Wikipedia News

Wikipedia and notability

2011-10-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

The barrier to entry into Wikipedia articles is notability: Subjects must be notable enough to create enduring articles on the encyclopedia. According to policy, while news reporting covers announcements, sports news or celebrities, the fact that something is "in the news" is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopaedia. Notability is difficult, perhaps impossible to predict directly after an event, and can result in historical events being described in purely modern terms or an article being created about something noteworthy at a particular time which later might not meet notability requirements. Wikipedians call this "recentism" and have a tag to make it transparent to readers that the article might be skewed towards "recent perspectives." In an essay on "recentism," Wikipedians describe the phenomenon as "writing or editing without a long-term, historical view, thereby inflating the importance of a topic that has received recent public attention."

Britannica goes Wiki

2009-02-23T19:19:00.000-08:00

Encyclopaedia Britannica which already contains 46 million words and other forms of media content is now inviting anyone to edit and contribute to its online version. Jorge Cauz - Britannica's president said: "What we are trying to do is shifting to a much more proactive role for the user and reader where the reader is not only going to learn from reading the article but by modifying the article and - importantly - by maybe creating his [or her] own content." Well, at last they got the idea.
Mr Cauz also took a swipe at Google for helping to promote Wikipedia via its search engine rankings. He characterised Wikipedia as containing "plenty of cracks" and "facts which are not always correct".

McCain and Wikipedia

2008-08-22T17:54:00.000-07:00

One of the Wikipedia editor has noticed similarities between Sen. John McCain's statements and Wikipedia entry on Georgia. Well, it only shows how influential Wikipedia has become.

1. One of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia)

vs.

One of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion (McCain)

2. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic (1918-1921), which was terminated by the Red Army invasion of Georgia. Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and regained its independence in 1991. Early post-Soviet years was marked by a civil unrest and economic crisis. (Wikipedia)

vs.

After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. As the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the Cold War, Georgia regained its independence in 1991, but its early years were marked by instability, corruption, and economic crises. (McCain)

3. In 2003, Shevardnadze (who won re-election in 2000) was deposed by the Rose Revolution, after Georgian opposition and international monitors asserted that the 2 November parliamentary elections were marred by fraud. The revolution was led by Mikheil Saakashvili, Zurab Zhvania and Nino Burjanadze, former members and leaders of Shavarnadze's ruling party. Mikheil Saakashvili was elected as President of Georgia in 2004. Following the Rose Revolution, a series of reforms was launched to strengthen the country's military and economic capabilities. (Wikipedia)

vs.

Following fraudulent parliamentary elections in 2003, a peaceful, democratic revolution took place, led by the U.S.-educated lawyer Mikheil Saakashvili. The Rose Revolution changed things dramatically and, following his election, President Saakashvili embarked on a series of wide-ranging and successful reforms. (McCain)

Medical Wiki

2008-01-18T20:39:00.000-08:00

AskDrWiki.com is a nonprofit educational website operated as a public service by the Open Access Medical Informatics Group. One can publish review articles, clinical notes, pearls, and medical images on the site. Using a wiki anyone with a medical background can contribute or edit medical articles. The main focus has been on Cardiology and Electrophysiology but we have started to expand to other specialties.

Wikitravel.org Guide

2007-06-10T19:48:00.000-07:00

Wikitravel - wikitravel.org contains close to 20,000 destination guides. It is an open source travel guide featuring up-to-date information on attractions, hotels, restaurants, travel tips and more. It also provides free and reliable advice written by Wikitravellers from around the globe.

Organic SEO Wiki

2007-05-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

There is a new wiki about search engine optimization. Organicseo.org was started on March 20, 2005 by Anthony Ettinger and it refers to the manual type of page optimization versus automatic submission to search engines. Everything described on this wiki can be implemented by one motivated person, or you can always hire someone to do it. This is a public work, and anybody is welcome to edit the content.

Chinese version of Wikipedia

2006-08-21T22:20:00.000-07:00

China’s Baidu.com, has launched a Chinese language online encyclopedia inspired by the cooperative reference site Wikipedia, which the communist government bars China’s Web surfers from seeing. The Chinese service, which debuted in April, carries entries written by users, but warns that it will delete content about sex, terrorism and attacks on the government. Government censors blocked access last year to Wikipedia, apparently due to concern about its references to Tibet, Taiwan and other topics.

Splunk Wikipedia

2006-04-06T22:04:00.000-07:00

A US company called Splunk is setting up a public collaborative website, or wiki, for IT professionals who hunt down system glitches. Splunk is today expected to launch a commercial version of a hosted service called Splunk Base, which aims to be the equivalent of an online encyclopaedia, like Wikipedia, but for technology administrators.
Splunk Base is a hosted wiki where system administrators can post information on errors they encounter while running data centres. A database administrator, for example, might report a problem that often occurs when setting up an Oracle database to run with Apache Web server.
The system, which is available for free, allows administrators to tag, or label, their entries so other users can more quickly find solutions to their system woes. The company name is a play on "spelunking," or cave exploration.

From silicon.com

Wikipedia Truth Test

2006-04-05T22:13:00.000-07:00

Elaine Wang a senior at Lamar High School in Arlington, Texas has tested Wikipedia by doing what she has called the truth test. You can see the results in the article from www.sunherald.com

Larry Sanger Lecture

2006-03-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

Sanger's talk was titled "The Future of Free Information" and focused largely on how his new project, Digital Universe will fix the problems he feels Wikipedia and other information resources have.
"High quality of content is essential because we want an information resource to allow us to gain knowledge," said Sanger. "Quality is determined by accuracy and completeness."
Sanger said expert involvement increases a resource's faithfulness to expert opinion. He pointed out several times during the presentation that the difference between Wikipedia and Digital Universe is that experts would have editorial control over user submitted entries in Digital Universe. He said experts were needed to lead discussion between non-experts submitting information.
"Accuracy is going to increase the more expert eyeballs get at the topic," said Sanger. He added that accuracy requires neutrality and fairness with respect to the broad range of opinion within a field.
Sanger also spoke about completeness and availability of information being important to the ideal information resource. He said if contributors add a missing piece of information to a resource then the quality improves.
"Availability is best achieved by making the resource both widespread and as inexpensive as possible," said Sanger.
According to Sanger, one of Digital Universe's features is the use of portals which will connect information from various mediums together to make access easier. For example, in addition to an encyclopedia entry about Mars, there would be links to pictures, videos or books about Mars.
Sanger said that, despite the shortcomings he feels Wikipedia has, it is currently the closest to the ideal information resource.
"What the world really needs is a single information resource that excels across the board." Sanger said this is Digital Universe's goal. "We will start engaging the public in various ways this year."

Wikipedia Accuracy

2006-03-24T17:56:00.000-08:00

Recently Nature has investigated Wikipedia. The Nature study, results of which were published in the December 15 issue, asked scientists to assess 50 entries on scientific topics ranging from Dolly the sheep to Dmitry Mendeleev, the 19th-century Russian chemist, without telling them if the articles came from the Britannica or Wikipedia. The study found the average Britannica entry contained approximately three inaccuracies, while Wikipedia had four. Only eight "serious errors" were found, four in each encyclopedia. Britannica objected that, despite Nature's conclusion, the journal's own figures showed Wikipedia had one-third more inaccuracies.

It was also uncovered that some US politicians were trying to clean up their image. Staff of Democrat senator Tom Harkin apparently removed a paragraph from his Wikipedia entry recording his false claim to have flown combat missions over North Vietnam. Similarly, staff of Republican senator Norm Coleman rewrote his Wikipedia biography so that he was described merely as an "activist" at university, not a "liberal".

Class Action Suit Against Wikipedia

2006-03-17T20:29:00.000-08:00

The Internet group that once solicited complaints for a class action suit against Wikipedia has shut up shop and revealed its roots. Claiming to have been prompted by the John Seigenthaler Wikipedia biography controversy, the site http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org once sought parties to build a defamation suit against the wiki-based encyclopedia. Today, that site points to the Officialwire news service, known to be associated with Greg Lloyd Smith. The long-standing Wikipedia-alleged association between Officialwire and the QuakeAID "charity" has also been confirmed due to that site being replaced with a similar redirection.

The class action website was initially registered to one Jennifer Monroe who is affiliated with QuakeAID, an organisation which Wikipedia editors have accused of being a scam following QuakeAID personnel having created their own article on Wikipedia last year. This came at the time of the Indian Ocean earthquake, when Wikipedia user Baoutrust added QuakeAID to Wikipedia's victim donations page and sparked a dispute about the legitimacy of the organisation. Wikipedia editors did not acknowledge the tax-exempt status of the organisation which QuakeAID displayed on its home page; however, this can now only be seen via Google's cache. The 501(c) registration QuakeAID used to list is generally accepted as what defines an organisation as a charity with the United States. However, a number of groups removed QuakeAID from their public lists of charities following the Wikipedia dispute.

The dispute between QuakeAID and Wikipedia editors sparked a negative publicity campaign waged via Baou Trust's news service, OfficialWire. A number of articles which portray Wikipedia, or Wikipedians in a bad light have been published on the service. The site for the proposed class-action suit provides a link displaying results of a search of OfficialWire for stories about Wikipedia. This is not the first instance of the directors of Baou Trust using their newswire to run a smear campaign: a long-running campaign against former directors of the equity company IEQ was mounted following Greg Lloyd Smith's hostile takeover of the firm.

Smith is no stranger to controversy, having been the target of legal action by Amazon.com when he registered the Amazon.gr and Amazon.com.gr sites and set up an Amazon.com look-alike selling Greek-language books. Amazon initially filed suit in Greece, and later in the US where their complaint described initial communication from Smith as a "thinly-veiled shakedown" when he offered to sell a controlling interest in CITI to the company for $1.6 million. The Amazon suit sought triple damages under RICO statutes stating, "Fraudulent acts of mail and wire fraud, extortion and criminal copyright infringement constitute a pattern of racketeering, and pose a threat to society."

Million Articles

2006-03-06T20:32:00.000-08:00

The collaborative online encyclopedia had a tough 2005, but it now has a million articles to share with the world. The team behind Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, is celebrating after the English version of Wikipedia racked up its one millionth article.
The Wikimedia Foundation announced late on Wednesday 1st of March that the target had been reached, after an article about the Jordanhill railway station in Scotland was created.
Wikipedia was created in January 2001 and almost immediately proved extremely popular with Web users who welcomed the fact that its collaborative, Wiki-based approach allowed anyone to contribute to it. At present, it is growing by around 1,700 new articles every day.
However, last year it faced accusations that it was inaccurate, and was forced to block access from the US Senate and House of Representatives after political aides had heavily edited entries referring to their allies and opponents.
Wikipedia acknowledged on Wednesday that it had faced criticism in 2005, but pointed to a study published in Nature which found it was almost as trustworthy as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Wikipedia users have been guessing when the one millionth article would be published. This pool was won by Mészáros András. Some users had predicted that the target would never be reached.
From ZDNet UK

Wikipedia worries

2005-09-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia worries By Rob O'Neill August 27, 2005

A series of fictitious entries have tested the integrity of the co-operatively produced online encyclopedia Wikipedia over the past fortnight.
Initially, fears centred on an entry for a fake pop star, Jamie Kane. Kane is the fictional star of a BBC online interactive game. But as the matter was investigated other encyclopedia entries have come under scrutiny.

Wikipedia, which started operations in 2001, is one of the most popular online reference sites on the web. It's operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and edited collaboratively by thousands of volunteers around the world. Anyone can join and edit its entries. However, its openness may also have allowed the encyclopedia to be abused.

After investigations and publicity on the digital media website Boingboing, apologies were received from the people responsible for the false entries, one unaffiliated with the BBC who wrote the Jamie Kane entry and another, a BBC employee, who made an entry for the bogus Kane's fictitious band.

The BBC employee, who identifies himself as MattC online, said his action was not part of an orchestrated marketing campaign "nor was it intended for my page to be attributed to the BBC, which has been implied. It was nothing more than common garden vandalism for which I am sorry".
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says it appears the entries were not part of a marketing effort "just some guy at the BBC editing Wikipedia innocently and harmlessly. I consider this part of it a non-story."
However, the matter has not ended there. Wikipedia has now produced a page linking to other suspect entries on the site. These include an entry for a Burger King campaign that now carries a note saying the article is being considered for deletion "in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy" and asking for the community's views.

Last week the site carried an entry for a supposed new religion involving a deity known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The religion is a parody of the Kansas State Board of Education's decision to allow theories of intelligent design (the idea that the universe was created by some unknown intelligent agent) to be taught in science classes. This entry is now also being considered for deletion.
Wales says there is a community process determining if something is relevant. "Lots of things get deleted because they can't be confirmed or have no cultural relevance," he says, citing vanity pages for obscure people.
A United States digital media commentator and contributor to Boingboing, Xeni Jardin, says Wikipedia is a gigantic online reference tool that catalogues all sorts of things including internet "memes" or cultural ideas transmitted across the internet. The encyclopedia, she says, discusses these in an intelligent way and is self-correcting.

Jardin says the Spaghetti Monster entry has undergone a lot of editing by the community presenting it as a meme and a gag at various times. Dozens of edits were happening every hour at one point. The entries also each carry a discussion tab, so the process of editing and issues surrounding any entry are transparent to the user.
Jardin says many people did not object to the Jamie Kane entry but protested that it was presented as a fact, as if he existed. The entry will settle down, she says, to a factual one as the Wikipedia editing process continues.

Jardin says much of the outrage over the Kane entry was that it looked as if the site was being used for commercial gain. It now seems that was not the case.
However, the concern continues. One anonymous reader contacted Boingboing telling them he worked at a marketing company that uses Wikipedia for its online marketing strategies.

"That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or 'leaks' embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of [online meeting place] Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it.
"On the other side, I love it from an academia/sociological standpoint and I don't have a problem with it used as a viral marketing tool. After all, marketing is a form of information, with just a different end point in mind (consuming rather than learning)."

But as Jardin says: "I imagine quite a few Wikipedia users would beg to differ."

From The Sydney Morning Herald