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Wikipedia Gets State Funding in Germany
tmk writes "How can Wikipedia be improved? The German government started a project today to train experts to contribute to Wikipedia. The goal is to write or improve several hundred articles about renewable resources in the Internet encyclopedia. The project is funded by the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection. The German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Wikipedian to coordinate the efforts. 'The challenge will be to motivate experts who have done good work in other projects to get involved in the community lexicon. As project director Florian Gerlach told heise online, "Such expert reports are usually written, edited, and published in the normal newspapers or even on other websites. But Wikipedia is radically different: articles there continually grow with input from numerous authors, who often remain anonymous. The end product is constantly changing, and third parties can publish their own texts or even change yours." The future authors will therefore receive some training to help them work with Wikipedia.'"
For the first time, the German edition of the open Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia will be receiving state funding. Germany will be setting aside part of its budget to improve information about renewable resources in Wikipedia.
Paying people to edit wikipedia does not count as donating money. Would we say wikipedia is 'receiving funding from Microsoft' if MS was paying employees to write about MS products?
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
mention the war!
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Just you wait
The problem will be when the US government funds a secret energy task force to write entries about oil being the energy source for the foreseeable future. I predict a revert war between the US and Germany.
While this project does have good intentions, I can't help but wonder if it might do more harm than good for the green movement. I don't know how things are in Germany, but here in the States, global warming is considered by many to be disputable. As is Wikipedia. Right now one of the strongest things the global warming awareness campaign has going for it is the huge number of scientific articles which support the findings. That's pretty hard to argue against. But if they start pushing information onto anyone-can-edit-Wikipedia, some of the authority is lost.
I can hear them now:
"These pinko liberals would have us believe that the Earth is warming up, because of human activity! And what sources do they have to support this? Wikipedia! Oh, that's right, the website that ANYONE can edit! How convenient!"
Skype is too convoluted... Now I'm reverse-engineering the Kyoto Protocol.
Are there Wiki professionals out there that go around and train people on how to use a wiki? Outstanding! I knew my resume had a blank space that needed filling.
As for the US-based wiki, we may not be professionals but dammit we're a union. Now where did I put that union card anyway...
This will fundamentally change the wiki model, which grew rapidly because it did not require its writers to be accountable to existing standards. That made it popular, but also error-prone. Academia and government are going to take over wikipedia from within, by this model, and while this violates the fundamental ideal of wikipedia, it will improve the content vastly. Maybe there's something to learn here about the wisdom of accountability and peer-review standards that, while imperfect, evolved over time for a reason. It's a very generous move by the Germans, and one I hope others follow.
technical writing / development
Germany funding Wikipedia? Oh great.
The obligatory Ayn Rand quote that I feel is applicable here:
...from "To Dream The Non-Commercial Dream", The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. II No. 7, January 1, 1973.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Well, there was that tax on Zyklon-B...
*ducks*
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I kind of wish that it would be possible to go through a credentialing process to prove that a given author has definitely been educated on a particular subject. It would be good if such credentialed people could get a section that cannot be altered by random politicians/companies/idiots/etc. That way you could be a little more confident about a piece of info being accurate, and you can tell the differece between a well recognized academic and a 12 year old.
This could be seperate from the normal wikipedia article; there could be a link near the bottom that leads to the 'expert wiki.'
Would we say wikipedia is 'receiving funding from Microsoft' if MS was paying employees to write about MS products?
No, we'd call that "astroturfing."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They will likely research what they write, write well and have it sh*t on by the general wikipedia trolls, or worse, people who think they know what they are writing about.
Germany started World War II under the leadership of a party that is banned in Germany today, and Germany did not start WWI--to tell the truth, the gears of war were prepped up long before even Gavrilo Princip shot the Austrian archduke. Comparing modern Germany to Nazi Germany is much, much worse than comparing modern Germany to the modern US.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I. G. Metall has organized the new submitters and called a strike. Access to Wikipedia comes to a crashing halt.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Having government agencies disseminate facts to the public through Wikipedia is certainly more cost effective than having them set up and maintain siloed sites like www.nutrition.com, www.consumer.gov, and www.usda.gov to do the same thing, the way the U.S. government does.
If you tried selling me on the concept before it launched, I would have said it was a nice idea but impossible, like the 19th century utopian societies that collapsed on themselves. While Wiki does have flaws, what it gets right far outstrips what it gets wrong. Color me thoroughly impressed. Before someone goes and says "but it doesn't stack up compared to professionally edited encyclopedias and newspapers and books," let me point out that those sources have just as many flaws. New York Times and Iraqi WMD's anyone? I believe Chariots of the Gods was also a published book, same as Mein Kampf. And didn't I remember hearing about the Million Little Pieces guy totally fooling Oprah with his fictional autobiography? Readers are encouraged to use their own intelligence when assessing the validity of claims made in printed material. Official sources can get it just as wrong as Wiki but they lack the discussion pages for people to hash out the truth.
The best suggestion I've seen is that Wikipedia can go the way of Linux distributions. For those who are willing to do their own fact-checking, they can get the straight dope from Wiki, warts and edit wars and all. For academic distributions, editing boards can decide what to accept from the live articles. It naturally won't be all of Wikipedia, just what pertains to the topics that the editing team think are appropriate for the distro. MIT may pull in a ton of science articles and leave out the articles about countries, TV shows, music, etc. Harvard Business School may concentrate on business history, applicable case law, and other subjects encompassed in the curriculum but find the material MIT covers to be factually correct but outside the interest of the course. These distros can then filter edits through a peer review process to make sure they agree with what's entered. The reputation of the editing board is on the line in these distributions and factual inaccuracies here would incur as much shame as if the error occurred in a peer-reviewed journal.
To extend the comparison to open source, one could consider the academic distros to be the stable fork, straight wiki would be the beta version. The respect and prestige accorded to the various editing boards will be a matter of public opinion. Because the board members are not just anonymous yahoos on the net but people with careers and reputations, the overall quality of work should be higher. And, seeing as all of this knowledge is "open source," original research appearing in an academic distro can always be ported into the real wiki.
I do not think any of this is starry-eyed optimism or unrealistic hippie idealism, I think it is quite realistic and the hard parts have already been demonstrated for the skeptics.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I'm excited to hear this, but -- wouldn't the Citizendium be more appropriate, given that the experts could actually be recognized as experts, and the work could go towards a recognized polished page?
wikipedia is of course full of smears, propaganda, lies, errors, partisanship, etc. but at least it's a democratic model of such, so you can expect it from all sides: a random cacophony of background noise. your average person's healthy critically minded bullshit meter can weed the useful from the unuseful
;-(
but by linking the government, any government, to wikipedia, now your cacophony has a louder strain of establishment rhetoric and bureaucratic agenda. instead of your bullshit meter going off here and there, now your bullshit meter is on orange alert all the time: those with an agenda aren't random riff raff, now they have dug themselves deeper into the lifeblood of the entire site
there is no such thing as a neutral unbiased source of information. but a site unhinged from corporate ownership or governmental oversight or funding accountability is pretty much as close as you are going to get. involving any outside entity with an agenda, no matter how innocuous the agenda nor how limited the scope of the involvement nor what the model of involvement is, it taints everything about how you must perceive the site if you have a healthy bullshit meter
a shame, just a bloody awful development because i love wikipedia, but now i love it a little less
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Now they really can be Nazis.
Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux
When calling other people stupid, it's best to use big words like "too" and "she" correctly.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You'd think in Germany they might be especially wary of 'consensus' history projects, especially within a political context. And about privacy laws too, for that matter (cf. the Google/Gmail story from Saturday).
Then again, maybe not...
=======
Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
Her ideas are complex, and have many interesting ramifications - just like Karl Marx. Now I realize that in most ways she was the antithesis of Karl Marx, but IMNSHO she makes the same fundamental mistake as Karl Marx - she appears to place too much faith in her fellow human being. Of course, I've only read one book (Anthem) by her, so I'm definitely no expert on her thinking. I'm basing this mainly on that book (recently read), but I'm also basing it on how her "supporters" describe her philosophy (which largely agrees with what I got out of the book).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The neo-Nazi party, the NPD - and others - are not banned. In parts of Germany they have elected members and considerable power and influence. They differ only slightly from the Nazi party - and that is only because aspects of what they believe in are censored by German Law (The censorship laws are actually part of the problem - they drive neo-Nazi's underground and mask their true numbers). In my experience, as one who is not German but has lived in Berlin for many years, the rise of the neo-Nazis is much greater than the average German in the street realises. There is a significant and growing problem with extreme right wing behavior modern Germany. The Nazi's seem to be smarter this time round. They are making legal changes much more slowly this time, but it is happening.
Seemingly small things, like the decision to mark the site of Hitler's bunker, or the decision to remove the Palast Der Republik in favour of a rebuilt Schloss, are all giving the extreme right more power and influence.
Modern Germans need to wake up to this before it is too late -- again.
Specifically to the Wikipedia thing though - yes, there is a real danger, nay likelihood, of neo-Nazis hijacking that. However, that is simply a function of the fundamental problem with Wikipedia -- cabals rule all. In this, Germany is no different to Microsoft, to Scientology, to the Ayn Rand lovers in the WikiFoundation itself, or indeed to any and all with an agenda and resources.
The fundamental problem with Wikipedia is its delusions of authority, and its designs on the same. If people stopped taking it seriously it would be one hell of a lot more useful and authoritative.
The late, great Anne is invoked:
You might have a point, if this were anything more than a efficiency motivated form change. The experts are already spending their time writing the same material over and over for newspapers. Contributing source material to Wikipedia instead does nothing but save time.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Having annoying twits vandalize information they dislike is one thing, but when Big Brother is using tax money to fund it, it's quite another.
In other words, in your POV, Germany's POV makes sense. True or not, that is irrelevant.
What is discussed here, is that Germany has found a way to "pay the piper" — to further its POV. Perhaps less sloppily, but not entirely unlike the other astro-turfers. Again, whether that is a good or a bad POV is not, actually, relevant.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
...and, will they allow anyone to edit these articles? That's the spirit of a Wiki, right? It's all fine to hire a bunch of smarter monkeys to write for you, but when your "editor" is the rest of us (relatively by comparison) retarded monkeys, I don't see how paying for the initial content makes a difference.
btw...as the parent I was asking those questions rhetorically.
--beckerist
"Such expert reports are usually written, edited, and published in the normal newspapers or even on other websites. But Wikipedia is radically different: articles there continually grow with input from numerous authors, who often remain anonymous. The end product is constantly changing, and third parties can publish their own texts or even change yours." The future authors will therefore receive some training to help them work with Wikipedia.'"
The last person to try recruiting people to edit Wikipedia for money got banned, and his reputation besmirched by the screaming idiots who administer Wikipedia. Fortunately he doesn't care now
There's only one problem with editing Wikipedia as an expert - you'll be buried by the hordes of ignoramuses who know better than you because they've got Google and there's more of them than there is of you.
If you're of a classical bent, you'd call it a Sisyphian struggle - but if you're on Slashdot you'd call it "shovelling shit against the tide".
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
As a German, let me say that the right-wing thread is vastly exaggerated. If anything, non-nationalistic socialism is too strong, and almost dangerous. The programme is roughly the same, only that the Socialists aren't THAT openly against immigrants (but Lafontaine has said something in that direction, too).
The radical right wing is strong mostly in Eastern Germany and/or in areas with high unemployment. It's just a symptom of Germany's problems, not the root cause. Cure the disease and the National Socialists (and Socialists probably, too) will go away.
The problem, and not in Germany but worldwide, is the general rise of neo-fascism, of taking more and more civil liberties away in the name of safety and "terrism".
I personally find it disturbing that people keep voting for the same big parties, just like in the Weimar Republic, while nothing changes, the problems get worse, and both parties basically perform only bad "reform" measures, that hurt instead of help. But we all get the government we deserve.
As a contributor to Wikipedia, the idea that a foreign government is targeting Wikipedia to "improve" articles to reflect its point of view and policies (make no mistake, despite whatever they're calling it, that's what this is) makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I'm not even certain this is legal under current Wikipedia rules and practices.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Rumor has it George W. is going to fund a rewrite of the entry on evolution.
...think this is a very good way to spend money. If money is put into school system, it might be to build new gyms, give teachers a 20 cent raise, maybe a few more computers; if money is put into writing articles for wikipedia, money goes straight to making information available to the public. Very truly making it a 'free encyclopedia' and a reliable compendium of knowledge. I think it could also be beneficial to mark wikipedia articles written by certified professionals on the subject, or something similar.
I'm more or less familiar with the arguments about this decision and I think the decision's both wrong and wasteful, but how do you figure it empowers the extreme right?
PenguiNet: the (shareware) Windows SSH client
It is not hypothetical. Here is a testimony of one such person.
As long as the people are paid to improve the quality per Wikipedia standards, rather than to promote a particular POV, I consider such "hired editors" for a contribution.
I'm a great fan of Wikipedia, but I find this rather scary. What next? Perhaps only letting those approved by government-paid experts contribute articles to Wikipedia like the State-run BBC decides what constitutes news in the UK.
Never, never forget that the BBC kept Winston Churchill off British radio during the long and disasterous run-up to World War II. They allowed only the appeasement point of view on the air, giving Hitler the 'breathing space' he needed to make the war a long and bloody one.
Every time I go to a public showing of the nazis (yes, the courts have to allow it unless there's a very good reason not to; right of public assembly is sacred after all) there are at least 10-50 times as many people demonstrating against them as there are nazis. That feels good. No actually it's terrible that there's even just ONE nazi standing there, shouting seriously stupid things. It breaks my heart that yound and old people are among them. The old one will die out naturally, but the young ones are just desperate, which really is a shame. At least the government has quite some money put into projects to show kids what happened in the 3rd Reich and to root out the cause of frustration. Not enough in my opinion, but they don't stop with it at least.
Germany has not forgotten. Not at all. Come over here and you will see. Ask Jews who live here now, even they will tell you that. We have many, many museums, pieces of art, historic sites and whatnot treating the 3rd Reich critically, none of which try to glorify anything that happened back then - it's the brutal truth.
As to Wikipedia: No, there's no danger of Nazis hijacking it. Firstly, it's not at all in their area of interest (why would they care about environmental issues?) and secondly there are about 83 million Germans who are no Nazis (out of 83.x million) who will report/fix any hijacked site.
And it's great that our government does this - others should do the same. Knowledge for the people for free in an accessible form. Great!
like all other wikipedpia articles
How can German-language Wikipedia sustain its claim to impartiality if contributors are paid by a State institution whose goal it is to "conduct research ... with an eye to launching products on the market"? (German products surely)
I hope all Wikipedians and anonymous IP holders to whom NPOV still means anything will relentlessly vandalize the "improved" articles.
Wikipedia seems to be run entirely by science geeks who never figured out that highschool and TV are brainwashing tactics. How sad for a bunch who supposedly take pride in using their brains that they should have been so easily tricked.
Thus, in Wikipedia, if it doesn't fit with conventional wisdom, it isn't in there.
This is fine if I need to look up how jet engines work or what the capital of Sweden is, but if you want to look up anything which hedges into areas which are controlled, then you might as well forget it. You'll just get loads of false wisdom spat at you with cult-like vehemence.
The genius of the New Big Brother is that Thought is self-policed these days. Who needs Orwell?
Congratulations, humanity. That paper bag trap is going to baffle you for a long time yet.
-FL
It would, but Larry Sanger is kind of a joke, and nobody cares about his sour grapes over leaving Wikipedia with a "you'll be sorry!" and seeing it flourish without him.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
As Wikitruth and the Wikipedia Review forums have shown hundreds of times, Wikipedia is full of inaccuracies and edit wars on all but the most mundane topics. More insidiously, there is tremendous pressure for particular viewpoints from groups of administrators with special interests, sometimes reflecting the bias of Wales or employees.
So, the idea that there will be an organised effort by a particular group to push a particular agenda (that of a particular dept of the German government) is nothing new. The idea that it will spoil some honourable volunteer effort where all points of view "balance out" is, alas, a complaint about a horse that has grown wings and a horn and blasted through the stable roof.
They're German. They're going to be editing the German Wikipedia, which is, unless you speak German, not the one you've been editing.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
One of the nice things is that nobody gets paid to do Wikipedia, no matter how highly respected they are, or how much work they've put in. How does someone who has the official imprimatur of the Foundation compare with them in terms of prestige or authority? With a retired person who spends eight hours a day fixing typos and essentially being one of the little gnomes that makes everything run smoothly?
The Essjay incident should have put the kibosh on credentialism; users should be evaluated by the work that they put in and nothing else. I fear that this sort of sponsored participation will lead the paid contributors to think that they're more authoritative than the folks who just do it for the love of the project.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
More train articles on Wikipedia.
(I completely misread the point of the article from the linked text).
Only two people are paid. They coordinate the efforts of the experts and organize Wikipedia trainings.
(Score:-1, Offtopic) Neither, obviously...
Great, so now the govt. is in charge of giving us the facts. That has no chance of any conflicts of interests getting in the way of getting to the truth.
I know the parent is off-topic but so are all those uninformed comparisons to Germany's past.
Maybe you should remind yourself from time to time that there was more to the war than just who won it and who lost it.
Germany's past is not a fscking joke. It should be a lesson to everyone.
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
What Germans Think Of The NPD (in German, but it should be fairly comprehensible to English-speakers). 82% don't even see the NPD as a valid democratic party.
Specifically to the Wikipedia thing though - yes, there is a real danger, nay likelihood, of neo-Nazis hijacking that.Neo-nazi types have always had the ability to edit Wikipedia and yet articles about things like the Holocaust remain intact...so I fail to see what this has to do with TFA (not sure if you were making that connection, apologies if I misunderstood you).
Modern Germans need to wake up to this before it is too late -- again.While I agree that all countries should be vigilant about the direction they're heading, I feel that a resurrection of the Third Reich is probably the last thing the German people need to worry about. The dire conditions (widespead poverty, economic devistation, the loss of a war, the percieved ineffectiveness of the government et al) that allowed Hitler to whip people into a frenzy simply aren't there, not to mention the fact that many German gamers will happily blast away at Nazis in WWII games. I stayed with a German family in Munich for a while and they *insisted* that I visit Dachau to "learn from history's mistakes."
As for the inaccuracy of Wikipedia on "hot button" issues, I would say that wasn't a problem unique to Wikipedia, but to the topics themselves. After all, no matter what you say about global warming, abortion, politics, etc there's always going to be a large number of people insisting you're wrong, biased, using flawed reasoning, etc. Anyone asking wikipedia to arbitrate the truth for them is asking too much. For math, computer science, linguistics, etc I can trust Wikipedia to generally give me correct forumlas and explainations. But for the hot button issues, there's NEVER one stop shopping. You need to read around and decide for yourself.
Paying people to edit articles on Wikipedia raises questions of bias and propaganda. What's next? Is the German government going to pay people to have its view on taxes, education, religion, etc. edited into Wikipedia?
If the German government wants to support Wikipedia, they should donate hardware and bandwidth.
Germany Funds wikipedia and calls Scientology a cult all in the same day? Wow, time to pack up & head for the smart ppl land.
I'd really like to see more of university student's contribution in wikipedia(s). There's a lot of work being done all over the world by millions of students every year. Tapping into that source would really help wikipedia to grow. With professors and lecturers checking their work anyway, they'd be already peer reviewed by the experts. I wouldn't have minded if some of my work would have been shared to the community - instead of just being buried within my backups. Even lower level schoolwork could be beneficial. Reports on this famous person or that small town could really be useful to someone.
I assume the articles in German will be written. But to the invention of web language digester Babelfish giving thanks, entire Worldsurface from this gift benefit can. Among others I wish our new machine translated feudal barons to welcome!
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.