---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de>
Date: 18.12.2005 05:30
Subject: [Wikinews-l] Collaborative reporting: QuakeAID and the "class
action lawsuit"
To: wikinews-l(a)wikimedia.org
(I would appreciate it if someone could forward this to wikipedia-l,
since I am no longer subscribed there.)
You may have heard about the "class action lawsuit" against Wikipedia
(http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org - .com is a parody). You may also
have heard that this "lawsuit" is linked to [[QuakeAID]], an alleged
charity soliciting donations for earthquake victims. You may know that
Wikipedians have raised many doubts about the legitimacy of this
charity, and have linked it to a convicted fraudster, Greg Lloyd Smith.
Finally, you may be aware that "QuakeAID" is publishing, through its
associated BAOU.com / OfficialWire site (currently still indexed by
Google News), one article after the other against Wikipedia. A recent
one has described Wikipedia as a breeding ground for pedophiles, and is
linked to another recently created campaign website, Wikipedophilia.com.
(You probably do not know that the same news wire also publishes stories
endorsing Holocaust deniers Zündel and Faurisson.)
More is probably to come. BAOU.com, "QuakeAID"'s parent company, seems
to be trying to do everything possible to discredit Wikipedia, after
Wikipedia has discredited QuakeAID. I think it's time for them to learn
that wikis have teeth.
This is a very, very serious issue and not just some troll setting up
anti-wiki websites. QuakeAID has been, for some time, listed in major
charity directories, and people wanting to donate money for the 2004
tsunami victims were sent there. I don't know how much money they
received, but it must be substantial.
_If_ this charity is a fraud (and that part is _not_ certain at this
point), it's a large scale operation (registered with the IRS), and the
person running it should be put behind bars. So if you've ever fancied
yourself a private detective or investigative reporter, this is your chance:
Wikinews is conducting a full and thorough investigation into all
matters related to QuakeAID and BOAU.com. I have tried to accumulate all
the information in Wikipedia and elsewhere in one place, but I will not
have time to commit myself beyond this. So this will either sink or swim
with your involvement. If the evidence is solid, we can publish this
story, and send a nice dossier to the FBI. If we don't do anything,
BAOU.com will continue its anti-wiki campaign, or disappear quietly.
If you do want to join the effort of researching this, please visit:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_talk:Story_preparation/Wikipedia_class…
If this URL breaks, use:
http://tinyurl.com/bh9m2
This is a historic chance for the Wikinews, Wikipedia and blog
communities to work together. Let's not screw it up.
Erik
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--
An eternity is very, very long, especially towards the end
Now we've /really/ hit the big time. </sarcasm> Anyway, the popular
gaming-centric webcomic Penny Arcade pokes fun at Wikipedia with its
latest comic, available at http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic.
Interestingly, the comic seems to be inspired by a bad experience Tycho,
one of the comic's creators, had with Wikipedia, and his
"rant" (http://www.penny-arcade.com/) seems rather critical. Also, the
comic sparked some discussion on the forums:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=208105.
--
Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg(a)gmail.com>
Ho-ho-ho,
yes, it's a little early, but the presents I bring are not completely
finished either.
My test site [1] now features three features that will, hopefully, ease
some of the pains of reliability and every-day work at wikipedia.
The first one you know, the validation feature, in its current
incarnation. It has already been pre-field-tested by some people from
the German wikipedia.
The other one we talked about, the "stable version". This is a currently
a very basic implementation, and will be overhauled by me to add some
usability and reduce confusion (e.g., clicking "edit" on the stable
version page).
The third one I talked about, but noone saw it yet, so here it is: Task
management! (you gonna love this!)
First, I made some screenshots [2] for the people who don't have time to
read boring text or try it live :-)
Still with me? Great! The task management feature is intended to replace
both the category-and-template based tags like "cleanup" or "wikify",
and the very-long-page-based things like AfD. (Please, don't start yet
another thread about keep/turn off AfD here!)
If you go try it out, better get a user account; so much more fun (can't
change tasks as an anon).
Executive summary:
* Article sidebar
** All open tasks for a page will be displayed in the sidebar of the article
* New tab "Tasks"
** Create new tasks, look at and modify existing tasks for that page
** "Create" ("please create a blank page for a poor anon") and "Write"
("Requested articles") tasks available for non-existing articles
** Tasks can be closed ("closed" or "won't fix")
** You can assign yourself a task; it will be marked as such, so no more
double effort and edit conflict :-)
** Every task, for every page, can have its own discussion page, in a
"Task:" namespace. On these pages, there's backlink and info for the task
* New "Special:Tasks" page
** List your own assignments (so you won't forget them :-)
** Search for (open) tasks
After a long, *long* weekend with little, *little* sleep, resulting in
more than 1000 lines of code for this feature alone, I hereby declare it
"running" :-)
Once I'm rested again, I'll look into additional functions:
* Search for tasks concerning pages in certain categories (yes, that
will include "parent" categories, I hope!)
* Auto assignment: You can sign up for "wikification duty"; a "wikify"
task will be assigned to you, and once you did it, as a reward, you'll
get the next one :-)
Emerging into coma right about ... now! :-)
Magnus
[1] http://www.magnusmanske.de/wikipeerdia/index.php
[2] http://www.magnusmanske.de/tasks/
One user asked me if my previous comment on this issue was meant to be a sarcastic one.
So maybe I should explain a little bit more in detail what I meant.
My point was:
1. I can understand why a number of people who speak that language and live there are not content with the current modus operandi and why we keep getting complaints about this.
2. My personal opinion is that we ought to make some changes.
What I (and obviously many who are actually concerned by it) find unacceptable about the current situation:
- When an internet user from the Republic of Moldova visits Wikipedia's homepage, he finds
among others links to Wikipedia editions in "Română" and in "Moldovenească".
- There are people who think that Moldovan is a distinct language. There are people who think that Moldovan is simply different name for the Romanian. Everybody knows however that both
Romanian and Moldovan are generally written in Latin script.
- Nevertheless, on Wikipedia's homepage "Moldovenească" in not written in Latin script, like the Moldovan society has determined but in Cyrillic script like it was decreed in the unfree days of the Soviet union when the people of Moldova was not allowed to decide for themselves.
- This gives the Moldovan internet user a bad impression of Wikipedia and irritates him or her because they can think that Wikipedia ignores what the independent nation of Moldova decides and rather goes by the standard from the Soviet era.
- Now, if that user clicks on that cyrillic "Moldovenească", he is taken to a page that tells him to make a decision if he prefers the Latin or the Cyrillic script.
- What happens next is the following: If that user choses Latin (i. e. the standard script), he is told that his language is now considered Romanian by Wikipedia and taken to the Romanian Wikipedia. If, however the user should decide for some reason that he prefers Cyrillic (official script during the Soviet era), Wikipedia _now_ considers his language Moldovan and he is taken to a Wikipedia named "Moldovenească".
- And finally he realizes that this wiki that uses the Soviet standard which became suspended one and a half decades ago is given the subdomain "mo" (code reserved for Moldovan which is by default written in Latin script) by Wikipedia!
Now I would like ask everybody who has had the patience to read this far:
Is there anybody who does _not_ understand why a large number of users from the region are upset by this weird arrangement?
When, a few weeks ago, a couple of Wikipedians from the former Yugoslavia were telling us that they were feeling insulted and offended by the mere existence of an edition in Serbo-Croatian I was not able to comprehend that.
But I do understand the irritation here and think it is well-justified.
In a nutshell, Wikipedia currently delivers this message to users from Moldova:
"If you're using the Latin script (like your national constitution says and like the majority of your compatriots do) we'll call your language Romanian but in case you should use Cyrillic, then we'll consider your language Moldovan".
Is there anybody who thinks that there is no need to correct this awkward situation?
Thanks for your time and attention!
Arbeo
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Hi Sabine (y todo mundo)
For all Australian wikipedians, in particular, for Melburnians, this week's Thursday edition of the Age had two articles on wikipedia, one of which was this comparison with Britannica. There was one story in the main body of the Age, and another story in the Live Wire pull out (an IT supplement) - I can't remember which was which.
Salutamu
pippu d'angelo
Message: 9
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:44:05 +0100
From: Sabine Cretella
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] comparison between Encyclopaedia Britannica and
Wikipedia (German)
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List ,
wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <43A15705.2020605(a)yahoo.it>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
http://www.golem.de/0512/42221.html
well ... this is why page creation by anonymous users is not so bad ...
And why it is impossible that Encyclopedia britannica needs to proof and
reproof each single word it writes
http://www.golem.de/0512/42221.html
"both" encyclopeadias - this means even that one that according to our
infos needs to proof every single word - has the same amout of critical
errors in the same articles only in different places ... - hmmmmm .....
considering that Encyclopedia Britannica is 237 years old and Wikipedia
only 5 .... hmmmmm ....
(sorry I don't have time to translate this article - maybe there's an
English one around as well???)
Well I suppose it is time to go "back to ordinary" functioning of
Wikipedia (anonymous users can create articles - this is even easier to
check to my opinion - just switch off all registered users and have
special regard to anonymous page creations).
Ciao, Sabine
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Hoi,
Sometimes something good comes out of unfortunate affairs. Have a read
of this e-mail that I forward to you with permission.
Thanks,
GerardM
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Africa WikiProjects
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:40:00 -0500
From: Martin Benjamin, Editor <swahili(a)yale.edu>
To: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
References: <43940170.8050504(a)gmail.com>
Hi Gerard,
There is a discussion right now on an academic Africa list about how and
why to use Wiki in class and scholarship. I'm copying the discussion clips
below. What comments do you have that I can pass along to the
list? Particularly, how would you (or your colleagues) advise a professor
to approach a Wikipedia class project? What tools are available to make
the job easier? Are there links that offer particularly helpful guidance?
Many of the people who might be inspired to join the project have very
limited computer expertise - think email, web clicking, and the ability to
use Word. How can such people be eased into the world of Wiki?
Here are the comments to this point:
________________
Pursuant to a discussion on H-Luso-Africa on the topic of Wikipedia, an
internet encyclopedia much in the news in a rather negative way lately, I
decided that rather than gripe about the misinformation there, I would add
something myself. To that end I have completely modified the article that
relates to the Kingdom of Kongo and have added a kinglist to the somewhat
inaccurate one that is found on one of its links. Both my article and
the kinglist are as up to date and accurate as I can make them given the
limitations of space and the format of an encyclopedia article. Indeed
elements of both are based on unpublished manuscript and archival sources,
though the format does not allow footnoting.
I am hoping that the article may spin off and help to create more accurate
information in cyberspace about Kongo, given that Wikipedia is growing in
popularity and more and more widely used in spite of our serious and well
placed misgivings.
I would love any feedback that others might give me on the utility of
doing this, either on line or off.
_______________
I think it is extremely important for the Africanist community to edit
and create articles for Wikipedia and other popular sources of
information about Africa. Wikipedia articles are often the most widely
consulted source of info about the history of an African country and the
information contained in Wikipedia articles is copied and freely used
(syndicated) during the creation of thousands of multiplying websites. It
is unfortunate that universities have often not yet come to appreciate
the information revolution which is taking place and thus have not come
to terms with the need to encourage scholars to actively participate in
this revolution since it is part of our vocation, I would argue, to
provide easily accessible information and analysis based on our research
to the general public and not just scholarly articles for our colleagues.
In any case, even scholarly articles are increasing being made available
on websites for the general public as well as for fellow scholars, and so
the distinction between scholarly articles for colleagues and informative
articles for the general public is not as sharp as it used to be. I
recently checked a Wikipedia article on a country I study and found much
of the information very outdated. For those who argue that this is one
indication of the unreliability of Wikipedia articles, I would remind
them that such information often comes from books on African history
which are still widely consulted but very dated. For example, Pierre
Kalck's books on the Central African Republic are still very much
consulted by people wanting to find out about or write a short synopsis
of the history of the country, and while the sections in his books on the
colonial and post-colonial period are still very useful, his chaptes on
precolonial history are now full of misinformation which is unfortunately
used by people constructing websites. The revisionist literature about
precolonial Central African history is not as accessible because it
exists in books and articles which most people cannot easily get their
hands on. So one of our tasks, I would argue, is to share our knowledge
of the most recent revisionist literature on topics with a wider public
by editing and updating Wikipedia articles. For those that argue that
conspiracy theorists and others often include false or dubious
information in Wikipedia articles or other websites, I can only remind
them that books are published every year which are full of dubious and
inaccurate information on every topic under the sun. We need to do what
we can to help improve the quality of what is available on the internet
instead of only complaining about it or discouraging our students from
using internet sources.
______________
Thanks to John Thornton and Richard Bradshaw for bringing up the subject
of Wikipedia and articulating the reasons why African studies should
treat
it as a serious resource.
I would add three quick thoughts:
1) Adding and improving content relating to Africa on the Wikipedia might
be framed in terms of outreach.
2) It might be possible to work with students in the context of courses
on Africa to add to the Wikipedia. For instance an assignment to critique
and if necessary update/correct/complete Wikipedia entries. One imagines
this
could have some interesting spinoff effects, such as motivation (not just
writing an assignment for a grade, but disseminating something for others
to use), and initiation into a kind of scholarly publication (I know that
sounds
stretched, but for undergrads and beginning grad students it would likely
be the first time they "publish" anything serious on the web or anywhere
else). Sure there's a risk of introducing less than ideal material into
the system, but in theory at least, if enough people are doing this, poor
quality content will be improved - and the quantity of information
available on Africa will also increase.
3) Although the vast majority of Wikipedia's content is in English, it
is expressedly a multilingual resource with currently a small amount of
content in some African languages. So another area for contribution might
be entries in these and other still-unrepresented languages of the
continent. In
addition to contributions by African and Africanist scholars, advanced
students of African languages might also be a source of additional content
(under guidance of their instructors, and perhaps as part of what they are
graded on in their language courses).
________________
Let me step out of editor mode for a second here, and say that the more I
think about Donald Osborn's suggestion regarding having students in
African
Studies courses update the Wikipedia, the more I like it. Such a plan
provides students with an opportunity to dabble their toes in the
production of knowledge, but does so with at least a modicum of academic
oversight.
Perhaps we should dub this the "Osborn Initiative"?
___________________
In a course on the history of the Central African Republic this term, I
specifically encouraged my students to write such good research papers
that they could use them as a basis for a Wikipedia article and attach
their full paper to the site as a link. For example, one student conducted
research on the history of the exploitation of diamonds in the CAR and the
Kimberley Process, and I have encouraged him to write a Wikipedia article
on diamons in the CAR and to attach his research paper as a link. Another
student wrote about Protestant missions in the CAR. Same thing. Another on
the role that NGOs are playing in the CAR. Ditto. I did not make it a
requirement of the course this time, but I plan to do so in the future. I
must say that the students were generally very dubious about their ability
to write a paper which would be good enough to be attached to a Wikipedia
article, but some seem interested in trying it.
One real advantage of Wikipedia articles is the links that can be attached
to it to lead the reader with a click to more detailed information on the
topic. For example, an article on the history of the Grace Brethren
mission in the CAR might include a link to triune baptism,
dispensationalism and other topics which would help the reader under-stand
what distinguishes the Grace Brethren from other Brethren groups, what is
taught in their seminaries in the CAR, etc. The main article is just a
take-off point for links which let the reader go anywhere she or he needs
to in order to gain a deeper knowledge of the topic. When I was studying
the Brethren I found the Wikipedia articles on dispensationalism very
helpful since I am not a theologian and was only vaguely familiar with the
difference between Covenantalism and Dispensationalism. Since
Dispensationalists usually have a very pro-Israel orientation, one has to
wonder how Brethren teachings in the CAR has, or will eventually shape,
the views of Central African church leaders toward the Arab-Israeli
conflict (or whatever one chooses to call it). Thus, the difference
between Covenantal and Dispensationalism may be of interest to historians
who examine the conceptual framework within which Central African
Christians view Southwest Asian affairs. Well, enough said for now.
http://www.golem.de/0512/42221.html
well ... this is why page creation by anonymous users is not so bad ...
And why it is impossible that Encyclopedia britannica needs to proof and
reproof each single word it writes
http://www.golem.de/0512/42221.html
"both" encyclopeadias - this means even that one that according to our
infos needs to proof every single word - has the same amout of critical
errors in the same articles only in different places ... - hmmmmm .....
considering that Encyclopedia Britannica is 237 years old and Wikipedia
only 5 .... hmmmmm ....
(sorry I don't have time to translate this article - maybe there's an
English one around as well???)
Well I suppose it is time to go "back to ordinary" functioning of
Wikipedia (anonymous users can create articles - this is even easier to
check to my opinion - just switch off all registered users and have
special regard to anonymous page creations).
Ciao, Sabine
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