Contact email address for the website owner, John Donovan (above): johndonovan@me.com
UPDATE ADDED 31 JULY 2021. On or around 22 July 2021, an incompetent cyber Intelligence outfit acting for Shell issued a 5-day ultimatum on behalf of Shell to the company hosting this website. See Shell’s failed blundering attempt to kill my royaldutchshell.website Update ends.
UPDATE ADDED 30 OCTOBER 2021. The most recent television coverage was in the Channel 4 TV controversial film documentary Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant broadcast on 24 Oct 2021. View transcript at Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant – John Donovan segment.
(Information from WIKIMEDIA COMMONS: The above Shell logo image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired and its author is anonymous.)
The information contained on this website is sourced mainly from the EBook displayed above, authored by John Donovan. It was first published in 2016 and has been updated and expanded with related information.
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
Wikipedia articles cover multitudinous subjects including the history and accomplishments of prominent individuals and major businesses, including Royal Dutch Shell.
The information provided is supposedly accurate.
Unfortunately, the integrity of Wikipedia is corrupted by a policy allowing the anonymous editing of articles.
This fundamental flaw allows articles to be potentially sanitized of any facts embarrassing to a featured person or business.
Decisions are sometimes taken within the Wikipedia community to remove entire articles from the public gaze in the shadiest circumstances.
Participants in such decisions are allowed to hide their identity and their background circumstances.
The flaws in editing credibility are especially important in regards to big business as positive or negative information in a Wikipedia article about a company can potentially have an impact on its reputation and value. The flaws have been exploited. Negative information has been removed from Wikipedia articles.
For example, Wikipedia articles about Shell Dutch Shell have been covertly edited by Shell employees from Shell offices. This was only discovered as a result of electronic scanning technology.
Entire articles about Royal Dutch Shell controversies, including employee safety issues and environmental concerns, have been deleted by anonymous editors.
This was despite the fact that the information met all Wikipedia requirements, with independent evidence from reputable third-party sources cited to verify all stated facts.
John Donovan was the initiating author of Wikipedia articles that were subsequently cleansed by Wikipedia editors of information deemed embarrassing to Shell. Most Wikipedia editors use aliases so that their identity and background is unknown.
He was also the author of the deleted Wikipedia articles relating to Shell.
He declared to Wikipedia at the outset of becoming a voluntary editor his background and expertise in relation to Shell.
CONCERN BY SHELL OVER WIKIPEDIA EDITING BY JOHN DONOVAN
As a result of an application to Shell under the UK Data Protection Act 1998, Donovan discovered from Shell internal communications a deep concern by Shell over his Wikipedia editor contributions about Shell.
The tone of one particular internal Shell email was hostile and aggressive to a degree that Reuters published an article about it. Shell put a large team of people on a war footing and John Donovan, his website, and Shell’s own employees became the target of a global spying operation by Shell Corporate Affairs Security.
John Donovan was chairman of a sales promotion agency, Don Marketing, that devised spectacularly successful forecourt promotions for Shell on an international basis. Many involved budgets of several million dollars. A mutually beneficial relationship lasted for over a decade.
This was followed by two decades of acrimony involving six High Court actions, a County Court case and proceedings via the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
At one stage Shell displayed posters at the Shell Centre in London defaming John Donovan and his father.
In response, the Donovan’s sued Shell for libel. One of two libel actions they brought against Shell. Both were settled out of court, as were all of the other court actions. Shell also lost the case decided by the WIPO.
For more than a decade, John Donovan has operated non-profit websites focussed on Shell including royaldutchshellplc.com and royaldutchshellgroup.com, both of which Shell unsuccessfully attempted to seize.
Several hundred mainstream media articles by the FT, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, Forbes, Dow Jones Newswires etc., and over 50 books contain references to either John Donovan, his father, and/or the Shell focussed websites they co-founded.
Shell has a dark history it would prefer to forget and would like to keep hidden. See my ebooks published on Amazon:
(Information from WIKIMEDIA COMMONS: The above Shell logo image on each book cover is in the public domain because its copyright has expired and its author is anonymous.)
In January 2016, Shell received the dubious distinction of being named as the most hated brand in the world.
VW challenges Shell as world’s ‘most hated’ brand after emissions scandal
(Information from WIKIMEDIA COMMONS: The above Shell logo image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired and its author is anonymous.)
The world’s most hated company: can NGOs help turn Shell’s reputation around?
Wikipedia is not the only Internet brand name corrupted by the use of unethical people using online aliases. The following Guardian newspaper articles about the fake reviews plaguing Amazon are worth reading.
The same basic fake review problem undermines confidence in the authenticity of customer reviews for all Internet business and all products sold online. The content of all Wikipedia articles having a commercial dimension and all online product reviews are suspect because editors/reviewers can hide their identity. Hence the online businesses springing up offering a service to sanitise/enhance Wikipedia articles and/or mass manufacture fake reviews, sometimes for counterfeit sub-standard products.
Flood of ‘fake’ five-star reviews inundating Amazon, Which? finds
16 April 2019… Amazon‘s customer review system is being undermined by a flood of “fake” five- star reviews for products from unfamiliar brands, a new …
Amazon sues 1,000 ‘fake reviewers’
Oct 18, 2015 … Amazon has started legal action against more than 1,000 unidentified people it claims provide fake reviews on the US version of its website.
Computer says no: Amazon uses AI to combat fake reviews …
Jun 22, 2015 … Retailer uses artificial intelligence to fight astroturfing by putting greater emphasis on verified and helpful reviews.
TEXT BELOW INSERTED JULY & AUGUST 2021
In July 2021, Larry Sanger, the co-creator of Wikipedia, publicly expressed misgivings about how Wikipedia has changed in recent years and points in particular to its lack of impartiality. See The Telegraph article headlined: “The Left has taken over Wikipedia and stripped it of neutrality, says co-creator.”
EXTRACT FROM THE ARTICLE: Asked if he thought Wikipedia could be trusted to give truthful information, he replied: “Well, it depends on what you think the truth is.”
The answer in italics was generated by Google on 17 July 2021 in answer to the question: what percentage of Wikipedia editors hide their names/aliases.
Wikipedia carries the general disclaimer that it can be “edited by anyone at any time” and maintains an inclusion threshold of “verifiability, not truth.” This editing model is highly concentrated as 77% of all articles are written by 1% of its editors, a majority of whom are anonymous.
SCREENSHOT
Anonymous posts are an evil that undermines the integrity of Wikipedia and many other Internet platforms including social media. Anonymity facilitates online bullying, abuse, threats, blackmail, racist behaviour and the posting of fake information. People have been driven to suicide by such activity. It should be universally banned except, perhaps, for genuine whistleblowing.
UPDATES INSERTED IN AUGUST 2021
On 1 August 2021, The Sunday Times published a major article on page 24 under the headline: ‘I wouldn’t trust Wikipedia — and I helped to invent it’
MailOnline Article By ARIEL ZILBER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM: | ‘Nobody should trust Wikipedia,’ its co-founder warns: Larry Sanger says site has been taken over by left-wing ‘volunteers’ who write off sources that don’t fit their agenda as fake news. Wikipedia can no longer be trusted as a source of unbiased information…
FOX News Article By Charles Creitz | Fox News: 22 July 2021: Wikipedia co-founder slams the website for having ‘abandoned’ the neutral point of view:
Screenshots from related video…
Further information from the Fox News article and video interview.
Larry Sanger discusses how the website has become more biased on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’. The co-founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, who left the organization more than a decade ago and has increasingly opposed what he says it has evolved into, told Fox News on Thursday that biased and partial actors have “gamed” the user-edited database, ruining what it was meant to be.
Host Tucker Carlson went on to note that people have increasingly found slanted or missing context and facts in Wikipedia entries, as well as the dynamic of editors “playing up something that doesn’t seem to be true… In the above Tucker Carson/Larry Sanger video, Sanger identifies “anonymous contribution” as being detrimental to the accuracy of online information as it is open to the information being corrupted by Governments, corporations, spies and criminal organisations. They know how to play the Wikipedian game. Sanger says he is embarrassed and is now a leading critic of Wikipedia.
ENDS
RELATED
Royal Dutch Shell Wikipedia Machinations: 29 March 2010
Ku Klux Klan culture at Wikipedia: secrecy and censorship: 12 Oct 2010
Wikipedia Klan exposed: 13 Oct 2010
Instant reaction on Wikipedia: 13 Oct 2010
Integrity of Wikipedia corporate articles corrupted by editing scandal: 18 Dec 2011
BP a novice at manipulating Wikipedia compared with Shell: 17 April 2013
Wikipedia editing scandal: 28 Dec 2013
I WARNED WIKIPEDIA YEARS AGO THAT ALIAS EDITING WOULD RESULT IN SCANDAL: 7 Sept 2015
Shell’s failed blundering attempt to kill my royaldutchshell.website 29 July 2021
For decades Shell has tried to suppress online criticism: 3 Aug 2021
Wikipedia’s Reputation in Meltdown: 7 August 2021
Wikipedia list of Wikipedia Controversies
Includes a reference to a “perceived hostile editing climate.”
Some extracts from the list.
“December 2005 – Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales was found to be editing his own Wikipedia article. According to public logs, he had made 18 edits to his biography, seven of which were alterations of information about whether Larry Sanger was a co-founder of Wikipedia. It was also revealed that Wales had edited the Wikipedia article of his former company, Bomis. “Bomis Babes”, a section of the Bomis website, had been characterized in the article as “soft-core pornography”, but Wales revised this to “adult content section” and deleted mentions of pornography. He said he was fixing an error, and did not agree with calling Bomis Babes soft porn. Wales conceded that he had made the changes, but maintained that they were technical corrections.
October 2013
An investigation by Wikipedians found that the Wiki-PR company had operated “an army” of sockpuppet accounts to edit Wikipedia on behalf of paying clients. The company’s website claimed that its “staff of 45 Wikipedia editors and admins helps you build a page that stands up to the scrutiny of Wikipedia’s community rules and guidelines.”[8][9] The company’s Twitter profile stated: “We write it. We manage it. You never worry about Wikipedia again.”[9] The Wikimedia Foundation subsequently sent Wiki-PR a cease-and-desist letter.[259] After a Wikipedia sockpuppet investigation related to the company, more than 250 Wikipedia user accounts were blocked or banned.[260]
January 2014
The Wikimedia Foundation announced that Program Evaluation Coordinator Sarah Stierch was “no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation”, after evidence was presented on a Wikimedia mailing list that she had been editing Wikipedia on behalf of paying clients, a practice the Wikimedia Foundation said was “frowned upon by many in the editing community and by the Wikimedia Foundation”.[267][268]
September 2015 – Wikipedia was hit by the Orangemoody blackmail scandal, as it came to light that hundreds of businesses and minor celebrities had faced demands for payment from rogue editors to publish, protect or update Wikipedia articles on them.[296]
SEE ALSO
- Censorship of Wikipedia
- Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia
- Criticism of Wikipedia
- Litigation involving the Wikimedia Foundation
- Plagiarism from Wikipedia
- Reliability of Wikipedia
- Wikipedia in culture
ENDS
*Credit: Roger Sotherton was a director of Don Marketing with a key role involved in all of the hugely successful promotional games (examples displayed above) that Don Marketing created for Shell in the 1980s and 1990s.
Copyright Notice: All rights, including copyright and compilation in the content of royaldutchshell.website web pages authored by John Donovan, are owned or controlled for these purposes by him. In accessing the said web pages, you agree that you may only download the content for your own personal non-commercial use. Except where expressly stated otherwise, you are not permitted to copy, broadcast, download, store (in any medium), transmit, show or play in public, adapt or change in any way the content of these web pages for any other purpose whatsoever without the prior written permission of John Donovan via the email address: john@shellnews.net
shellplc.website and its sister non-profit websites royaldutchshellplc.com, royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellenergy.website, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net and shell2004.com are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia feature.