Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions/Archive 5

MOAR NUUS

 * Judge uses Wiki in case. Apparently a Connecticut judge used Wikipedia to cite the number of gay congressmen in their opinion of legalizing same-sex marriage.

 bibliomaniac 1  5  23:22, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Current members of the United States Congress -Ravedave (talk) 03:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh and someone actualy like the way we are written:
 * http://www.splicetoday.com/consume/wikipedia-the-21st-century-s-freudian-mother
 * Geni 16:11, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia vandalism embarrasses mainstream journal
This article by Cade Metz in The Register details how a nonsense vandal edit in Wikipedia was repeated in the Daily Mirror. After someone tried to remove the misinformation from the Wikipedia article, someone readded it, citing the same Daily Mirror article as a source. Cla68 (talk) 00:15, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Just to add some personal opinion, if we had flagged revisions this might not would have happened. Cla68 (talk) 00:28, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * This was covered somewhere else already, I think it was AN. Woody (talk) 09:32, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, and how is the Daily Mirror a mainstream journal? It is a trashy tabloid. When I think of journal I think Economist or New Scientist, not the Mirror! Woody (talk) 09:33, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The Daily Mirror has a circulation of 1.4 million per issue . So, how many people read and digested a false bit of information because we can't control vandalism effectively, or haven't implemented something like flagged revisions which would make controlling it easier?  Of course, the Mirror's reporter shouldn't have been so lazy, but perhaps he took our claim of being an "encyclopedia" at face value? Cla68 (talk) 13:24, 20 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The valid point that 1.4 million readers were misled because of Wikipedia's flaw is not diminished by accurately noting what sort of publication the Daily Mirror is. --JayHenry (talk) 01:01, 21 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed – this is simply an embarassment for our community, for the Daily Mirror, and for humanity in general. Surely we can do better than this – at least, surely we can stop vandalism from appearing publicly? – Thomas H. Larsen 09:10, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

ArticleAlertbot
Alertbot is a new subscription-based bot that automatically notifies WikiProject when their articles enter certain workflows such as WP:PROD/WP:AfD, WP:FAC/WP:GAC/WP:FLC, and others. See User:ArticleAlertbot/Subscription for how to subscribe. The bot updates a notification pages on a daily basis. The bot was proposed by Headbomb (aka me), coded by B. Wolterding and is run by Legoktm. Due to the usefullness of the bot, and the fact that it is subscription based, I think that this should get a greater exposition than simply being on the approved bot list.Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 09:48, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Debate raging about fair use collage
. The debate has involved 22 editors, with an even split of opinions. 9 of the 22 are administrators, also with an essentially even split, have contributed. The decision in this case has ramifications for fair use montages as navigational aids across discographies, videographies, lists of books, list of characters and list of episodes. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:10, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia vs. Joe the Plumber: Wikipedia users debate Wurzelbacher’s newsworthiness and notability

 * Neat article. Cirt (talk) 08:17, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Neat article. Cirt (talk) 08:17, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Saatchi Gallery
A discussion on AN/I seems to have found its way into The Observer, 26 October 2008 - scroll to "Tales of mystery at the gallery".  Ty  04:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Ethical guidelines for researching Wikipedia
An idea recently proposed on Wiki-research-l listerv has evolved into a proposed policy: Ethically researching Wikipedia.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 22:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Book review suggestion
The Future of the Internet, and How to Stop It by Joanathan Zittrain. Yale University Press, 2008. Online I have not read the book, but I read an interesting book review of it (in American Scientist). It discusses the rise and fall of "generative systems," which are defined as systems with a "capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences." There are, naturally, many examples from Wikipedia. --Zvika (talk) 19:27, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Welsh Wikipedia milestone
Welsh Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles. If I've counted back correctly, the milestone article is Seiclo yng Ngemau Olympaidd yr Haf 1980. —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 22:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

BC Supreme Court determines hyperlink not defamation
See summary or full text of court decision. The case, in which Wikimedia Foundation was a party, decides that in British Columbia publishing hyperlink to defamatory text is not defamation. -- KenWalker | Talk 18:41, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikimedians in the UK form new organisation
It'd be great to include something along these lines either in News and Notes, or possibly a separate story.

Following the disbanding of Wikimedia UK reported in September, Wikimedians in the country have set up a new organisation, Wiki UK Ltd. The Chapters Committee has passed a resolution to support it becoming a chapter of Wikimedia, on which the board of the Wikimedia Foundation will decide in January 2009.

The new organisation has set up a newsletter to keep everyone informed, and is now inviting membership applications. Warofdreams talk 10:46, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Slashdot covers initiative to improve compsci articles
Slashdot reports on an initiative by Scott Aaronson to improve Wikipedia's coverage of theoretical computer science. -- The Anome (talk) 20:43, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Dutch wikipedia news
Heavy week on the dutch side of wikipedia news: --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:07, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * 500.000 articles for the dutch version of Wikipedia
 * Dutch business-person Bob Sijthoff is sue-ing the dutch wikimedia foundation chapter, and the dutch wikimedia association. He is demanding that the article about his person is removed, because it contains words that are "incorrect and insulting". He also demands that the identity of the author nl:User:Jakob H is revealed, so that he may sue this person. original publication His article has seen heavy copyediting since he sued. This is the first such case in the Netherlands and the judge will rule on December 10.
 * Sijthoff lost, because he failed to show that the dutch organizations had any authority or legal responsibility over the content. --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:37, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This publisher of the Dutch encyclopedia Winkler Prins, has announced that it will not release a new (10th edition) paper version of the encyclopedia in the future. The popularity of online resources such as the Internet and esp. Wikipedia is said to have influenced this decision. The CD-rom version will disappear as well and the publisher will focus its efforts on a subscription based edition on the Internet, which they hope to deliver sometime next year. They will continue to print their yearly encyclopedia appendices for the 7th, 8th and 9th edition versions.

Non-wikipedia news

 * Some stuff not directly related to wikipedia, but possibly very interesting to wikipedians:

--Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:07, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Europeana is to be a new EU-wide search platform to a collection of European digital libraries with digitized paintings, books, films and archives. The web site was publicly launched on 20 November 2008 and immediately taken offline due to server overload; it's scheduled for reopening by mid-December 2008.
 * The Dutch National Archive reports on their first experiences with sharing parts of their archive trough Flickr Commons, in an experiment, much resembling that of the American Library of Congress

Valued pictures
The Wikipedia Valued pictures department has just started. I think that this warrants publishing (if we can call it that) in this next issue of the Signpost. It's interesting news, and the project will benefit from the coverage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elucidate (talk • contribs)

"pro-Israel group's plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia"
From CAMERA website ...

"A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged."

- OlEnglish (talk) 23:58, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * After reading the article on CAMERA I realized this must be old news already. Interesting read though. OlEnglish (talk) 00:09, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Video tutorials : Wikimedia support, and Graphic labs historical leader critics
Hello, I'm the founder of the Graphic labs, which have now improve or create about 5.500 images in 3 years, with 0 US$. (In the commercial world, each of this improvement are frequently sell 30US$, and each creation about 200 US$ (if it was a for profit team, we would have seen about 250.000 US$ O.O) I explained on the Graphic lab page my critics toward the Wikimedia media policy.

I'm interested to write more, to answer to more questions. May one of your team member learn a little about these issues, contact me, and ask me some questions to go further, and then help me to copy-edit the article (I'm not a native speaker for English).

Regards, Yug (talk)  14:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

A few stories

 * Short mention in the Wall Street Journal here
 * WSJ Livemint blogger, outward apearance of our donation drive opinion (might not apply)
 * Slashdot Arkansas government editors allowed to keep IPs unknown
 * Hope some of these help. §hep   •   ¡Talk to me!  00:40, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject:Awards
A look at WikiProject Awards and prizes. More interesting than a run-of-the-mil wikiproject because it fills such a wide gap in the coverage of WP articles. The other awards project (WikiProject Orders, Decorations, and Medals) fails to cover any award that isn't a national one, including such, uhh, minor awards as the Nobel Prize. We're a small project admittedly, but the interesting part doesn't come from the numbers. I can pull some people together for a interview-type thing no problem. Ironholds (talk) 14:20, 31 December 2008 (UTC)