Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-03-11/In the media

"Gamergate Refuses to Die"
ThinkProgress tech reporter Lauren C. Williams wrote a long article (March 6) on how the Gamergate controversy has spilled over onto Wikipedia. Disputes regarding this video game controversy have raged for months on Wikipedia, culminating in a contentious Arbitration case which involved numerous editors and administrators, including this author. This has already received heavy media coverage, but Williams has produced what appears to be the most thorough piece of journalism about the Wikipedia controversy, including a number of original interviews.

Williams corrected the widely-reported misconception that the "Five Horsemen", the Wikipedia editors targeted by Gamergate, were feminists, noting that only one of the five was female and edited articles related to feminism, while the others were "longtime Wikipedia editors aiming to return normalcy and factual accuracy to the Gamergate pages". Williams interviewed one of them,, who was topic banned by the Arbitration Committee, as well as Mark Bernstein, whose vocal blog posts about Gamergate made him a target of their ire as well. Both discussed the harassment they and others received at the hands of Gamergate. NorthbySouthBaronof complained that “I haven’t seen one note of sympathy about the harassment from anyone in ArbCom, which says, ‘We don’t care about what happens off Wikipedia.'" Williams also spoke with, noting that she was the only member of ArbCom who openly identified as female.  She said "The Arbitration Committee rules only on user conduct, which is a fact that outside observers have been missing. We do not, have not, and cannot make rulings on the content of articles or the validity of users’ ideologies.”

Williams interviewed two female longtime Wikipedia editors, Amy Senger and Sarah Stierch, about larger issues on the encyclopedia, including systemic bias and the gender gap. Senger said that the ArbCom decision was evidence of the former and that “the people who are more vocal and combative tend to prevail in disputes” before the Committee. Stierch spoke of "a history of hostility" on the website and said "The fact that I have to go to my volunteer ‘job’ and fear that I’m going to get yelled at by somebody and get called a nasty name...You shouldn’t have to worry about what happens in your personal life...There is no reason why anybody, regardless of gender or political beliefs, should have to go onto a website about sharing knowledge and writing an encyclopedia — which is pretty damn geeky — and get harassed while doing it. It’s absurd.” She is among those who feel that the Wikimedia Foundation is not doing enough about these issues. "They’re the hospital administrator and the lunatics are running the asylum," Stierch said.

At Slate, Amanda Marcotte responded to Williams' article by writing "On Wikipedia, Gamergate Refuses to Die" (March 6). Marcotte wrote: "In an effort to stick to Wikipedia’s touted belief in 'neutrality,' the committee decided to hand out banishments on both sides of the equation: both to people for injecting the harassing claims into pages and for the people who were trying to clean it up...Wikipedia lost the very people who were trying to guard the gates in the first place. What happens to the next victim of a Wikipedia harassment campaign if the defenders are getting squeezed out through this pox-on-both-your-houses system?" G

For more Signpost coverage on Gamergate see our Gamergate series.

Examining a Wikipedia hoax
At Medium, Gilad Lotan, chief data scientist at Betaworks, examines (March 7) last September's Columbian Chemicals Plant explosion hoax. The hoax, whose perpetrators are still unknown but who may be Russian, involved fake accounts on Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other services. Lotan identified as the source of a hoax article on Wikipedia attributing the fake explosion to a terrorist attack. The account, created only eight days earlier, had made previous edits to articles about Russian author Alexander Asov, the Aditya Birla Group, owner of the chemical plant, and carbon black, which is manufactured there. Lotan wrote "Wikipedia editors are a global community that has very clear rules of conduct as well as an internal authority rank. As a completely new Wikipedia editor, it is very difficult to simply add a page, especially one depicting an ISIS terror attack on US territory, and expect it to stick around for long. The page was taken down quite rapidly, as users who were led to it from tweets flagged it as potentially problematic." G

For more Signpost coverage on hoaxes see our Hoaxes series.

Kanye's nemesis
The Daily Beast profiles (March 4) Brian Connelly, owner of the domain loser.com, which made headlines (and a traffic spike for Wikipedia) last week when Connelly redirected it to the Wikipedia article for Kanye West, after West nearly interrupted Beck on stage at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. (Beck first became famous in 1993 with the single "Loser".) Connelly has owned the domain since 1995 and in the past he redirected it to other targets, including sites for Governor Jim Hodges, Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks, Google, and Reddit. Some of Connelly's ire is based on seeing West perform at the Bonnaroo Music Festival last year:

In brief

 * Paging Doctor Wikipedia: CBC News profiles (March 11)  and his fight to rid Wikipedia of medical errors. G
 * St. Louis Blues: Three writers at Jezebel discuss the Wikipedia article St. Louis cuisine, which they find "Goddamned Hilarious" (March 11). They mock the article for, among other things, its regional boosterism and claiming local credit for foods including toasted ravioli, hot dogs, the waffle cone, and the hamburger. Following publication of the article, Wikipedia editors tagged or removed many of these claims. G
 * Tulu incubator: The Hindu reports (March 10) on efforts by students and teachers to create articles for the Tulu Wikipedia, which is now in the incubation stage. They report that over 700 Tulu language articles have been uploaded and that they hope to reach 1000 articles soon.  G
 * Will the FTC ever drop the hammer on paid Wikipedia edits?: The Kernel wonders (March 8) whether the Federal Trade Commission will ever take action on paid editing of Wikipedia, given the lack of disclosure to the reader (the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use only require disclosure to the Wikimedia community). The piece, which features comments by Wikipedia consultants David King and William Beutler, had previously been published on author Simon Owens' blog. A.K.
 * Truly outrageous: At Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnston reports (March 8) on the brief difficulties faced by Sophie Campbell, an artist whose credits include the current Jem and the Holograms comic book from IDW Publishing, with her Wikipedia article after she came out as transgender on March 6. G
 * Sneaking through Wikipedia's notability test: Andrew McMillen, author of last month's widely circulated Backchannel profile of, writes "How I Snuck Through Wikipedia's Notability Test" (March 6).  He compares his "ridiculously detailed" 1,905 word Wikipedia article to others; it is shorter than articles on Santa's Little Helper, Rickrolling, and spontaneous human combustion, but longer than articles on Lena Dunham, Frances McDormand, and Joe Rogan.  McMillen recounts the creation of his article by  as a stub in April 2014 and his surprise at its significant expansion by  later that year.  Following the publication of the Backchannel piece, his Wikipedia article was proposed for deletion. G
 * The Inspire Campaign: Think Wikipedia is sexist?: Fast Company reports (March 5) on the Wikimedia Foundation's "Inspire" grants campaign looking for ideas to narrow the gender gap, which is also discussed in a report (March 5) on edit-a-thons in Wired. A.K.
 * Wikiwand on iPhone: Venture Beat reports (March 5) that Wikiwand, a third-party skin for Wikipedia, is now available for iPhone. "It’s perhaps what a Wikipedia of 2015 should look like," the article says. Wikiwand says it will donate 30 percent of its profits to the Wikimedia Foundation. A.K.
 * Who founded Wikipedia?: The Epoch Times revives (March 4) an old story, looking at how the account of Wikipedia's earliest days has differed over time, depending on when and by whom it was told. A.K.
 * The Oracle of Wikipedia: At KQED, Adrienne Blaine discusses (March 6) how The Delphian Course of Reading, a ten volume series published by the Delphian Society in 1913, inspired her to contribute to Wikipedia. G
 * US drug capitals according to Wikipedia edits: Quartz reports (March 3) on the American cities that have contributed the most edits to Wikipedia's articles on certain drugs. A.K.

Note

 * Coverage of Wikipedia's NSA lawsuit appears in this week's In focus section.