WikiEN-l September 2009

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87 participants
135 discussions

Is Wikipedia the first draft of history - New York Times take on Joe Wilson article
by Keith Old 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

Folks, The New York Times reports: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/the-wikipedia-battle-over-joe-wils… If journalism is the first draft of history, what is a Wikipedia entry when it is updated within minutes of an event to reflect changes in a person’s biography? This is the very live issue that cropped up in a heated argument on the discussion page<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Joe_Wilson_%28U.S._politician%29> that accompanies Wikipedia’s entry on Representative Joe Wilson<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Wilson_%28U.S._politician%29> Wednesday night, just 30 minutes after the Republican from South Carolina interrupted President Barack Obama’s speech<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/us/politics/11Wilson.html> by shouting “You lie!” As my colleague Carl Hulse reported in a blog post<http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/live-blogging-the-preside…> published about 10 minutes after the fight got going on Wikipedia, Mr. Wilson’s outburst came in response to the president’s statement that his proposed changes to health insurance laws would not give coverage to illegal immigrants. Since Mr. Wilson’s shout was made during a live television broadcast — nowarchived on YouTube by The Associated Press<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aE_nEoE5kE> — in front of all of his colleagues, the fact that it happened is not in dispute. After Wikipedia’s editors initially removed the first reference to the event<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Joe_Wilson_%28U.S._politicia…> from the entry on Mr. Wilson, citing concerns about sourcing and potential “vandalism,” the page was locked to prevent new or unregistered users from editing it. That is when the argument among Wikipedians — which can be read in full on the discussion page starting here<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Joe_Wilson_%28U.S._politician%29#Yelling_…> — really took off. (More in article) The Joe Wilson article is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Wilson_(U.S._politician) Regards *Keith Old*

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What happens when you're unhappy with the Wikipedia article on your town
by Keith Old 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

Folks, >From the Sonora Union Democrat. http://www.uniondemocrat.com/2009090897749/News/Local-News/Wikipedia-vandal… *Sonora has entered the debate over the accuracy of Wikipedia. * *For two days last month, the city’s entry on the user-edited online encyclopedia described the town as a racist, elitist backwater. * *Wikipedia has come under scrutiny over the years for inaccuracies due to its policy of allowing the public to generate new entries and edit existing ones. Defenders of the Wikipedia, though, say it utilizes the wisdom of the masses and is generally no less accurate than print encyclopedias. * *Whatever the case, Wikipedia is nonetheless currently considering making its entries harder to edit, possibly by enlisting a number of expert gatekeepers. * *Sonora’s entry makes a case for the proposed policy change. * *From Aug. 23 to 25, according to Wikipedia’s records, less-than-flattering edits by someone with the user name “Vayne,” who claimed to be a 21-year-old Sacramento college student named Michael, could be found throughout Sonora’s Wikipedia page, which dates back to 2002. * *Vayne said Sonora’s lack of racial and ethnic diversity, non-Christian places of worship and economic opportunities make it an uninviting place for some. * *“Many (Sonorans) are of higher economic standing and tend to be unwelcoming to visitors without money,” Vayne wrote. “Visitors new to the area or who might be considered ‘ethnic’ should prepare for the high level of ethnic disparity by blending as best as possible. ... Most Latinos have sought work and opportunity elsewhere where they are less likely to be judged due to economic standing, skin color, or a linguistic barrier.” * *Vayne also weighed in on homelessness in Sonora, saying, “The local government literally ignores the homeless problem.” * *The entry was spotted by a Sonora resident on Aug. 24, who contacted Board of Supervisors member Liz Bass, who represents the city, and asked her to do something about it. Bass got some local staffers on the job of restoring Sonora’s entry. * *Bass said the unflattering entry amounted to “cyber-vandalism.” * *“It sounds like a disgruntled person who didn’t get what they wanted out of this experience,” Bass said. “I’ve lived here 37 years. Obviously, we do have shopping centers, a homeless shelter downtown, a bypass and people of color do live here.” * *Vayne had claimed that Sonora lacked malls, divided highways and homeless shelters. * *Monty Youngborg, a retired volunteer for the Tuolumne County History Museum, who does technical work for the museum, likes the idea of Wikipedia tweaking its policy, saying its editors “should have some verified pedigree.” * *“You get these people, maybe they got into trouble with the cops, who can really make a mess and put out a lot of untruths,” Youngborg said. “You never know what sets people off.” * *Youngborg called Wikipedia a “valuable tool,” which he uses often. * *He said the more technical the entry, usually the more accurate it is. * *Because of the plethora of false or biased data available not just on Wikipedia but throughout the entire Internet, Youngborg recommends that people use a “jaundiced eye” when surfing the Web. * *“I think people are going to have to get a little more calloused at the Internet,” Youngborg said.* This is our current article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonora,_California Regards *Keith Old*

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghan...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

In a message dated 9/10/2009 11:33:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time, george.herbert(a)gmail.com writes: > Of course, that's a 5-metric-ton weapon, which is not militarily > useful at this point.>> I can think of a few uses. Will

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Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghanistan
by Keith Old 10 Sep '09

10 Sep '09

Folks, >From the Huffington Post: "Last November, David Rohde was kidnapped in Afghanistan and held for several months, before managing to escape with his interpreter. Media around the world, at the request of the *Times*, kept silent about the kidnapping, and later drew criticism for this from some quarters. It has just happened again -- with my magazine, *Editor & Publisher*, among those not writing about it -- in the case of another well-known *New York Times*reporter in Afghanistan, but for a much shorter period of time. Stephen Farrell, with his aide Sultan Munadi, were seized on Saturday and freed just hours ago in a daring raid by British commandos. Munadi and a commando were killed. Farrell is fine. I saw some indications that Farrell had been snatched in my regular Web searches for media scoops over the weekend. As in the case of Rohde, a handful of not prominent blogs, along with very scattered media abroad (in their original language) reported that something was up, but confirmation was slight, given the silence of the *Times* and U.S. military. This went on for two days, as I kept searching -- and finding that, once again, the media apparently were not rushing anything into print or online. Also, as in the case of Rohde, I noticed that Farrell's Wikipedia entry had been scrubbed -- some user kept trying to post the kidnapping and the "news" kept getting deleted, before the entry was put under "protected" status and the cat and mouse game stopped. You can see it in the "history" there along with complaints of this "censorship crap" occurring again. " http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/again-media-and-wikipedia_b_280… Given the lack of reliable sources, the removal of information on the kidnapping seems justified. His article is here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Farrell_(journalist) Regards *Keith*

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Deletion of unreferenced living person biographies
by Andrew Turvey 10 Sep '09

10 Sep '09

----- "Tony Sidaway" <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > On 9/5/09, Phil Nash <pn007a2145(a)blueyonder.co.uk> wrote: > > I took a quick look the other day at the categories of unsourced > > articles, which go back to December 2006; to be honest, I don't currently > > have the time or will myself to trawl through what is a Sisyphean task. Even > > limiting that to BLP articles is more than enough to tax the stamina of most > > volunteer editors. It's easy enough to begin a stub, and as easy to tag as > > unsourced, but it does take some commitment to take the bricks and fashion a > > mansion, which I think we should be doing. > > I feel strongly that biographies of living people without sources > should be deleted on sight. They can always be recreated by someone > who possesses at least one reliable source. Working with some other editors, I started [1] to go through older unsourced living people biographies (BLPs) and either add references or propose for deletion under the criteria for speedy deletion (CSD), the proposed deletion process (PROD) or the Articles for Deletion process (AfD). Attack pages and pages on people which don't assert notability can be speedy deleted under CSD and PROD can be used for the others if they haven't been PRODed/AfDed before. However, many editors think that neutral unreferenced articles shouldn't be PRODed or AFDed unless the proposer has first made an effort to find sources themselves (see guideline [[WP:BEFORE]]). In my experience being an unreferenced BLPs is not enough to persuade editors that it should be deleted - despite being a clear breach of the BLP policy and hence grounds for deletion; it's more likely to succeed if you can show that it's non-notable. There are 51,000 unreferenced BLPs at the moment [2] - about 13% of the number of articles in category living people and 2% of all articles. Using Twinkle it takes me about 5-10 seconds to propose CSD, PROD or AFD; checking sources takes me about 5 minutes and adding new sources and improving expanding articles takes about an hour. Clearly whether we allow "deletion on sight" or require proposers to improve articles first makes a big difference to whether this backlog will ever be cleared. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AndrewRT/Unreferenced_BLPs [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unreferenced_BLPs Andrew

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghan...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 10 Sep '09

10 Sep '09

In a message dated 9/10/2009 8:56:59 AM Pacific Daylight Time, stvrtg(a)gmail.com writes: > > Let's suppose you have in your possession exact detailed plans for a > > small H-bomb. Would you think you could simply put it into Wikipedia? > > Only if we have reliable, well-researched, and peer-reviewed sources.>> Scratch "peer-review". We don't require that on this sort of article. I'm not even sure we have a policy on "how-to" manuals, do we? Will

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghan...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 10 Sep '09

10 Sep '09

In a message dated 9/10/2009 6:34:59 AM Pacific Daylight Time, fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net writes: > To a certain extent this > conversation has been about, "Common sense, what's common sense?, I don't > want no stinking commons sense, I'll work to rule and, if harm results, > tough!, Harm to Wikipedia?, Public relations? Piss on that!">> Sorry but no. It's been about "your common sense, isn't my common sense." Miscasting it as "fire bad" isn't going to win any new converts.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghan...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 10 Sep '09

10 Sep '09

In a message dated 9/10/2009 6:26:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time, fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net writes: > That is what the Foundation does in such cases, they pass information on > from outside sources that are knowledgeable about the situation.>> > Or, at we've seen, outside souces which create false information when it suits them, and are hypocritical when it doesn't. Will

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghan...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 10 Sep '09

10 Sep '09

In a message dated 9/10/2009 5:48:09 AM Pacific Daylight Time, fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net writes: > We should not publish up-to-date and accurate > information on how to create great harm whether it is about A-bombs or > reporters held captive by the Taliban, and we don't, >> Just to repeat by way of propaganda, there is no credible evidence that publishing details about reporters held captive by the Taliban would cause any harm at all, let alone great. Will

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghan...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 10 Sep '09

10 Sep '09

In a message dated 9/10/2009 3:42:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time, surreptitious.wikipedian(a)googlemail.com writes: > I nominate Will as the person making press statements when someone does > write the how to make a H-Bomb article.>> I would like to thank all the little people I stepped on, on my climb to the top. Will

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WikiEN-l September 2009