Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-10-23/In the media

The decline of Wikipedia
MIT Technology Review published a long article on what it called "The decline of Wikipedia". Editor involvement has decreased since 2007; according to the article, this has had an adverse qualitative effect on content, particularly on issues pertinent to non-British and American male geeks.

Noting that Wikipedia "threw out centuries of accepted methods" for compiling an authoritative and comprehensive reference work, the article goes on to detail efforts under Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner to decrease the gender gap and attract new editors, including the ill-fated VisualEditor and its associated calamities, trying to develop an overall more-diverse editor group. "Because Wikipedia has failed to replenish its supply of editors, its skew toward technical, Western, and male-dominated subject matter has persisted," the article says. Jimmy Wales commented, "The biggest issue is editor diversity." If there aren't confident, new editors coming to Wikipedia with a drive to write great articles about Wikipedia's underrepresented content, then the encyclopedia will not improve, and will be in an eternal state of "decline" in quality, while its popularity and use through outlets such as Siri and Google search results increases.

In summarising its view of the state of Wikipedia, the article concluded that Wikipedia –

Wiki-PR scandal prompts press statement from Sue Gardner
Media interest in the Wiki-PR sockpuppeting story broken first by The Daily Dot and then further reported on in Vice (see Signpost articles last week and the week prior) prompted outgoing Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner to issue a press statement which sparked widespread coverage in the mainstream media, led by the BBC, The Guardian and The Independent in the UK, and the Wall Street Journal, Time, Slate and the Washington Times (quoting coverage in The Signpost) in the US. Tech sites including Ars Technica, Web Pro News, Venturebeat, Tech2, CNET, Computerworld UK, The Register and many others also reported the story. (A more complete collection of related press articles is being compiled on Meta.)

Here is Sue Gardner's statement in full:

Wiki-PR's Jordan French in turn released a statement that was quoted in full by the Wall Street Journal and in part by the Washington Times as well as in PR Week. Here is the text as given by Wall Street Journal writer Geoffrey A. Fowler:

A community ban discussion at the Administrators' Noticeboard saw overwhelming support for banning Wiki-PR from the English Wikipedia. Administrator closed the discussion on 25 October 2013 and enacted the ban. As of 26 October 2013, Wiki-PR's website looks unchanged.

Australian cabinet minister: "I looked up what Wikipedia said"
The Sydney Morning Herald notes that Australian Minister for the Environment Greg Hunt, a member of the centre-right Liberal Party, "uses Wikipedia research to dismiss links between climate change and bushfires". Hunt had admitted his use of Wikipedia in a statement made to the BBC.

Hunt's comments came in response to concerns raised by scientists, environmental groups and politicians that extreme weather events—such as the current massive bushfires in New South Wales—were linked to climate change, and in the wake of statements by the head of the UN's climate change negotiations, Christiana Figueres, and former US vice-president and climate change activist Al Gore criticising the Australian government for its decision to scrap a carbon tax.

In a follow-up article, The Sydney Morning Herald noted "Wikipedia's verdict on Greg Hunt: 'terrible at his job'." The fact that Hunt used Wikipedia to dismiss concerns over global warming was promptly added to his Wikipedia biography (in an edit that included some expletives), and then deleted again. This was not the only such edit, as The Sydney Morning Herald noted:

Hunt's biography was semi-protected as a result. The affair, also covered in the UK by The Telegraph and The Guardian, sends a curiously mixed message about both the perceived authority of Wikipedia, and its perceived lack of authority.

In brief

 * Chapter funding: Sue Gardner's warnings of the potential for corruption in FDC funds allocation and her doubts that chapter spending contributes adequate value for money to Wikimedia projects attracted further coverage, especially in Europe and Latin America—including Webwereld and Computerworld in the Netherlands, Wired and Downloadblog in Italy (with a response from the Italian Wikimedia Chapter), Silicon News in Spain, Marlex in Mexico, El País in Uruguay, Entorno Inteligente in Argentina and 163.com in China. Slate too touched on the topic, in an article that also reviewed the sockpuppet case and the MIT Technology Review article covered above.
 * Behavioral ecology on Wikipedia: The St. Louis Beacon reported on a Washington University undergraduate course in behavioral ecology that "is an officially designated Wikipedia course, where students learn not only about subjects like social insects but also about how to translate their scientific knowledge into terms the Wikipedia-using public can understand."
 * Big data: CIO Magazine ponders the idea of Wikipedia as an originator of the modern big data movement.
 * University of Texas editathon: The Daily Texan reported on the first editathon at the University of Texas, and the problems of accessing sources hidden behind a paywall.
 * Fundraising. ThirdSector reports on a talk by Zack Exley, former chief community officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. Exley described the Foundation's strategy of testing different fundraising messages to determine the most effective one. Among the new information shared was the fact that testing showed that highlighting keywords in a solicitation increased donations by up to 22%.
 * Pundits on Wikipedia: Invezz.com commented on how important it is to investment pundits to have a Wikipedia biography.
 * Jimmy Wales at Ideafest: Flanders Today covered Jimmy Wales' participation in the Ideafest seminar in Brussels, where "experts will discuss whether the free sharing of research results, so-called 'open science', could counter plagiarism and fraud."
 * Editors worn down: The New Statesman had a piece on editor fatigue, touching on the Wiki-PR story and Wikipedia's editor and admin retention problems. The article contained a number of errors though—the last admin was not appointed in September 2011, and it is somewhat misleading to say that admins—who can be as anonymous as all other editors—are only "appointed after a rigorous screening process which includes background checks and a written test."
 * Sex cult tries to invent 1000-year history through Wikipedia: The Kernel reported on an elaborate hoax involving fake newspaper articles and spurious historical references to a "Secret Order of Libertines" inserted in Wikipedia. A related file on Commons has been nominated for deletion.
 * Airtel partnership: IT News Africa announced a new partnership between the Wikimedia Foundation and Airtel to provide free mobile access to Wikipedia to Airtel customers in Africa.
 * Arbitration Committee criticised for handling of Manning case: The Guardian reports that the arbitration committee has received criticism from British campaign group Trans Media Watch for its handling of the recent Manning naming dispute. The Guardian article, which erroneously claims that the arbitration committee was "called in to make the final decision on which name should be at the top of Manning’s page", quotes a Trans Media Watch statement saying, "We feel that Wikipedia's banning of certain editors for calling people transphobic reflects a wider cultural problem whereby identifying someone is prejudiced is seen as worse than being prejudiced. If the arbitration committee thinks that 'transphobe' is a slur, it might want to reflect on why that is." The arbitration committee had sanctioned a number of editors on both sides of the divide, some for engaging in discriminatory speech, and others for accusing other editors of transphobia. Trans Media Watch continued, "We would like to see Wikipedia demonstrate more self-awareness in its approach to social issues and more consistency in its treatment of cases like this. There are hundreds of pages on Wikipedia about notable people known by names other than their first names, yet we don't see this kind of fuss made in relation to those about, say, George Osborne or Jodie Foster, or even other trans people like Chaz Bono, who was also well known to the public under a different name."