Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-12-03/In the media

Wikipedia featured in 800th anniversary celebration of the Magna Carta


The signing of the Magna Carta on June 15, 1215 is seen as an iconic event in the history of civil rights and liberties. The British Library will open an exhibition next May to commemorate that document's 800th anniversary. As part of that exhibition, the Ruskin School of Art has commissioned artist Cornelia Parker to create Magna Carta (An Embroidery), a 13 meter long embroidered recreation of the entire Wikipedia article on the Magna Carta as it appeared this June on the document's 799th anniversary.

In a press release (November 27), Parker said:

The work will be created with the assistance of over 200 people, ranging from prisoners to MPs. The Guardian reports (November 27) that Jimmy Wales has agreed to participate in the stitching. The Wisbech Standard profiles (October 8) one of the embroiderers, Janet Payne of Whittlesey, a professional artist and representative of the Embroiderers' Guild. Payne is stitching an image of the signing of the Magna Carta from John Cassell's History of England. The image was removed from the article on November 5.

Wikimédia France raises €5,000 for cheese


Wikimédia France launched a campaign on the crowdfunding website KissKissBankBank to raise thousands of Euros to create images of hundreds of kinds of cheese to illustrate Wikipedia articles. The WikiCheese campaign, spearheaded by User:Pyb, will gather Wikipedians on a monthly basis in Paris to take high quality photographs of ten cheeses from multiple angles and to sample them afterwards. Photographs of the first ten cheeses are already on Wikimedia Commons. The campaign has received significant news coverage, such as this article (November 25) from The Daily Telegraph, and already passed its initial goal of €5,000. The money is for photographic equipment, books to use as sources to improve cheese articles, and, of course, the cheese itself. The top goal of €9,500 promises WikiCheese will document 365 cheeses and produce a documentary about artisanal cheese production. The Wikimedia Foundation clarified (December 2) to Business Insider Australia that the WikiCheese campaign has no relationship to the Foundation or its regular fundraising drive.

In brief

 * LiveScience reports (December 3) on research into gender bias on Wikipedia.
 * Muscat Daily reports on the December 3 speech by Jimmy Wales at Sultan Qaboos University.
 * artnet reports (December 3) that New York Times arts reporter Carol Vogel has taken a "voluntary buyout" and resigned from the newspaper. This summer, Vogel was accused of plagiarizing Wikipedia for a July installment of her regular "Inside Art" column (see previous Signpost coverage).  Vogel, who was widely read in the art world, had been at the Times since 1983.
 * In Boing Boing, student Nathan Ringo discusses (December 3) his efforts to circumvent internet filters at Wayzata High School which blocked numerous websites, including Wikipedia.
 * insidethegames reports (November 30) on the collaboration, begun in 2011, between Wikimedia Australia and the Australian Paralympic Committee to improve articles on Australian Paralympic history and athletes, such as Kevin Coombs. The project has produced over 800 articles and it hopes to eventually include photos in every article on the subject.
 * The New Statesman reports (November 27) that an anonymous British government employee is obsessively updating statistics on Wikipedia articles about Scottish football.
 * The Washington Post discusses Wikipedia's "complicated relationship" (November 25) with net neutrality due to Wikipedia Zero. This echoes concerns raised by, among others, the Electronic Frontier Foundation earlier this year (see previous Signpost coverage).