Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-10-31/In the media

Jessica Wade
Jess Wade, a scientist and Wikipedian, had several media reports appear about their article-writing prowess this month:
 * "This 33-year-old made more than 1,000 Wikipedia bios for unknown women scientists" (today.com), also republished under the headline "Jessica Wade Makes Wikipedia bios For Unknown Female Scientists" (yahoo.com)
 * "Jess Wade has written 1,750 biographies of women scientists" (The Washington Post)
 * Physicist on a mission to add top women scientists to Wikipedia (nbcnews.com)
 * "This Woman Was Honored By Queen Elizabeth For Writing 1,750 Bios For Women Scientists on Wikipedia" (Entrepreneur)

The deletion debate for Clarice Phelps, a scientist whose biography was created by Wade, was covered by Today and in readers' comments on a previous Signpost's Community view "The Incredible Invisible Woman" by Megalibrarygirl, and an Op-ed by Wade herself. – B

Growing attention for Growth features
The Wikimedia Foundation has decided that the Growth Team features are ready for the public spotlight. Adi Robertson, a reporter at The Verge, Vox Media's technology news outlet, picked up the pitch, running with the headline "Wikimedia is adding features to make editing Wikipedia more fun".

"Wikipedia is one of the sturdiest survivors of the old web, as well as one of the most clearly human-powered ones, thanks to a multitude of editors making changes across the globe," she writes. From there, the article provides a straightforward overview of the new mentorship system and suggested edits tool. It is mostly deferential to the foundation's perspective, although Robertson notes that gamified interfaces have been criticized as addictive, and that "the algorithm's own accuracy rate isn't exemplary: editors deem about 75 percent of the link recommendations accurate". (After the newcomer chooses which recommendations to adopt, 10 percent of edits have been reverted.)

The Indo-Asian News Service published a short, thinly reported version of the same story. – Sdkb

You can ignore whatever you'd like
The time draws nearer for the WMF's annual plea to donate, accompanied by a plea from Andrew Orlowski to not donate. This year, appearing in Unherd, he argues that –

Much to think about. For additional coverage on the subject, see this month's News and notes. Orlowski has been a harsh critic of the project since at least 2004, when he described Wikipedians as "the Khmer Rouge in diapers". – AK,S,J

French wiki editors and BLP subjects demand trans rights
In June, trans comic artist Jul Maroh, the French creator of the graphic novel Blue Is the Warmest Color posted to Instagram about the turmoil they were experiencing as a result of discussions on fr:Discussion:Jul' Maroh around misgendering and the repetition of their deadname on their French-language biography. They also posted to Instagram Stories asking for support from Wikimedians. This was lightly covered in the media at the time, mainly by French-language online magazine ActuaBD. After the discussion, they posted a toolbox for other trans BLP subjects and attended the annual general meeting of Les sans pagEs, the French-language equivalent to Women in Red.

After that AGM, Les sans pagEs announced that they were professionalising, having secured funding from the French national chapter (with grants proposals under review with WMF and Wikimedia CH) to employ project founder Natacha Rault as a director, causing several days worth of heated discussion on Le Bistro, the Francophone equivalent to our Village pump. As a result, Wikimedia LGBT+ organized an Open letter of support for Les sans pagEs, criticising "bad-faith arguments" and "harassment" that included calls for the disestablishment of the project. The open letter has been signed by 77 wikimedians, including representatives of affiliates such as AfroCROWD, Art+Feminism, Noircir Wikipédia, Whose Knowledge?, WikiDonne, Wikimedians of Slovakia and the Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network plus national chapters including Wikimedia Belgium and Wikimedia UK, as well as individuals. (Note: the author here was lead organiser on the Open letter.)

Les sans pagEs came back energised from the controversy, with Natacha presenting with Wikimedia LGBT+ to promote Queering Wikipedia 2022 at Wikimania before working on gaining a consensus update to frwiki's MoS guidelines on trans biographies and being featured in young-women's magazine Madmoizelle, headlined "&thinsp;'Wikipedia reproduces the sexist bias of our society': Les sans pagEs, the collective filling in the encyclopedia's gender gap".

Which brings us neatly back to Jul' Maroh, who in October led an open letter in French news-weekly L'Obs, reported in literary news magazine Actualitte denouncing insensitive coverage of trans, nonbinary and intersex biographies on the Francophone Wikipedia and crediting the efforts of Les sans pagEs and Noircir Wikipédia in countering systemic bias. – O

Down with the middlemen, or factoids over ad-cruft: Wikipedia as a better search tool (except for some pirates)
James Vincent in The Verge offers a hearty recommendation of Wikipedia's mobile app as an alternative to Google Search. He says it's more useful, less bloated, and more fun.

After a frustrating search session blighted by nearly a full page of ad-cruft, the author sums up their experience: "why the hell am I Googling this stuff anyway? If half of my Google searches on mobile are just Wikipedia lookups, why not cut out the middleman altogether?" The Wikipedia app goes straight to the juice and provides diverting and illuminating side trips for "a nerd with an affinity for factoids" in the bargain: "Wikipedia is actually one of the true wonders of the internet", they say.

"Up with the knowledge keepers and down with the middlemen," he concludes. We're blushing.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette also acknowledged that "some people" use the Wikipedia app instead of searching with Google, but found an error in a pirate-related search that resulted in the answer Alexander von Humboldt – who, the Democrat-Gazette reminds us, "was not a pirate". – B, Sdkb

Wikipedia as a military target for disinformation
Think tanks Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Centre for the Analysis of Social Media presented a report discussing the possibility of state-sponsored bad actors using Wikipedia as a channel for disinformation, propaganda, or as part of an information warfare campaign. Various media sources reacted. El País in particular called out the study's concern over "long-term infiltration by state-sponsored actors" to take over Wikipedia's "underlying policies and governance processes". Later, an ISD employee was able to add enough citations to the organization's article to save it from a nomination at Articles for Deletion. – B, BR, J


 * "The Hunt for Wikipedia's Disinformation Moles: Custodians of the crowdsourced encyclopedia are charged with protecting it from state-sponsored manipulators. A new study reveals how.": Wired
 * Researchers: Wikipedia a front in Russian propaganda war: The Record by Recorded Future
 * "Wikipedia's 'suspicious' edits could be pro-Russian campaigns, study suggests": The Independent (via Yahoo! News)
 * "Catching spies on Wikipedia, a new report warns of elaborate state-sponsored disinformation campaigns on one of the most widely used and trusted websites": El País

See also Disinformation report and Recent research in this month's Signpost.

In brief
''Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next month's edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page.''
 * "Deaditors", again ...: This time in The Face. Mentions of these mythical beasts in press sources now outnumber uses of the word "deaditor" on Wikipedia itself (outside of discussions of articles on death and Wikipedia, that is).
 * Too many crises: The Telegraph noted (archive) that Wikipedia had to disambiguate its article on the 2022 United Kingdom government crisis ... readers could no longer be relied upon to have just this particular one in mind. PWilkinson, who added a hatnote, was duly credited for the important intervention. Gizmodo picked the story up a few days later, by which time 2022 United Kingdom government crisis had become a full-fledged disambiguation page.
 * Expansion: Wikimedia Community User Group Rwanda hosted a "WikiVibrance 2022" challenge from September 14 to 30, netting 557 new articles on Kinyarwanda Wikipedia, reports The New Times
 * Contrasting TikTok's "quantum flapdoodle" with Wikipedia: Wikipedia beat journalist Stephen Harrison observes in a Slate article that in response to the 2022 Nobel Prize winners research in quantum entanglement, popular TikTok content promotes quantum mysticism while Wikipedia continues its attempt to promote and verify science.
 * "Why I sued Wikipedia": Author and BJP spokesman Tuhin Sinha is suing the Wikimedia Foundation as a reaction to the community's March 2022 decision to delete the article featuring him as a subject. In a public statement published in news18.com, Sinha expresses his belief that Wikipedia deleted his biography because of his political beliefs, and that Wikipedia in India is a channel for disinformation and propaganda by bad actors in Western states and corporations. Media outlet republicworld.com reacted with additional opinions.
 * Wildfires, ranked: 247wallst.com presents a report of the worst wildfires in United States history as determined by reading Wikipedia articles.
 * Reptiles, ranked: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch identifies the world's most popular reptiles by examining Wikipedia's Pageview Statistics. This journalism may be referring to the 2016 study on a similar topic. Casual users can access different but similar data quickly through Massview Statistics.
 * High school furries are not litterbox trained: KTEN describes how a United States politician's campaign claims that toilet training for American high school students in furry fandom includes classroom access to a litter box. Wikipedia has an article for the litter boxes in schools hoax, and describes the claim as disinformation and propaganda often tied to a bathroom bill for denying toilet access to queer and trans youth.
 * Those who work to feed the AI will get their ideas promoted; or, influential but anonymous: thought provoking ideas about the future information apocalypse utopia? From Tyler Cowen writing for Bloomberg : "those who are happy to produce content with little credit, such as Wikipedia editors, may gain influence."
 * "Would I be knitting?": Aussie editor Annie Reynolds creates biographies instead of knitting – over 400 of them (SBS World News). See the list of creations at User:Oronsay.