Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-10/In the news

Research on where the newcomers went
New Scientist reports on research by the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) on the reduced rate of new article creation and casual editor participation since 2006. PARC argues that a move from adding new content towards refining existing content has resulted in more content disputes, in which established editors can overwhelm casual or new users by wikilawyering. One of the people leading the Wikimedia Foundation strategic review stated this was only one of several interpretations of the data, noting for example that the increasing use of spam bots may explain the observed increased rate of reversion. (See 2007 Signpost article on PARC's WikiDashboard and 2009 Signpost article on the decline in editing activity.)

The Age combined the PARC story with coverage of the GLAM conference in Canberra. Framing the PARC argument as "new contributors were being pushed out by the rusted-on Wikipedia elite," Users Liam Wyatt and Mathias Schindler were interviewed explaining the conference goals and factors behind the PARC results.

GLAM-Wiki conference
In addition to the above-noted story from The Age, several other press outlets covered the GLAM-Wiki conference (GLAM = Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums). Before it began, stories from iTWire&mdash;"Wikimedia: Conference seeks open cultural content"&mdash;Computerworld&mdash;"Wikimedia event seeks to open up Australian culture"&mdash;and an interview on ABC Radio National described the purpose of the conference and featured perspective from conference organizer Liam Wyatt (User:Wittylama).

During the conference, many participants relayed the conference goings-on via Twitter (using the hashtag #glam-wiki and several others), and a number of reflective blog posts have appeared since the conference ended. For more news coverage and more on the perspective of the conference participants, see the Wikimedia Australia website, which cataloging blog posts and other media.

In brief

 * Softpedia picked up the announcement by Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that it was representing User:Dcoetzee, who has been accused of various wrongdoings relating to his downloading of images from the website of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). (See previous Signpost article.) The EFF also made available its letter of July 20th to the NPG's lawyers.
 * The Karnataka Knowledge Commission has declared its priority of starting "an online encyclopedia in Kannada, like Wikipedia in English." The article does not mention the existence of Kannada Wikipedia, currently ranked 99th in size among Wikipedias.
 * Wikipedian Pamela Morris wrote a letter to the editor about the article Rosewood massacre, which appeared in the Cedar Key Beacon: "Acknowledging Rosewood will lead to healing". Morris points to the continued significance of the racially motivated 1923 massacre for the residents of Levy County (including the communities of Sumner and Cedar Key).  She expresses her hope that the renewed publicity for the incident&mdash;the article was Today's Featured Article for 4 August&mdash;might be a positive opportunity for the affected communities to "personify the human ability to redeem themselves if the will is strong enough", by "declar[ing] the truth about what happened, and cast[ing] a new identity for the area."