From Slate: Russian Oligarchs Keep Dying in Suspicious Ways. Wikipedia Is Keeping a List.

A peak inside Wikipedia.

- Click here for the article. 

Russian oligarchs linked to large energy companies keep dying in weird ways: dubiousdefenestrations, questionable suicides, and even more outlandish ways, like in May, when Russian state-owned media outlet TASS reported that 43-year-old oil executive Alexander Subbotin died from a drug-induced heart attack at the Moscow home of a Jamaican shaman. Why’d the oligarch visit the shaman? To get toad venom as a hangover cure, allegedly.

On July 9, an anonymous Wikipedia editor with the username “cgbuff” started Wikipedia’s 2022 Russian mystery deaths article, which chronicles “unusual deaths of Russian-connected businessmen [that] occurred under what some sources suggest were suspicious circumstances.” When the article was first published, it listed just nine Russian oligarchs.Today, it chronicles 17 deaths, and it’s been viewed more than 400,000 times.

In its very first week, the article was nominated for deletion, with some editors arguing there was “no connected conspiracy.” It’s also not easy to find reliable sources for recent Russia-related information (Wikipedia demands reputable citations, and Russia doesn’t have a free press). The article raises a host of questions, chiefly: How do you ensure that a Wikipedia page is significant and notable, not just unfettered rumor?

When it comes to the realm of rumor, Wikipedia is only as accurate as the news outlets it cites. Hours after the Feb. 24 attacks, Wikipedia had an article stating that the Ghost of Kyiv, a heroic pilot who shot down six Russian planes, was fact; after further reporting, current revisions clearly mark it as an apocryphal morale booster. The Wikipedia article about mysterious oligarchs has had a very different trajectory.

One thing is clear: These people have all died. First there were Leonid Shulman and Alexander Tyulakov, a directors at Russian state-owned energy giant Gazaprom, who were found dead by apparent suicide in January and February respectively. The deaths continue: Former government official Igor Nosov had a stroke, and Ukrainian-born billionaire Mikhail Watford mysteriously died in the U.K.