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Wikipedia Gets Critical Reception from UK Press at Wikimania 2014
metasonix (650947) writes On Sunday the 2014 Wikimania conference in London closed. Wikimania is the major annual event for Wikipedia editors, insiders and WMF employees to meet face-to-face, give presentations and submit papers. Usually they are full of "Wiki-Love" and good feelings; but this year, as the Wikipediocracy blog summarized, Wikipedia and its "god-king" Jimmy Wales came under considerable fire from the UK media — a very unusual occurrence. And much of it was direct criticism of Wales himself, including a very hostile interview by BBC journalist James O'Brien, who had been repeatedly defamed in his Wikipedia biography by persons unknown.
A yahoo news article claims the general public in England trusts Wikipedia more than traditional news outlets.
And "defamed" or called out on something questionable? Genuinely asking, I never heard of this British journalist until today...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Wikipediocracy isn't a "blog", it's a troll website for a walleyed lunatic fringe of Moonies, Scientologists, pro-ana activists and conspiracy loonies who got banned from Wikipedia and aren't taking it well. metasonix, the OP, is a prime example of such braincases - http://www.metasonix.com/v3/index.php/the-wikipedia-project
The guy who wrote the linked article (Andreas Kolbe) is legit. He contributes quite a bit to Wikipedia and I believe is interested in making it better. He's also critical of many aspects of it, but not trollishly so.
Much of the rest of Wikipediocracy is indeed filled with unsavory characters who're angry they weren't allowed to push various agendas on Wikipedia, though. What seems to have kicked it off initially, among other things, was one of its co-founders getting banned because he tried to expand his linkfarm business into Wikipedia.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Or, we could solve the problem at the root instead of using soft censorship and claiming it's not censorship because the information is still there, just really hard to see. We have better documentation of our lives than previous generations. That means that we have more dirty laundry that can be found. How about we just become more tolerant people and call out people who are not being tolerant people instead of trying to fight the realities of the spread of information . If someone doesn't get a job because they stole a candy bar 10 years ago, organize a boycott of that company for being such petty dicks.
Also, the practice of brand management is exactly the kind of thing we should scared of. Blackwater does awful shit, and changes their name every couple of years so we don't point to the same evil bastards again and again.
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The linked article is just tabloid journalism.
I wrote a comment about how the media experts were focussing on the wrong problems and how they clearly -surprisingly- knew very little about Wikipedia and its problems - BUT then I read the source article and found it's just an attack piece, cherry picking the least interesting parts of the conference and painting every controversy as being the fault of an iron-fist dictat from the Wikimedia Foundation.
What I learned: wikipediocracy is a nonsense website.
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A series of self-portraits taken by Indonesian monkeys has sparked a copyright dispute between Wikipedia and a British wildlife photographer, says Wikipedia is using his copyrighted images without permission. Photographer David Slater complained that Wikipedia rejected his requests for the images to be removed from the website. Although the monkeys pressed the button, Slater set up the self-portraits by framing them and setting the camera on a tripod. The Wikimedia Foundation claims that no one owns the copyright to the images, because under U.S. law, 'copyright cannot vest in non-human authors', the monkeys in this case.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/wor...
Let's see here:
1) "A series of self-portraits" -- I seem to recall a set of pictures initially, some of which could be considered self-portraits, many of which were of the general area the camera was pointed at with some monkey bits partially in the picture. This was not a selfie-shoot; some of the pictures just happened to be a) of the monkey and b) in focus.
2) Slater set up the self-portraits. False. Slater set up the camera, and was completely surprised by the monkey who came in while he wasn't paying attention and started taking random pictures. I read his original article before this whole thing blew up. Back then he was just excited to share this with the rest of the world. It's true that he curated the photos (got rid of the ones that weren't worth publishing), but there was no artistic intent in his leaving his camera unattended.
3) Non-human authors. This same public domain situation exists if you set up your camera with a motion sensor and capture your cat doing funny things. Unless you had intent (difficult to prove, and you have to PROVE it under copyright law), such images are in the public domain.
So yeah; the thing about a site like Wikipedia, is that everyone who wants free publicity but doesn't get the concept of making information FREELY available will try to coopt it for their own use -- and someone has to be the gatekeeper.
Personally, I think for 90% of the articles, Wales does a decent job as the final gatekeeper, and Wikipedia ends up as a more useful resource than Encyclopedia Brittanica. For that other 10%... 8% of it is stuff that should indicate almost immediately that you should go somewhere else for the real story. The final 2% is an issue, but is still a better hit/miss ratio than you'd get from pretty much any other third-party source.
Well, this article he wrote is nonsense. I know nothing else about the guy.
He just takes every controversy and paints it as an unsolvable failure of the iron-fisted Wikimedia Foundation.
Funny -- it seemed to me like one of the most insightful and relatively balanced pieces on Wikipedia I've read in some time. Despite having a number of serious complaints, the author also talks about very positive aspects of the event, as in: "Wikimania was in many ways an inspirational event. There was a palpable sense of enjoyment and celebration in the air..." and later in the final conclusion "As I travelled to Wikimania, I worried that I might hate it. But my worst fears did not materialise." He clearly cares greatly about Wikipedia and wants to make it better.
In fact, some of the potential solutions he mentions address the biggest problems of Wikipedia and could finally be the path to solve them. For example:
Medical content, notably the current initiatives to have medical articles peer-reviewed by academic experts (Cancer Research UK is involved, and is now hosting a Wikipedian in Residence), and provide readers with a permanent and prominent link to that peer-reviewed article version. It's an excellent idea that in the long run could also be transferred to other topic areas. Experts might be more inclined to contribute and review articles if their work is guaranteed some lasting presence. We hope the Foundation will support that effort.
Wikipedia has grown over the years by leaps and bounds with all the wonderful contributions from random people. But for articles that have achieved a relatively good status, Wikipedia is spending more and more time fighting the "barbarians at the gates" who want to vandalize, post misleading information pushing an agenda, and just random editors with little expertise who wikilawyer their way into having the article the way they like, regardless of an expert consensus on the topic. All of this could be solved by keeping articles more "stable" (maybe have a separate proposed edits page, or an "experimental" page that could be edited by anyone and is not the default) and incorporating advice from subject matter experts.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is older than Wikipedia and the best resource on philosophy on the internet, shows how this can be done well. Wikipedia wouldn't have to let go of the option for the general public to edit pop culture articles on their favorite Star Trek or Buffy or Friends episode or whatever -- but for subject matter where there is a peer-reviewed expert academic literature available and experts who are willing to contribute, why not help make that possible?
Similar policies could solve some of the biographical article problems brought up in the summary -- even just holding proposed edits in a queue for experienced and validated editors to allow them would prevent nonsense such as that mentioned in TFA where a reporter has to complain about: "I have spoken publicly about my children having been born as a result of fertility treatment. And my Wikipedia page, which I didn't even know existed, contained a phrase along the lines of 'he wasn't man enough to impregnate his own wife'," a statement that went unchallenged on Wikipedia for nearly a month. The author (and the reporter complaining here) is right -- there's simply no excuse for that sort of nonsense, particularly when Wikipedia has such a poor track record of figuring out ways for real people to correct factual problems in articles about themselves.