Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-02-28/In the news



Egypt and Jordan most likely to host Arab Wikimedia office
An article titled "Wikipedia to open Arab office" in The National, a daily newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, reported statements by Jimmy Wales about the Wikimedia Foundation's plans to expand to the MENA region, with a "50–50 chance" that its second international office would open there (after India; Brazil is another option). While cautioning that this is "still a good year away" and that "we've not really entered into the beginning of a process of identifying the best location", Wales named Egypt and Jordan as the most likely countries, having called them possible "leading contenders" on Twitter. He rejected an earlier article in the Saudi Gazette that had claimed "Wikipedia chief hints at office in KSA" (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), calling it "completely untrue and based on a fabricated quote", and stating that the country's "human rights record is unacceptable". The Saudi article had been published on the occasion of his keynote speech at the "2nd International Conference on e-Learning and Distance Education" in Riyadh.

40,000 word, quarter-decade interview with Larry Sanger published
An extensive interview with Larry Sanger (known for his role in starting Wikipedia until 2002) was published this month by Dan Schneider on his website Cosmoetica (www.cosmoetica.com/DSI27.htm, currently available at ). Apart from long parts about Sanger's philosophical views, it also touched on topics such as citations, verifiability and credentials on Wikipedia and Citizendium.

Recalling Wikipedia's early history, Sanger said that "When it became obvious that Wikipedia was growing like gangbusters, I spent most of my limited time on it, leaving Nupedia, unfortunately, to wither."

Many questions were informed by Schneider's own criticism of Wikipedia (frequent linking of his web site has led to its inclusion in Wikipedia's URL blacklist), which Sanger even rejected at times. Asked whether he agreed with Schneider's belief that "a term called agnotology, which is about the love of ignorance, for a variety of reasons [is] prevalent in modern society, and [is] a Prime Directive of both the Internet and Wikipedia", Sanger replied: "The Wikipedians themselves seem, for all their faults, to be highly curious and frequently well-informed, even if the know-nothings sometimes make spending time there unbearable."

Answering another question, Sanger said: "It does seem that Wikipedia is ripe for replacement. But what will replace it?  Maybe Citizendium or something else—that remains to be seen.  And maybe it will enjoy its now-dominant position for a long time.  Many deeply flawed institutions live on for centuries, as you know.  Like it or not, Wikipedia has a chance for long-term hegemony because it’s just so huge."

In his closing remark, Sanger said: "I shudder to think how many words I’ve written [40,000 according to his estimate on Twitter ]. This has been the weirdest interview I’ve ever had".

Briefly

 * Citations needed in minister's thesis and elsewhere: On Saturday, the English Wikipedia's "citation needed" template was featured on several protest signs at a demonstration in Berlin against German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who recently lost his doctoral title after his 2006 dissertation was revealed to have been plagiarized in large parts from other sources – without the necessary citations. Examples: (photographed by Wikipedian Mathias Schindler),  (showing one of the demonstration's instigators, Frank Rieger of the Chaos Computer Club, who had been an outspoken critic of the German Wikipedia in the past, see Signpost coverage). A Wikia wiki (Guttenplag) where Internet users collaborated to uncover the multitude of plagiarism instances in the minister's dissertation played a central role in the scandal, reaching up to 1.9 million pageviews per day, prompting Jimmy Wales to observe "huge traffic at Wikia" and even surviving an AfD on the German Wikipedia, which is not exactly known for liberal notability standards regarding new websites. Other recent sightings of "citation needed" in the media include a CNN news report that quoted from the article Methotrexate to explain an incident with that drug, undeterred by the lack of a  reference (, at 0:36) and the tongue-in-cheek sentence "... Although Bono is not an alien. [Citation needed]" in an article about Area 51 in the February issue of Empire magazine. See also Signpost coverage of similar signs at a US demonstration, and other appearances:  "'citation needed' for sanity".
 * Jimmy Wales' birthday revisited: A portrait of Jimmy Wales in The Guardian (covered in last week's "In the news") quoted his earlier comment that the entry about himself in Encyclopedia Britannica had gotten his birth date wrong. In a subsequent letter to The Guardian, the Managing director of Encyclopaedia Britannica UK, Ian Grant, explained its decision to stick to the date that Wales had objected to. On Wikipedia, the issue has generated much discussion over the years, including allegations of an improper use of the oversight tool, and Wales "pushing people to think about things like circularity, sourcing, and reliability through a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor", as described by himself.
 * Wikipedia printouts in state capitol: Several blogs reported on the discovery that the explanatory plaques next to two statues of former governors in the state capitol of the US state of Louisiana contained printouts of the Wikipedia articles about them, dating from 2009. The state has removed them after a tourist complained., , ,
 * Pharma COI issues explained: Wikipedian Bertalan Meskó, MD published an explanatory post about COI editing on his personal blog ("Can pharma companies edit Wikipedia?"). A reaction on Stanford University's "Scope" blog remarked that Wikipedia not requiring disclosure of COI was "different than COI policies elsewhere on the web".
 * Photographer tries to insert self-portraits on Wikipedia: An article titled "Artist Infiltrates Wikipedia" on PSFK.com reported on the efforts of a US artist who photographed "himself staring out at scenic bays and standing on desolate stretches of empty beach and uploaded these photos to the corresponding Wikipedia page for each geographical location." The images, which had been inserted into several articles on the English Wikipedia (examples) and other projects, were deleted after a deletion request on Commons.
 * Quiz about edit wars: A new quiz on Wikipedia edit wars on Sporcle.com gives the player eight minutes to find, for a number of contested statements, the name of the Wikipedia article where each has been edit-warred over (based on Lamest edit wars). According to the site, the quiz was published on February 22nd and has been played over 43,000 times at the time of writing.
 * Cartoon about academic COI editing: In a recent episode of the webcomic Piled Higher and Deeper, a hapless graduate student is assigned the task of editing the Wikipedia article about his academic advisor.