Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-05-02/In the media



Wikipedia Zero piracy in Bangladesh
In a follow-up to his story on Wikipedia Zero-based piracy in Angola (see previous Signpost coverage), Motherboard's Jason Koebler reports (April 27) on very similar problems with piracy in Bangladesh, arguing that "Wikipedia's piracy police are ruining the developing world's Internet experience":

As in Angola, Bangladeshis are using zero-rated Wikimedia sites to upload copyrighted material and then share the links in filesharing groups on the equally zero-rated Facebook.

Koebler says the "arms race" between the pirates and Wikimedians trying to stop them is "significantly more advanced" than it it is in Angola:

Meanwhile,

Wikimedia Bangladesh has become involved, pleading with users to stop the uploads, telling them they are contributing to an "increasingly negative perception of Bangladesh in many different sectors" by treating Wikimedia sites as a sort of free YouTube. But, Koebler argues,

Study: Wikipedia is basically a corporate bureaucracy
Gizmodo reports (April 25) on a new study by Bradi Heaberlin and Simon DeDeo arguing that Wikipedia has become a corporate bureaucracy, "akin to bureaucratic systems that predate the information age."

One of the study's most striking findings, Gizmodo reports, is that

DeDeo and Heaberlin note Wikipedia's conservative nature: over 89 per cent of its core norms, created by a small pool of around 100 users, have remained unchanged; they have achieved a "myth-like status" even as they inevitably conflict with each other. Resolution of such conflicts is made more difficult by the fact that editors form central "neighbourhoods" organised around "article quality, content policy, collaboration, and administrators" that are "increasingly separate and interact with each other less and less", leading to the emergence of tribalism.

In its article, Gizmodo references a study published earlier this year in Physical Review E by Jinhyuk Yun (윤진혁), Sang Hoon Lee (이상훈), and Hawoong Jeong (정하웅) from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, which came to similar conclusions about Wikipedia. The Korean study received a German-language write-up in taz this week (April 28).

DeDeo's and Heaberlin's study was subsequently also covered by The Washington Post as well as by Sciencealert.com (April 28).

Chilling effects
The Washington Post, along with many other media outlets, reports that according to a new study by Jon Penney, "Snowden's disclosures about NSA spying had a scary effect on free speech":

The study, titled "Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance and Wikipedia Use", is

The collected data showed that pageviews dropped immediately after the June 2013 news stories about Snowden and never recovered to previous levels.

Too few cooks in Wikipedia ...
The New Statesman covers (Apr. 17) a project kickstarted by Bee Wilson, chair of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, to bring more women editors to Wikipedia in order to improve its articles on food. The article's writer, Felicity Cloake, visited a related group editing session at the British Library.

Commenting on the under-representation of notable women on Wikipedia,

Finding translation gaps
VentureBeat reports (Apr. 28) on a collaboration between Wikimedia and Stanford University to help point translators to significant content gaps in other language versions of Wikipedia:

University news site Futurity also has an article (Apr. 15) on the project; a Wikimedia blog post (Apr. 27) is available here. 

In brief

 * Japanese Wikipedia hits 1 million articles: The Japan Times notes that the Japanese Wikipedia has passed the 1-million mark. (Apr. 30)
 * Thiruvananthapuram Wikipedia workshop May 4/5: The New Indian Express has news of an upcoming Wikipedia workshop led by Indian ecologist and writer Madhav Gadgil, due to take place on May 4 and 5 in Kerala's capital, Thiruvananthapuram. The workshop is "jointly organised by Swadeshabhimani Media Study Centre and the Centre for Internet and Society in association with the Wikipedia fraternity of Kerala." Interested editors can find a telephone number and further details in the linked article. (Apr. 30)
 * Hillsborough disaster: The Liverpool Echo reports that the Hillsborough disaster page has again been vandalised, this time from a Warwickshire County Council IP address. This is the second time vandalism of the page traced to a UK government source has led to press headlines; in 2014, an unnamed civil servant was fired after making offensive edits to the page from a government IP address. (Apr. 28)
 * "Wikipedia editors feud like teens": Gawker's Ashley Feinberg has another instalment of deleted Wikipedia articles, including the biography of Wikipedian Derek Ramsey. (Apr. 28)
 * Tulu Wikipedia: The Hindu reports on efforts to create a Tulu Wikipedia. (Apr. 27)
 * Glenn Hughes: Loudwire has Deep Purple's Glenn Hughes play Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?. For more in the same vein, see Loudwire's overview of recent episodes. (Apr. 27)
 * Sahapedia: The Daily Mail reports on Sahapedia (http://www.sahapedia.org/), a project to create a "web portal of India's cultural heritage". Unlike the crowdsourced Wikipedia, Sahapedia will be written by subject matter experts. (Apr. 27)
 * Wikipedia's dentistry pages need work: As reported by The Courier, "staff and students from University of Dundee School of Dentistry have set up a Wikipedia editing team, after becoming disappointed with the 'inaccurate and incomplete' material available on the free online encyclopaedia." (Apr. 26)
 * Cowgirl blues: Noted left-leaning political blogger "Montana Cowgirl" reckons someone with ties to Greg Gianforte, a candidate for the Republican Party's nomination for governor of Montana, USA, has been airbrushing his Wikipedia biography. (Apr. 25)


 * The Beyhive descends on Wikipedia: As covered by The Root, The Daily Mail and many others, Beyoncé fans, collectively known as the "Beyhive", took to vandalising fashion designer Rachel Roy's Wikipedia biography, believing her to be the "Becky with the good hair" referred to by Beyoncé in one of the songs on her new album, Lemonade, as a rival for husband Jay Z's affections. On April 24, the Rachel Roy biography received over one hundred edits within the space of one hour. (Apr. 24–25)
 * Product placement: The A.V. Club looks at Wikipedia's article on product placement as part of its Wiki Wormhole series. (Apr. 24)
 * A source-o-meter?: The Atlantic reports on a study (see previous Signpost coverage in the February edition of "Recent research" and the related talk page) suggesting that Wikipedia should build a "source-o-meter" indicating how many of the information sources a Wikipedia article is based on can readily be verified by the reader online. (Apr. 22)
 * Wikipedia soon to be available on the Moon: Mic, TechCrunch, TechWorm and others cover the efforts to take Wikipedia to the Moon, as covered in last week's Signpost. (Apr. 21–24)
 * Police chief apologises: The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reports that "Saskatoon police Chief Clive Weighill said he is angry and upset that someone from inside police headquarters altered the department's Wikipedia page to erase all references to 'starlight tours.'" "It really does upset me. It's just another step backward," Weighill is reported to have said at a board of police commissioners meeting. For context see the previous Signpost article, "Saskatoon police delete Wikipedia content about police brutality". (Apr. 21)
 * Full Measure: Sharyl Atkisson's U.S. TV series Full Measure covers the "Dark Side of Wikipedia". The programme interviewed two banned paid editors, Wikipediocracy co-founder Gregory Kohs and Mike Wood . (Apr. 17)
 * Pottermore take-down notices target Wikipedia: As described by Business Insider and TorrentFreak, Pottermore, the publishing company responsible for marketing the popular Harry Potter series, has filed copyright takedown demands alleging various websites, among them Wikipedia, contain its intellectual property. Business Insider and TorrentFreak described the takedown requests as "surreal" and "bizarre". (Apr. 14–15)


 * Odia Wikimedian: Opensource.com features Sailesh Patnaik's description of his "four year, action-packed experience with Wikipedia" that began with his registering a user account in April 2012, aged 15. "I consider myself to be an Odia Wikimedian. I contribute Odia knowledge (the predominant language of the Indian state of Odisha) to many Wikimedia projects, like Wikipedia and Wikisource, by writing articles and correcting mistakes in articles. I also contribute to Hindi and English Wikipedia articles." And he has done much else besides in the Wikimedia movement, as you can read in his retrospective. (Apr. 15)
 * Wiki-geeks get seriously young: The Statesman reports on school-age Wikipedia contributors from Hong Kong. Jimmy Wales "once described the Hong Kong team as the youngest group of Wikipedians in the world." (Apr. 15)
 * Block chain war: Cryptocurrency blog CoinTelegraph discusses an "edit war" on the article block chain. (Apr. 14)
 * Year of science: Plos.org reports that "The Wiki Education Foundation (Wiki Ed) has announced the 2016 Wikipedia Year of Science, an initiative to improve Wikipedia's potential for communicating science to the public. Through its Classroom Program (where students write Wikipedia articles on class-related topics in place of a traditional research paper) and with collaborations from Wikipedia editors, Wiki Ed will engage scientists to improve the breadth and depth of scientific content on Wikipedia." (Apr. 14)

Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or contact the editor.