Wikipedia in the news: 2 September 2008

Wiki­me­dia: matur­ing and professionalising

Wiki­me­dia pegs future on edu­ca­tion, not profit (24 August 2008, San Fran­cisco Chronicle)

Sue Gard­ner, Wikimedia’s exec­ut­ive dir­ector, expresses sur­prise at the mis­un­der­stand­ings that people have about Wiki­me­dia. As a char­ity, Wiki­me­dia is not seek­ing to profit from the bil­lions of dol­lars that some say could be earned from pla­cing advert­ise­ments on its pro­jects’ web­sites. Recently, Wiki­me­dia moved its headquar­ters to San Fran­cisco, and the move, Gard­ner says, was because of the area’s “tech tal­ent”; the organisation’s core staff has now increased to 21. Jimmy Wales cred­its Gard­ner with pro­fes­sion­al­ising Wiki­me­dia, insti­tut­ing com­pet­ent and sound man­age­ment. Gardner’s goals for the future include increas­ing par­ti­cip­a­tion, improv­ing qual­ity and mak­ing Wiki­pe­dia avail­able in a vari­ety of formats. On the other hand, Ed Chi, the cre­ator of Wiki­Dash­board, says that there has been a decline in interest in edit­ing that does not bode well for the community.

US Vice-​​Presidential can­did­ates with groomed articles

McCain camp touts Biden praise ahead of speech (27 August 2008, TheHill​.com)

Blog­gers have noticed changes to Joseph Biden’s Wiki­pe­dia art­icle as news of his Vice-​​Presidential nom­in­a­tion was leak­ing out. For instance, blog­gers say that the sec­tion about his involve­ment in the 2004 pres­id­en­tial cam­paign was deleted. Also, details of Biden’s under­gradu­ate stud­ies and alleg­a­tions of pla­gi­ar­ism were said to have dis­ap­peared from his Wiki­pe­dia bio­graphy. The art­icle raises the ques­tion of whether Bar­rack Obama’s cam­paign or the Demo­cratic National Com­mit­tee changed the art­icle, given the tim­ing of the edits.

Don’t Like Palin’s Wiki­pe­dia Story? Change It (31 August 2008, The New York Times)

A Wiki­pe­dia user called Young­Trigg made a num­ber of edits to Sarah Palin’s art­icle before the announce­ment of her nom­in­a­tion as the Repub­lican Vice-​​Presidential can­did­ate; the user­name is a ref­er­ence to her infant son Trig. The edits, which added com­pel­ling stor­ies about her upbring­ing and pos­it­ive com­ments about her polit­ical career, were in fact rewar­ded with a Barn­star, and the editor made con­tact with other Wiki­pe­dia edit­ors. In par­tic­u­lar, Young­Trigg asked an anonym­ous editor where he or she had heard about Palin being McCain’s choice, pos­sibly because, as the art­icle sug­gests, Young­Trigg had an interest in whether the news had leaked already. How­ever, later, another user came along to tone down the addi­tions that seem biased. Ulti­mately, Young­Trigg, who denied rela­tion to the Palin fam­ily, has now retired from Wikipedia.

Other men­tions

Other recent men­tions in the online press include:

• An inter­view with Wiki­pe­dia founder (and Crim­son Tide fan) Jimmy Wales (ESPN The Magazine)
  Jimmy Wales is quizzed on Wiki­pe­dia… and football.
• Veoh Safe Har­bor rul­ing could help You­Tube in Viacom battle (28 August 2008, Ars Tech­nica)
  A judge uses Wiki­pe­dia to under­stand some of the tech­no­logy in the case decided between Veoh and Io that has import­ance in rela­tion to the DCMA “safe har­bour” provisions.
• Wiki­pe­dia van­dals tar­get West Aus­tralian politi­cians (29 August 2008, news​.com​.au)
  As the West­ern Aus­tralia state elec­tion draws closer, politi­cians’ art­icles are being van­dal­ised, although some of the van­dal­ism was rever­ted within minutes.
• Asylum-​​Seeker Rejec­ted Based On Wiki­pe­dia, Appeals Court Reverts (2 Septem­ber 2008, Wired​.com blogs)
  The 8th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals over­turned a rul­ing by the Board of Immig­ra­tion Appeals that had found that a par­tic­u­lar Ethiopian travel doc­u­ment was insuf­fi­cient to prove someone’s iden­tity, a find­ing based on inform­a­tion gleaned from Wikipedia.
• Just How Power­ful Is Wiki­pe­dia? (Site­Point Blogs)
  Entries on Wiki­pe­dia play a strong role in form­ing pub­lic per­cep­tion, because Wiki­pe­dia art­icles appear very fre­quently on the first page of res­ults when using search engines.
• Arabic con­tent in Wiki­pe­dia very weak, users to blame (1 Septem­ber 2008, Daily News Egypt)
  Users in Egypt gathered for the fourth regional Wiki­pe­dia Day, and the event res­ul­ted in a sub­stan­tial increase in the num­ber of Arabic-​​language art­icles, des­pite the Cairo venue report­ing low attend­ance numbers.
• The pros and cons of Wiki­pe­dia (3 Septem­ber 2008, JG​-TC​.com)
  Uni­ver­sity edu­cat­ors believe that part of their role is to ensure stu­dents develop crit­ical think­ing skills, and Wiki­pe­dia is good as a place to begin under­stand­ing a topic.

From the Wiki­pe­dia Sign­post.

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