 | This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page. |
| This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page. |
| “ | National anthems are fundamentally irrational things. The American anthem was written during the war with Canada, which, essentially, the US lost. (So painful is this that every attempt by Canadians to put it into the historical record in Wikipedia is almost instantly corrected by Wikipedia's US monitors). | ” |
Thursday February 25 2010. --candle•wicke 06:12, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
The German technology program de:Neues had a good segment on Wikipedia last week. Includes interviews with Jimbo, Wikimedia Deutschland and an editor of wikileaks. The video is here: http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/983018/3sat-neues:-Sendung-am-28022010#/beitrag/video/983018/3sat-neues-Sendung-am-28.02.2010 It is fully in German, but I think many around are not too bad at German, so perhaps it deserves a small note. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
A flurry of emails was recently sparked by a question recently send to the foundational-l mailing list. I suppose a short blurb about the responses and such would be beneficial for Signpost readers, since people are constantly wondering what the latest news on Flagged Revs is. Initial post can be found here: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-February/056972.html. The responses are in March's archive. Killiondude (talk) 00:02, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
"Dr. Handel or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Wikipedia" : "Vandalism happens all the time on Wikipedia, and much of it is not cleaned up promptly. Well, this one is just a little different. For those 3.5 hours, that article was linked from the main page of Wikipedia, one of the ten most-visited sites on the web (WebCite). During that period, it was almost certainly viewed by a thousand people or more. Second, that lovely paragraph wasn't the only BLP disaster in the article, which also labeled Handel a "murderer" and a "Nazi", and implied that he had been pressured into leaving Israel by Western intelligence agencies. Third, Mike Handel doesn't even exist except in my imagination (and now on Wikipedia). I created Mike Handel as a test and a demonstration. Wikipedia has a BLP problem, but many Wikipedians are altogether too happy to ignore it." (David Lindsey) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 06:36, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Today's Sunday Times Magazine carries a full page interview with Jimbo in which he talks (a little) about his work for the foundation. The online version can be seen here. Worth mentioning? - Dumelow (talk) 00:05, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
There is currently a a discussion on going at WP:Footy to auto display an unreferenced template when the football squad is unreferenced Gnevin (talk) 12:27, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
"10 of Wikipedia's wackiest arguments" ("Behind every page there's a battle raging for control") - pretty funny -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 00:12, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
With 154,174,390 "unique users," Wikipedia holds 3.26% of all web traffic. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8562801.stm —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 20:12, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Linking#Announcement: Silliest wikilink of the month awards (January–February 2010), like the Darwin Awards these are edutaining in their own way. -- Banjeboi 22:06, 13 March 2010 (UTC) 1-
There's a very interesting analysis of Wikipedia in Evgeny Morozov's book review "Techno Rebellion: Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget" : "... evangelists for its collaborative, if chaotic, editing model have argued that other industries should follow in its footsteps and embrace the crowd-sourced production of knowledge. But would Wikipedia even exist today if one of its founders, Jimmy Wales, had made a fortune with one of his earlier, less-successful start-ups, a web portal that included pictures of female pin-ups and used adult film stars in its advertisements?" (n.b. he said that, not me!) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 03:19, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
An interesting community review is going on currently on Wikiversity - here - regarding a controversial material on Ethics within Wikimedia projects. Already a lengthy discussion involving Jimbo Wales as well, which at one point resulted to the proposal of closure of Wikiversity. The discussion continues... --Gbaor (talk) 09:32, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
"Thriving Cult of Greed and Power" at mediabistro.com Awadewit (talk) 02:45, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
An article in First Monday Awadewit (talk) 21:09, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Not sure if it's been covered before, but just say I Love Wikipedia. Steven Walling 19:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
WP:ALT has been going through a major revamp, Wikipedia:Alternative text for images, which began after a long discussion that has since been moved to Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Alt text. It might make an interesting story. —Charles Edward (Talk | Contribs) 15:26, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
There was a piece in The Courier Mail today regarding Ryan Harris (cricketer). For the past two years, the article has stated that he was born in Nowra, New South Wales, when in fact he was born in Sydney. The problem seems to have been introduced when someone used this version of his profile on Cricinfo for the birth location, which was then updated on Cricinfo but not Wikipedia. Sports journalist Mike Colman did a search and found that the only place currently drawing a link between the two was his Wikipedia article, and Harris is being constantly bugged by Nowra-area media for an interview because of it!
A relatively minor issue maybe, but perhaps interesting given the recent concern over BLPs. Unfortunately the article itself is not online. Lankiveil (speak to me) 03:14, 20 March 2010 (UTC).
WikiProject Good Articles is scheduling a backlog elimination drive for April 2010; this comes in the wake of the GA Sweeps that was completed earlier this month which was featured in the current issue. The drive will be coordinated by Wizardman and myself (MuZemike) and will last for the entire month. The goal of this drive is to bring the number of outstanding good article nominations down to below 200. This will help encourage more users to strive for article quality in getting articles up to GA standing and ensuring that they get reviewed in a timely manner. Awards will be handed out to those who complete a certain number of reviews as well as for those who complete the most reviews. –MuZemike 23:38, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
On Sunday March 21, Vulva was article of the day in the German Wikipedia. After some discussion, the article was illustrated on the main page with an explicit photo (screenshot).
A lengthy and heated discussion ensued on the main page's discussion page, reaching the equivalent of about 130 printed pages and resulting in some site bans and editor retirements. Jimbo joined in, writing
On his discussion page, Jimbo referred to the insider joke WP:SPIDER. In the end, the photo stayed on the main page for the full 24 hours.
The reaction reaching the German support email address info-de@wikimedia.org was comparatively limited; by Tuesday they had received 42 emails about the illustration, all negative, ranging from irritation to horror.
Sources:
AxelBoldt (talk) 17:42, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
There has been mediation ongoing for a while regarding whether the article goatse.cx ought to contain a screenshot of the website (Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2010-01-12/Goatse.cx). However, incident was sparked last week when administrator Prodego deleted the image File:Goatse.fr_homepage.png, prompting a flurry of activity of both criticism and praise at ANI. There was a brief (and unsuccessful) motion to deadmin Prodego. The case was taken to DRV, where three sides have emerged - those who think the image should be deleted, but feel the deletion as out of process; those who think the image should be kept; and those who endorse the deletion. The latter of these, including Jimmy Wales, are generally justifying themselves under the basis that the image fails NFCC#1, while opponents state that that is not the issue as there is no consensus that it fails, and that if it does then several other images such as the soldiers erecting a flag at Iwo Jima could just as easily be described and thus should also be deleted.
Note: the image in question has previously survived an IfD, as has the article (multiple times).
I think this is quite an interesting little problem which the community might appreciate information on. Please edit my stuff into something coherent. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:42, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Downtime on Wikipedia is now sufficiently rare that it's a newsworthy event when it happens! See the telegraph article. Mike Peel (talk) 23:30, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Microsoft's search engine Bing contains enhanced copies of Wikipedia articles in its Reference section. They recently added a new location feature which presents a clickable and zoomable map displaying all locations mentioned in the article.
Source: [2]
AxelBoldt (talk) 02:24, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
They've released a bunch of info on their presentations.©Geni 23:16, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Here is an article from The Guardian about Wikipedia's redesign. ISD (talk) 12:52, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I find it very odd that we are changing the default text to improve usability yet are seemingly doing niothing to improve the prehistoric looking main page design....That pastel graphic looks so 1996,,,, Dr. Blofeld White cat 14:30, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
This blog has just been completed. It is part of the "One Hundred Days To Make Me A Better Person" project created by comedienne Josie Long for the Londwon Word Festival. ISD (talk) 18:27, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi I'm Kay Kiljae Lee, a Ph.D candidate in University of Kansas. I am currently conducting a research on the motivators of online collaboration. Hereis a survey page through which I am collecting the initial data (17 Mar ~ 15 May 2010) The survey is conducted with complete anonymity and the first set of data will be analyzed for part of my research aiming for AIS (Association for Information Systems) conference 2010. You can contact me by clicking here. Your participation will be greatly appreciated.Kay Kiljae Lee (talk)
I was looking at Wikipedia:Featured article statistics (which is a hand-recorded tally of wikipedia's number of articles by month). In November, February, and March, 30,000 new articles were created. The last time we created so few articles in a month was March of 2005. Article creation on en wikipedia has hit a 5-year low. Raul654 (talk) 15:48, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Not precisely Wikipedia-specific, but http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2010/03/25/presentation-participation-in-communities-of-practice/ is presentation on the factors involved in making goal-oriented online communities work. If this link is not appropriate for the Signpost, maybe one of the active bloggers contributing/lurking here could use it. -- llywrch (talk) 16:09, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee has determined that there is a need for additional oversighters and checkusers to improve workload distribution and ensure complete, timely response to requests. Beginning yesterday, experienced editors are invited to apply for either or both of the Oversight or CheckUser permissions. Current holders of either permission are also invited to apply for the other. The last day to request an application is April 10, 2010. For more information, please see the election page.
For the Arbitration Committee - KnightLago (talk) 16:47, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Starting on April 5, the default skin will change from monobook to Vector. See this Raul654 (talk) 20:38, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikiversity open letter project/WMF Board March 2010: "This OPEN LETTER seeks clarification about disruption of the Wikiversity project and the censoring of Wikiversity content by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and will be sent to the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. The text of the letter was frozen at the end of March. Wikiversity participants will now have a week (April 1- April 7) to sign the letter." (Disclaimer - I currently have no involvement in this letter, I'm simply suggesting it as a topic) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 22:10, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Interesting critical analysis - "Wikiversity: When Breaching Experiments Attack": "In brief, Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) board member and Wikipedia co-founder Jimbo Wales was nearly tricked, with an ease that can only be described as laughable, into shutting down the entire English Wikiversity subdomain, a wiki with over 80,000 web pages - all with the "full support of the Foundation" - by someone who had announced shortly beforehand on Wikiversity itself that he was about to try to get Wales to do just that, as an "experiment." " (Disclaimer - the preceding were the article writer's words, not mine) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 23:59, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Recently, Cunard (talk · contribs) had nominated a number of hidden or secret pages, which stirred up quite a debate among users. In one nomination alone, there can be a 'keep', a 'delete', a 'weak keep' and a 'weak delete'. Some users want all of these to be deleted, while some want all to be kept. Most sub-pages of such hidden pages were deleted, and undeletion requests returned no result. Kayau Voting IS evil 04:19, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
"Wikifounder reports Wikiparent to FBI over 'child porn'" "Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has reported the site's parent organization to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he believes the Wikimedia Commons "may be knowingly distributing child pornography." (Personal disclaimer - don't shoot the messenger!) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 00:00, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Follow-up Larry Sanger reply (disclaimer - those are his views, not mine) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 23:20, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Why did Sanger post this to a user who hasn't edited in over 2 years though? -- Ϫ 13:24, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia' article on whistleblower Anat Kam currently states that
citing a deletion debate on the Hebrew Wikipedia (Google translation).
As this appears to be a widely discussed BLP case which might provide insights for readers from the English Wikipedia too, it would be nice if a Hebrew speaker could write a brief summary of that controversy (about the he: article, not about the whole legal case) for the Signpost.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:45, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
I was blasted on a Slate (magazine) podcast from the 39:10 minute mark almost to the end of the show as a University of Michigan-crazed superuser.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 23:35, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Some experiences from a BLP subject. Stifle (talk) 09:02, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Total edits in Wikimedia projects according to the Wikimedia counter is expected to reach 1,000,000,000 sometime this Friday. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Wikimedia_counter. -- Ϫ 13:19, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Cuil has recently launched an automatic encyclopedia engine called Cpedia. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Cpedia.2C_an_automatic_encyclopedia for more details. - hahnchen 22:48, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
The bug is 23223. I like the suggestion of moving the plume toward America best :p Circéus (talk) 16:35, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Following the conclusion of the GA Sweeps in March 2010, the April 2010 GAN backlog elimination drive has accomplished its goal of the number of outstanding GA nominations to below 200 – 12 days before the scheduled end of the drive. As of 00:00 19 April 2010, from the beginning of the drive, 512 good article nominations have been reviewed so far with 379 of them passed, 67 failed, and 68 placed on hold according to the list of completed GANs by the participants; 330 GANs were reviewed in the backlog elimination drive in Spring 2009|previous GAN backlog elimination drive in February–March 2009. Here are some other statistics from as a result of the backlog elimination drive:
–MuZemike 01:48, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
As part of Malayalam Wikipedia Meetup 2010, the Malayalam wikipedia has released 500 selected articles on a CD ROM. This is the first time in India, a Wikipedia on local language releasing its articles for offline usage. utcursch | talk 05:55, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Facebook have quietly announced that the content for their new "Community pages" will be automatically scraped from Wikipedia: [4] — Pretzels Hii! 20:01, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
We at Wikinews are holding n:Wikinews:May 2010 writing contest. I was wondering if you could include a little blurb. Thanks. --Mikemoral♪♫ 04:36, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
This entry in Mark Mardell's blog gave me a chuckle. Waltham, The Duke of 18:10, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Judges rap Wiki-evidence in immigration cases at The Globe and Mail. Mindmatrix 14:25, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
"Backstage with the Wikipedians" "Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia, is a massive project, where human knowledge is collected and edited by ordinary users. But behind the scenes of the German-language version of this intellectual utopia is a group of small and dedicated volunteers. Their passion for truth at times leads to bitter disputes." -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 11:31, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
You might be interested in knowing that the Guild of Copy Editors is organizing a backlog elimination drive for the month of May 2010. Editors are cordially invited to participate. The Guild hopes to reduce the large number of articles tagged for copy editing issues, which currently stands at over 8,200. We would be extremely grateful if our invitation to participate can be included in the next edition of The Wikipedia Signpost. Thanks. -- S Masters (talk) 16:46, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
There's an interesting long post on the blog of writer Peter David, "The Wikipedia Deletionists, Round 2", recounting an article deletion debate. The perspectives are illuminating, as another writer says "This is like a trip into Bizarro-land." and Peter David comments "If you ever want to get an up-close-and-personal feel for what the Mad Tea Party is like, go watch the Deletionists in action." -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 14:09, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Picture of the day photo credits might be something to include somewhere in the next edition. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:11, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
"Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age" Larry Sanger - Interesting thoughts, e.g. "Perhaps the highest-octane criticism, quite relevant to the current discussion, is Jaron Lanier's essay "Digital Maoism." Among Lanier's well-placed points is that online collaboration in what he (along with Kevin Kelly and others) calls "hive minds" (e.g., Wikipedia) unsurprisingly tends to depersonalize and alienate us, cheapening our individuality and sapping the interest and idiosyncrasy from our writing and thinking." -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 13:08, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Jimbo was/is featured as one of the commentators in the new special America: The History of Us (a redlink as of me posting this), on the history channel. I didn't see the episodes myself, but a friend also told me that he was billed as the "Co-founder of Wikipedia". Ks0stm (T•C•G) 20:51, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikimedia Commons has been blocked in Iran.[7] Kaldari (talk) 20:51, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
The New York Times claims we are using Flagged Revisions, and draws the conclusion that "the result has been a steady desertion by amateur editors and an increasing dominance by experts" ("Challenging the Limits of Open Society", NyTimes, April 23, 2010). Plain wrong on many levels. Amalthea 10:30, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikimania 2010, this year's global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe, is accepting submissions for presentations, workshops, panels, and tutorials related to the Wikimedia projects or free content topics in general. The conference will be held from July 9-11, 2010 in Gdansk, Poland. For more information, check the official Call for Participation. Cbrown1023 talk 00:50, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
"More replies about Wikimedia and the fallout of my report to the FBI" Larry Sanger - If Signpost is going to do a follow-up on, err, recent events in this matter, I suggest this post by Larry Sanger is much better source for his views than the Fox News article: "But I think Wikipedia must become more consistent with the somewhat higher standards of the world it is a part of, and I would think of myself as lacking courage if I did not say so. I hope others will join me." (Disclaimer - my finding his views worth examining does not mean I share them all). -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 03:42, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
[8] 86.41.80.244 (talk) 19:08, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Please see commons:Commons:News regarding the sexual content purge for a complete archive of relevant media regarding this event.
By fiat, Jimbo has asserted that Commons will not include sexual content covered under the Section 2257 record keeping requirements. The exact details of what will happen are still being worked out, but this is a big change producing no small amount of conflict. Dragons flight (talk) 22:28, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia is nearing its first goal in eliminating unsourced biographies of living people, or "BLPs".
The goal is to have no more than 30,00 "old" unreferenced BLPs on June 1. There had been about 50,000 at the start of the year.
The June 1 goal is the first of series, spread over a year, based on an RFC earlier this year. Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons is helping coordinate efforts. Project members are adding sources and removing outdated tags.
The project is also working to encourage editors to help in their areas of interest. Other Wikiprojects are being notified of unsourced BLPs that apply to each project. This is being tracked at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/WikiProjects.
Some projects had been working on this effort for quite a while. Football has been running its list for almost a year -- User:Rettetast made it. The-Pope started a list for Australia in January, and India made up their lists around that time, then Rugby and a few others were done as well.
Then eventually Okip got Tim to come on board and his DASHBot made it all possible to get every project listed and regualarly updated -- we had a few hiccups along the way.
One editor, on his or her own, was addressing 1000 out of 3000 unreferenced football articles.
Working from another angle is the replacement of templates on article referenced solely or mainly to IMDB. A new tag has been made, aiming to clarify the situation of those page. For progress, see User:Doncram/IMDBzap.
Other efforts include a contest, pledge page, and the sticky prods. Maurreen (talk) 22:49, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
It was reported on Chortle.co.uk, with visual evidence, that someone wrote on the Wikipedia article covering the comedian John Cleese saying that Cleese died. ISD (talk) 13:40, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia's Parent Company Starts Purging Porn From Its Websites. Remember (talk) 19:33, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
The poll on Jimbo's founder privileges is reaching consensus:
--Alecmconroy (talk) 01:39, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
The Israeli parliament is currently debating a bill that would open up government photo archives. It was initiated by Wikipedia Israel and is also known as the "Wikipedia bill". It is however not clear how useful it would be to the project, since the bill would put restrictions on commercial use and would forbid using the photos in racist propaganda campaigns. [10] AxelBoldt (talk) 04:25, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
SF chronicle interview with Jimmy on why Knol failed —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:53, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
"Deconstructing Wikipedia" - Feature Story Reed magazine June 2010 "Larry Sanger ’91 launched a revolution. Why does he want to start over?" -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 12:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
...is an upcoming new open-source social network that aims to be more private than Facebook. It has received quite a bit of attention, including an article in the New York Times. Their website [11] says:
We are 140-character ideas. We are the pictures of your cat. We are blog posts about the economy. We are the collective knowledge that is Wikipedia. The internet is a canvas – of which, we paint broad and fine strokes of our lives with. It is a forward extension of our physical lives; a meta-self comprised of ones and zeros. We are all that is digital: If we weren’t, the internet wouldn’t either.
I'm not sure if this means anything; I'm putting it here for others to interpret. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 20:57, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
This item will be published in Wikipedia's ITN on 12-May-2300. World is too hot--yousaf465 02:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
First round had begun (as of May 14) and will end in one week. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2009 MahangaTalk 02:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
The CheckUser and Oversight election has now opened. Any editor who has made at least 150 mainspace edits prior to the first announcement of the election may vote. The voting will close at one minute past 23:59 UTC on 27 May 2010.
Direct link to the voting pages
For the Arbitration Committee - KnightLago (talk) 14:48, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Following the publishing of an xkcd cartoon which defined the word Malamanteau, the page was created on Wikipedia, and then redirected to xkcd with much discussion on the talk page over whether or not it should be its own article. As of 00:41, 15 May 2010 (UTC) the article itself is 66 bytes in length, while the talk page is over 200 kb. -mattbuck (Talk) 00:41, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
An article from The Guardian ISD (talk) 13:22, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
X! has just announced that his edit counter has reached 1 million hits in only 1.5 years. Worthy of a news brief, of course. I think it also may say something about the significance of an editor's edit count to fellow Wikipedians, or maybe just an editor's interest in their own editing nature, or perhaps an editor's vanity. Maybe an article exploring this would be good. Diderot's dreams (talk) 14:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
-- Cirt (talk) 23:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Pakistan restricted access to Wikipedia and banned viewing of certain pages on the website in the country on May 20, 2010, according to Fast Company,[1] The New York Times,[2] Radio France Internationale,[3] The Express Tribune,[4][5] The Washington Post,[6] Computer World,[7] Newsweek,[8] Agence France-Presse,[9][10] and the Financial Times.[11] Agence France-Presse noted, "The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) extended a ban on Facebook, ordered by a court until May 31, to popular video sharing website YouTube and restricted Wikipedia."[10] The Washington Post reported, "At least 450 sites, including Wikipedia, were also cut off by midday" on May 20.[6] Radio France Internationale quoted the editor of The Friday Times, who stated, "They’ve banned not just Facebook, now you have YouTube. They’re also blocking Flickr, I’ve just heard that they’ve blocked Wikipedia ... eager beavers sitting in the PTA and in other ministries are just going on and blocking sites."[3] The New York Times reported that the ban, "also included certain pages on Flickr and Wikipedia".[2] According to Radio France Internationale,[12] and Newsweek, pages were blocked on Wikipedia by the Pakistan agency due to what the government described as "growing sacrilegious contents".[8] Ahmad Rafay Alam of the Pakistani English-language daily newspaper The Express Tribune commented, "the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has taken it upon itself to block Wikipedia, among other things."[5] Reuters reported on May 20 that "websites, including Wikipedia and Flickr, have been inaccessible in Pakistan" since the previous evening.[13] According to Agence France-Presse, a representative of the organization the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan, Wahaj us Siraj, stated "Wikipedia had been blocked" in the country.[9]
Thank you for your time. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 18:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
From The Washington Post - "And that's how a klezmer-playing Maryland dad wound up providing Wikipedia to Cuban Jews." APK whisper in my ear 07:04, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether I'm putting this in the right place. But can this or something like it run in the next issue, please? Maurreen (talk) 08:06, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia is nearing its first goal in eliminating unsourced biographies of living people, or "BLPs".
The goal is to have no more than 30,00 "old" unreferenced BLPs on June 1. There had been about 50,000 at the start of the year. As of May 19, editors had reduced the number to less than 32,000.
The June 1 goal is the first of series, spread over a year, based on an RFC earlier this year. Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons is helping coordinate efforts. Project members are adding sources and removing outdated tags.
The project is also working to encourage editors to help in their areas of interest. Other Wikiprojects are being notified of unsourced BLPs that apply to each project. This is being tracked at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/WikiProjects.
Some projects had been working on this effort for quite a while. Football has been running its list for almost a year -- User:Rettetast made it. The-Pope started a list for Australia in January, and India made up their lists around that time, then Rugby and a few others were done as well.
Then eventually Okip got Tim to come on board and his DASHBot made it all possible to get every project listed and regualarly updated -- we had a few hiccups along the way.
One editor, on his or her own, was addressing 1000 out of 3000 unreferenced football articles.
Working from another angle is the replacement of templates on article referenced solely or mainly to IMDB. A new tag has been made, aiming to clarify the situation of those page. For progress, see User:Doncram/IMDBzap.
Other efforts include a contest, pledge page, and the sticky prods. Maurreen (talk) 22:49, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
From Business Insider - "Watch Jimmy reveal the mystery of the Wikipedia staff." APK whisper in my ear 06:59, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
WP:STOCKS#Drini for the "I missed that day at target practice" award.
FT2 (Talk | email) 16:02, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
From Business Insider - "Where will Wikipedia be in 10 years? How big can it get?" APK whisper in my ear 16:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Calm down Al Gayda. (Durka Durka) It doesn't involve us. I'm talking about actual cockfighting. From The State - "That rogue juror then brought pages of Internet research from the Wikipedia Web site into the jury room and held a private discussion about the case with three other jurors, the whistleblower juror testified...But jurors who violate the rules can go to prison. And, depending on the seriousness of the misconduct, [U.S. Judge Cam] Currie could declare a mistrial and overturn the guilty verdicts against six people government lawyers called key players in major cockfights in Swansea and Williamsburg County." Déjà vu. APK whisper in my ear 16:21, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Last month, Wikipedia was the fourth most popular website. "According to Google, which ranked the sites based on unique visitors,...Wikipedia came in fourth with 310 million unique visitors and 7.9 billion page views." (via the Los Angeles Times) APK whisper in my ear 05:09, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
"Wikipedia not showing properly in Apple's Dictionary" (by Topher Kessler, CNET.com) - "Apple's Dictionary application is useful for grabbing information about items, either by looking them up in the dictionary or thesaurus, or by using online resources such as Wikipedia. Recently Wikipedia has undergone a few site and design changes, which have broken some of the way items are displayed in the Dictionary application." APK whisper in my ear 05:20, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia sysop (User:ABC) - "Drink the Kool-Aid."
Newly registered account (User:XYZ) - "But, but, I don't wanna."
pause
ABC (talk | contribs) blocked XYZ (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite (Vandalism-only account)
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., discusses "The Wikipedia Cult" with Global Politician (interview by Daniel Tynan). APK whisper in my ear 05:48, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
I would like to suggest that Newsletters from Wikiprojects should be in the Signpost so that they can get more readers and possibly help promote Wikiproject-related projects. Ex: Wikiproject Video Game. GamerPro64 (talk) 14:58, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
"Anatomy of a Wiki-hoax" (Ken Jennings) - "A couple months ago, I introduced you to the Wikipedia article (now yanked) on Orange Julius namesake Julius Freed, which is full of all kinds of crazy trivia, like the fact that he invented a shower stall for pigeons. I was mostly interested in the article because (a) it had sat unchanged on Wikipedia for five years, and (b) it all seemed transparently phony to the trained eye." -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 17:20, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
The Great Malamanteau Crisis of 2010 is mentioned in today's Boston Globe. (by Erin McKean) APK whisper in my ear 07:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
How being shown on article pages and in the interwiki links YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 06:43, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
I feel as though I am being bullied out of Wikipedia when all I do for the most part is qualitatively improve articles by adding citations. I have a group of malign editors that have formed a cohort against me. They have searched really hard to find a few matters of dispute out of my 20,000 or more edits that I have made to this Project. I would like to voice my concern on Signpost. Would somebody like to interview me? B9 hummingbird hovering (talk • contribs) 10:20, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
From LiveScience - "A new study says Wikipedia is as accurate a source for cancer information as a professionally reviewed resource — assuming you can wade through the lousy prose." (additional coverage: The Washington Post, Time, The Independent, Los Angeles Times) APK whisper in my ear 14:25, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
From The Hill - "Wiki founder Jimmy Wales criticizes broadband subsidies". (by Gautham Nagesh) APK whisper in my ear 14:34, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
The radio sketch comedy Bigipedia, which is show which parodies Wikipedia, has been given a second series. Source: British Comedy Guide. ISD (talk) 13:56, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
From The New York Times - "The British Museum has begun an unusual collaboration with Wikipedia, the online, volunteer-written encyclopedia, to help ensure that the museum's expertise and notable artifacts are reflected in that digital reference's pages. About 40 Wikipedia contributors in the London area spent Friday with a "backstage pass" to the museum, meeting with curators and taking photographs of the collection. And in a curious reversal in status, curators were invited to review Wikipedia's treatment of the museum's collection and make a case that important pieces were missing or given short shrift." (by Noam Cohen) APK whisper in my ear 22:45, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
From Brigham Young University–Hawaii's Ke Alaka'i student newspaper - "Nearly forty percent of college students trust Wikipedia over their professors, according to a recent survey." (by Richard Farnes) Interesting, but note the small survey sample. APK whisper in my ear 15:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
The new user-interface is scheduled to be rolled out on the Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, and Dutch Wikipedia's on Thursday, June 10: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-June/059020.html Kaldari (talk) 03:18, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Clever Wikipedia satire from BuzzFeed: [12]. Lampman (talk) 23:42, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
From DNA - "The income-tax (I-T) department insists that fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani is not an artist and to support its claim it relies on Wikipedia -- a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit...Justice DY Chandrachud, however, asked, 'How reliable is Wikipedia? Isn't it subject to user modification?'" (by Mayura Janwalkar) APK whisper in my ear 16:57, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
From the Financial Times - "Of its 'models', the least recognisable but probably most influential is Jimmy Wales, who started Wikipedia on the premise that the sum of human knowledge should be available free to anyone on the web, and whose non-profit foundation that raises funds for, and develops, the site is often cited as a new business model." (by Avril Groom) APK whisper in my ear 17:08, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
From The Chronicle of Higher Education - "[Clay Shirky] figures all of Wikipedia, his gold standard for group activity online, took about 100 million hours of thought to produce. So Americans could build 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year just by writing articles instead of watching television." (by Jeffrey R. Young) APK whisper in my ear 05:11, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Depending on exactly how you measure it we've just broken 1400 volumes of text on the English wikipedia (obvious with pics it would be rather higher but no one has worked out how to calculate that).©Geni 17:00, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
"Derogatory remarks about two Tampines Junior College (TPJC) students in a Wikipedia entry prompted one of them to file a police report."
The vandalism has removed from the public archives now.[13][14] utcursch | talk 09:05, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
A story from the BBC. ISD (talk) 09:51, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
In a copyright case in Sweden the Tingsrätt cited Copyright aspects of hyperlinking and framing [15] as a general background for their decision. --Ainali (talk) 21:43, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
From Gawker.com and The San Francisco Appeal - "Local Writer Will Pay You $15/Hr To Create A Wikipedia Entry To Support Her Story For The NYT". (by Hamilton Nolan and Eve Batey, respectively) APK whisper in my ear 22:47, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
From Forbes India - "World-wide, the number of people speaking English is actually quite small;" Hmmm. See List of languages by number of native speakers. APK whisper in my ear 22:55, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
From The Irish Times - "A lot of scientists don't like Wikipedia because it's published to the web maybe it's not as accountable as traditional publishing material. But I think Wikipedia is proof that, for the most part, it works – and it's going to help us bring the message to a wider audience." (by Claire O'Connell) APK whisper in my ear 00:22, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
From The Boston Globe - "AllOfWiki Offline is a $10 app for iPhones and iPads that does something very simple and powerful. It downloads all the text content of Wikipedia, and stores it in your device's memory." (by Hiawatha Bray) APK whisper in my ear 00:30, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
From the Nielsen Company - "The popularity of social media is undeniable – three of the world's most popular brands online are social-media related (Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia) and the world now spends over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites." APK whisper in my ear 08:10, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
See above. From Global Politician - "Is Wikipedia a Cult? Wikipedia strikes back" (by Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.) APK whisper in my ear 16:12, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
From the Knoxville News Sentinel - "Kernell figured out the answer to Palin's password security account courtesy Google and Wikipedia, changed the password, gained access to the account and boasted about it on a popular Internet discussion board." (by Jamie Satterfield) APK whisper in my ear 03:48, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
He's...popular? From USA Today - "Users get creative with Wikipedia page of USA-Slovenia referee". (additional coverage - Politics Daily, The Atlantic, NBC News, San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post) APK whisper in my ear 21:32, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
The pictures from Britain Loves Wikipedia are now available on Commons, and are in need of categorization and adding to articles. See the WMUK blog post for details. Mike Peel (talk) 15:56, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
From the Star Tribune - "Wikiracing, a new game played using the online encyclopedia, is an increasingly popular distraction during late nights in the library or long days spent in classrooms for many young people. In Wikiracing, competitors try to get from a predetermined starting page on the website to a predetermined destination as quickly as possible." (by Ben Jones) APK whisper in my ear 22:48, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
The WT:POST discussion seems to show that the Signpost would like more news on sister projects published, so here's some random bits I've picked up, if anyone wants to write about them: Wiktionary revamped hideable content and introduced hideable quotes a couple days ago, WT enabled the Flood Flag (though that was on June 11, so I don't know if that's recent enough), wikt:WT:EDIT had nested translations enabled (June 7), the Wiktionary policy on "Names of specific entities" has been replaced following a vote, and one new bot was approved on Wiktionary (see wikt:Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2010-06/User:Diego Grez Bot for bot status). Also, wikt:Wiktionary:WikiProject Medicine was started. Wikibooks added 5 namespace aliases, 'WB:' to 'Wikibooks:', 'WJ:' to 'Wikijunior:', 'CAT' to 'Category:', 'COOK:' to 'Cookbook:', and 'SUB:' to "Subject:'. WB also imported ((WPBannerMeta)) from Wikipedia, (now used only on b:Wikibooks:WikiProject Languages, I think). --Yair rand (talk) 02:58, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
From Firmas Press via The Miami Herald - "The situation is very dangerous, because Wikipedia is also a field of ideological battle where there's no shortage of lies or a biased selection of information to distort the image of the adversary someone wants to destroy. Wikipedia has many collaborators who are healthily devoted to the spread of knowledge, but it also has many warriors intent on destroying the reputation of those whom they consider their enemies. I learned this first-hand when a former student warned me that my biography in Wikipedia described me as a terrorist in the service of the CIA, the culprit of the murder of priests and a thousand other delirious fantasies." (by Carlos Alberto Montaner) APK whisper in my ear 06:06, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
The Journal of Medical Internet Research has recently started an Open Peer Review process in which any registered user can review articles which have been submitted for consideration for publication. Top of the List at http://www.jmir.org/reviewer/openReview/abstracts is a submitted manuscript "Wikipedia as a global tool for public health promotion". Those with expert knowledge of this area on wikipedia may wish to contribute.— Rod talk 13:03, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I think the wikipedia signpost should have a section reporting information on sister projects. --sillybillypiggytalk to me sign! 16:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
From the Toronto Sun - "When a writer took him to task asking what if the armour got into the hands of criminals, the blog writer responded: 'My explicit goal is to put it in the hands of criminals, real and common alike, and anyone else who wants it for that matter.' Also, the blog site is linked to a Wikipedia page that showed how to make an electro-magnetic device 'that could be easily carried by a person, can produce pulses in the millions of amperes and tens of terrawatts, exceeding the power of a lightning strike by orders of magnitude.'" (by Rob Lamberti) APK whisper in my ear 04:34, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
As of just now [16], the project is as close as possible with current detection methods to being in compliance with WP:NFCC #9. Prior to BJBot_3 coming online in January of 2008 (see BAG approval), there were more than 2000 violations in userspace alone. When DASHBot_5 came online in January of this year (see BAG approval}, there were more than 1000 violations (I routinely saw in excess of 1400). The daily report of NFCC 9 violations showed 76 violations as of 20:00 UTC 24 June 2010. All of those violations have been removed. There are certainly a few remaining violations, but they are all new violations since yesterday. So far as I'm aware, this is a first. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:53, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
"What to do on the web when you are dead" (Bill Thompson) - "The reports of my death on Wikipedia were not merely, as Mark Twain famously put it, exaggerated - they were entirely fictional but plausible enough to be taken seriously by the average Wikipedia visitor. ... Perhaps someone read the many articles I've written about Wikipedia and decided I was an enemy of the people who needed to be executed without even the benefit of a show trial. But I've decided I don't really want to know who did this or why and can't see that anything good would come of being aware that someone I know thought it was a good idea to do something that had the potential to cause many people I love and care for pain and distress." -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 17:06, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
From Fox News - "Wikipedia has become home base for a loose worldwide network of pedophiles who are campaigning to spin the popular online encyclopedia in their favor and are trying to lure more people into their world, an investigation by FoxNews.com confirms." (by Jana Winter) APK whisper in my ear 20:32, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
From The Daily Telegraph - "Written under the cowardly shield of a mere IP address (67.82.179.2, near Allentown, NJ) the contributor clearly wanted to label – in fact, libel – me as a Holocaust denier presumably because of my attack on Simon Wiesenthal in my book Hunting Evil." (by Guy Walters) APK whisper in my ear 20:45, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
From GeekSmack - "Bing has approached the search engine market very differently than most others. Bing is quite popularly known as an decision-engine, rather than a search engine. Bing offers a vastly different approach to finding and displaying information than the norm. Among the the features is one called Bing Wikipedia." (by Patrick Laughner) APK whisper in my ear 03:32, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
From Network World - "Hey, look, someone donated a million dollars to Wikipedia - anonymously, no less." (by Paul McNamara) APK whisper in my ear 03:57, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
From The Hindu - "Some of the subjects covered at the conference were: e-governance, wikipedia, blogs, search engines, character recognition and Tamil domains." (by M. Soundariya Preetha) Further info. APK whisper in my ear 04:07, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
From the World Entertainment News Network (via the Toronto Sun) - "Katy Perry used the internet to research which rapper she wanted to collaborate with on her new single - and chose Snoop Dogg after reading his entry on Wikipedia." APK whisper in my ear 19:59, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
From Yahoo! News - "Did you know that the founder of Orange Julius once invented a shower stall for pigeons? It said so on his Wikipedia page — for five years. So it has to be true, right?" (by Christopher Null) APK whisper in my ear 23:13, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
From The Chronicle of Higher Education - "At the Wilson Center discussion, former University of Michigan president James Duderstadt ticked off a long list of transformative technologies and modes of learning that seem destined to reshape postsecondary instruction globally...Along with open courseware initiatives, ranging from iTunes University to Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, he cited Google’s Library Project; Wikipedia; Facebook and Twitter; virtual environments such as Second life; immersive games like World of Warcraft; and much more." (by Ben Wildavsky) APK whisper in my ear 18:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
"The Trouble With Wikipedia" (James DeLong) - "As far as web traffic goes, Wikipedia diverts the stream from those sources to itself, which cuts off most possible revenue-generating links for the original sources. So Wikipedia will prosper as long as the other sources are there to be lifted, and as long as it has an ideologically-committed base of volunteer workers (or a base of contributors who see personal advantage, just as Linux, the other great flagship of free culture, rests on the money supplied by IBM, HP, and other large companies).
As for new knowledge — the situation is reminiscent of the Dark Ages, when the inhabitants of Europe used the stone from the great buildings of the fallen Roman Empire as a handy quarry." -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 03:26, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
From The New Zealand Herald - "The outage struck down one of the world's most popular websites, the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, is now over. Earlier today its administrators said via Twitter that it was working on the problem, which is affecting users around the globe, and would provide more details when they were available. The administrators later issued an update in which it said Wikipedia was "slowly" coming back online after a power outage affected its data centre in Florida." APK whisper in my ear 14:07, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
From The H - "A large number of spam emails are currently prompting their recipients to verify an alleged Wikipedia account by clicking on a link that appears to point to the official Wikipedia site. The emails contain such texts as "Someone from the IP address 112.135.3.205 has registered the account 'iamjustsendingthisleter' with this e-mail address on the English Wikipedia", where the IP address corresponds to that of the spamming computer (bot), and the alleged Wikipedia account is the spam recipient's email account." APK whisper in my ear 14:13, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
In response to last week's Signpost, James Delingpole from The Daily Telegraph writes the following:
"Well I never expected anything to come of this. I thought we lived in world modelled and run by Warmists and that there was nothing much we realists could do to defend ourselves against such injustices.
But lo! Who should come to save me than the great man himself, as you'll see from this edition of the Wikipedia news bulletin Wiki signpost."
On the article’s talk page, Jimmy Wales said that 'Delingpole's particular complaint here about his entry is without question valid', observing a violation of WP:UNDUE. The section has since been removed.
So, thanks Jimmy Wales. Much appreciated. You’re a gent."
APK whisper in my ear 10:00, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
From the Muskegon Chronicle - "Chronicle reporter Megan Hart stumbled across some interesting information about Muskegon while she was researching story ideas using Google. One of the first things that came up in her Muskegon search was Wikipedia. The entry said some residents had unsuccessfully campaigned to secede from both Michigan and the United States. The section acted like it was a major part of city history." APK whisper in my ear 11:28, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
From The National - "The developers of Wikipedia are troubled. How could the popular website have fewer articles in Arabic – a 3,000-year-old language spoken by more than 250 million people – than Esperanto, a 100-year-old language spoken by fewer than 1,000?" APK whisper in my ear 22:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
From Technology Review - "As a global resource built from the spare time of millions of volunteers, Wikipedia may be the epitome of Web 2.0. But the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia, among other projects, is now thinking about how to make it a linchpin of Web 3.0, or the semantic Web." (by Tom Simonite) APK whisper in my ear 06:54, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
From the University of Colorado Law School's Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law - (by Eric Goldman) APK whisper in my ear 13:18, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
From iTWire - "The new lineup of the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees was announced at the Wikimania conference this week. Ting Chen was appointed chair of the board, Stuart West was appointed Vice-chair (and continues as board treasurer), and Samuel Klein was appointed board secretary." (by Stephen Withers) APK whisper in my ear 04:01, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
From Pink News - "Australia will delay plans to block 'inappropriate' websites, including gay porn sites, the government's communications minister has said...Although the government said the law would stop online child pornography, only around half of the 2,395 blacklisted sites were associated with abusive images of children. Others included online poker portals, YouTube links, gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia pages and the homepages of private companies and medical practitioners." APK whisper in my ear 16:11, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
From The Daily Telegraph - "'In what way are you Anglo-Irish?' a grand lady asked me at a constituency function. 'I'm not, as far as I'm aware.'.....She continued to glare suspiciously at me. And then the penny dropped. For some reason, a section on my Wikipedia entry reads 'Hannan was born of Anglo-Irish parents living on their farm near Lima, Peru...' Although we all claim not to, we increasingly treat Wikipedia as definitive. In this instance, the woman I was talking to (who was, as far as I could make out, slightly déclassée Anglo-Irish) was convinced that I was responsible for my own Wiki-page. And, in fairness, several politicians do indeed appear to have written their own Wiki-entries." (by Daniel Hannan) APK whisper in my ear 10:49, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Noam Cohen reports in The New York Times Bits blog on Sue Gardner's opening keynote from Wikimania. Steven Walling 11:52, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
From The New York Times - "Rather than look to experts to get its mojo working, the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates the Wikipedias in more than 250 languages, is aiming at the underserved populations of the globe to meet its ambitious goals for growth." (by Noam Cohen) APK whisper in my ear 02:20, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
From The Jakarta Post - "Someone defaced my Wikipedia page the other day. Yes, it’s absurd that I have a Wikipedia page — ask my, er, fans, about that — but even more absurd that someone should bother enough to deface it." (by Jeremy Wagstaff) APK whisper in my ear 05:37, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
Despite the somewhat forumlatic title HIST459-Spring2010-Student-Reflections-on-Wikipedia-Assignment.mp4 contains some interesting commentary on a student? project to edit wikipedia (history stuff apparently) and how they felt about the project.©Geni 20:07, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
This looks to be a controversial AfD, with no real consensus. Might be good in a Discussion Report next week. I'd write it but I have too big of a COI. —mono 23:07, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
From FrontPage Magazine - "Wikipedia is used by 68 million people a month. Google Jerusalem, Israel, the Holocaust, jihad – the first reference to come up is Wikipedia. Most users mistakenly think it is an encyclopedia. Actually it is a special sort of blog, self-styled 'the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.' Open an article, click on the edit tab, add or remove what you like. Everyone in the world writes Wikipedia." (by Karin McQuillan) APK whisper in my ear 14:35, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
From the PBS MediaShift blog - "A little over three years ago, I started working as the communications manager for Wikipedia. I had just moved to St. Petersburg, Fla., and was ecstatic to hear that this quirky website, which had begun to pop up in many of my web searches, was based there." (by Sandra Ordonez) APK whisper in my ear 20:59, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
From Inside Higher Ed - "Of all the Web 2.0 tools that have become de rigueur on college campuses, wikis fundamentally embody the Internet's original promise of pooling the world’s knowledge — a promise that resonates loudly in academe. And yet higher education's relationship with wikis — Web sites that allow users to collectively create and edit content — has been somewhat hot-and-cold. Wikipedia, the do-it-yourself online encyclopedia, vexed academics early on because of its wild-west content policies and the perception that students were using it as a shortcut to avoid the tedium of combing through more reliable sources. This frustration has been compounded by the fact that attempts to create scholarly equivalents have not been nearly as successful." (by Steve Kolowich) APK whisper in my ear 10:36, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
From The Daily Telegraph - "Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, received an award from the South African government under an unwelcome nickname after his Wikipedia entry was apparently sabotaged." (by Murray Wardrop) APK whisper in my ear 09:35, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
From CNET.com - "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible, but not necessarily to create it outright. This makes Wikipedia a natural partner...Specifically, Google is helping Wikipedia with translation, so subject matter documented in one language needn't be created from scratch in another." (by Stephen Shankland) APK whisper in my ear 13:52, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
From BBC - "Outrageous optimism". --candle•wicke 03:57, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2010/07/wikipedia-paper-out.html http://precedings.nature.com/documents/4242/version/1 may be of interest. Shyamal (talk) 04:54, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
From The Indian Express - "The Internet, we know, is deeply skewed towards content in English and other languages of the global North. Wikipedia is not immune to these inequalities, and this was a topic of fervent discussion at this year’s Wikimania, which recently concluded at Gdansk in Poland." (by Gautam John) APK whisper in my ear 00:56, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
The Muhammad image issue has flared up in a big way. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/ace.wikipedia_and_Prophet_Muhammad_images probably has the closest to a comprehensive description of what is going on.©Geni 20:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/work-at-wikimedia-community-department-open-call/ The WMF is launching an open call to find people who are interested in working at Wikimedia -- phoebe / (talk to me) 03:17, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Jimmy Wales has appeared as a new entry in The Guardian's top 100 most powerful people in the media. He is listed in 47th place. Details are here. ISD (talk) 06:40, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Foundation audit committee is looking for community volunteers with financial literacy to join the 2010-2011 committee. According to Board of Trustees member Stu West, the committee reviews Wikimedia's financial statements and audit documentation, meeting with staff and the Foundation's independent auditors. Members are required to disclose their real names and undergo a background check. To volunteer or for more information, please contact Stu at stu <at> wikimedia.org. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 14:47, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
The Wikipedia Online Ambassadors program is now accepting applications from Wikipedians who want to help improve the way we nurture newbies. Its main focus is a concerted effort to do mentorship with students who are assigned to edit Wikipedia in their courses; it's part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative right now (see Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy and the Signpost article about it), and will hopefully be the basis for a longer-term and broader program going forward.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 17:19, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
See this article. Wikipedia scored 77 out of 100, facebook 64, myspace 63 and youtube 73 on the American Customer Satisfaction Index, developed by the University of Michigan’s business school. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:02, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
There is a ban discussion on AN that's quite unusual and interesting. The subject is a user who posted a userpage of some of the vilest hate speech I've seen on-wiki [17], and yet the AN thread is tending to oppose and is quite revealing of community attitudes. A rare chance to see the community's high-held principles actually in action and how users and admins see such things. "General interest" news.
Disclosure - I was the admin who warned this user, but this is all about the wider community's beliefs and views, on which this thread provides a quite exceptional eye-opener. FT2 (Talk | email) 16:55, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
There is a rather interesting story developing which involves recent heavy spam attacks (penis enlargement etc.) and a possible connection with a U.S. university [18][19] [20][21][22][23]. I am noting this here in case someone is working on this (usually the news articles should have been covered in the last ITN or in this week's) - I think it is advisable to wait for an issue or two [24].
Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
I've drafted something for you at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-26/News and notes. Any use? ϢereSpielChequers 17:06, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
After hitting 8,000 a few months ago, the backlog of Category:Uncategorized_pages has been falling, and in the last few days has dropped below 200. ϢereSpielChequers 19:26, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
"This Interview Is A Stub: Wikipedia Co-Founder Larry Sanger on Being Wrong" (Slate, Kathryn Schulz) - "There is, however, a great deal of argument—and consternation—about the accuracy of Wikipedia entries. (A headline in the Onion made the point nicely: "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence.") That's why I went looking for Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales, then quit the project over disputes about its governance and the quality and credibility of its content." -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 16:48, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
The wall street journal did a study into tracking technologies used on the top 50 major US websites, and Wikipedia was the only one to score 0 (not tracking anything at all). wikipedia.org scorecard methodology. The highest scoring was dictionary.com with 234 trackings. Of course dear mr. Kohs has to jump right in on the comments... When will that guy allow himself to return to his own life, you wonder. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:59, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
| This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page. |
dugdale was invoked but never defined (see the help page).((cite news)): Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
((cite news)): Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
((cite news)): Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
((cite news)): Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
((cite news)): Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
((cite news)): Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
((cite news)): Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
((cite news)): Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
((cite news)): Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)