It's been know since the 2005 London bombings attacks that Wikipedia is good
when it comes to evolving stories because the Wikipedia article will always
be the most complete and concentrated article about a developing event. It
helps journalists as well. The google link you provide below refer to the
2009 Iranian presidential election and Air France Flight 447 exclusively. I
don't know if google are doing it manually but I appreciate the idea.
Fayssal F.
> Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:33:53 -0400
> From: Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia(a)gmail.com<ragesoss%2Bwikipedia(a)gmail.com>
> >
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Google thinks Wikipedia is a news source
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <40c6a93a0906141233k11ab72c0i4741754f2a17d97e(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Sage Ross<ragesoss+wikipedia(a)gmail.com<ragesoss%2Bwikipedia(a)gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Inclusion of Wikipedia articles in Google News appears to be based on
> > a) having been created recently, and b) having as its title a term
> > that is part of the core topic of a collection of articles that Google
> > News determines to be related.
> >
>
> Strike that. Creation date doesn't seem to figure in. [[Murder of
> Meredith Kercher]] was created quite a while ago, but is linked from
> Google News results about the recent related developments.
>
> -Sage
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
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> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
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>
> End of WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 71, Issue 29
> ****************************************
>
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Hi all, please see new volunteer position[1] for Email response (OTRS)
statistician. This position is specific to the English Wikipedia group
of email queues, but may be customized for other langauges/projects later.
If you have specific questions, feel free to email me directly, but I'd
like to keep general discussion on the lists to a minimum.
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
[1]
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Volunteering:Email_response_statistician>
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After Microsoft's surprising unveiling of Yet Another Search Engine
(TM) named "bing", I just /had/ to strike back with a similar
Wiki(m|p)edia search interface, consequently called "bong".
Using "Cambridge" as an example (because there's something for each "section"):
http://toolserver.org/~magnus/bong.php?doit=1&mode=pedia&q=%20cambridge
It sure misses lots of JavaScript-based eyecandy, but...
Worth extending? Or too toy-ish?
Cheers,
Magnus
Wikimedia IRC community,
I invite you to read the following announcement and then, if you wish
to discuss it, join us on meta at
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:IRC/Group_Contacts/Noticeboard>.
I am pleased to announce that the IRC Group Contacts team has been
changed over to a new group with a strong manifesto. James Forrester,
previously chair of the group, has stepped down due to real life
commitments inhibiting him from being as active as he once was. On
behalf of everyone who uses IRC I'd like to thank him for all the work
he has put into the role, and personally I thank him for his guidance
while I was deputy IRC Group Contact in fulfilling the role as best as
possible; it was invaluable advice.
With James leaving the post of chair, I have taken on this role and I
now have three new deputies: Casey Brown [[m:User:Cbrown1023]] kibble
on IRC, Filip Maljkovic [[m:User:Dungodung]] dungodung on IRC, and
Ryan [[m:User:Rjd0060]] Rjd0060 on IRC. James and I, with the
involvement of these three and a small team of other IRC
representatives and functionaries, chose these three as people we know
and trust enough to be able to work with, and as users who we feel
suit the Group Contact role well, and of course who have the time and
motivation to carry out the job.
What is the role of the Group Contact, then, that I have just
mentioned? We have set this down for ourselves far more rigorously
than before. Over late 2008 to early 2009 the levels of service from
James and I have been very poor compared to what is rightly expected
by the community - we appreciate that things have been poor. So the
new group has come up with ways of trying to engage with everyone
involved in IRC more. We intend to try to touch base with our Channel
Contacts significantly more often, first by encouraging them to join
us in #wikimedia-ops (#wikimedia-irc has been closed and redirected to
-ops to try and centralise discussion). They already do a great job
but we feel they could benefit from greater support from the Group
Contacts. We intend to be around more to be involved in discussions,
but we are going to try and remain laid back in terms of using
authority directly: the fact that power is delegated to channel
contacts and their operator teams, we feel, is an important part of
IRC running smoothly.
On a technical note, I am in fact the only Group Contact recognised by
freenode at the moment to perform technical actions like the setting
of cloaks and taking over of inactive channels. We hope that freenode
will get the other contacts approved soon but we have no ETA on this
and the queue is roughly four years long. We have in the past received
special treatment for being a large project on the network, but we
haven't been told there's any reason why we'd get this this time. So
for the moment please be patient while technical GC work is funnelled
by the whole team to me. Our requests for the other GCs to be
recognised have, however, been submitted into the queue.
On another technical note, you may see the nick wmfgc around freenode
- this is an account used to hold GC priviledges, since there are now
many of us who may need access to it.
We intend to hold a Group Contact Surgery, per [[m:IRC Group
Contacts/Surgeries]], soon in order that issues from the community can
be discussed with other IRC users and contacts around.
All of the major IRC channel contacts and the IRC Group Contacts can
now be reached on <irc-contacts(a)lists.wikimedia.org>.
If you just need to contact a GC there is also
<irc-contacts-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org>.
Sean Whitton [[m:User:Sean Whitton]] seanw on IRC
for the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts
--
Sean Whitton / <sean(a)silentflame.com>
OpenPGP KeyID: 0x25F4EAB7
"The Future of Reputation: gossip, rumour and privacy on the internet"
http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/
Chapter 6 has a few pages on the Siegenthaler incident (as well as
Wikipedia more generally), but a lot of the second part of the book
deals in more general terms with thorny topics we regularly encounter
and find it hard to draw firm rules on:
* how to respond to requests to remove material
* the ethical issues of unrestrained publication;
* the dilemmas of defining whether information is public or private,
and how to deal with that enormous fuzzy grey middle ground between
them.
May well be of some interest to many of you.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
(I meant to send this a good month ago, and completely forgot until now...)
I can't speak for the Foundation, but I assure you that we at Wikimedia UK are doing our best to defend and promote the Wikimedia projects against all unfair criticism, including these articles.
Personally, I thought the article would have been worse if it had omitted the paragraph from Wikimedia UK - the damage was done in the rest of the article which was largely derived from other sources.At least they gave us an opportunity to say how we were responding.
As I said before, I think the main damage has come from a trusted user who has deceived the community over a number of years and from our controls which were completely inadequate to deal with this. Our credibility and reputation would be easier to defend if we could show that we were actually doing something to improve these controls.
I've opened a discussion at [1] - please add you comments there.
Regards,
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Guide_to_requests_for_adminship…
----- "Giacomo M-Z" <solebaciato(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> From: "Giacomo M-Z" <solebaciato(a)googlemail.com>
> To: "charles r matthews" <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>, "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, 9 June, 2009 22:43:32 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Daily Mail article on Sam Blacketer case
>
> Charles says: "All that can be done with the press is to try to get your own
> spin in there, along with what they'll print anyway." Charles is quite
> wrong; that is not all that can be done. Once can refute vociferously -
> anywhere and everywhere. Sadly though, Wikipedia and Jimbo are afraid to do
> that, as I learnt to my cost in the "Giles Hattersley affair"- Some of you
> may remember that Jimbo blocked me for defending his encyclopedia from a
> high profile attack. A high profile attack, incidentally, that has never
> been properly reputed. It's almost as though they are frightened of
> defending themselves - or do they just dismiss the European press, and
> indeed Europeans, as less important than the American. One can only
> speculate as to why this is? Wikipedia's governors and public relations
> people are worse than nothing; they are incompetent, amateurish is the
> kindliest thing one can say.
>
> Giano
>
> On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Charles Matthews <
> charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> > AGK wrote:
> > >> Gross inaccuracies that harm our public image? Not that I can see. Some
> > of
> > >> the details are wrong - number of ArbCom cases for instance, but that's
> > >> pretty irrelevant to the story or indeed our reputation. Likewise with
> > the
> > >> relationship between Wikimedia UK and the Foundation.
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > > (Belated reply to Andrew's post of one day ago.)
> > >
> > > The article certainly doesn't give a positive impression of us. It's
> > quite
> > > clear to me that there are inaccuracies and that the article harms our
> > > public image. Wikipedia gets quite enough stick for being "totally
> > > unreliable" (and such) without the Mail spreading incorrect information
> > > about how we operate.
> > >
> > But that, largely, is how the press operates - without regard for the
> > impression Wikipedians would like to be given of Wikipedia. and with
> > obvious inaccuracies (often exacerbated by the efforts of subeditors who
> > know little about the topic itself). All that can be done with the press
> > is to try to get your own spin in there, along with what they'll print
> > anyway.
> >
> > Charles
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
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> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
On Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:55:25 +0100, Charles Matthews wrote:
> One test for you and your competence to issue lectures on PR: rearrange
> the words "productive" and "counter" into a well known hyphenated
> phrase.
Oooh... I love anagrams and other wordplay!
Recount POV-crud tie?
--
== 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/
---- "AGK" <wikiagk(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> From: "AGK" <wikiagk(a)googlemail.com>
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Monday, 8 June, 2009 15:24:30 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Daily Mail article on Sam Blacketer case
>
> >
> > To be fair on that last point, they hear we "resolve disputes" and they
> > know there are hundreds of disputes a week. They just don't have the
> > awareness AC doesn't solve 99% of them :)
>
> The argument stands: the Daily Mail are printing gross inaccuracies, and
> it's harming our public image.
Gross inaccuracies that harm our public image?
Not that I can see. Some of the details are wrong - number of ArbCom cases for instance, but that's pretty irrelevant to the story or indeed our reputation. Likewise with the relationship between Wikimedia UK and the Foundation.
The Daily Mail will spin the story as they see fit. What we might disagree with is the editorialising, which we can do little about, not any errors of fact.
The harm to our public image comes from the fact that a senior trusted user has managed to deceive Wikipedia over a number of years and our systems were inadequate to deal with this.
I hope there will be an honest debate in Wikipedia about how we can make sure this doesn't happen again. Coming not that long after the Essjay controversy, requiring trusted users to verify their identities seems like a sensible response.
Andrew
Through ignorance, through weakness, through its own deliberate fault...?
;)
Interestingly enough, though, Blacketer wasn't the one who removed the
"consistency" comment he was the one who added it in the first place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Cameron&diff=242271726&oldi
d=242266826
The DM allege that he "tried to remove a reference to the Tories having a
'consistent' lead in the polls." In actual fact, he merely replaced it with
a more relevant one and you'll never guess which news outlet it was that
he cited.
Make what you will of Blacketer's account juggling, but to my mind there
isn't even a case for arguing non-neutral editing here. To borrow WP:COI, I
can hardly see that advancing outside interests was more important than
advancing the aims of Wikipedia in this case.
But hey, caveat lector, right..?
H
On 08 June 2009 at 13:41, FT2 [ft2.wiki(a)gmail.com] wrote:
> To be fair on that last point, they hear we "resolve disputes" and
> they know there are hundreds of disputes a week. They just don't
> have the awareness AC doesn't solve 99% of them :)
>
> FT2
