An article by John Sweeney published on 22 April 2013 on scnow.com, the website of the Florence, South Carolina Morning News, reported that Florence city officials have taken to monitoring and correcting the Wikipedia article on their city.
| “ | We hit save and it's done ... Until somebody comes behind me and undoes it. | ” |
| — Robby Hill, Florence city council member | ||
The reason: the Wikipedia article on their city has repeatedly contained untruths, city officials say. Sweeney gives examples—at one point Wikipedia apparently said that the mayor of Florence could veto ordinances passed by the council, but such an action could be overridden with two-thirds of the council. Apparently, it's the first time anyone in Florence has heard about that, and there is no such rule in the city's ordinances; a Florence city council member simply responded: "This is crazy". Sweeney attributes the damage to Wikipedia's policy of open editing: "What makes Wikipedia so unique is the fact anyone can change information in, or add information to, a particular article. Want to move Florence to India? It can be done. Make it a center for mangrove farming? Check. You can do that, too."
At one point, Sweeney says, false information in Florence's Wikipedia article almost caused a business deal to fall through that was of vital importance to the city's economy:
| “ | Florence almost lost a multi-million business just last year thanks to misinformation on Wikipedia. Shortly after Otis Elevator closed a $40 million investment deal to move into the old Maytag plant just off I-95 in August 2012, bringing 360 jobs to the area, some Otis officials noticed a Wikipedia entry detailing Florence’s skyrocketing crime rate. Coupled with some other events, those troubling stats nearly brought the deal to a screeching halt, says Joe W. King, executive director of the Florence County Economic Development Corporation. [...]
Wikipedia reported that Florence had the 10th highest crime rate in the United States. "That’s just not true," Hill said. According to statistics released by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), Florence County doesn't even rank in the state's top 10 when it comes to crime rate (it's 23rd) [...] by no measure, say local law enforcement officials, is the city 10th nationally. |
” |
City officials explain that they are not trying to act as censors, but are simply removing false information that undermines the city's economic development, given Wikipedia's reach and its potential to spread misinformation "like wildfire, and tarnish the reputation of a person, company or—in Florence’s case—a city."
"Is Wikipedia better for breaking news than Twitter?" This was the question Jason Koebler asked in US News on 15 April 2013. The article focused on the Wikipedia Live Monitor, a web app designed by Google engineer Thomas Steiner, based on the observation that important breaking news is generally covered very quickly on Wikipedia:
| “ | Steiner says the classic example of this is when Michael Jackson died—within seconds, the King of Pop's Wikipedia page was flooded with users attempting to edit his page with new information about his death. When Russia was hit with a meteor earlier this year, dozens of pages were created on Wikipedia with new information, which showed up on Steiner's tool.
By monitoring the number of editors and edits on any given page within a short amount of time, Wikipedia Live Monitor is able to point out a number of "breaking news candidates," which Steiner says might be more reliable than a Twitter feed. "The main motivation of using Wikipedia instead of social media is you get a lot of events in one place—almost everything relevant in a breaking news sense has a Wikipedia page," Steiner says. |
” |
The Wikipedia Live Monitor is available at http://wikipedia-irc.herokuapp.com/.
This week, we spent some time with a project that develops tools and methods for improving the user experience in the hope that new users will continue editing the encyclopedia. The project was started in July 2012 and has grown to include 124 members. The project's members partner with the Teahouse (interviewed last year) and the Welcoming Committee to spread WikiLove, welcome new users, encourage civility, crown an Editor of the Week, test new versions of Snuggle, research the reasons why people leave Wikipedia, and invite departed editors to return. We interviewed Dennis Brown, Buster7, EpochFail, Amadscientist, Go Phightins!, and TheOriginalSoni.
Editor Retention Editor of the Week | |
|---|---|
 Tomobe03 is a proud Croat. | |
| Tomobe03 | |
| Editor of the Week for the week beginning April 21, 2013 | |
In just 3 years of editing, Tomobe03 has got a prolific set of articles under his belt that every editor would be envious of. His high-quality articles have improved the all Croatia related articles immensely, and his 11 thousand article-space edits have given way to 47 DYKs, 36 GA class articles, among others. Most of his edits have been on major and well-known articles, like  Adriatic Sea, Croatia, Croatian War of Independence or President of Croatia. Editors like him are the reason why Wikipedia continues to be widely read by millions of readers. | |
| Recognized for | Extensive coverage of Croatia related articles. |
| Notable work(s) |  Operation Storm and  Counties of Croatia |
| Nomination page | |
Next week, we'll play ball in the Land of the Rising Sun. Until then, take a swing at our previous reports in the archive.
Reader comments
The Wikimedia Conference is an annual meeting of the chapters to discuss their status and the organisational development of the Wikimedia movement. Held first in the Netherlands in 2008 and then in Berlin from 2009 to 2012, this year the conference was in the northern Italian city of Milan. For the first time it included groups that wish to be considered for WMF affiliation as thematic organisations (the Wiki Education Foundation, the Catalan-language-based Friends of Wikipedia, and Wiki Project Med) and one of the three groups that was recently affiliated as a user group (Esperanto and Free Knowledge). The conference was also attended by members of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), the Affiliations Committee, and a representative of the Wikivoyage Association, the German non-profit that is the former host of the new Wikivoyage travel-guide wiki, which moved to the WMF last November after considerable controversy.
The conference was hosted by the Italian Wikimedia chapter, with funding of US$120,000 from the Foundation's Wikimedia Grants Program, following a much-discussed application for $157,000 that assumed 250 participants (about 130 attended), including $78,000 for the conference venue and catering for light lunches and a coffee station. The German chapter donated up to a further $65,000 to make the event possible.
The event began last Thursday with three parallel meetings:
The main conference began in the morning with a State of the movement session, in which 18 entities were each allocated three minutes to present a "lightning" talk about their most important activities, plans, or problems. This format was repeated on Saturday (19 presentations) and Sunday (seven presentations). The presentations varied widely in content and approach. Christophe Henner, for example, used humorous slides in his presentation for Wikimédia France, including a photograph of a prison corridor to embellish his reference to the recent bullying of a chapter member by the French intelligence agents. The proposed chapter from Nepal, which hopes to gain WMF affiliation, spoke of how the country has 123 languages, with seven existing WMF sites. Among these, the Nepali Wikipedia was started as early as 2002 and now has 23,000 articles and 78 active users; a further seven Wikipedias for languages in Nepal are in incubation. Wikimedia Macedonia, recognised in 2010, has 15 members and no budget. It has made progress in an education program at four universities and a number of secondary schools and citizen "internet clubs", and has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Library and National Archives. The group has already established collaborative links with Wikimedia Ukraine. Links to slides for all presentations in which they were used are included at the schedule pages.
After lunch, participants broke up into three parallel tracks, comprising a total of nine one-hour sessions. Resources sharing and standardization was presented by the South African and Swiss chapters, exploring ways of developing secure web hosting and document editing among entities. Small offices examined the advantages and disadvantages of establishing and running a physical chapter office. Chris Keating, chair of Wikimedia UK, presented a talk on the recent governance review of the chapter, recommending "Executive Summary and the Characteristics on pages 9 to 12" of the report, which was jointly commissioned by the Foundation and the chapter. The minutes for most of the parallel sessions currently exist only in the form of raw Etherpads.
One of the highlights of the conference was the meeting with the Board. All current Board members were present, and each gave brief opening remarks. Jimmy Wales pointed out that last month was the first in which more than half a billion people visited WMF websites. A question-and-answer session followed. Among interesting questions were:
Saturday morning had involved 75-minute sessions on Chapter peer review; How to keep volunteers active; and Seven cool projects, including the French chapter's Kiwix wifi software to give offline access to Wikipedia in places in Africa with unstable internet connections. After the joint WMF Board–chapter meeting there were 45-minute sessions on the European Policy Working Group, Chapters in the Global South and lessons that can be learned, and Evaluating programs, presented by the WMF's senior director of programs, Frank Schulenberg.
Sunday, the last day, included another WCA meeting (no minutes yet available), and a feedback session on the Foundation's grantmaking agency that has forged a major change in finance and accountability in the movement – the FDC – which was described by one participant at the meeting as "a huge culture shock". In attendance were Dariusz Jemielniak, Anders Wennersten, Ali Haidar Khan, Sydney Poore, Yuri Perohanych, Arjuna Rao Chavala, and Mike Peel from the FDC; Patricio Lorente (one of the two chapter-selected WMF Trustees); and Foundation staff members Anasuya Sengupta (senior director of grantmaking), Winifred Olliff, Katy Love, Adele Vrana, Garfield Byrd (chief financial officer), and Jessie Wild. Representatives were present from 15 chapters that have applied to the FDC and three that have not.
A summary was presented of the findings of the survey of participating chapters after Round 1 of the FDC funding process last October (n = 8): the process is satisfactory, and deemed fair, transparent, and not overly time-consuming, and is not inhibiting the ability to reach the goals, though there are areas that should be improved. There is a need to strengthen communication between FDC/staff and applying entities, and to tighten application requirements. And the “open question” is if the FDC is a good mechanism for achieving impact. Applicants said they spent from three to 150 hours on their application (a median of 70 hours), and that it was hard to use the portal and forms, although "survey participants largely saw the process as fair and transparent". Three questions seemed to emerge: Are the movement entities evolving their program plans to have the most impact? Is the overhead required for the FDC process greater than the value (both impact and compliance) it provides? Is the process stifling innovation and/or limiting new participation in the movement?
The survey brought up negative feelings about the critical feedback given to chapters on their applications: that assessments were "too violent" and "insulting", that non-specific comments can be "de-motivating for volunteers", and thus that "more details are needed" in feedback. There were complaints that the FDC process is in English, is difficult to understand, and that comments arise from existing opinions on an entity. The etherpad records the comment that "The FDC proposal form is horrible for the community, even for those who are used to reviewing annual plans and budget. They wouldn't understand from the form what their own chapter is doing. [The current process is] designed to make comparisons and nothing else, [to] redesign it from scratch. [The] proposal form is not easy for entity staff and is extremely hard for editors and community members to review."
The response from the FDC was that "Comparing proposals is critical for the FDC, especially as the volume of proposals and amounts of funds requested increases and to force people defining goals." The FDC chair, Dariusz Jemielniak, referred to the importance of cultivating goal-setting abilities among applicants, and pointed out that the Foundation itself did not fully satisfy the FDC's requirements in Round 1. Since the FDC is making large grants, he said, it sets higher expectations in terms of communicating entities' plans and filling in forms. The Foundation's chief financial officer, Garfield Byrd, said that the level of detail required in the FDC form for the annual plan and budget is clearly not detailed enough, and that it is difficult for readers to understand the financials from budgets and annual plans alone. FDC member Anders said that about half of FDC applications are not sound. Among other statements by FDC members were that there is a limited number of dollars to give out in the FDC, and it's not going to be possible to staff up all chapters.
Sunday finished with a series of meetings known as Barcamps.
Biophysicist Daniel Mietchen attended the conference for WikiProject Med. He told the Signpost that in his opinion "there's a tendency for many wheels to be invented independently, so coordination across chapters has strong potential to improve efficiency and impact. For example, several chapters are now in discussions with their respective ministries of culture/education/science about how open licensing and Wikimedia projects can be included in curricula from high school to graduate courses, yet there has so far been next to no coordination of these efforts."
He specified the lack of coordination related to attendance at events, for example in Commons documentation and recurring visa problems; the Signpost has been informed that intending participants from two developing-world countries were refused visas for travel to Italy.
Mietchen pointed out that the three issues identified as the focus of the newly forming EU policy project also require coordination across chapters: "freedom of panorama (which exists in most but not all EU countries), orphan works, and PD-Gov (a concept alien to most European jurisdictions). Other issues, such as how to handle the paper work in running a chapter, have traditionally not been tackled in a very coordinated way either; nor have initiatives involving many chapters, such as Wiki Loves Monuments or the FDC process. However, a number of attempts along these lines are becoming more visible, e.g. the Chapters Association's discussions on the 'Chapters Exchange."
| “ | The general atmosphere at the meeting was very productive, so I would expect to hear about a few cases of concrete improvements in cross-chapter coordination at Wikimania [in Hong Kong in August]. Thematic organizations like WikiProject Med can act as a catalyst here: while most attendees seemed positive about having them, nobody seems to have a clear idea yet how that would play out in practice, so some experimentation is needed. I would encourage all existing and forming chapters and related organizations to keep each other in mind when planning activities from now on." | ” |
Participants generally praised the atmosphere at the conference. On the downside, it appears that most of the detailed planning was left until the last minute. Just one week before the start, no schedule was available. A basic draft appeared on Meta a day after the Signpost made enquiries of the organisers; we know of at least one chapter for which this lack of planning weighed in the decision not to send representatives. The Signpost notes another matter that may be of interest to the organisers of future Wikimedia events: one participant commented that the connectivity at the venue and in the hotels was "crappy".
The case started off-wiki in a bitter academic dispute between James Cantor and Jokestress, who are open about their real life identities, James Cantor and Andrea James. The case was brought by Mark Arsten, after the community was unable to agree on an interaction ban or a topic ban for James Cantor, Andrea James, or both.
The on-wiki conflict originated in the hebephilia article, which deals with the classification criteria of mental disorders for adults with a sexual preference for pubescent children, but involved other articles on paraphilias and transgenderism as well. James Cantor has been accused of using his own publications as sources for the articles, and of negatively editing Andrea James’ Wikipedia article; Andrea James has been accused of promoting fringe theories.
The proposed findings of fact that have passed as of this writing are:
1) Jokestress and James Cantor are involved in off-wiki advocacy or activities relating to human sexuality; the topic is a primary area that the two edit on Wikipedia.
2) Jokestress has repeatedly asserted, without evidence, that users she is in an editorial dispute with have a conflict of interest with the topic at hand.
3) Jokestress is a prominent party to an off-wiki controversy involving human sexuality, in which she has been sharply critical of certain individuals who disagree with her views, and has imported aspects of the controversy into the English Wikipedia to the detriment of the editing environment on sexuality-related articles.
4) Off-wiki conduct of individuals not named on-wiki while this arbitration case was pending, as referred to on the case pages, is not attributable to any of the named parties to the case and has not affected this decision.
No findings of fact were proposed for Mr. Cantor.
Proposed remedies that have passed to date are:
1) Jokestress and James Cantor are banned from interacting with each other, commenting on and/or commenting about each other including their professional lives, works and on-wiki activities. This applies to all namespaces, but excludes dispute resolution that explicitly relates to both parties.
2.1) Jokestress is indefinitely banned from the topic of human sexuality, including biographical articles.
4.1) Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all articles dealing with transgender issues and paraphilia classification (e.g., hebephilia).
Arbitrators were sharply divided over whether to prohibit James Cantor from editing “hebephilia, biographies of sexology researchers, and related advocates”. Six votes were needed for passage; there were 3 support, 3 oppose, and 2 abstain, with a third arbitrator withdrawing after seeing how the case was proceeding.[1]
In the case, brought by Lecen, an editor is accused of systematically skewing several articles involving former Argentinean president Juan Manuel de Rosas in order to portray a brutal dictator as a democratic leader, in keeping with the political motives of Argentinian "nationalists" or "revisionists".
The arbitration committee is looking for uninvolved editors with expertise in Argentina and the Spanish language to participate in the workshop phase of the case.
The evidence stage closed 12 April 2013, and a proposed decision is scheduled for 26 April 2013, though these dates may be extended by the recent floods in Buenos Aires, which have adversely affected an editor involved in the case.
This case was brought to the Committee by KillerChihuahua, who alleges the discussion over this American political group has degenerated into incivility. Evidence for the case was due by March 20, 2013, and a proposed decision scheduled for April 3, 2013.
On Monday, the English Wikipedia became the 12th wiki to be able to pull data from the central Wikidata.org repository, with other wikis scheduled to receive the update on Wednesday. The deployment gives users access to a {{#property:}} parser function, most obviously suitable for use in infoboxes.
Wikis are not obliged to use the new functionality they will receive. As the Signpost reported two weeks ago, the English Wikipedia community remains divided on the matter, although the early indications of an RFC established since are that the phase 2 code will be put to at least some use there, if only on a trial basis.
In related news, the English Wikipedia will have version 5 of the Article Feedback Tool re-enabled this week on an opt-in basis, following its rejection of the function for general deployment last month. In addition, wikis including the English Wikipedia have, eight years after bug #189 was opened requesting the feature, finally gained access to a new <score> pseudo-HTML tag, analogous to <math>, but providing instead for the creation of music notation on the fly:
Within the next week, the English Wikipedia will become the first Wikipedia to benefit from Echo, a major WMF-developed extension aimed at providing MediaWiki with a Facebook-style notification system. Though many types of notifications are possible, this initial deployment will focus on providing only core updates, including news of new user talk messages. More controversially, these kinds of notifications will launch in an "opt-out" fashion; users opposed to the change will be directed to a user preference toggle.
Announced nine months ago, the Echo project has lived a comparatively quiet existence, with trial deployments on MediaWiki.org rarely causing a stir. Proponents point to the applicability of Echo to both power-users (who may be monitoring many different goings on) and first-time editors (who find Wikimedia wikis' idiosyncratic array of news channels confusing), while detractors cite the potential for users to be overwhelmed with a torrent of notifications of varying importance.
The extension will supersede the existing email notification system, opening the door for new types of email notification to be added. However, as developers behind the project were keen to point out, the email half of the system will be strictly opt-in: no existing user should begin receiving email notifications for which they did not previously sign up.
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.
