Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-02-07/In the news

Mormon newspaper examines struggles about Mormon topics on Wikipedia
The Deseret News, a Utah newspaper owned by the Mormon (LDS) Church, published an article titled "Wiki Wars: In battle to define beliefs, Mormons and foes wage battle on Wikipedia". It stated that "for people looking into the doctrines, history and practices of the LDS Church and other religions, Wikipedia is seen as the most accurate, reliable and unbiased definition", and cited a 2007 comment by M. Russell Ballard, a member of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve: "[Internet] conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the church teaches."

Much of the rest of the article illustrates the "battle" by focusing on two editors: User:Bochica (later User:Roger Penumbra), a mormon who got involved in Wikipedia in 2006 after experiencing "the power of Wikipedia.org to define the world – and his faith" through an exchange with an LDS missionary who had grown doubts about the church's tenets after reading Wikipedia, and User:John Foxe, an account which according to Deseret News belongs to "a professor at Bob Jones University, a Christian college and seminary located in Greenville, South Carolina that has historically been hostile to the LDS Church".

Finally, the newspaper quoted Richard L. Bushman, a professor of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University and author of the reference cited most often in the article on Joseph Smith, Jr. (founder of the LDS movement). Bushman called the article "a picky piece that isn't inaccurate, but it sort of lacks depth. It ends up being shallow, I think."

Briefly

 * Wikipedia, the queen of the Web: An article that appeared on the front page of Argentine newspaper La Nación titled "Wikipedia, the queen of the Web" highlighted Wikipedia's success and widespread use despite heavy criticism regarding the accuracy and reliability of its content.
 * Art installation prints recent changes: Artist Dean McNamee has posted photos and a video (featured on Gizmodo and other media) of the art installation that he and Tim Burrell-Saward had been commissioned to create for "Wikipedia's official 10th anniversary party" on January 13 at the Louise T. Blouin Foundation in London. It consisted of 18 printers installed on a scaffolding in the building's entrance lobby, constantly dropping cards each corresponding to an entry from the English Wikipedia's recent changes. (While Gizmodo claimed that the edits were "printed in real time", it appears that at least some were stored in advance - the example featured in McNamee's video dates from January 6.)
 * Reagle interviews: Wikipedia researcher Joseph Reagle recently gave several audio interviews about his book Good Faith Collaboration - The Culture of Wikipedia: On Jerry Brito's Surprisingly Free podcast, to the US think tank Council on Foreign Relations and to Brian Lehrer.
 * Executive Director's TEDx video: The video of Sue Gardner's talk at TEDx Dubai in December (see also last week's "News and notes") has been published.
 * Creation of the Wikimedia PR videos: Opensource.com interviewed director Jelly Helm about "telling the open source story" with the videos he created for the Foundation last year, featuring interviews with Wikipedians conducted at Wikimania 2010.
 * Do BLP concerns make Wikipedia too "vanilla"?: A comment in Canadian tabloid the Winnipeg Sun, titled "Wikiepedia goes vanilla" [sic], criticized what it described as "the sterile face of geek consensus" in some Wikipedia articles, citing the absence of information about a certain controversy in the article about the city's mayor Sam Katz (it has since been added). The author conjectured: "Perhaps this mindset got stamped early onto the institutional psyche of Wikipedia. With seemingly everyone expecting an open, online encyclopedia to spiral into information anarchy, it triggered a surprisingly low institutional tolerance and a hypersensitivity to mainstream criticisms of inaccuracy."
 * The top five Wikigroans: The Daily Telegraph followed on earlier reports of Wikipedia's gender bias by seeing if it could detect a demographic bias produced by Wikipedia's young male editors. It called the results its top five Wikigroans (using a term introduced in 2007 by Something Awful). Similar to The New York Times article that ignited the recent debate (see last week's "In the news"), The Daily Telegraph article compared a number of articles it deemed to have an important historic or cultural significance and compared their length with similar articles which might be of interest to young males. Thus Francis Xavier is compared with Professor X,  Love with  masturbation,  Beowulf with He-Man, John Locke to John Locke (Lost) and Sex with World of Warcraft. In each case the first mentioned  "cultural article" is shorter than the second "pop culture/male article".
 * "Personal appeal" to include affiliate advertising on Wikipedia: TechCrunch ran a guest post titled "Please read: a personal appeal TO Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales" (alluding to Wales' well-known fundraiser messages), worrying whether "Wikipedia [can] sustain itself for another 10 years without a significant change to its business model" and arguing that Wikipedia should include affiliate marketing links, relaxing the external links guideline statement against such links: "From the Hawaii page, a simple Orbitz affiliate link will produce $3 for each plane ticket sold, 3–5% for a hotel reservation, and so on." The author noted previous opposition by Wales to advertisements, but said that such links would be "a simple solution previously unexplored".
 * Least essential Wikipedia pages: Humor website Something awful listed what it considers "The least essential Wikipedia pages", including the list of animals with fraudulent diplomas.