Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-05-13/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-05-13/Traffic report
An article published on May 10 on Odwyerpr.com written by Greg Hazley documented a "sparring match" between Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and public relations firm Qorvis partner Matt Lauer. Lauer, who is not related to the Matt Lauer of the US' Today show, disputes Wikipedia's guideline discouraging public relations firms from editing articles on their clients, saying "This inane policy would violate the basic tenets of even the most partisan of small-town newspapers or the most crooked court rooms. This dangerous policy violates the fundamental rules of reporting, of debate, and of discussion." Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Paid editing Wales responded via Twitter, saying "Your complaints are deeply dishonest to the point of being embarrassing."
Lauer's firm, Qorvis, created several sockpuppets to try to "whitewash" the pages of his clients. There was a thread about this on Wales' Wikipedia talk page regarding Qorvis in February which referenced a sockpuppet investigation into the matter. When it was confirmed, Wales suggested to Lauer that his clients should fire him for his misuse of Wikipedia.
A previous article in the Daily Dot detailed some of Wikipedia's "voluminous" evidence against Qorvis—though Lauer denies that it is true—and continued to slam Lauer:
| “ | Remember Lauer's claim that some creatively slanderous Wikipedian had written that CEO Michael Petruzzello was known as the "Super Gypsy among the Washington elite?" The Daily Dot discovered that the edit was actually made by the exact same Qorvis IP address listed above: 38.100.14.250. Either inside jokes from Qorvis staffers were leaking on to Wikipedia, or the "Super Gypsy" really is Petruzzello's nickname. Regardless, the fact that Lauer omitted this key information from his blog post shows that either he's either [sic] being dishonest or is ignorant of what his employees are doing on Wikipedia. Either way, it calls into question everything else Lauer has said about Qorvis' activity on the site. | ” |
The O'Dwyer article concludes with a comment from Wales stating that in his experience, which he describes as "comprehensive", people who are paid representatives are bad editors who insert biased information and that they do it because "that is what paid advocates do." Still, despite Wales' strong words, Wikipedia's conflict of interest and paid editing guidelines are purposely vague, and attempts to strengthen or weaken them have faced strong resistance.
A report conducted by researchers at the Warwick Business School has concluded that a trading strategy based on the frequency of views would have yielded up to a 141 per cent improvement over a random strategy. IT Business of Canada wrote about the report. Their article commented that:
| “ | While basing a trading strategy solely around such data is likely a risky proposition, it is an interesting real-world case study of big data in action, and how publicly accessible information on group behavior can be used to make better and more informed decisions. | ” |
The report found that using Wikipedia from late 2007 to 2012 may have "provided some insight" into how the market was going to perform, but said that no such relationship exists between views of Wikipedia articles on actors and filmmakers.
The report can be viewed in its entirety via Nature.com here.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-05-13/Technology report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-05-13/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-05-13/Opinion
Dear [admin's name],
Thank you for your work with the Foundation wiki. At this time, we are formalizing a new requirement, which is that administrator access is given only to staff and board. I am having administrator access to accounts that are neither staff or board be disabled, effective immediately.
Sincerely,
Gayle [Karen Young, the WMF's Chief Talent and Culture Officer]
Thus came an email to community volunteers who until last Friday had been administrators on the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) official website, wikimediafoundation.org. In a torrid week for Foundation–community relations, this sparked a highly emotional reaction on the Wikimedia-l mailing list—one of the largest off-wiki methods of communication for the Wikimedia movement.
The Foundation's site has been around since 2004, when its home page described Wikipedia as "the award-winning online encyclopedia". However, unlike all other WMF sites, which are freely editable by anyone, the Foundation's official site has never been fully open to community editing. Its "Welcome" page states that "this wiki does not exactly follow the same rules as the other Wikimedia projects, since it is not open to all for editing, and in case of disagreement, the organ of decision will be the Board." The WMF uses the site to publish its Board of Trustees' resolutions, to present information about its staff and contractors, and as part of the fundraising process, among other purposes.
The desysopping was a source of considerable upset among participants on the Wikimedia-l mailing list, with some community members accusing the Foundation of intentionally pushing the community away. The motives for the action were initially unclear, even after an explanation from Young on her Foundation website user talk page:
I'm limiting admin rights on this wiki to Foundation staff and board members. You'll still be able to do everything a normal user can do, and if you have a particular project you're working on which brings with it a good justification for admin rights, I'm sure people will be happy to give you those rights for the duration of that project.
The abrupt action and its accompanying email was likened to being summarily terminated from a place of employment—the key difference being that those fired were volunteers, or people who edit because they believe in the movement and its mission. Community members characterized it as "tactless and rude", a simple "thanks, bye", and as the "corporate version of ordering someone off your lawn". The situation was apparently exacerbated by the unfortunate timing of the actions—at the start of the weekend break in the US—and the lack of an early response intensified the mounting furor on the mailing list.
Community members used the incident to remark on what they perceived as centralizing actions being taken by the Foundation in recent months. MZMcBride noted that these have included restricting blog access, Bugzilla adminship, and shell access, the latter leading to the loss of volunteer system administrators. The Foundation's Executive Director, Sue Gardner, said the incident was in the interests of simple efficiency. Gardner said it was her understanding that volunteer editors on the Foundation's site have reverted changes made by Foundation staff, and vice versa. The resulting long discussions, typically one-on-one (as opposed to large community debates), have occasionally taken an inordinate amount of time away from the Foundation's paid staff. Gardner said that the staff working on the website have been assigned tasks to complete, and these discussions are not an ideal use of their time.
Gardner does not believe that the Foundation revoked administrators' powers to spite the community. "This decision is not about 'the community' versus 'the WMF'", she said, but about enabling the WMF's paid staff "to do their work on the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness." It also clarifies the proper structure on the Foundation site, where the Foundation takes the editorial lead, in contrast with the projects, where the editing community takes the editorial lead and the Foundation provides background assistance. Returning to the removal of administrative rights, Gardner said, "People can disagree with this decision, and that's okay. But ultimately, the Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki: it's our job to figure out how best to manage and maintain it. That's what we're doing here."
WMF has not identified any specific incidents that prompted its decision, though staff interactions with MZMcBride may have been a trigger. In January 2012, a disagreement with a contractor led WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller to threaten deactivation of MZMcBride's WMF wiki account. In March 2013, MZMcBride proposed deletion of over one thousand pages. In response to that proposal, Director of Community Advocacy Philippe Beaudette hinted at the possibility of removing userrights, saying that Senior Communications Director Jay Walsh "has requested that I not issue any further userrights here until a conversation has been had about the direction of the wiki and its management." Conversations in these incidents raised the same points about the WMF wiki's unique purpose and Foundation control as Gardner's recent explanations. The event also brought up the question of merging the WMF site into Meta, the coordinating website for the Wikimedia movement, including the Foundation, the projects, related entities, and community members.
Gayle Karen Young apologized for her handling of the incident, and continued with her thoughts on the divided community that the Foundation faces every day:
| “ | ... I wish people could see how ... it can be sometimes just exhausting to try to please so many different voices. Some of you may think that the Foundation doesn't think about the community—and I think we sometimes listen so much that it's a little crazy because, as has been explained to us, the community is not one voice, not one thing, not one person. It's a vast, beautiful, sometimes conflicted, sometimes coordinated people working on this enormous shared endeavor. So it's not that community is not worth listening to, but how and where and to what pieces, and how do we get better at it and how do we amplify the constructive voices and not let deconstructive voices (both within the Foundation and without) tear us down because this work is hard. ... / ... So sometimes I forget we're on the same side, and thank you for reminding me. Thank you for the temperate voices, the ones who present a point of view I hadn't considered. As you can likely imagine, I hear more that way. Most people do.
... So...listening, thinking... also tired, but optimistic, and I hope and want to keep doing better. |
” |
| “ | Facilitating collaboration among Wikimedia organisations is the major topic the WCA has committed itself to. The WCA/Journal is one big piece in the mosaic of tools and communication spaces we provide in order to start and grow the exchange of ideas, solutions and projects. It's [sic] purpose is to make organisations aware of each other's work, give them some entry points for collaboration, make their success stories visible and share their experiences. | ” |
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-05-13/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-05-13/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-05-13/In focus
The Race and politics case has been accepted for arbitration, and the evidence phase is now open. Two other cases remain open.
The evidence phase of this case, which deals with sourcing methods in articles pertaining to race politics, is scheduled to close May 21, 2013, the workshop is to close on May 28 and the proposed decision is scheduled to be posted June 4.
In the case, brought by Lecen, an editor is accused of systematically skewing several articles involving former Argentine president Juan Manuel de Rosas to portray a brutal dictator as a democratic leader, in keeping with the political motives of Argentine "nationalists" or "revisionists".
The evidence stage was scheduled to close 12 April 2013, the workshop stage on 19 April, and a proposed decision was scheduled for 26 April.
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 20 March 2013, the workshop was to close on 27 March, and a proposed decision was scheduled for 3 April.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-05-13/Humour
