David King is the owner of EthicalWiki, a small business that helps organizations contribute to Wikipedia with a conflict of interest that focuses on ethics. He also contributes equally as a volunteer, racking up more than 16,000 edits over the last few years. Over the last year, there's been extensive debate about whether public relations professionals and other corporate representatives should participate on Wikipedia and, if so, to what extent and what kinds of rules should be followed. In this Q&A, he provides his perspective on the debate.
Can editing Wikipedia anonymously as a public relations representative be illegal?
The Federal Trade Commission requires that those with a financial connection to a company provide clear and obvious disclosures regarding their affiliation. If readers presume Wikipedia's content is written by independent, crowd-sourced participants, but it is actually a corporate communication or promotion, this may be an illegal form of covert advertising that is misleading to readers. The FTC's .com disclosures guide (new location) and the findings of a German court case seem to uphold similar principles. It's hard to say how the law would be interpreted in different circumstances, but companies should proceed with caution.
Do you support the Bright Line rule that PR reps not directly edit articles?
Any organization that is acting in good faith, should respect Wikipedia's autonomy and take the extra step of making sure their proposed changes are supported by the community. It would be irresponsible for the community to encourage public relations professionals to take a risky course of action that is an ethical and legal minefield, such as directly editing the article. Exceptions like grammar, spelling and genuinely neutral editing fall under our common sense principles, but should not be communicated explicitly. They are likely to be taken advantage of by bad-faith participants or weaken a professional's ability to push back against corporate pressures to make COI edits.
Does the Bright Line work?
Not very well, but it's not as if direct editing by PR reps has better results for Wikipedia. Editors complain that it is difficult to assess whether a PR rep's contributions are neutral and PR contributors complain that it's difficult to get anything done without bold editing.
We can fix the community's complaint by quickly dismissing requests to micro-manage the exact language of the article. Even if the PR rep is correct, these are generally unhelpful and the community has better things to spend our time on. We can address the complaints of PR pros by creating a consistent wizard-based process for routine requests that can be handled by a single editor.
Are PR editors mistreated here?
Sometimes it can look like mistreatment from the PR rep's perspective, because we are frustrated not to get our way or feel passionately about what a correct article looks like. In other cases, the harassment is genuine, but this is also a problem volunteer editors experience.
The community does not accurately assign good faith or bad faith to COI editors, because we do not have access to enough information on-Wiki to evaluate an editor's intentions. Some would claim that we should therefor always assume good faith, but this is not a good use of the community's resources, especially in the most obvious cases of bad faith. The easiest way to handle this is to provide straightforward instructions on the proper way to participate with a COI and distinguish between those that follow instructions and those that do not.
Can paid editors be neutral?
The Wikipedia community accepts mediocre contributions from everyone. Public relations professionals do not need to be top-grade editors to be welcomed here, nor do we even need to be any more neutral than the average editor.
The only thing an organization needs to do to avoid hostility, risk and controversy is prove that they are not an advocate. If they are not an advocate, any bias is accidental and inconsequential and if they are, advocacy is broadly prohibited.
Not an advocate?
The normal role of a public relations professional is to communicate the company's point of view, but Wikipedia's expectation is that the organization attempts to be neutral about itself, including adding perspectives the employer or client doesn't agree with. The extent of which an organization and its PR rep are able to bridge this gap between their de facto role and Wikipedia's expectations scales with the amount of acceptance they can expect on Wikipedia.
Organizations that are unable to meet Wikipedia's expectations about their role accept additional risk and other problems, because advocacy is broadly prohibited, regardless of what rules are followed, how policy-compliant the content is, or how polite they are. Strategic public relations professionals will advise clients to avoid advocacy, because this will have the best outcome for them in the long term. It is even a viable strategy to overcompensate for a conflict of interest intentionally, so editors can trim down the contentious content rather than speculate over what's missing, or whether there is cherry picking and slanting.
What about the bad guys?
Every spammy, promotional article that slips through the cracks has three competitors looking at it and thinking "why can't we have an article like that?"
One approach is fighting against promotion on-wiki, but it's an uphill battle. The other strategy that is needed is preventing bad-faith COI edits from occurring in the first place. This can be done by educating the PR community, providing straightforward advice and by making an example out of the bad guys.
It's crazy that blatant Wikipedia astroturfing firms are operating in broad daylight like it's a legitimate business that doesn't need to hide in the shadows. I would like to see the Federal Trade Commission establish some precedence that blatantly astroturfing Wikipedia is illegal and unethical.
Anything else?
In a perfect world, experienced, thoughtful volunteers would bring every article up to Featured status. But in practice we have lots of articles that need to be created, are "owned" by POV pushers, or are just terrible in general and the PR rep is the most motivated to improve it. There are many cases where, though I may have a bias, I can be much more neutral than volunteers have been on that particular page.
I don't know at what frequency we can realistically expect organizations to take on the unusual role Wikipedia expects of them. I turn down more than half of the business inquiries I get, because the prospect just wants something too different than Wikipedia for us to deliver the expected outcome within the scope of our ethics policy. It would help if Wikipedia was more clear about communicating its expectations.
It's a contradiction that some in the PR community take it for granted that their role on Wikipedia is the traditional one of communicating the client's point of view, but also see no reason for controversy when acting as "just another editor." Each circumstance is different. A lot comes down to whether the community trusts a specific company and/or individual and whether that organization is able to exhibit trust-building behaviors.
The saga of Walter White, chemistry teacher-turned-drug kingpin, as told in the critically adored television series Breaking Bad, has been a water-cooler necessity for years, and now, as it nears its end, audiences are feverishly following every plot thread to guess what the finale will reveal. This week brought the antepenultimate episode, called "Ozymandias", which is regarded by critics and audiences alike as one of the best the show has produced. Interest in the episode was so high that it even brought the poem into the top 20.
For the complete top 25 report, plus exclusions, see WP:TOP25.
For the week of September 15–21, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
And the world middleweight champion beat Saul Alvarez on September 14; a fight that an estimated 2.2 million televisions tuned in for, and which could ultimately net him $100 million.
Fox News: Wikipedia abandons efforts to purge porn from online encyclopedia
Fox News writer Perry Chiaramonte published an article detailing Wikipedia's alleged abandonment of its fight to remove pornography. The article features comments from Wikipediocracy co-founders and banned Wikipedians Gregory Kohs and Eric Barbour; the latter asserted that most Wikipedia administrators are "young males who don’t write any content ... and love to fight among themselves", adding that to them, Wikipedia is "a giant video game, not an 'encyclopedia'". They also noted that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia user page) deleted hundreds of images several years ago, only to have them undeleted and re-added. Fox News noted that the Wikimedia Foundation board did begin to try to solve the problem, but efforts were dropped after a consensus was not reached.
“
Wales did indeed remove images from the site and made a call for the foundation to implement a "personal image filter"; in May 2011, the Board of Trustees unanimously voted 10-0 in favor of the filter. But protests against the decision led the board to reverse its decision. The board ultimately canceled any plans for an image filter, leaving pornography freely available to all site visitors.
”
Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Jay Walsh conceded that the board currently is not taking any steps to remove pornographic images, saying "This was a major discussion within our community. Thousands [about 24,000] of users contributed to the process. Ultimately, our board declared that the results of this referendum were inconclusive, and that no single system would be effective, nor was there consensus about the need for the system."
The article concludes with Walsh noting that Wikimedia Commons sees hundreds of images added and deleted on a minute-by-minute basis, and that inappropriate images—be they copyright violations or potentially illegal—are removed by volunteers quickly, sometimes instantaneously, calling it part of the “normal, daily process on our project."
In brief
South Africans launch effort to expand Wikipedia coverage : Concerned with missing or inaccurate information about its country, Lead SA has gathered a diverse group of contributors in hopes of improving the coverage of South Africa. The Daily Maverick lamented the poor coverage of South Africa-related topics like monkey gland sauce and berg wind. On a more serious note, several sources pointed out the fact that the English language Wikipedia is dominated by North American and European viewpoints. Business Day interviewed two people who stated that this bias hurts the coverage of South Africa and tends to portray the nation, and even the African continent, in a negative light.
Plastic surgery advocated through Wikipedia: The Daily Dot highlighted accusations against plastic surgeons who use Wikipedia and associated projects to advertise for their services.
Wikipedia article competition: The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) announced its 2013 competition to improve the quality of existing Wikipedia articles related to computational biology. Full details can be found at the related Wikipedia page.
Submissions deadline close for Wiki Loves Monuments
Countries taking part in WLM 2013.A submission from Oruro, Bolivia; filed by a new user early in the competition.
On 30 September, Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the Wikimedia community's global photo competition, will reach the end of its submission period. The proceedings have been underway since the first of this month; national juries will start reviewing submissions for the first round of selections after it closes.
At the time of writing, WLM had achieved nine featured, seven valued, and 149 quality images on Commons. Similar to past years, it will take the media file repository's community and the related content projects months to work through all submissions and evaluate candidates for predicates. In quantitative terms, the continent of the competition's origin (Europe) is currently dominating: Poland is leading the national selections with 31k submissions, followed by Germany with 25k, and Ukraine with around 21k. Notably, bicontinental newcomer Armenia has submitted more than 13k images. Among the African states, South Africa leads before Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt with 3.5k to 890, 710, and 430, respectively. Among Latin America, Uruguay (4.2k) is in front of Mexico (2.9k) and Argentina (1.9k); the latter is also hosting images of Antarctica, though none have been submitted. In Asia, India, which won last year's international jury prize for the best image, holds a commanding lead with 7.3k files, with China lagging with 2.1k submissions. The US, which has taken part since 2012, currently has 6.8k.
A community, the WMF, and the VisualEditor walk into ...
Community aggravation with one of the Wikimedia Foundation's signature initiatives, the VisualEditor, came to the fore again this week with the announcement and implementation of code blocking the tool.
Kindled by Kww, the action came as part of implementing prior consensus in the English Wikipedia's VisualEditor request for comment. The code, which was reviewed and altered after community comments prior to going live, was removed minutes after being deployed as the Foundation decided to officially change the English Wikipedia to 'opt-in' status'. The VisualEditor's product manager castigated the editors involved for deploying "known-broken code ... despite direct warnings to the participants of the damage it would cause", while the WMF's engineering team considered it "badly flawed" code that would put an "unacceptable load on the servers".
Fallout from the disagreement includes a debate over whether Foundation employees are members of the community; the VisualEditor is currently opt-in only, on the English Wikipedia, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Previous Signpost coverage of the VisualEditor includes its deployment and an op-ed from the Foundation's Deputy Director, Erik Möller.
In brief
Should the community logo be trademarked?: Four community members have declared their formal opposition to the Foundation's attempt to trademark the Wikimedia community logo in the European Union. The opposition, which includes the logo's original creator (Artur Fijalkowski), was careful to note that "it is not our intention to damage anyone; our actions are a challenge against what we perceive as unilateral declaration of ownership of an asset that has always belonged to the wider community, and not to one or another organisation that is part of the movement." The original discussion behind this can be found on Meta. The Foundation was quick to file a request for consultation on Meta to determine the wider community's opinion; the Foundation legal team's position is that without trademarking, others could register the logo and restrict the community's use of it. A possible solution (which currently has majority support) lies in a collective membership mark, which would "allow community members to use the mark freely to show their connection to the Wikimedia movement, while still protecting the mark against abuse from non-community parties."
Featured lists election: An election to select two new delegates for the featured list candidates process is being held from 1 to 30 October. Nominations will be accepted from 1 to 7 October. Voting starts on 15 October.
Indian gender gap: A draft work plan for the Indian gender gap project has been posted on Meta, though few specifics have been entered.
Brazilian education group proposal: A new grants proposal from Ação Educativa, a non-profit Brazilian educational group, has been published on Meta. Their objectives can be viewed on their FAQ page; the program would run for ten months with a proposed budget of approximately US$551k.
This week, we continued our exploration of other language editions of Wikipedia by visiting the Spanish Wikipedia's Wikiproyecto Fútbol (WikiProject Football). Started in February 2004, the project has grown to include 23 Featured Articles and 115 Good Articles covering the clubs, players, competitions, and sport in general. The project maintains a very active talk page, a to do list, a manual of style, and a category of football articles to be wikified. We interviewed NZF.
What motivated you to join Wikiproyecto Fútbol? Are you a fan of a particular team? Have you contributed to any of the project's Featured or Good Articles?
NZF: I do not remember very well, but I think they invited me and I accepted without hesitation. I'm a fan of the Argentine club Rosario Central but in Wikipedia I focus on football in Oceania, and in this regard my favorites are the New Zealand teams Waitakere United and Wellington Phoenix FC. My biggest contribution to Wikipedia and the WikiProject Football was raising Oceania Football Confederation to Good article status.
Are there some teams that have better encyclopedic coverage than others? Are all parts of the Spanish-speaking world represented on the Spanish Wikipedia?
NZF: Yes, and it is very noticeable. When I began to create articles for clubs, I remember Oceania had just 5 or 6 articles, and they were quite poor. In general, clubs outside European and Spanish-speaking countries have poor coverage, are outdated, incomplete or poorly written. However, all the clubs in Spanish-speaking countries are well covered, especially for Spain and Argentina.
How does the activity at WikiProject Football compare to other sports projects on the Spanish Wikipedia? Does WikiProject Football collaborate with any Spanish-language WikiProjects?
NZF: If it's not the most active WikiProject in the Spanish Wikipedia, it is pretty close. A lot of people like football and most of us in the Spanish Wikipedia want the best coverage for our club or favorite team. We often collaborate with the respective countries' WikiProjects, but especially with the Wikiproyecto Estadios (WikiProject Stadiums).
How does the Spanish Wikipedia's coverage of football differ from other language editions of Wikipedia? Do you ever translate material from other languages to improve articles on the Spanish Wikipedia?
NZF: The English Wikipedia has translated content from many of my articles and there is excellent coverage, all clubs have articles and rarely they are outdated or incomplete. In the Spanish Wikipedia there is a very noticeable Hispanocentrism and Eurocentrism — articles on teams in Brazil, Africa, Asia and Oceania are scarce and of poor quality. Since I started editing on the Oceania Football Confederation, I came across only one other user willing to create articles — only one in almost two years! However, when asking for help to improve an article of a Mexican club, for instance, many stakeholders work together. When Tahiti played the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, the article was edited almost every 3 or 4 hours by an interested party that wanted to clarify who they would face or that they had been thrashed by Spain and Uruguay, ignoring the rest of the article. Obviously, when the Confederations Cup finished all these "interested" editors made no further edits — because obviously what interests them over in Fiji, Tahiti, New Caledonia, Vanuatu or New Zealand?
How difficult has it been to acquire images for football articles? Are there any subjects that could be easily photographed if you knew a Wikipedia editor in a particular country?
NZF: It's almost impossible to get images for the aspects of football that I edit: Oceania. However, it is very easy to get images of players from playing in Spanish-speaking countries, there is always someone who lives there and is willing to photograph and upload those photos.
What are the project's most urgent needs? How can contributors from the English Wikipedia help the Spanish WikiProject Football?
NZF: Eliminate Hispanocentrism and Eurocentrism. Maybe the article Liga de Campeones de la UEFA (UEFA Champions League) has perfect coverage, but the Champions League AFC (AFC Champions League) is poorly covered because there is noone interested in editing. I think the only thing that there are articles in each edition of this competition is because they participate in the FIFA Club World Cup, where teams usually play Hispanic countries and European clubs. One place where I think the English Wikipedians could be helpful is in the articles of English clubs, most are short articles full of mistranslations and poor content.
Next week, we'll revisit a philanthropic band of Dubliners. Until then, rock out in the archive.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from September 15, 2013 through September 21, 2013.
Featured articles
12 featured articles were promoted this week.
Julianne Moore (born 1960) is a British-American actress and children's author. She has received four Academy Award nominations.Stanley Bruce (1883 – 1967) was the eighth Prime Minister of Australia (1923–29).
No. 38 Squadron RAAF (nom) by Nick-D. This article covers a Royal Australian Air Force transport squadron that was formed in 1943, and saw service in World War II, the Malayan Emergency, and a number of other training and peacekeeping roles. The squadron still exists today in both a transportation and training role, and has the "longest period of continual operation of any of the RAAF's flying squadrons."
Stanley Bruce (nom) by Unus Multorum. Was the eighth Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1923 to 1929. Bruce was a World War I veteran, member of the Nationalist Party, and later an international figure. Most notably, Bruce oversaw the Australian government's move from Melbourne to Canberra, the new capital, and became the first Australian to serve in the United Kingdom's House of Lords.
Boletus calopus (nom) by Casliber. Also known as the "bitter beech bolete" or the "scarlet–stemmed bolete", this fungus grows in the woodlands of Asia, Northern Europe, and North America. Although first described as a member of the genus Boletus in 1801, recent evidence indicates that it will likely be moved to a new genus due to substantial differences with other Boletus species. While not strictly poisonous, the bitter-tasting compounds calopin and O-acetylcyclocalopin A make this fungus rather unpalatable.
Love the Way You Lie (nom) by Wikipedian_Penguin. This 2010 hit single, performed by Eminem (and featuring Rihanna), was written by the rapper, along with artists Skylar Grey and Alex da Kid. The track went on to become Eminem's best-selling single, despite its somewhat controversial topic, domestic violence. Interestingly, the song was criticized due to its focus on the "abuser" (sung by Eminem, and portrayed by Dominic Monaghan in the music video) rather than the "victim" (sung by Rihanna, and portrayed by Megan Fox); perhaps this led to Rihanna's "Love the Way You Lie (Part II)", which although less well–received, turned the tables on the original song.
Elgin Cathedral (nom) by Aunva6. Construction started on this Scottish cathedral in around 1215, and was completed by 1242. Serving the Diocese of Moray, the cathedral survived fires in 1270, 1390, and 1402. When the Scottish Parliament voted to adopt Protestantism as the state church in 1560, the cathedral was abandoned. Since that time, the structure was stripped of its lead roofing and permitted to decay, leaving the site in ruins today.
Mascarene Parrot (nom) by FunkMonk. The Mascarene Parrot was a species of parrot unique to the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. First discovered in 1674, the parrot was described by Linnaeus in 1771, and was likely extinct before the dawn of the 19th century. Modern researchers have been unable to determine precisely the correct scientific classification for this parrot, which debate centers around whether the bird was of African (subfamily Coracopsinae) or Asian (subfamily Psittaculinae) in origin. Adding to that confusion is the fact that, despite two stuffed specimens existing today, researchers are not sure of the parrot's coloration in life.
Kellie Loder (nom) by Neelix. This Canadian recording artist has released two Contemporary Christian albums, with her latest album, 2010's Imperfections & Directions earning the singer-songwriter a nomination for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year at the 2012 Juno Awards, Canada's top music awards. Originally intending to become a nurse, Loder did not finally make the decision to abandon her medical career for music until 2013. Despite moving toward writing and performing more secular music, Loder still considers her craft a form of Christian ministry.
Format of Sesame Street (nom) by Figureskatingfan. Sesame Street, a popular American children's show, has varied its format several times throughout its 44-year history. Originally starting out in a "magazine" format, the show gradually became more "story"-oriented, depicting a single thematic story throughout several 10-minute segments. Eventually, the show's audience grew younger, and by the late 1990s, Elmo became a dominant narrative figure.
Julianne Moore (nom) by Loeba. This article covers the well-known British-American actress of stage, television, and film, who starred in such works as Boogie Nights, The Hours, and Game Change. Moore has won both a Daytime and Primetime Emmy, a SAG Award, and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for four Academy Awards.
Talk That Talk (Rihanna song) (nom) by Tomica. This article covers the Bajan singer's 2011 single that earned Rihanna and Jay-Z, who rapped on the track, a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for the 2013 awards show. The song is considered one of Rihanna's more light-hearted songs from the album of the same name, and was promoted with a B-side that included a remix of the singer's hit single with Calvin Harris, "We Found Love".
"Goodbyeee" (nom) by Ajmint. This was the sixth and last episode of Blackadder's fourth series (known as Blackadder Goes Forth), which concentrated around the First World War. This was the last regular episode of the show to be broadcast. Without giving away too many spoilers, the episode was considered "darker" than others in the series, and the final shot is of a field of poppies.
D-Day naval deceptions (nom) by ErrantX. An article that contains exactly "what it says on the tin", it describes Operations Taxable, Glimmer, and Big Drum, which all had one primary thing in common: attempting to fool German military before and during the Invasion of Normandy in June 1944. While Taxable and Glimmer focused on Calais, to the east of the planned invasion site, Big Drum was an attempt to make the Allied invasion force seem larger than it was. Despite being thoroughly planned, sources are divided as to whether they were successful to any degree.
List of Square Enix compilation albums (nom) by PresN. Japanese video game company Square Enix constantly releases compilation albums containing songs, or arrangements of songs, from multiple video game series owned and developed by the company. These albums include music directly from the games, as well as arrangements covering a variety of styles, such as orchestral, piano, vocal, and techno. Dozens of albums have been published since, primarily through Square Enix's own record label.
Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series (nom) by SoapFan12. This award is presented annually at the Emmy Awards ceremony to honour outstanding series in the drama field of television. The Doctors, first aired in 1963, became the first recipient of the award in 1972. General Hospital holds the record for the most awards, winning on eleven occasions. ABC has been the the most successful network, with a total of twenty-one wins.
Sherlock Holmes (1939 film series) (nom) by SchroCat. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was the subject of a series of fourteen films released between 1939 and 1946. Actors Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce played Holmes and Dr. John Watson, respectively. The first two films were released by 20th Century Fox, while the rest were made by Universal Studios. Some of the films in the series had become degraded over time, with some of the original negatives lost.
62nd Academy Awards (nom) by Birdienest81. The 62nd Academy Awards took place on March 26, 1990 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Awards in 23 categories were presented. Driving Miss Daisy became the most-awarded film of the ceremony, winning four awards including Best Picture and Best Actress. Drama war film Glory finished second with three awards, while other thrirteen films receiving at least one. Additionally, two special honourary awards were given.
List of Billboard number-one alternative singles of the 1980s (nom) by Holiday56. A total of twenty-two singles had topped the Alternative Songs record chart by the end of the 1980s. The chart, that ranks the most-played songs on American modern rock radio stations, debuted in the September 10, 1988 issue of Billboard, having "Peek-a-Boo" as its inaugural number-one single. Alternative rock band R.E.M. and new wave group The B-52's were the only acts to score more than one number-one single during the 1980s.
National Film Award for Best Actor (nom) by Vensatry with Bill william compton. This award, officially known as the Rajat Kamal Award for the Best Actor in Hindi, is presented annually at the National Film Awards of India since 1968. It honours actors who have delivered the best performance in a leading role within the Indian film industry. Uttam Kumar, from Bengali cinema, was the first recipient of the award, thanks to his performances in Anthony Firingee and Chiriyakhana.
Ida B. Wells (nom) created by Mary Garrity, restored by Adam Cuerden and nominated by Chick Bowen. African-American journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells (1862 – 1931) documented lynching in the United States. She was a skilled rhetorician.
New Moon (1940 film) (nom) created by Tooker Litho Co. and nominated by Crisco 1492. New Moon is a 1940 musical film adaptation of The New Moon operetta. The film starred Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Mary Boland, and George Zucco.
Nototropis falcatus (nom) created by Lycaon and nominated by Crisco 1492. This photo, by a Belgian marine biologist who is a Wikipedia contributor, shows a species of amphipod crustacean.
Sunset at Montmajour (nom) created by Vincent Van Gogh and nominated by Crisco 1492. This oil painting by Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh was completed in 1888. In 2013 it became the first Van Gogh painting to be confirmed as the artist's work since 1928.
Socks the Cat (nom) created by Barbara Kinney/The White House and nominated by I JethroBT. Socks the Cat, owned by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and his family, appears on the presidential lectern in the White House Briefing Room.
and his family during President Clinton's years in office.]].
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
Wiki, or 'pedia? The genre and values of Wikipedia compared with other encyclopedias
Wikipedia and Encyclopaedism: A Genre Analysis of Epistemological Values[1] is a new master's thesis that analyzes the values that influenced how knowledge is presented on Wikipedia, in comparison with other encyclopedias that have been created throughout history. The author uses genre analysis to compare the epistemological values that are represented in the kind of knowledge that different encyclopedias present and in the way they present that knowledge. The author first conducts a literature review to compare the epistemology of two genres: wikis and encyclopedias. The wiki epistemology is composed of six values: self-identification, collaboration, co-construction, cooperation, trust in the community, and constructionism. By contrast, the values of major current and historical encyclopedias—such as Diderot's Encyclopédie, Pliny's Natural History, and the Encyclopædia Britannica—prioritize trust in experts, authority, and consistency.
Despite being based on different, and even somewhat contradictory, value systems, the purpose of Wikipedia and the way it presents knowledge are shown to be similar to other works in the encyclopedia genre. The author analyzes the frequency of common words in section headings of 25 heavily edited English Wikipedia articles that had a corresponding article in Britannica. He compares the evolution of section headings within these Wikipedia articles and multiple editions of Britannica, and shows that the gradual process by which a Wikipedia article becomes more structured through the addition and alteration of headings is similar to the process for Britannica articles, which also tend to become longer and more formally structured over subsequent editions. This thesis presents some interesting parallels between the way articles are developed within Wikipedia and other encyclopedias, despite vastly different timescales and some differing underlying values. It also offers an engaging, in-depth discussion of the concept of genre, the purpose of the encyclopedia genre, and the history of several major historical encyclopedias.
Identifying trending topics of yesteryear
In a paper titled "Temporal Wikipedia search by edits and linkage",[2] the authors develop a method to identify Wikipedia articles associated with topics around a date based on changes the length of the article as well as patterns of the other articles to which it links. This paper expands on prior work in temporal information retrieval and anomaly detection and uses modifications to the HITS and PageRank to return a list of the most relevant documents for a topic on a date. This work has implications for not only using Wikipedia data to identify trending topics, but also to retrospectively identify trending topics. A downloadable Java client allows test searches (for the months of September and October 2011) and the display of the resulting page networks.
Automatic detection of "infiltrating" Wikipedia admins
A paper titled "Manipulation Among the Arbiters of Collective Intelligence:
How Wikipedia Administrators Mold Public Opinion",[3] to be presented at next month's ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), makes a rather serious claim: "We find a surprisingly large number of editors who change their behavior and begin focusing more on a particular controversial topic once they are promoted to administrator status." This reviewer does not find it shocking, as he has written about this problem years ago. The authors note that those editors are difficult to understand based on their pattern of edits, but are more easily spotted by analyzing the pattern of votes at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, though they also suggest that a relatively simple fix may be helpful - simply increasing the threshold of success votes required for a successful RfA may increase the quality of the Wikipedia admin corps.
One may however quibble with "enforcement of neutrality is in the hands of comparatively few, powerful administrators", another attention-drawing claim in the abstract, that however finds little discussion or support in the body. Discussions about NPOV topics are hardly limited to mop'n'bucket wielders, and thus this claim, and the article abstract, may be exaggerating the importance of the findings. Some admins wait until getting the nearly-impossible-to-remove mop before becoming, well, regular editors. As long as they are not abusing their powers - this reviewer is not sure why we should care. What is more relevant, certainly, is how this entire process shows the inefficiency of RfA, which forces people to hide behind false "I am perfect" personas, as any sign of being a real person (i.e. making errors, being human, etc.) is often enough to threaten to derail that process. Still, this review is not a place for beating that nearly dead horse - but those interested in the RfA reform process should likely read this article in more detail.
Academic role models important for promoting the use of Wikipedia in higher education
"An Empirical Study on Faculty Perceptions and Teaching Practices of Wikipedia"[4] is a new paper in the emerging subfield of "academics and educators attitudes on Wikipedia", which we have covered before (links). This paper benefits from a respectable sample (about 800 respondents from the faculty body of the Open University of Catalonia). The paper confirms a number of previous findings, namely the importance of one's perception of Wikipedia's usefulness and quality, which is significantly and positively correlated to whether one will consider using it as a teaching resource. Correspondingly, poor knowledge about Wikipedia in particular, and about open access and collaborative knowledge creation models in general, are negatively correlated with views on Wikipedia. Having a respected figure (role model) using Wikipedia in teaching is also likely to influence others, through the usual informal peer networks. Individual characteristics (academic rank, teaching experience, age or gender) are not seen as significant. As the authors conclude, there is much work to be done in educating the worlds of education and academia about the basics of Wikipedia - something we should never take for granted.
Was Steve Jobs an inventor? WP:V as "delegated voice"
In a paper titled "Learning through Massively Co-Authored Biographies: Making Sense of Steve Jobs on Wikipedia through Delegated Voice",[5] the authors performed a qualitative analysis of discussions about whether or not to describe Steve Jobs as an "inventor" from the articles talk page. They use the discussion as an example of Wikipedians' use of WP:Verifiability to write articles from a "delegated voice". While mostly critical of the limitations and contradictions that this approach to encyclopedia construction entails, they admit that Wikipedia articles "do indeed illustrate a variety of voices and points of view." They draw a contrast with Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on Steve Jobs which does not contain any critical comments while Wikipedia's contains several nuanced discussions critical of Jobs' life and work.
Briefly
Distribution of biography articles on the German Wikipedia by gender and decade of birth (red = male, blue = female)
Distribution of biography articles on the Swedish Wikipedia by gender and decade of birth (red = male, blue = female)
Historical gender ratio of Wikipedia biographies: Swedish Wikipedian LA2 has evaluated biography articles on the German and Swedish Wikipedia by birth date and gender.[6] The results show a ratio of more than 10:1 males to females for births before 1900, decreasing to less than 3:1 in the late 20th century.
Readability rating tool based on AFT data: A paper titled "Automatic Readability Classification of Crowd-Sourced Data based on Linguistic and Information-Theoretic Features"[7] uses readability ratings that Wikipedia readers submitted via the Article Feedback Tool to construct an automatic text readability test.
Wikipedia usage in Germany: According to an annual survey by ARD and ZDF (Germany's two main public broadcasters),[8] 74% of German Internet users access Wikipedia at least occasionally (among academics, the number is 88%), and 32% use it once per week or more often.
BALL CHICKEN BRITISH WOMAN: A master's thesis submitted last year to the University of Georgia, titled "A Large Scale Study of Edit Patterns in Wikipedia and its Applications to Vandalism Detection"[9] contains a wealth of statistical results about vandalism edits on the English Wikipedia, for example a "List of top 25 vandal words", starting as follows: Ball, chicken, British, woman, hole, handicap, meat, kiss...
Automatic classification of edits: A paper titled "Automatically Classifying Edit Categories in Wikipedia Revisions"[10] presents a system to automatically classify Wikipedia edits into categories such as the fixing of spelling mistakes, the adding of citations, markup changes or vandalism.
Legendary, acclaimed, world-class text analysis method finds you promotional Wikipedia articles really easily: Training a machine learning algorithm to distinguish 13,000 articles in the Category:All articles with a promotional tone from articles not tagged as promotional, and from good or featured articles, three researchers from the University of Texas at Austin conclude that "stylometric features ... work very well for detecting promotional articles in Wikipedia."[12] Among the many features used in the classifier is the "percentage of special phrases such as peacock terms (‘legendary’, ‘acclaimed’, ‘world-class’), "weasel terms" (‘many scholars state’, ‘it is believed/regarded’, ‘many are of the opinion’, ‘most feel’, ‘experts declare’, ‘it is often reported’) , editorializing terms (‘without a doubt’, ‘of course’, ‘essentially’)."
^Rughinis, C.; Matei, S.: Learning through Massively Co-Authored Biographies: Making Sense of Steve Jobs on Wikipedia through Delegated Voice. Control Systems and Computer Science (CSCS), 2013, 19th International Conference on 29-31 May 2013, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/CSCS.2013.62
.JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.png)
_01.jpg){kind=link}
