Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-09/In the media: Difference between revisions

Prompted by the recent Wikipedia Science Conference in London, Nature interviewed Martin Poulter, an organizer of the conference, concerning Wikipedia's new outreach to scientists and the reason why they're not embracing the recent call to action. Poulter believes that scientists are deterred by the idea of anyone being able to edit Wikipedia and that because they do not trust it as a reliable source, they are less likely to get involved: Template:Signpost pull quote Poulter also believes that scientists and academics aren't getting involved in the process due to the fact that many of them have busy lives and many are deterred by the "petty" time-wasting conversations and edit-wars.

You can read Nature's article here and one by Inverse here (Sept. 7) T

• Wikipedia can be used to detect search trend data:The Stack recently reported on a new Japanese study. The study shows that, for example, a page view statistics graph of the Anne Hathaway article on Wikipedia will closely mimic a Google Trends graph of searching "Anne Hathaway" on Google. This method can be used to estimate search statistics for less popular subjects not covered by Google Trends. T

• Politics and religion: The New York Observer was the latest publication to do a round-up of the most edited Wikipedia pages. (Sept. 8) AK

• Embattled President: In Slate, University of Iowa Professor Kembrew McLeod writes about the embattled incoming UI President Bruce Harreld, who has come under fire for his error-filled resume and complete lack of higher education experience. At an introductory talk and Q&A, which McLeod posted on YouTube in the category "comedy", Harreld had a contentious discussion with one UI alum. The conflict was regarded his earlier statement that UI was not a "Public Ivy", information he said he got from Wikipedia, though the Wikipedia article on the university correctly identifies it as a Public Ivy. (Sept. 8) G

• The Tamil Wikipedia sets a goal for 100k articles: The Hindu reports on the efforts to recruit editors to work on the Tamil Wikipedia. The Times of India reports that they've set a goal of a hundred thousand articles over the next year. As of this writing, the Tamil Wikipedia has over 69 thousand articles. (Sept. 7) G

• Harvard students host an edit-a-thon: On September 7th, a group of eight Harvard undergrads assembled an edit-a-thon to improve and create feminist articles on Wikipedia. The Harvard student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, reported on the event. (Sept. 7) T

• Wikipedia founder backs site's systems after extortion scam: The Guardian interviewed Jimmy Wales on last week's revelation of the Orangemoody paid editing extortion ring (see Signpost coverage). Wales said:

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(Sept. 6) G

• Mayoral plagiarism: MedioTiempo reports that former football star Cuauhtémoc Blanco plagiarized entire sections of the article about him on the Spanish Wikipedia in his registration paperwork for the mayoral race in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos, Mexico. Blanco won the June 7 election and will assume office on January 1. (Sept. 6) G
• Bandits: The Daily Beast reports on how Cuban pianist Dayramir González was "Shaken Down by Wikipedia’s Blackmail Bandits". González was one of the victims of the Orangemoody scam. The Beast notes that his "story is special among most of other targets because he meets Wikipedia’s standards for notability." (Sept. 5) G

• Who will save your soul?: In the Financial Times, Murad Ahmed writes about "Wikipedia’s struggle to save its soul" in the wake of recent revelations of paid editing like the Orangemoody ring and the Sunshine Sachs controversy (see previous Signpost coverage) and the declining numbers of active editors. Ahmed concludes:

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(Sept. 4) G

• Jimmy Wales on China's block of Wikipedia: GreatFire, a non-profit organization monitoring internet censorship in China, interviewed Jimmy Wales. The Chinese Wikipedia has been blocked in China since May. Wales said:

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(Sept. 4) G

• Critical eye: In The Conversation, academic Taha Yasseri, a former checkuser in the Persian Wikipedia, argues that "using Wikipedia as PR is a problem, but our lack of a critical eye is worse":

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(Sept. 4) AK

• Is the Google Knowledge Graph killing Wikipedia?: In Forbes, Jayson DeMers wonders if the Google Knowledge Graph is killing Wikipedia. The drop in traffic Google directs towards Wikipedia may be a result of the Knowledge Graph answering many basic queries. (Sept. 4) G

• Stay positive: The Associated Press reports on a new study published in PLOS One called "Editorial Bias in Crowd-Sourced Political Information", by Joshua L. Kalla of the University of California, Berkeley and Peter M. Aronow of Yale University. Prior to the 2014 US Senate elections, the authors added positive and negative accurate facts to Wikipedia articles of sitting US Senators. Their study found that "Negative facts are 36% more likely to be removed by Wikipedia editors than positive facts within 12 hours and 29% more likely within 3 days." They found that the bias towards positivity was solely for incumbents, replicating the experiment for the articles of retired and deceased Senators found that the reaction to edits was not similarly skewed. (Sept. 3) G

• Industrial-scale blackmail: The Register describes the Orangemoody case as "Wikipedia’s biggest scandal" and attributes the problem to Wikipedia's overriding commitment to anonymity:

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(Sept. 3) AK