Morton Brilliant, campaign manager for Cathy Cox (a candidate for governor of the U.S. state of Georgia), has resigned after reports that he edited the Wikipedia article for her opponent in the Democratic primary, Lieutenant Governor Mark Taylor. One of these edits raised ethical concerns by focusing on Taylor's family (an automobile accident involving Taylor's son in which a passenger was killed), a subject Cox had specifically instructed her staff to avoid during the campaign. However, the information was factual and the incident had received considerable coverage in local news media.
Along with a handful of other edits, all of this activity on Wikipedia took place last November. As the edits were made without registering an account, they could be traced back based on the IP address, and this indicated that the computer being used belonged to Cox's campaign headquarters in Atlanta. Some news reports indicated that the origin of these edits had been "confirmed" by Wikipedia or by Jimmy Wales personally, but in reality the information needed to trace them was publicly available to anyone looking at the article's history.
Although the technical evidence was only specific enough to identify the campaign, circumstantial evidence pointed strongly to Brilliant. Aside from editing the articles about Taylor and Cox, the only edits from the IP address had been to two other politicians, Dino Rossi and Mark Sanford. What these two have in common is that they were both gubernatorial candidates (Sanford successfully in South Carolina, Rossi unsuccessfully in Washington) who ran against politicians on whose campaigns Brilliant had worked. The changes were generally factual and backed up by sources, albeit presented in somewhat unflattering terms. The most salient difference, however, was that those campaigns were already long over by the time the edits were made.
The statement announcing Brilliant's resignation did not indicate that he had admitted to making the edits personally, but Cox said in accepting the resignation that Brilliant "is responsible for all the work in my office". On Friday, Cox named Chris Riggall, a senior aide in her current office as Georgia's Secretary of State, to replace Brilliant as campaign manager.
Bill Shipp reported in the Gwinnett Daily Post that Taylor's aides had known for months about the edits and had already traced them back to Brilliant. However, they held back on publicizing the news until this past week to coincide with a speech by Cox that her staff called a "major policy address". As a result, Shipp said the scandal effectively upstaged part of the kickoff to her campaign.
Apparently prompted by this high profile story, Associated Press writer Shannon McCaffrey submitted "Wikipedia Ripe for Political Dirty Tricks", which was picked up by over a hundred media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News and more.
Wikimania recap
28 August 2006
Wikimania recap
14 August 2006
Wikimania recap
7 August 2006
Wikimania last-minute information
31 July 2006
Events: Contests, parties, and the local area
24 July 2006
Wikimania updates
17 July 2006
Wikimania updates
10 July 2006
Meetups And Newsworthy International Assemblages
3 July 2006
More featured speakers at Wikimania
26 June 2006
Hacking Days
19 June 2006
Featured Speakers at Wikimania
12 June 2006
Other international meetups
5 June 2006
About Wikimania
29 May 2006
About Wikimania
22 May 2006
About Wikimania
15 May 2006
About Wikimania
8 May 2006
About Wikimania
1 May 2006
About Wikimania
24 April 2006
Three years of meetups : 2003-2006
17 April 2006
Introduction to a series: Looking forward to Wikimania 2006
10 April 2006
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Wikimania recap |
This week, we highlight some of the roles that community members play in Wikimania.
Wikimania offers members of the Wikimedia projects a chance to meet and discuss ongoing projects, challenges and ideas for the future. One major goal of Wikimania 2006 is to provide a forum for the many Wikimedia Foundation projects to learn from and communicate with one another, and to share their current status and future goals.
There are many opportunities for the community to be involved with planning, participating in, and following the event. Those unable to attend the conference can participate in the online aspect of the conference held concurrently with Wikimania; can propose presentation topics and submit posters; can submit content to the media and writing contests; and can volunteer to help with the website, translation and other efforts. Attendees are encouraged to organize their own informal discussion sessions; submit proposals for presentations and posters; and volunteer on site.
To provide the best possible project representation, Wikimania 2006 is still accepting proposals for presentations, discussions and posters about Wikimedia projects and communities. Presentations need not be lengthy; there will be slots in the program for quick five-to-fifteen minute talks about a particular topic. Community members are welcome to suggest program ideas and to submit posters even if they can't attend the conference in person.
Some possible proposal ideas:
Wikiproject discussions should include a description of the project and its goals, including a short history and why it is notable; any challenges and successes that the project has had; plans for the future; and how others can get involved in the project.
Two special types of submissions are posters and "Birds of a Feather" sessions, or BOFs. Posters can showcase a project or other presentation topic. Posters hang for the entire conference, and may be submitted by those unable to attend. Posters are generally mailed to the conference site, and set up the day before it begins. They are typically 2-3 ft long, and either printed as posters (to be attached to a wall or board) or in pieces which are pasted onto posterboard to help them stand on their own.
Birds of a feather sessions, or "BOFs", are ad-hoc discussions formed at the conference or ahead of time, with a general understanding of the topic to be discussed. They meet primarily outside of the main conference hours, using available open spaces and rooms. Sign-up sheets will be available at the conference for organizing discussion sessions.
Community members can be involved with the conference by writing about what they want to see discussed at the conference, by nominating content for the Wikimania contests, and by volunteering.
Discussions of community and editorial topics, before and during wikimania, are an important part of the event. These can start on project pages, blogs, or the talk pages of workshops and abstracts; and carry over into the conference itself and the face-to-face conversations there.
Wikimania will also host an international writing and media contest, for content created in the last year and used on Wikimedia projects. Last year's media contest evaluated submissions in 18 categories. Participating in the media contest will mean international recognition for your favorite brilliant prose and media. Details on this year's contest will be released soon on the Wikimania site.
There are a variety of volunteer positions open for Wikimania, some of which require attending the conference or living near Boston, and many of which do not. These include everything from coordinating conference events to writing and translating website content. More information, and a regularly updated list of positions, can be found on the conference volunteering page.
Next week: A look back at Wikimania 2005.
For general questions about wikimania : wikimania-info@wikimedia.org
For questions about or suggestions for the program : cfp@wikimedia.org
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales will be honored by several organizations in the coming months:
Time Magazine has named Wales as part of its 2006 TIME 100 list, honoring the 100 most influential figures in entertainment, religion, politics, and technology. Voting is underway at Time's website for the most influential scientist/thinker of the year; currently, Wales is 9th of 10, trailing eight others headed by leader Al Gore (in a different category— see below link).
Reference: Time Magazine 2006 Time 100 Poll— This article stub lists all 100 Time Nominees.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation plans to award Jimmy Wales one of its prestigious Pioneer Awards on Wednesday, according to a Thursday press release. Gigi Sohn and Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of Craigslist will also be honored. Previous recipients of the award include internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee, Linux founder Linus Torvalds, and free software advocate Richard Stallman.
Knox College, an Illinois liberal arts college, will present Wales with an honorary doctor of laws degree at their 2006 commencement ceremony, to be held on 3 June. At the ceremony, former diplomat and human trafficking opponent Shirley E. Barnes and comedian Stephen Colbert will also receive honorary degrees. Like Wales, Colbert was also named one of the TIME 100.
Wikipedia reached 4 million articles in its various languages on Sunday. Of the 4 million articles, over 25% (~1.1 million) were in English.
Wikipedia is participating in Google's Summer of Code, which allows students to perform work for profit for many open source projects. Applications opened on Monday; participants are required to be 18 or older, and be a full or part-time student at an accredited institution. Google employees and their families, as well as citizens of Iran, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea and Myanmar/Burma are ineligible.
During a mailing list conversation comparing the English and German Wikipedias, Elian, a participant in both communities, wrote a detailed comparison of the two, comparing each on issues such as Adminship (requests for adminship are much more frequented on the German Wikipedia), arbitration (the German Wikipedia has no Arbitration Committee, and instead decides bans by community vote), userboxes (relegated to the User namespace on the German Wikipedia), and social structure.
In preparation for a speech to be delivered at Wikimania 2006, Linuxbeak is soliciting survey responses from Wikipedians about what they think about Wikipedia.
There were numerous stories, especially in the Southern United States, covering the resignation of Georgia campaign manager Morton Brilliant after ethics questions arose over some of his Wikipedia edits (see related story). A related Associated Press story, "Wikipedia Ripe for Political Dirty Tricks", was picked up by over a hundred media outlets as well.
According to the article "Branson on wealth" at BBC Online, Richard Branson held a meeting in California to plan an African version of Wikipedia a few weeks ago. He discussed "getting Wikipedia to create an education site for Africa ... An African living in South Africa might know nothing about Ethiopia or Nigeria".
In response, Jimmy Wales says, " The news story is significantly confused. We already have several African languages, and I discuss with practically everyone I meet, how we might improve and promote what we are doing in those languages. I was at a meeting with Sir Richard, as the story says, but the meeting was not about Wikipedia, per se, but rather about his own initiatives in Africa, which might or might not include helping us in some ways. His help will be very much appreciated, but nothing specific has been discussed or is planned at this time. I am in an ongoing email dialogue with him."
The BBC also wants to "reboot" its homepage to exploit "the functionality and usability of services such as Flickr, YouTube, Technorati and Wikipedia". They have created an open site at http://open.bbc.co.uk/reboot/ to allow users to contribute to the redesign process.
"Jane Jacobs died this week. There are many online resources devoted to the woman perhaps most responsible for keeping our cities as livable as they are, but her Wikipedia entry may be the best place to start to learn about her." [1], New York Times
The Game Daily site uses Wikipedia as a generic metaphor for a reference work: "Under the Wikipedia entry for 'dinosaur' you'll find photos of journalists who don't consider search optimization..." [2]
Webcomic Bob and George mentions Wikipedia: [3] and [4].
Seven users were granted admin status last week: Lord Voldemort (nom), Humus sapiens (nom), RasputinAXP (nom), Ezeu (nom), The JPS (nom), Keenan Pepper (nom) and Deskana (nom).
Six articles were featured last week: Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Halloween (film), Kolkata, Søren Kierkegaard, USA PATRIOT Act, Title III, Subtitle A and Genesis (band).
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as Today's featured article: S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897, Attalus I, Hong Kong action cinema, 1996 U.S. campaign finance scandal, Swedish allotment system, Mini and Diane Keaton.
Two lists reached featured list status last week: Timeline of Apple Macintosh models and List of NCAA Philippines basketball champions.
Four pictures reached featured picture status last week:
A new special page, Special:Randomredirect, allows a user to visit a random redirect page. Added by Rob Church on 25 April, the page works in a similar fashion as Special:Random.
Another new page, Special:Unusedtemplates, allows users to find templates which are not transcluded on any other page.
Bug #4327 was resolved by adding a timestamp to special pages which contain cached data. Pages like Special:Ancientpages will now display the time the data was last updated.
Server-related events, problems, and changes included:
The Arbitration Committee closed two cases this week. Additionally, two motions in prior cases.
A case against users involved in a bible-related dispute was closed on Thursday. As a result, SimonP was cautioned to respect consensus. SimonP and other users had warred over articles on single bible verses, and the exclusive use of the King James Version of the Bible.
A case against Agapetos angel was closed on Sunday. As a result, Agapetos angel and related users were blocked from editing articles relating to Jonathan Sarfati, and other editors were warned to follow Neutral Point of View.
A case was accepted this week involving editors on Biological psychiatry. It is currently the only case in the evidence phase.
Cases involving users SqueakBox and Zapatancas, Messhermit (user page), Monicasdude (user page), and Jacrosse (user page), Marcosantezana (user page), Terryeo (user page), Aucaman (user page), and Locke Cole (user page) are in the voting phase.
Motions to close are on the table in the cases involving editors on Depleted uranium, users DarrenRay and 2006BC, FourthAve (user page) and Lou franklin (user page) .
A motion to ban Herschelkrustofsky from Wikipedia for one year has four support votes with no opposition.
A motion to restrict StrangerInParadise to one user account has five support votes with no opposition.
