Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-12-16/In the media



Wales' comments on censorship in China edited for public consumption
Jimmy Wales was one of the attendees at the second annual World Internet Conference in Wuzhen. Given the state of Internet censorship in China, a number of groups called for boycotting the conference, including Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders. Charlie Smith of GreatFire, an organization devoted to monitoring and opposing Chinese Internet censorship, told The Hill that conference attendees "should be ashamed of themselves". (In September, Smith published an interview with Wales.) Representatives from Western technology companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Netflix, and LinkedIn were in attendance, but heads of state from the West were absent, and reporters from the New York Times were banned. Of the heads of state or government leaders in attendance – Dmitry Medvedev (Russia), Nawaz Sharif and Mamnoon Hussain (Pakistan), Karim Massimov (Kazakhstan), Temir Sariyev (Kyrgyzstan), Kokhir Rasulzoda (Tajikistan), Rustam Azimov (Uzbekistan), and Siaosi Sovaleni (Tonga) – a number were from countries which practice internet censorship themselves. The Wall Street Journal reported that some of Wales' comments on a December 17 conference panel were altered in a Chinese-language transcript posted online. Wales, an outspoken proponent of free speech and opponent of Chinese censorship of Wikipedia and the Internet, said,

In the Chinese translation, his comments were altered to make it appear he was in favor of Chinese government censorship:

Gizmodo quipped "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is familiar with people putting made-up bullshit online." G

Wikimedia Foundation releases year in review video
On December 15, the Wikimedia Foundation released its year in review video, #Edit2015, created by Victor Grigas. A blog post announcing the video said "#Edit2015 celebrates the individuals all over the world who’ve invested thousands, if not millions, of hours in curating Wikimedia sites." The video included highlights of world news and cultural events and how Wikipedia and Wikimedia project recorded and responded to those events. Engadget wrote "Wikipedia continues to chronicle human history in real time". Vice reflected that "Maybe that's part of the point of the Wikipedia Foundation's #Edit2015 montage: History is always feeding back through the present. It is always subject to edit." G 

In brief

 * Flights of fancy: The Malay Mail Online, Free Malaysia Today and other Malaysian news outlets report on a press statement by 1MDB requesting that members of the public ignore "fake information circulating on social media regarding the setup and operations of a so-called 1MDB Airlines Berhad. It's from a fake Wikipedia entry. We confirm that there is no such company owned or operated by 1MDB." The article 1MDB Airlines was deleted shortly after the news story appeared; it had been nominated for deletion on December 14. The deletion log shows that there were two prior instances of the article, deleted on November 30 and December 4. (Dec. 18) AK
 * Trailblazers: A blog post by consultant Anne Loehr, "5 Women Blaze a Trail Toward the Future of Work", included Rhiannon Ruff, co-founder of the consultancy firm Beutler Ink. Loehr wrote that Ruff "has written about content biases and the gendered patterns of editing on Wikipedia, as well as the issues involved in encouraging more women to participate in such a male-dominated space."  Ruff co-wrote a recent Signpost op-ed on paid editing. (Dec. 18) G
 * Sunshine: The New York Observer looks back on this summer's Sunshine Sachs Wikipedia editing controversy (see previous Signpost coverage), wondering "How could they do it?" (Dec. 17) AK
 * GLAMorous librarians: The ACRLog, the blog of the Association of College and Research Libraries, discusses why librarians should partner with GLAM and Wikipedia. (Dec. 15) G
 * Too much information: Liberty Ballers, the blog dedicated to the Philadelphia 76ers on SB Nation, offers a lengthy discussion, with multiple charts, of the "Outrageously Overwritten Wikipedia Page" of NBA player Nik Stauskas. They write that "This is frankly a ridiculous level of detail for a 22-year-old's Wikipedia page, particularly one who played two notable seasons in college and is now in his second year of pro basketball, playing limited minutes for bad teams."  Among the data presented is that the article, at 5,568 words, is longer than that of Yuri Gagarin and John Stuart Mill, but shorter than that of John the Baptist and Taylor Swift. (Dec. 15) G
 * Summa cum laude: Times Higher Education reviews "a ranking of the world's most influential universities, based on an analysis of the number of times that higher education institutions are mentioned on Wikipedia". UK universities topped the list, with the universities of Cambridge and Oxford taking first and second place respectively, ahead of Harvard, Columbia and Princeton. (Dec. 15) AK
 * High school success: Sports media are reporting on a tweet from basketball player Justise Winslow about donating money to Wikipedia: "Might have to do it. Wouldn't have gotten thru high school without it." (Dec. 14) G
 * Rights and wrongs of Wikipedia: In The Times, Giles Coren humorously listed a number of people he would ban from the UK, including London resident Jimmy Wales.  Coren wrote "With the invention of Wrongopedia  [sic] this man made people think it was okay not to be educated, because now anyone can pretend to know anything just by getting it off a website. Then, by ensuring that everything on it was wrong, he basically killed knowledge itself, which is quite a feat. Like something Lex Luthor would try to do."  In a letter to the editor, John Julius Norwich responded "As a writer of history I resort to [Wikipedia] at least a dozen times a day. I could never have written my last two books without it, and I have never caught it out yet, which is more than I can say of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Its range is astonishing: it is almost impossible to find a person, place or subject that it has left uncovered." (Dec. 12–13) G