Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-07-31/In the media

Wikipedia blackout
Reported in greater depth in this issue at the Discussion report, the Spanish, Italian, Latvian, Estonian, Polish, Catalan, Basque, Galician, Hungarian, and Slovenian Wikipedias blacked out, incurring extensive media coverage throughout Europe: Business Insider also showed a Twitter exchange between Jimmy Wales and European Commission over the blackout.

UK venture capitalists are not notable
Writing on 13 July for the Technology Intelligence section in leading UK newspaper The Telegraph, James Cook reports on anonymous users suggesting Wikipedia is biased against British entrepreneurs while allowing articles about US financiers. Listing deleted articles Angel CoFund, Eden Ventures, Episode 1 Ventures, Hoxton Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partners, Notion Capital, Passion Capital, Rob Kniaz, Saul Klein, and Scottish Equity Partners, he claims that deletions of 19 articles are an orchestrated effort of three Wikipedia users who support each other's AfD nominations. In the Articles for Deletion discussion about the Tom Blomfield biography, the page was procedurally kept following a 'no consensus' closure.

In a brief interview with The Signpost, one of the deletion nominators,, had this to say about the accusations:

—K

In brief
Other contributors:


 * Frequent flyer: WMF Executive Director Katherine Maher engaged in business travel 200 days last year (The Wall Street Journal & National Geographic, June 21). (Editor's note: Take out the weekends, holidays, and vacation, and that's practically every working day.)
 * Paid editing: It's frowned upon, but that doesn't stop the WMF from now paying for an advertorial in the Daily Maverick.
 * Digital literacy project: A Washington State University professor is leading a "Thousand Page Project" to create articles on 1,000 local newspapers. (Poynter Institute, Chronicle of Higher Education)
 * Wikimedians decolonise the Internet: How Dumisani Ndubane of South Africa helps "decolonise the Internet" by contributing to Wikimedia – he wrote large parts of Wikiversity's electrical engineering content. (The Media Online)
 * Road trips and augmented reality: The Road Trip app (a Chrome browser plugin) will read Wikipedia content aloud based on your current location. (The Verge) An augmented reality smartphone app displays Wikipedia articles for any topics the app user is nearby. (ShortList)
 * Improving knowledge about violence and abuse: University of Pennsylvania's Ortner Center on Violence & Abuse in Relationships conducted a project to improve the public's knowledge about violence and abuse by improving Wikipedia pages on the topic. (Penn Today)
 * Weak passwords still OK: Digital Journal reports "Amazon and Wikipedia still giving poor password advice". Fixing this has been proposed at least since 2011.
 * Academic writes 270 Wikipedia pages in a year to get female scientists noticed: A WikiProject Women in Red contributor, Jess Wade, is profiled by The Guardian and El Pais.
 * The Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia group, coordinated through a private Facebook group called The Secret Cabal, was covered by Wired magazine: "The 'Guerrilla' Wikipedia editors who combat conspiracy theories".
 * Why pay for information – according to those selling it: EdSurge published an interview of Karthik Krishnan, the CEO of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., in which he compared his encyclopedia to Wikipedia and "spoke about convenience over quality, the problems with crowdsourcing and why we should once again consider paying for information".

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