stick the landing back in 2015 with their first two drafts, Sliu253 had tried again four days later with another version of their Simu Liu Wikipedia article. The draft was returned with the same comment: references inadequate to show subject’s notability.
After more than a month of inactivity, Sliu253 returned, speaking out for the first time. “I am Simu’s publicity representative, not Simu himself,” the editor claimed on their Wikipedia talk page in November 2015. Of their purported client, the editor stated: “He has built an extremely notable career for himself in Canadian TV and stage, as evidenced by the multiple sources I have given.”
What followed was a blitz of draft submissions as Sliu253 tried their hardest to get Simu Liu a Wikipedia page. The draft was declined on November 12; it was declined again on November 13, and then again on November 16.
The account was starting to draw attention. Another Wikipedia editor posted a comment on their talk page, warning of Wikipedia’s conflict-of-interest rules. Autobiographical Wikipedia articles are generally discouraged; COI editing is discouraged as well, and users with conflicts are typically recommended to make some sort of disclosure.
To this, Sliu253 responded. “We work on the publicity for the Canadian television show Blood and Water,” the account stated. “We don’t work directly with the actors of the show, but given Simu’s role in the series . . . he very clearly satisfies Wikipedia’s notability guidelines.” Sliu253 concluded, somewhat bluntly: “Please reconsider your position. Thank you.”
The editor who had posted the warning did not budge. A PR flack working for a TV show is still violating Wikipedia’s conflict-of-interest rules, they noted. In fact, paid editing comes with its own rules on Wikipedia. At the very least, editors are required to disclose any compensation (which Sliu253 belatedly did). However, they are still not supposed to be contributing promotional content to what is supposed to be a neutral encyclopedia. This is, of course, assuming that Sliu253 was actually operated by Blood and Water’s publicity team and not Simu Liu himself.
The edits continued. The draft Simu Liu article was declined again on December 6, on January 2, and on January 15. After that, it appears that Sliu253 abandoned their attempts to get it published. The draft article was eventually deleted for inactivity.
On April 4, 2016, the Wikipedia page for Simu Liu was finally created. This time, nobody bothered with Articles for Creation; the page was uploaded directly to Wikipedia by a brand-new account. The account’s username? Aznrom3o.
It is worth noting at this juncture that using multiple accounts on Wikipedia (“sockpuppetry”) is also generally prohibited. Some exceptions exist: users with certain security concerns, users with certain privacy concerns, and users who edit Wikipedia in a professional context (for example, educators and Wikimedia Foundation employees) are permitted to have multiple accounts. Even then, users are expected to abide by the site’s rules; having a valid excuse to use a second account is not a license to engage in illicit behavior.
Using two accounts to edit the same article, without explicitly declaring a connection, for profit? That would almost certainly be disallowed. A small number of trusted users (usually administrators) have access to the CheckUser tool, which helps determine whether two or more Wikipedia accounts are actually operated by the same person. As you can imagine, the tool is quite powerful, and is generally only used as part of a formal sockpuppet investigation, after which the offending users are usually banned. But in April 2016, no such investigation was opened. Was Aznrom3o the same person as Sliu253? Alter egos of Simu Liu, or mere hirelings? Maybe people just didn’t think it was worth the effort to take a closer look. The two accounts, editing Wikipedia in tandem, appeared to slip under the radar.
The edits began to taper off after that. Aznrom3o and Sliu253 continued to edit sporadically, almost exclusively on pages related to Simu Liu. Both accounts, plus an anonymous user with an IP address geolocated to Toronto, made a number of early edits to Simu Liu’s new Wikipedia article. Both accounts also edited the Wikipedia article for Blood and Water, where Liu had scored one of his early major roles. Aznrom3o edited Marco Grazzini’s Wikipedia article and created an article for Andrea Bang; the actors were co-stars of Liu’s on the TV show Kim’s Convenience. Sliu253 attempted to create a Wikipedia article for Tina Jung, another of Liu’s co-stars from Kim’s Convenience, but that article was deleted as insufficiently notable.
And then? They stopped. Unaffiliated editors picked up the slack, began updating the article with reliable sources. Aznrom3o and Sliu253 were no longer needed.
One of the last things that Sliu253 accomplished was to upload a photograph of Simu Liu wearing a blue suit to Wikimedia Commons, a repository of freely-licensed images and files integrated with Wikipedia. It is the very image which opens this essay; in fact, the photograph appears on the Afrikaans, English, Japanese, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Chinese Wikipedia articles for Simu Liu.
But that was that. August 2017 marked the last burst of activity; since then, both accounts have lain dormant, and neither has made an edit since. And why would they continue? Simu Liu had his Wikipedia article. Put simply, they’d accomplished everything they’d set out to do.
Somehow I missed the North Face thing when it happened; that's hilarious