Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-04-26/In the media

Following a February 9 article by Omer Benjakob, a flood of news articles in March praised Wikipedia's coverage of all things related to coronavirus. This month the flood slowed down, but is showing signs of resuming.

More coronavirus news

 * Why Wikipedia Is Immune to Coronavirus in Haaretz by Omer Benjakob following up his February 9 story. With lock-downs around the world and almost everybody with internet access actively browsing, the internet has been stressed with an 'infodemic' of misinformation. Lacking the resources of YouTube, Google, Twitter and Facebook, Wikipedia is nonetheless "having its moment," with 115 million pageviews of coronavirus related articles on the English language encyclopedia this year through April 7.  The role "of being the public’s main source of medical and health information" has been thrust upon Wikipedia. The role of WikiProject Medicine and its tough standards is emphasized and how it has been "immunized" by dealing with previous public-health scares like the 2003 SARS and the 2015 Zika outbreaks.


 * Wikipedia breaks five-year record with high traffic in pandemic in Dawn provides outstanding straight news coverage of Wikipedia's efforts to keep up with the pandemic, including pageviews, and the articles on misinformation related to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic, and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Pakistan.


 * Why Wikipedia is winning against the coronavirus 'infodemic' The Telegraph interviews the "chief steward of the greatest collection of knowledge in the entire history of human civilisation", Katherine Maher, aka the ED and CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation. Maher makes the point "the committed, meticulous and sometimes eccentric community of volunteer editors" are the actual bosses of the encyclopedia, not her. Using examples from the current pandemic, she explains how Wikipedia works and how the new traffic records stress the site. "It's a good thing that Wikipedia works in practice, because it would never work in theory," she says. "It works because ... people want it to work?" That may be the best explanation we'll ever get.


 * She concedes that there is evidence of state-sponsored campaigns on Wikipedia, for example on the Chinese Wikipedia, and that the WMF is watching a few possible cases. A bigger fear, though, is that large areas of the encyclopedia could be captured by ideologically-driven communities.

Rosie
'[https://www.thelily.com/wikipedia-is-a-world-built-by-and-for-men-rosie-stephenson-goodnight-is-changing-that/ Wikipedia is a world built by and for men. Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight is changing that]' in The Lily (Washington Post)). You might think you know about but you will learn much more by reading this article, She was born in Gary, Indiana. While growing up in California, she wanted to be an anthropologist, but bowed to her father's wishes and majored in business administration, then became a healthcare administrator. She first edited Wikipedia in 2007, creating an article on the defunct publisher Book League of America. She's created articles on the Kallawaya, Perry River, Donna, and her grandmother. You likely know about her work at Women in Red, reducing Wikipedia's gender gap, and her writing of the article Maria Elise Turner Lauder, which was recognized as the English-language Wikipedia's sixth millionth article, but the beauty of this Lilly article is in the details.

Jew-Tagging
Jew-Tagging @Wikipedia by Edward Kosner in Commentary. Kosner who describes himself as "a proud if non-observant Jew" thought it was intrusive that the Wikipedia article about him described him as being "born to a Jewish family." Neither he, nor his son, could remove the offending text. But when he responded to a Wikipedia solicitation for a donation commenting that he'd "be much more inclined to contribute had Wikipedia made it possible to deal with my problem" - perhaps coincidentally - he received an answer from. The story gets complicated from here. There are different reasons why an article subject might want to be, or not want to be, identified by their religion or ethnic group. There are different reasons why an editor might want to identify an article subject by their religion or ethnicity. Several editors said on the Jimbo Wales talkpage that they were offended by the implication that a refusal to donate could result in the changing of article content.

In brief

 * A small town newspaper gives good advice on determining news reliability: The Kokomo Perspective suggests using the SIFT method. The acronym is straightforward "Stop. Investigate the source. Find better coverage. Trace back to origins." Under "Investigate the source" they note that "nearly every English language publication or media website has a Wikipedia site, which will summarize it." For most reliable sources, and some unreliable sources, this is correct.


 * The many languages missing from the internet in BBC Future: "There are nearly 7,000 languages and dialects in the world, yet only 7% are reflected in published online material." The dominance of English on the internet, including the dominance of the English Wikipedia, is part of the problem. But Wikipedia and Wikipedians are working to ameliorate the problem as well. Miguel Ángel Oxlaj Kumez is working to create a Kaqchikel Mayan version of Wikipedia. Lingua Libre is a WMF-funded oral language archive run by Wikimedia France.
 * How are translations between English and Arabic helping to tackle misinformation? on Euronews: Arabic is the fourth most commonly spoken language among internet users, but only 1% of internet content is in Arabic, according to Euronews. University students in Mosul, supported by Ideas Beyond Borders, are doing something about it. Many of them lived through the 3-year occupation of Mosul by Islamic State. They've translated 11,000 articles, about ten million words, to the Arabic Wikipedia.


 * Wikidata founder floats idea for balanced multilingual Wikipedia: Reviews a proposal by Denny Vrandečić. See In focus.


 * Penn Museum faculty, students create Wikipedia pages about women to boost representation: Despite the demands of social distancing, the Penn Museum held an editathon on March 26. Using Zoom, they created 3 articles: Deborah A. Thomas, Sophia Wells Royce Williams, and Mary Virginia Harris, and edited 20 other articles.


 * A Matter of Facts: Thomas Leitch on Wikipedia: a refreshingly direct podcast from Delaware First Media with an interview of the author of Wikipedia U.


 * An Ambitious Campaign To Enrich Wikipedia with Unbiased Information: From Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. See News and notes.
 * Wikipedia evidence for/against coronavirus lab release theory?: Saying there is no official list of such facilities, BBC News used Wikipedia's list of biosafety level 4 labs in covering a fringe theory.


 * NoFap struggles against Wikipedia, accuses editors of bias in Reclaim the Net: NoFap, a self-help website and community forum aimed at curbing pornography viewing, has taken offense to the way it is described on Wikipedia. NoFap feels that "activist" editors and porn industry personnel have distorted the relevant article to give an inaccurate representation of its purpose.

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