Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-09/In the media



Calling all scientists!
Nature covers the recent Wikipedia Science Conference in London, part of Wikipedia's outreach to scientists and efforts to "bridge the gap between the online encyclopaedia and the research community".

Discussing the reasons why such outreach is necessary, Martin Poulter, an organizer of the conference, told Nature:

Poulter added that there was a "cultural barrier" militating against stronger involvement from scientists, who may feel they have too little time to get into the lengthy discussions that sometimes occur around Wikipedia edits. Poulter said, "There have to be changes from both sides. That’s what we’re discussing."

The conference, which took place September 2–3, brought Wikipedians together with academics and publishers new to Wikipedia editing. (Sept. 7) T

More Wikipedia editors in the Netherlands than all of Africa combined
Vice reports on a paper published by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) which comes to the conclusion that "the relative democratisation of the Internet has not brought about a concurrent democratisation of voice and participation".

By geolocating both edits and editors across the various language versions of Wikipedia, the researchers found that editors from North America played a disproportionate role in creating both Wikipedia content about their own culture and content about other cultures. Five countries – the US, the UK, Germany, France and Italy – were responsible for 45 percent of all Wikipedia edits, and there were "more Wikipedia editors from The Netherlands than all of Africa combined". And when editors from low-income countries did participate, they tended to write about global rather than local topics.

Mark Graham, an associate professor at the OII and one of the authors of the paper, suggested that despite awareness of this issue within Wikipedia and laudable efforts such as the global outreach team, Wikipedia "is not inherently democratising knowledge" – its own rules reinforce rather than subvert the status quo:

Remedial efforts therefore needed to focus on the development of cultural and educational infrastructure in the countries concerned, Graham argued; internet technology alone was no quick fix in levelling the playing field. (Sept. 8) AK 

In brief

 * Wikipedia can be used to detect search trend data: The Stack recently reported a new Japanese study. The study shows an example where a page view statistics graph of the Anne Hathaway article on Wikipedia will closely mimic a Google Trends graph of searching "Anne Hathaway" on Google. It was decided that this method can be used to estimate search statistics for less popular subjects not covered by Google Trends. (Sept. 9) T


 * Koch Brothers: The Daily Kos claims to have found evidence of a "multi-year Wikipedia whitewashing" campaign focused on articles related to Koch Industries and Charles Koch. The article refers to a discussion thread at the administrators' incidents noticeboard in which the complainant, apparently a Daily Kos journalist working undercover, was eventually blocked. (Sept. 9) AK


 * Politics and religion: The New York Observer was the latest publication to do a round-up of the most edited Wikipedia pages. (Sept. 8) AK


 * Labor of love: Vice has an in-depth examination of the history of Wikipedia's Labor Day article. (Sept. 8) AK


 * Embattled President: In Slate, University of Iowa Professor Kembrew McLeod writes about the embattled incoming UI President Bruce Harreld, who has come under fire for his error-filled resume and complete lack of higher education experience. At an introductory talk and Q&A, which McLeod posted on YouTube in the category "comedy", Harreld had a contentious discussion with one UI alum. The conflict was regarding his earlier statement that UI was not a "Public Ivy", information he said he got from Wikipedia, though the Wikipedia article on the university correctly identifies it as a Public Ivy. (Sept. 8) G


 * The Tamil Wikipedia sets a goal for 100k articles: The Hindu reports on the efforts to recruit editors to work on the Tamil Wikipedia. The Times of India also reports that the Tamil Wikipedia has set a goal to reach one hundred thousand articles over the next year. As of writing this, the Tamil Wikipedia has over 69 thousand articles. (Sept. 7) G


 * Harvard students host an edit-a-thon: On September 7th, a group of eight Harvard undergrads assembled an edit-a-thon to improve and create feminist articles on Wikipedia. The Harvard student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, reported on the event. (Sept. 7) T


 * Wikipedia founder backs site's systems after extortion scam: The Guardian interviewed Jimmy Wales on last week's revelation of the Orangemoody paid editing extortion ring. Wales said:


 * (Sept. 6) G


 * Mayoral plagiarism: MedioTiempo reports that former football star Cuauhtémoc Blanco plagiarized entire sections of the article about him on the Spanish Wikipedia in his registration paperwork for the mayoral race in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos, Mexico. Blanco won the June 7 election and will assume office on January 1. (Sept. 6) G


 * Bandits: The Daily Beast reports on how Cuban pianist Dayramir González was "Shaken Down by Wikipedia’s Blackmail Bandits". González was one of the victims of the Orangemoody scam. The Beast notes that his "story is special among most of the other targets because he meets Wikipedia’s standards for notability". The article concerning him was deleted. (Sept. 5) G


 * Who will save your soul?: In the Financial Times, Murad Ahmed writes about "Wikipedia’s struggle to save its soul" in the wake of the recent revelations of paid editing like the Orangemoody ring and the Sunshine Sachs controversy as well as the declining numbers of active editors. Ahmed concludes:


 * (Sept. 4) G


 * Jimmy Wales on China's block of Wikipedia: GreatFire, a non-profit organization monitoring internet censorship in China, interviewed Jimmy Wales. The Chinese Wikipedia has been blocked in China since May. Wales said:


 * (Sept. 4) G


 * Critical eye: In The Conversation, academic Taha Yasseri, a former checkuser in the Persian Wikipedia, argues that "using Wikipedia as PR is a problem, but our lack of a critical eye is worse". He stated:


 * (Sept. 4) AK


 * Is the Google Knowledge Graph killing Wikipedia?: In Forbes, Jayson DeMers wonders if the Google Knowledge Graph is killing Wikipedia. The drop in traffic that Google directs towards Wikipedia may be a result of the Knowledge Graph answering many basic queries. (Sept. 4) G


 * Stay positive: The Associated Press reports on a new study published in PLOS One called "Editorial Bias in Crowd-Sourced Political Information", by Joshua L. Kalla of University of California, Berkeley and Peter M. Aronow of Yale University. Prior to the 2014 US Senate elections, the authors added positive and negative accurate facts to Wikipedia articles of sitting US Senators. Their study found that "Negative facts are 36% more likely to be removed by Wikipedia editors than positive facts within 12 hours and 29% more likely within 3 days." They also found that the bias towards positivity was solely for incumbents. When replicating the experiment for the articles of retired and deceased Senators, they found that the reaction to the edits was not similarly skewed. (Sept. 3) G


 * Industrial-scale blackmail: The Register describes the Orangemoody case as "Wikipedia’s biggest scandal" and attributes the problem to Wikipedia's overriding commitment to anonymity:
 * (Sept. 3) AK

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