WikiEN-l May 2008

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

99 participants
157 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has PR Problems
by Fayssal F. 17 May '08

17 May '08

On one hand Nielsen Online says Wikipedia U.S. growth is decreasing while a professor at British Columbia University is advocating for its use. By the way, Guy Chapman says that "Wikipedia is headed to court soon". That is the story about Wikipedia. We strive to do our best but there would always be someone unhappy for a happy one. If I have to agree with something here it would be with the fact that we have to review our approach toward newcomers. I know, yes... that would not solve sockpuppetry problems - afterall, sockpuppetry harms our NPOV label and subsequently harms the reader in terms of the quality of the material they are getting. So, yes Marc, we think about our readers and i don't believe we are taking the issue from a marketing side. No, because we are volunteer encyclopaedists and nobody here is a marketer. And yes, the foundation needs to take some actions. Do we have a kind of a guideline designed for the media? There's a press kit but it is vague. Does the media know about the 5 pillars? How many hits the Wikimedia press room page gets a day/month? It appears that the media is misunderstanding our processes out here and something needs to be done - but not necessarily changing our philisophy or the way we work. Fayssal F. > On Fri, 16 May 2008 17:34:57 +0100 "Andrew Gray" <shimgray(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has PR Problems > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Message-ID: > <f3fedb0d0805160934q7426ba59v21e10e6bb9ce61b6(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > 2008/5/16 Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net>: > > >> Everyone may hate > >> Wikipedia, but they still use it, and that's what matters. > >> > > Once again, the product is more important than the people. > > I really don't understand why you keep saying this as if it's a > scandalous revelation. > > Surely it's self-evident that a community of volunteers, who have > gathered together *to work on a specific goal*, will elevate that aim > over and above the process of community formation? > > [Yes, we as a culture treat people badly, especially newcomers. Yes, > we need to improve our default interactions with the outside world. > But this doesn't mean we need to consider the community as more > important than the encyclopedia... without the encyclopedia, the > community is an ill-matched and purposeless crowd of people, and would > implode fairly quickly] > > -- > - Andrew Gray > andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk > > > > ------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > End of WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 58, Issue 32 > **************************************** >

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Vetting new content
by Gregory Maxwell 16 May '08

16 May '08

In this (http://www.nabble.com/FW%3A-Wikinews-reporting-on-WMF-and-projects-to171709…) thread relating to a WMF ordered removal of content from Wikinews, Mike Godwin wrote: "The idea that you can post an incomplete or inadequate or false news story up on the site and then wait for people who happen by to fix it is a recipe for lawsuits -- the expensive kind, that the Foundation and Wikinews can't afford to defend. What probably needs to happen is some kind of process in which initial versions of news stories are vetted before they're made publicly available for further editing." Personally, I would expect to hold a news source to a lower expectation of accuracy than any encyclopedia because news, by its nature, is subject to the pressure and distortion of immediacy. I generally support the notion of increasing the distance between the general public and new unchecked material, though certainly not everyone does... but to whatever extent the position is valid, wouldn't it be extra-true for Wikipedia with its encyclopedia aspirations and enormous viewership? Thoughts?

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Fwd: Special Report: Exposed - Anti-Israeli Subversion on Wikipedia
by Elias Friedman 16 May '08

16 May '08

Hi. I just got this. I thought the community should see it. -Eli ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: HonestReporting <action(a)honestreporting.com> Date: Wed, May 14, 2008 at 9:30 AM Subject: Special Report: Exposed - Anti-Israeli Subversion on Wikipedia To: elipongo(a)gmail.com Exposed - Anti-Israeli Subversion on Wikipedia Dear HonestReporting Subscriber, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit, may strive for pure democracy, but that doesn't mean it's always fair. Our colleagues at CAMERA learned this the hard way last month when their effort to fight anti-Israel bias on Wikipedia ended in several members being banned from the site and bad press for the organization. CAMERA's campaign involved recruiting volunteers and instructing them in the basics of Wikipedia participation. The Palestinian advocacy group, Electronic Intifada (EI), however, branded the effort "a plan to rewrite history" and filed a bitter complaint with Wikipedia administrators, resulting in unusually stiff penalties for the CAMERA volunteers involved. EI's chief evidence against CAMERA was a series of private e-mails exchanged by CAMERA staff and their volunteers. An EI staff member infiltrated the group and turned the e-mails over to Wikipedia, claiming they revealed a plot by CAMERA to manipulate Wikipedia and to pass off "crude propaganda as fact." An investigation followed, resulting in two indefinite bans and several shorter-term bans for CAMERA members. A closer look at Wikipedia's inner workings, however, reveals there is more to the story. Research carried out by Social Media expert Dr. Andre Oboler, a Legacy Heritage Fellow at NGO Monitor, reveals that it was EI, not CAMERA, that manipulated Wikipedia to achieve its ideological goals. Dr. Oboler and HonestReporting also found that despite Wikipedia's clear policy against political advocacy, initiatives such as "Wiki Project Palestine" and the Yahoo group "Wikipedians for Palestine" used the Wikipedia platform to promote their ideological views, largely unopposed by the Wikipedia community. CAMERA, however, was singled out by the administrators in order to "send a strong message to lobbying groups, campaigns and other advocacy groups." WIKIPEDIA AND THE NEUTRAL POINT OF VIEW With nearly 60 million visitors a month and 10 million entries in 253 languages, Wikipedia has become a primary resource for students across the world. A Google search for almost any topic will return a Wikipedia entry at or near the top of the list of results. But despite its popularity, Wikipedia does not always provide the most accurate information. What sets the encyclopedia apart from other sources is its reliance on the "wisdom of crowds" - allowing any user who spots an error in any entry to simply change it himself, anonymously if he chooses. Not surprisingly, this feature turns controversial topics such as "Jerusalem" or "Terrorism" into battlegrounds between people with sharply different agendas. To counter the problem, Wikipedia established the neutral point of view (NPOV) as one of its guiding principles. The NPOV policy is meant to ensure all sides are presented equally on a topic until a consensus eventually emerges, a process that can take many months of intense debate. Unfortunately, NPOV is another noble goal not always applied equally by Wikipedia users. Dr. Oboler tracked the activity of Wikipedia user Bangpound, an individual revealed to be EI staff member Benjamin Doherty, who appears to be looking to spin EI's view of CAMERA's campaign. Here is how Dr. Oboler describes his activity: At 14:08 on April 21 EI boasted publicly to someone thought to be a member of CAMERA's staff that CAMERA and its editor have been exposed. He links to the EI article about CAMERA [accusing CAMERA of a Wikipedia conspiracy]. At 14:26 the same person edits the CAMERA page making it say "CAMERA also attempts to use Wikipedia to covertly disseminate discredited pro-Israeli propaganda." They add that EI have e-mails that "outlined an attempt to subvert Wikipedia editorial controls and leadership structures" - an accusation designed to make Wikipedia editors see red. At 14:44 they edited the Wikipedia page on reliable sources adding "CAMERA cannot possibly be considered a reliable source" and again they outline their accusations. These edits appear aimed both to discredit CAMERA and to promote EI. It was clever marketing as well as clever advocacy, and it took under half an hour. [For the full transcripts of these edits see Dr. Oboler's research on Zionism on the Web]. But according to Dr. Oboler, EI's manipulations on Wikipedia pale in comparison to other pro-Palestinian groups such as "Wiki Project Palestine" - an effort supposedly aimed at improving articles related to Palestinian culture and society but misused to promote a political agenda, and the Yahoo group "Wikipedians for Palestine." The real organized effort [to recruit outsiders to promote pro-Palestinian views on Wikipedia] appears to be from "Wikipedians for Palestine," a group that was advertised to individuals both on Wikipedia and through at least one Palestinian campaigning organization. That group was active for over two years. It was detected, questions were raised on and off Wikipedia, and then …nothing seemed to happen, then or now. People commenting on the CAMERA case who were shown to be involved in this Palestinian group first proclaimed the group's innocence. Then they made a number of misleading claims off Wikipedia, stating, for example, that they "never recruited neophytes to edit Wikiepdia," and that their group is "independent and never bankrolled and backed by any organization, let alone one as well staffed and funded as CAMERA." They were challenged by an administrator to give access to their group so the archives could be checked, as was done to CAMERA. They promptly deleted the group - destroying all archives. Wikipedia apparently dropped the issue because no one had infiltrated the group or had evidence revealing the content of the deleted archives. According to Dr. Oboler, it is impossible to know exactly what it accomplished over the past two years. What is clear is that its claims on the group's home page were designed not only to defend themselves but also to attack CAMERA. The group may or may not have actually recruited people who were not editors, but they certainly tried to. The penalties to CAMERA are for trying to recruit people, not for any problematic editing on Wikipedia (itself a very unusual thing in a Wikiepdia investigation - normally only actions on Wikipedia are considered). COMMON FORMS OF ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS ON WIKIPEDIA Anti-Israel bias in Wikipedia takes three primary forms: vandalism, blatantly false allegations, and attempts to marginalize the Israeli perspective. Vandalism, such as efforts to change Jerusalem to 'Capital of Palestine,' tends to be relatively harmless. Editors discover these kinds of changes quickly and "revert" them to the 'community consensus'. Wikipedia allows editors to be notified by email if someone has changed a favorite entry. It also keeps a history of all changes, making it easy to restore the original content. A more insidious form of bias is the use of false information. An example can be seen on the 'Egypt' 'Camp David Accords' entry, where clear anti-Semitic incitement in the Egyptian press was dismissed as simple 'Anti-Zionist criticism'. This entry alone attracts 150,000 viewers a year, and the related 'Egypt' entry, which doesn't mention the issue at all, is viewed 3.5 million times annually. More common are attempts to marginalize Israeli and Zionist content and lend more weight to the Palestinian or Arab narrative. The entry "Massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war," for example, lists only those allegedly committed by Jews. Another example is the original 'Hebrews' entry, which fails to mention the undisputed fact that Jews always prayed in Hebrew, and that it became their primary everyday language in Israel since the early 20th century. This category also includes entries that serve to diminish the perception of threats against Israel. For example, several Iran articles are apologetic about Iranian president Mahmoud Admadinejad's calls for erasing Israel from the map, reassuringly explaining the threat as mistranslation of Farsi, which supposedly only meant 'erase off the pages of time.' However they fail to mention that the same slogan was also painted on ballistic missiles in Iranian army parades. PRO-PALESTINIAN ADVOCACY: WIKIPROJECT PALESTINE A WikiProject is a Wikipedia's community feature allowing people with common interests to collaborate on particular encyclopedia topics. A project's homepage is essentially a central billboard allowing users to share articles of interest with the Wikipedia community. The 'Palestine Project' goals, stated on its page, fall within the accepted Wikipedia guidelines: To "Maintain information on Palestine including history, culture, geography and contemporary political, socio-economic and ideological context; Improve Palestine-related articles by expansion, verification and copyediting." And finally: "Be thorough and watch for POV in particularly controversial articles." Despite the warning, however, the actual content promoted by the project appears geared towards online advocacy. There are 210 articles marked as "high importance". About half are related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Many appear because of their influence on public opinion on the Palestinian cause. In its hall of fame for best articles, the Palestine Project page lists four best biographies. One is by Norman Finkelstein, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, whose controversial bestseller "The Holocaust Industry" accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust for financial and political gain. There is also a large number of small articles that appear to have been posted to add weight to the Project's page, giving it the appearance of significant substance. Many of these articles are posted by anonymous users so that they will be difficult to track. This is particularly suspicious behavior considering the community-building nature of WikiProjects. According to Dr. Oboler, the entire project appears to be an organized effort to promote the Palestinian point of view on Wikipedia. In trying to kill off an attempt by CAMERA to get pro-Israel people involved in Wikipedia, Electronic Intifada may just have thrown a spotlight on the real and far more successful campaign to control Wikipedia... the campaign that caused CAMERA so much concern in the first place. THE PROBLEMS ON WIKIPEDIA A study of user involvement on Social Media sites such as Wikipedia suggests that only 1% of site visitors become heavy contributors. But according to Dr. Oboler, the involvement of more people and greater diversity ultimately benefits sites like Wikipedia: CAMERA was right about the problems on Wikipedia. People should consider getting involved in Wikipedia and making use of the resources they have (such as books) to improve the accuracy of articles they take an interest in (on any topic imaginable). The first goal must be to improve Wikipedia. That this helps reverse manipulation of the truth is one side effect. Good well-sourced arguments will not only expose mistakes, they will also make Wikipedia better. Editing Wikipedia is not hard and, in time, people will learn how it works and become part of the community. If you do want to get involved, pay attention to the policies, the five pillars and other information you will be shown when you join. If you run into problems there are plenty of people on Wikipedia more than happy to help or provide clarity about Wikipedia itself. The truth will win out, but someone needs to make sure it is heard, footnoted and properly sourced. Dr. Oboler is also a post-doctoral fellow in Political Science at Bar-Ilan University where he is researching online public diplomacy. This research covers Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Google Earth and Wikipedia among others online platforms. More on his research can be seen at http://www.zionismontheweb.org/internet_warfare/ . Details on Wikipedia (the background data of which was shared with HonestReporting) are being added during this week. HonestReporting. com Click here to comment on this special report. Thank you for your involvement in responding to media bias. To support our work, donate here today. To View this article online, click here. To subscribe to HonestReporting, enter your email at the top of our homepage. -- Elias Friedman A.S., EMT-P President Congregation Knesseth Israel http://www.ellingtonshul.org/ elipongo(a)gmail.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Elipongo

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Special Report: Exposed - Anti-Israeli Subversion on Wiki...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 16 May '08

16 May '08

Oh this is great! So now we don't actually allow the publication of private emails by themselves (see Matt Sanchez), but we'll allow those same emails if they are cleverly buried in a pseudo-news-article by an advocacy group. That is great news. Another nice way to get around the prohibition on publication of private emails between administrators, arbitrators, etc etc. Will Johnson **************Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on family favorites at AOL Food. (http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight?NCID=aolfod00030000000001)

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Fwd: [Wikimediaau-l] Letter to the NSW Board of Studies
by David Gerard 16 May '08

16 May '08

Wikipedia used in schools! - d. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Confusing Manifestation <confusingmanifestation(a)gmail.com> Date: 2008/5/15 Subject: [Wikimediaau-l] Letter to the NSW Board of Studies To: Wikimedia-au <wikimediaau-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Hi everyone, The NSW Board of Studies has included Wikipedia as a text in an elective of its 2009-2012 HSC English Syllabus (see http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/english/prescriptions-sup…). This is obviously a great opportunity for us, and given that I think they're going to release some more support documents in June or July, it would be good to get in contact with them before then, whether we've sorted out our incorporation blues or not (although preferably so). As such, I've drafted a letter to them, currently at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ConMan/NSW_BoS_Letter for your perusal and comment. Once it's presentable, I'll have a little chat with the interim committee about timing so we can hopefully get it sent off at around the same time that we have an organisation behind it. With a little luck, this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and a model for cooperation with other state, territory and federal education departments. Cheers, Chris _______________________________________________ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l

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Why we do this
by David Gerard 15 May '08

15 May '08

http://englishrussia.com/?p=1849 http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2007/11/it-will-rise-from-ashes.html - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Interesting Sunday Times article on privacy
by WJhonson＠aol.com 14 May '08

14 May '08

In a message dated 5/12/2008 3:00:35 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, ansell.peter(a)gmail.com writes: Noone said you have to be a luddite to overcome the problem. Newspapers hypothetically could publish any random story>> -------------------- But could a newspaper get away with a story like this: "Somewhere near Chicago, a man shot his wife. He worked in some sort of factory, and they may have had two to four children". The extent to which BLP'ers or rather "tendentious editors who think they are following BLP" is just ridiculous. "Oh you only found the name in 20 newspaper articles? Well you'll need to find it in... um.. three hundred. That's our new criteria." When a hundred outlets report that Jennifer Aniston has a new boyfriend, and we don't, we are not fooling anybody. We just look stupid and lazy. We are not protecting anyone's privacy by ignoring what everyone has already read somewhere else. Or what you can find out with three google searches. Will Johnson **************Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on family favorites at AOL Food. (http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight?NCID=aolfod00030000000001)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Interesting Sunday Times article on privacy
by WJhonson＠aol.com 12 May '08

12 May '08

Yeah... Luddites Unite. Smash the machines that invade our privacy. It's over. The privacy war is lost on the internet. Time to move on. **************Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on family favorites at AOL Food. (http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight?NCID=aolfod00030000000001)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] They didn't attach the GFDL!!!
by Daniel R. Tobias 12 May '08

12 May '08

On 3 May 2008 23:18:53 +0100, "Magnus Manske" <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com> wrote: > Compare > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria > > with a screenshot from the movie "National Treasure 2": > > http://magnusmanske.de/nt2_qv.png I don't think there's any copyvio there... the text is too small to be readable on the movie screen, and the Victoria image is public domain. But the movie industry is as a whole pretty anal about crediting even the most incidental use of copyrighted or trademarked things... is there any mention of Wikipedia somewhere in the closing credits? -- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/

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Upper right messages
by Andrew Gray 12 May '08

12 May '08

...okay, this is weird. Any non-logged-in user now gets a randomly selected message displayed in quite small text in the upper right - "Find out more about navigating Wikipedia" or "Learn how to use Wikipedia for research". Anyone know when we started doing these, and why? It seems fairly cluttering and quite hard to notice - I think I only picked it out because I've been staring at the UI for too many years! -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

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WikiEN-l May 2008