I was going through the Wikipedia article on the Babbar Khalsa member
Jagtar Singh Hawara, and found that he has been described as a
"freedom fighter" in the intro. A page on the Network 18 website
in.com was cited as the reference for the term "freedom figher":
http://connect.in.com/jagtar-singh-hawara/biography-128389.html
I found it surprising that Network 18 described the alleged assassin
of Beant Singh as a "freedom fighter". On closer scrutiny, I realized
that the in.com page is just a mirror of the Wikipedia article's intro
section. This is obvious from the content and the presence of unlinked
reference numbers (such as "[1][2]") in the text. If you view the page
source, you'll find a meta tag: <META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Web18
Wiki">.
It seems that Web 18 (the Internet and Mobile arm of Network 18) has
been scraping content from the introduction sections of several
Wikipedia articles on a regular basis and publishing it on in.com
without proper attribution (which is required by CC-BY-SA). This can
be confirmed by visiting other pages on the website and clicking on
the "Bio" links on these pages. A few examples:
http://connect.in.com/kuldip-singh-brar/biography-167025.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuldip_Singh_Brarhttp://connect.in.com/environment/biography-517121.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Built_environmenthttp://connect.in.com/taliban/biography-522879.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
There's another, deeper problem here (which has been discussed many
times before): reputed media sources use content from Wikpedia without
attribution, and these sources are then used as references in the
Wikipedia articles to support false claims. Back in 2009, an IP user
(presumably a supporter of the Khalistan movement) had edited the
article to replace the word "Militant" with "freedom fighter":
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jagtar_Singh_Hawara&diff=27769871…
Then in.come must have simply copied this content without attribution,
and in 2010, another IP address used in.com as a reference to support
the assertion that Hawara was a "freedom fighter":
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jagtar_Singh_Hawara&diff=next&old…
--
Utkarshraj Atmaram
http://ut7.in/blog/
A group of us who are interested in the future of chapters and global
participation in Wikimedia projects have proposed a session at Wikimania
2010 that may be of interest:
http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Allow,_Invite,_Encourag…
If you're interested, and also attending Wikimania, we'd love to see you
there (sign-ups possible on the link above). If you're not attending,
but interested anyway, your feedback is welcome.
Cheers,
Achal
Hoi,
Veeven added the translation for the last language that OmegaWiki knows the
translation for Telugu for. As a consequence, there are now many, many
concepts that show most languages in Telugu. Because of the work done in
translatewiki.net, OmegaWiki shows practically everything in Telugu.
As more translations for concepts become available, OmegaWiki becomes useful
as a translation resource. A good example is the combination English Spanish
Dutch German.. The important thing is that the user interface can be in
Hindi, Kannada, Telugu or <your language>. Not only translations are
included, you will also find annotations like the Wikipedia article in a
language, the country a language is spoken in or the script for that
language..
Have a look and learn that for most languages there is already something.
When there is not, at OmegaWiki we are happy to include your language.
Yes, we use MediaWiki and yes, it could be/ have been a WMF project.
Thanks,
GerardM
http://omegawiki.blogspot.com/
Dear Fellow India Wikimedians,
After taking the discussions with the Chapters Committee meeting at Berlin last month (where Arun and Hari represented the India chapter) into consideration, we have arrived at a modified draft for the final ratification by and approval of the chapters committee and for filing with the Karnataka government authorities. Thanks a lot for all your support in bearing with the delays. The modified draft can be accessed at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India/MoA-PostChapComVer
Cheers,
Srinivas.
Unified login across all Wikimedia projects: Gurubrahma"
This is a really interesting situation...esp given the complexity of how
Wikipedia articles are made, not to mention some confusion regarding
open content at large. Personally, I don't think that the lack of
attribution owes to a misunderstanding of the open content license used
by all Wikimedia projects; I think it's laziness at best - or
carelessness at worst.
Erik Moller posted an interesting summary of preferred ways of
attribution when the source is Wikipedia -
(http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-March/050686.html)
and I completely agree that a gently worded letter that encourages the
use of Wikipedia in media reports and broadcasts but which also firmly
clarifies that the community would like some acknowledgement, is a great
idea. If media outlets benefit from what they've seen on Wikipedia, then
it's only fair that Wikipedia also benefit by meriting a mention. One
way to do this might be to have a model set of easy references, e.g. if
the report is on the www use a link, if it is broadcast in any form in
speech, use the project name (Wikipedia, etc.) and so on. Perhaps this
can be done as an overall kit for Wikipedia in the media - I suspect
that some guidance will be required.
On the subject of falsely or inaccurately cited 'facts' from Wikipedia
being reported and thus subsequently providing a source for the 'fact'
on Wikipedia - this is an endlessly fascinating debate on which there's
been much discussion. Personally, it's hard to think how this could
change unless we as a community are alert to correct frivolous edits and
flag obvious errors before they are reported as fact. But it is also
hard to understand why anyone would cite Wikipedia for anything other
than short, aggregated descriptions. (It's important to note that
reporting un-cited or dubiously cited 'facts' from Wikipedia is a
symptom of a similar kind of media laziness as above - anyone who takes
the trouble to understand how Wikipedia works will know that while not
every single word in an article is cited, any significant assertion has
to be, and in that sense, the citation of significant facts will always
have to attributed to something other than Wikipedia). The lines between
different kinds of words on Wikipedia are certainly thin, and this is by
no means something that has an easy resolution.
On a lighter note, the American television comedian Stephen Colbert, in
his usual perceptive way, has devoted much airtime to the topic of
"wikiality" by which he means something like the problem you've
described: see
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/72347/july-31-2006/t…
or
http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-c…
Dear all,
Pranesh Prakash from CIS is coordinating a comprehensive response to the
latest set of amendments proposed to the Indian Copyright Act in
conjunction with Nirmita Narasimhan, Lawrence Liang and I. This will be
a shorter and revised update to the last submission to government which
was made by ALF, which went out some years ago when amendments were
first proposed:
http://www.altlawforum.org/intellectual-property/advocacy/proposed-amendmen…
The draft will be ready later today and organisational sign-ons are
welcome; the focus of our analysis will be on access to knowledge and
strengthening the public domain. If any of you belong to organisations
which are interested in these effects of copyright law, please sign on
by sending an email authorising the use of the name of your organisation
in this effort to pranesh at cis-india dot org copied to sunil at
cis-india dot org either today or tomorrow - and, of course, also ask to
see the draft if you are interested. Once CIS submits the comments by
May 30, they will, of course, be made public.
Cheers,
Achal