- By Adam Shanks | Examiner staff writer |
- Apr 4, 2024 Updated 1 hr ago (SFExaminer.com)
Supervisor Dean Preston, the only Democratic Socialist on the Board of Supervisors, owns a home worth some $2.5 million.
Just check his Wikipedia entry. It’s right there.
Preston doesn’t dispute that he owns a home that, like many in San Francisco, is worth a pretty penny. However, Preston is the only supervisor whose personal home value is listed on his Wikipedia page.
“The most telling thing is that when you look at my profile on there, compared to most other supervisors, it’s just pretty obvious what facts are being put out there, what frame it is,” Preston said.
Preston’s page on Wikipedia — the free-to-use, open-source encyclopedia operated by a San Francisco-based nonprofit — is a battleground. As he seeks reelection to a second term in office, the controversial politician’s Wikipedia page has seen nearly 200 edits since the start of 2023.
Preston is just one among prominent San Francisco leaders whose Wikipedia page is a place where anonymous editors go to war over the truth — or, at least, which version of the truth to present.
Wikipedia catalogs the edits made to every page. Supervisors running for election, including Connie Chan, Preston and Aaron Peskin — who is contemplating a run for mayor — have seen an uptick in the number and scale of edits made to their pages in recent months.
Preston’s page was edited more than 150 times in 2023 alone — more than three times the number of edits made in 2022 — and the edits have more than doubled the length of the article.
The rate at which Preston’s page is edited has inched closer to that of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who represents more than 400 times as many constituents and surged into the national spotlight last year amid his quarrel with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Despite the relatively low profile of a San Francisco supervisor compared to national leaders, Wikipedia pages can amass thousands of views and frequently rank highly in search-engine results.
Wikipedia rules
Anyone can edit Wikipedia, but it is not without rules. The site is maintained by 265,000 volunteers who establish guidelines and editorial policy, according to a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia.
Wikipedia discourages users with potential conflicts of interest from editing entries, and it encourages a “neutral point of view” based on “reliable sources.”
“The whole process of content moderation by Wikipedia volunteers is open and transparent,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Examiner. “Everything from the way an article grows and evolves over time, to the citations required to verify the facts, to the content discussions amongst editors, are all publicly available on the article’s history and talk pages.”
Lee Hepner, a former aide to Peskin, said he wasn’t aware of Peskin’s office or anyone else’s wading directly into editing battles on Wikipedia.
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“It is not neutral, and it reflects the editorial biases of people who have the time and skill to edit it, and frankly, that does not include Supervisor Peskin; he’s not in there tinkering,” Hepner said.
The challenge for elected officials, he said, is to get an honest and direct message to constituents, “and that is a problem or a challenge that is bigger than Wikipedia or any media platform or journalistic outlet.”
Just as a student should not write a book report based on a single Wikipedia article, Hepner suggested that voters assume they can “be pointed in the right direction” but that the site is “vulnerable to inaccuracies.”
“I trust that voters are going to be consuming information holistically,” Hepner said.
Andy Mullan, formerly an aide to Supervisor Catherine Stefani, said there was never any emphasis or conversation around Wikipedia when he worked in City Hall. However, in the two years since he left, the breadth and scope of supervisors’ Wikipedia pages have grown.
Mullan suggested it might not necessarily reflect a greater interest in San Francisco politics but a shift in the medium through which that interest is expressed.
“So much more of the political discourse is now happening on the internet as opposed to the printed pages of a newspaper or face to face,” Mullan said.
Editing wars
On Preston’s page, users have battled over his record on housing and the extent of his wealth and privilege. His supporters highlight his career as a tenants rights attorney, while critics allege he’s privileged, with deep pockets that contradict his ideals.
One anonymous user, thenightaway, has edited Preston’s page 26 times since 2020. In a recent edit, the user added on March 14 that the school Preston attended in the 1980s is “a prestigious Ivy League preparatory” and that he owns a valuable home.
This is true, but Preston is not the only supervisor with wealth attached to his name.
Because she and her husband own a boat anchored in the East Harbor, Supervisor Catherine Stefani recently had to recuse herself from the debate over a controversial proposal to build a new harbor next to the Marina Green.
Peskin owns multiple homes in San Francisco that he rents out for supplemental income. Supervisor Myrna Melgar disclosed in ethics filings that she owns a bed-and-breakfast called Surfer’s Paradise Casa Sunzal in El Salvador.
Housing, housing, housing
Housing has become an increasingly thorny issue in San Francisco politics. The City faces a legally imposed demand to plan for more than 80,000 new homes — and that pressure is reflected on Wikipedia.
In 2021, a user added that Preston “has worked to delay and block numerous development plans and legislative proposals to increase the supply of both market-rate and affordable housing.”
In another edit, the same user maintained a sentence about how Preston worked to “halt the city of San Francisco buying a hotel in Japantown which it would use to house homeless people,” but deleted the end of it, which had clarified that Preston’s position was taken “with an unusual ally, Mayor Breed.”
The same user has also sought to clarify Peskin’s housing record.
On March 21, thenightaway wrote that Peskin “has persistently blocked new housing and other development in San Francisco.” Thenightaway deleted a sentence that was, arguably, not written from a neutral point of view. It claimed that Peskin “was pivotal in passing the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, one of the largest rezonings in the city’s history, and instrumental in creating the city’s ADU program.”
It’s not always an unflattering edit.
A user recently edited Supervisor Chan’s page to add to her record on housing. The previous edition had highlighted Chan’s resistance to housing legislation, such as when she “prevented the Board of Supervisors from considering a proposed referendum that would streamline the permitting process for certain housing developments.”
But a new edit on Feb. 20 not only clarified several of the stances already enumerated on her page but also added that Chan “voted to improve funding” for a new affordable housing complex on Geary Boulevard” and “authored legislation to offer relief to tenants and small property owners who lost income during [the] COVID-19 pandemic.”
Editors have also come to Preston’s defense, and the “talk” section of his page — where editors debate its content — is rife with discourse.
User coffeeandcrumbs, a regular editor of Preston’s page, deleted a section from the introduction explaining that Preston has “attributed capitalism as the cause of crime, drug use, and homelessness in San Francisco.”
“Of course, as a socialist, he believes capitalism is the cause of societal issues,” coffeeandcrumbs explained in a message accompanying the edit.
When it comes to Preston’s home and the alleged family trust connected to Preston’s wife — which Preston said his wife “is not a beneficiary (of) or in any way affiliated (with),” and “no one would have any evidence to the contrary” —coffeeandcrumbs wrote on the “talk” page that “the “multi-million dollar property” you describe is “just a house in San Francisco.”
“That is how much they cost,” the user wrote. “The article says ‘the family of Goosby’ has multiple trusts. Including this claim based on this sourcing is clearly [point-of-view] pushing. If you don’t see that, I don’t know what to tell you.”
Editor’s note: This article was amended on April 4, 2024, to include Dean Preston’s attestation that his wife is not a beneficiary or in any way linked to a previously reported trust that owns property in San Francisco.
