The possibility of outside organizations paying people to edit Wikipedia articles to their benefit has come up again, with reports that an unaccredited "university" was seeking someone to keep out unwanted information from its article.
This case involved Almeda University, one of a number of organizations operating in the United States that purport to offer college degrees with little or no coursework required, based on such factors as "life experience". Widely considered diploma mills, these organizations commonly have operations that are difficult to trace; they may be illegal in some jurisdictions, and their degrees are often worthless on the job market.
Last week, Wikipedia editor Randywombat reported that he came across an ad for "Wiki Requirements" on Guru.com, a site that bills itself as a marketplace for freelance talent. The ad complained of a "negative Wikipedia review" and offered to pay $50 weekly on an ongoing basis to revert changes and maintain "valid/positive comments" in the article. In response to Randywombat's follow-up, the company seeking this service was identified as Almeda University.
From the ad and subsequent communications, Almeda was objecting to "slanderous" comments based on media accounts about its operations. Articles about alleged diploma mills have sometimes been a focus of sustained efforts to keep out negative information, and these organizations frequently raise complaints through multiple channels if the information persists in the article. Meanwhile, due to the frequently scant information available elsewhere, Wikipedia has become a popular resource regarding unaccredited institutions of higher learning. In this case, the Wikipedia article ranks just behind Almeda's own sites atop the non-sponsored search results for "Almeda University" on Google.
Declining to pursue the offer, Randywombat instead posted the contents of the messages to the Almeda University talk page, and also shared an accompanying document that complained at length about Wikipedia practices and the treatment of Almeda's article. The document's author said that "newspapers only print negative stories" and objected to the reliance on such sources. Like many Wikipedia articles on unaccredited colleges, the article itself is carefully footnoted to news articles, education and government sites, and Almeda's own website.
Almeda University did not respond to a request for comment on this story. The incident strikes an ironic note given the current atmosphere, notably the controversy over fake degrees claimed by Wikipedia contributor Ryan Jordan and the ensuing proposals for verification of credentials claimed by editors.
While a number of editors have questioned the official stance that effectively prohibits any paid editing, William Pietri and David Gerard pointed to this situation as an illustration of why a strong response is needed to discourage such efforts. By clearly seeking a "positive" slant to the article, the offer lacked even the sophistication of the approach taken by Microsoft, in its controversial proposal to pay someone to monitor articles without attempting to maintain editorial control over the work.
As observers and media sources continue to misunderstand aspects of the project, Wikimedia Foundation board member Erik Möller has written an essay intended to address some of these problems.
The essay, posted Sunday, 11 March, is entitled "10 Things You Did Not Know About Wikipedia". Möller described it as "an attempt at a summary of some key issues for journalists, readers, and newbie editors." It consists of ten pithy statements, each accompanied by a longer explanatory paragraph and a link for further information.
With its list format and sometimes counterintuitive assertions, the essay fit a style of piece that often appeals to voters on social bookmarking sites. In fact, it was soon posted to digg and reddit, two leading examples of the genre, and appeared on the front page at both.
The essay was also discussed on the English Wikipedia mailing list, where editors promptly began critiquing it and offering suggested changes. Möller and others set to work editing the essay, with the result that already two of the ten points have changed from their original versions, while a third was changed as well before going back to its initial form (for the time being).
Some people disagreed about whether the misconceptions addressed in the essay were common. As Möller pointed out, however, people closely involved in Wikipedia may not be the best judges of whether the points are helpful to the general public.
As an example, the first point—"We're not for sale"—tackles confusion over the Wikimedia Foundation's nonprofit status and by extension its separation from Jimmy Wales's Wikia venture. The latter distinction has been lost on many writers in various sources, especially amid the coverage of Wikia's plans to launch a search engine. For a recent instance, Slashdot posted a story about "Wikipedia's Search Engine Plan" that originally described the connection as "Wikia, the company behind Wikipedia" and had to be corrected to reflect that Wikimedia and Wikia are separate organizations.
The Wikimedia Foundation is now hosting a blog aggregator, which launched last week as a tool to share information and opinions across the different projects of the organization.
As announced by Erik Möller, Planet Wikimedia is a beta test of an aggregator for weblog posts by people involved in Wikimedia projects. Previously a list of Wikimedians who blog was available on the Meta project site, but this was limited to a list of links to individual blogs and their web feeds. The people identified as bloggers include more than half of the Board of Trustees, although some have a history of only sporadic posts.
Blogs can be submitted for inclusion on the coordination page for the aggregator. The project is intended for blogs dedicated exclusively to wiki-related subjects, or those that can provide a filtered feed limited to relevant posts. A broader alternative that collects feeds from many of the same blogs without filtering is available independently at Open Wiki Blog Planet.
Initially, the project is running in English only. The possibility of incorporating additional languages into Planet Wikimedia was also suggested. Several languages have begun to attract support, and it was pointed out that a Polish equivalent already started last year.
WikiWorld is a weekly comic, carried by the Signpost, that highlights a few of the fascinating but little-known articles in the vast Wikipedia archives. The text for each comic is excerpted from one or more existing Wikipedia articles. WikiWorld offers visual interpretations on a wide range of topics: offbeat cultural references and personality profiles, obscure moments in history and unlikely slices of everyday life - as well as "mainstream" subjects with humorous potential.
Cartoonist Greg Williams developed the WikiWorld project in cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation, and is releasing the comics under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Williams works as a visual journalist for the US-based The Tampa Tribune, a daily newspaper in Tampa, Florida. He also has worked as an illustrator and designer at newspapers in Dubuque, Iowa, and Dayton, Ohio.
Wikimania 2007, the third annual international Wikimedia conference, will be held from 3 August to 5 August in Taipei, Taiwan at Chien Tan Overseas Youth Activity Center (CTOYAC). The technically-oriented preconference for developers, Hacking Days, will occur in the two days leading up to the conference. There are still two other events, Hacking Days Extra and Citizen Journalism Unconference, which will be held on 2 August.
Online registration for conference has opened, and will be closed on 30 July, with discounted rates for Wikimedia community members. Accommodation at CTOYAC is provided and the available time is 31 July - 5 August, and visa assistance for overseas travellers is available. See Registration page in official website for details.
On the other hand, the Call for Participation for Wikimania 2007 is out; submissions for posters, presentations, workshops, and discussion groups are being accepted now. The conference themes this year include Wikimedia Communities, Free Content, and Technical Infrastructure. Six types of submission are available. Nominations for speakers and speaker panels, and suggestions for other activities are welcome too. Details can be found in the official call for participation.
Many WikiPortals and WikiProjects have the "New Articles" feature: a section or a page where all newly created articles related to the project are supposed to be announced. When done properly it is a very usable feature: the project participants are the best people to weed out hoaxes and vanity articles, merge duplicates, polish new articles, and enjoy the newborn masterpieces. Unfortunately, digging out the related new articles is quite a chore that requires lurking through thousands of articles that appear everyday.
To facilitate this work Alex Bakharev has created a bot named AlexNewArtBot that does this work automatically. It "reads" the latest articles every night, checks them against some rules, and if they're found suitable for a project, includes them into the corresponding new articles list. The bot also compiles a list of suspected bad articles — entries that are likely attack or vanity articles.
Currently twenty "New Articles" lists are supported (see the bot's userpage) but more are planned. Ideally, every new article should go to at least one list to find readers and reviewers. If you are interested in collaboration to create such a feed for your project please contact Alex Bakharev.
The Wikimedia Foundation has posted a job opening for a Volunteer Coordinator. The position, which would ideally be based in the Foundation's office in St. Petersburg, Florida, involves organizing and coordinating volunteer efforts to assist the Foundation in its day-to-day work. Either part-time or full-time work is possible.
Wikipedia's 3-month Alexa rank remains at 11th; however, daily ranks over the last week have fluctuated, ranking anywhere from 9th to 11th. Should growth remain steady, it appears that Wikipedia will break the Top 10 in the next month. By-country rankings show that in Germany, the site ranks 6th. Not including search engines, the site is the second-most popular site in Germany, behind eBay. Wikipedia ranks 7th in Colombia and the Philippines, 8th in the United States, 9th in Canada, Mexico, Spain, Singapore and the Netherlands, 10th in the United Kingdom and Australia, and 14th in France.
Three users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Seraphimblade (nom), John Reaves (nom) and Ryanpostlethwaite (nom).
Twelve articles were promoted to featured status last week: Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (nom), Christ Illusion (nom), Harbhajan Singh (nom), Dime (United States coin) (nom), Definition of planet (nom), Antioxidant (nom), Ohio Wesleyan University (nom), Medieval cuisine (nom), George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (nom), Hovhannes Bagramyan (nom), Hawksbill turtle (nom) and Pinguicula moranensis (nom).
Two articles were de-featured last week: Portuguese language and Husein Gradaščević.
Two lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of counties in Kentucky and List of snow events in Florida.
Two sounds were promoted to featured status last week: and .
No topics were promoted to featured status last week.
Two portals were promoted to featured status this month: Portal:West Bengal and Portal:Kerala.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Battle of Ceresole, New Orleans Mint, Lead(II) nitrate, The KLF, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Act of Independence of Lithuania and Mini Moke.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Castle Ashby Cemetery, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Subtractive Color, Bodie, California, Caliper Animation, 30 St Mary Axe and Ivan Tsarevich.
Nine pictures were promoted to featured status last week:
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The sizes of old revisions are now displayed in page histories. (River Tarnell, T3723, r20221)
When visiting Special:Contributions directly, without any username provided, the user will now be given a form asking for a username (or to search for contributions of new accounts) instead of being given an error message. Also, the same form will appear at the top of Special:Contributions for any user, allowing the viewer to switch to other users' contributions easily. (Sui Min and Raimond Spekking; T11009; r20164, r20226, et al.)
Special:Popularpages will now show pages from any content namespace, not just the main namespace. (Some wikis have "content" namespaces that aren't the main namespace, such as the English Wikibooks' "Cookbook" namespace.) Special:Popularpages is not enabled on the English Wikipedia. (patch by Jim R. Wilson, T11231, r20275)
Special:Log/block, /delete, and /protect will now have links next to each entry to unblock, undelete, or change protection level, respectively. (Raimond Spekking and Sui Min, T8997 and T11117, r20293)
When viewing a diff of multiple revisions (such as this), clicking "undo" will now undo all the edits covered by the diff, not just the last. (Aaron Schulz, T10133, r20317)
After discussion on Wikitech-l, the addition of a checkered background behind transparent parts of images on image pages (as is common in image editors to distinguish transparent from white) was reversed. Users can still add it to their own stylesheets manually. (Erik Moeller, r20340)
Underlining in backlinks for references will now be immediately under the letter, not at the bottom of the entire line, for those with underlining enabled for links. (Raimond Spekking, T8906, r20190)
A coding error made in refactoring a function was fixed. The error could have led to error messages, and possibly the failure of either limitations of actions per user per unit time (e.g., a limited number of account creations per IP address per hour) or exemptions from such limitations. (Patch by Rob Church, T11216, r20210)
Usernames that look like IPv6 addresses are no longer allowed. MediaWiki does not yet support IPv6, but it probably will at some point in the indefinite future, at which point this will prevent conflicts. Standard IPv4 addresses have been invalid as usernames for a long time. (River Tarnell, r20242)
Page titles (and, therefore, user names) can no longer contain three consecutive tildes (~~~). They can therefore no longer interfere with the signature/date syntax. (Brion Vibber, T11223, r20274)
ImageMap tags will now work correctly with multiple polygons. (Brion Vibber, T11236, r20298)
Some updates were made to non-English messages, specifically:
Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to Mediazilla.
The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week, and closed four cases.
