Dear all, I received the following message regarding censorship from a
fellow Wikipedian (from the Yiddish Wikipedia) commenting on the
chilling effects of censorship (in this case religious censorship).
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: willi boy <boywilli(a)gmail.com>
Date: 25-Mar-2007 10:53
Subject: censership
To: Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com>
i saw your comments on the mailing list. this censorship think is
frightening can we maybe make use of the new times in wikimenia
foundation like the resignation of danny and the hiring of bastiqe
because this will eventually hit the yiddish wiki as well since most
speakers are religious.
yours trully
--
Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
I am a researcher seeking to interview Wikipedia contributors of any and all
levels of experience and involvement. In-depth, one hour interviews will be
conducted over the phone or email beginning March 27. Compensation for your
time will be provided – a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com. Must be 18+
and U.S. resident. Contact Benjamin Johnson, Department of
Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, Michigan State University,
by email at john2429(a)msu.edu or by phone at 517.230.1272.
Thanks!
Benjamin
By request, I changed my geohack tool, which is used by many
wikipedias to provide a list of map and data resources for given GPS
coordinates, to optionally use localized templates.
For that purpose, I've moved the en template to
[[Template:GeoTemplate]]. For localization (say, "fr"), you have to
1. copy the text of [[en:Template:GeoTemplate]] to [[fr:Template:GeoTemplate]]
2. edit [[fr:Template:GeoTemplate]] to the local language
3. call geohack with the additional parameter "language=fr" (URL
generation is usually done by templates, so a few fixes on your
wikipedia should do)
I still say that Map Sources/GeoHack should become part of the default
MediaWiki installation for wikipedias via extension. Using the
toolserver for this was a quick hack (thus the name) after the
original server went offline. It HTTP-GETs the
[[Template:GeoTemplate]] for /every single request/, which is bad for
both toolserver and wikipedia servers and could be solved internally
much more elegantly.
Magnus
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1595184,00.html
Look Who's Using Wikipedia
Thursday, Mar. 01, 2007 By BILL TANCER
The Wikipedia home page
Poor Wikipedia. Professional Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is suing one of its
contributors for a defamatory cyber-attack. And last year, television
host and comedian Stephen Colbert urged his audience to vandalize a
Wikipedia entry about elephants to prove the point that in a model
where any user can edit encyclopedia entries, those entries are only
as good as their source. Take the case of retired journalist John
Seigenthaler, a former assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy,
who was wrongfully accused of involvement in the assassination of
Robert and John Kennedy by an anonymous Wikipedia contributor in 2005.
Given the controversy stirring around Wikipedia, the history
department at Middlebury College has banned its use as a research
source. When did the online form of the dust-covered encyclopedia
become such a magnet for drama?
Academics are split on the usefulness of Wikipedia, which bills itself
as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." The sheer volume of
content (Wikipedia claims over 5.3 million entries, 1.6 million in
English) is partly responsible for the site's dominance as an online
reference. When compared to the top 3,200 educational reference sites
in the U.S., Wikipedia is #1, capturing 24.3% of all visits to the
category, according to Hitwise data. But as the recent drama
illustrates, a body of online knowledge built by an army of 75,000
volunteer, anonymous contributors and editors is prone to anything
from simple benign errors to outright information vandalism.
Search and Internet behavior data provide alarming insight into this
powerful but volatile resource — alarming because one of the core
groups of Wikipedia users are school children.
Determining the extent to which students leverage Wikipedia requires
some data detective work. The search terms that users enter to
navigate to the site are the most revealing. Along with searches for
various anime cartoons, sex topics and information on the most
recently shorn, exposed or departed celebrities, the majority of top
terms bear a close resemblance to elementary school homework and
research projects. During the month of February, which is also Black
History month, three of the top 20 terms sending traffic to Wikipedia
were for prominent black historical figures, while two other searches
were likely motivated by President's Day. In fact, changing
time-frames to any other month during the school year reveals a
similar result. (Source: Hitwise)
Along with the impressive growth in visits to the site, 680% in two
years, charting those visits over time confirms student activity. Over
the last three years of growth, traffic dipped during the summer
months and the weeks of spring break and winter vacation.
One of the reasons for Wikipedia's stellar growth rate in visits is
all the traffic it receives from search engines, over 64% last week.
In fact, due to Google's algorithm for displaying search results and
the abundance of links in any given entry, Wikipedia has become the #1
external site visited after Google's search page.
As students begin their online research, they could view the
prevalence of Wikipedia references in Google as proof of the accuracy
and reliability of the source. Given the search exposure and sheer
volume of data available on the site, they might fall into the trap of
relying on a single source for their education. Hopefully their
research projects won't involve elephants or professional golfers.
Bill Tancer is general manager of global research at Hitwise.
--
FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST please)
http://fn.goa-india.orghttp://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com
What bloggers are saying about Goa: http://planet.goa-india.org/
Yet again I have a journalist question: "How many editors are there on
Wikipedia?"
I can't find any solid numbers on this. I recall a graph showing that
activity per person is a power law graph, meaning there's no
sharply-definable answer.
Does anyone have any idea?
- d.
Language Log is a widely read blog covering linguistic issues that
goes back to July 2003. (It's even licensed under CC-BY-SA! how
progressive :))
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004301.html
A recent post about [[en:User:Koryakov Yuri]]'s campaign to improve
linguistics biography and general coverage in Russian Wikipedia.
Probably more to come.
Also a nice anecdote from an assistant professor at the University of
Massachusetts:
--
In my large intro course yesterday, there was an unfamiliar hand
in the air a lot of the time, and the student's questions and insights
were the best I've had all semester. It was puzzling, because I didn't
recognize him, and he seemed to know much more about syntax than one
would expect. (It was our first official day on the topic.)
After class, he came to the front and introduced himself as a
prospective student, just out of high school. He said linguistics was
his passion in high school. I said, "What? How?" And he replied,
"Wikipedia".
--
regards,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
On the Moldavian Wikipedia it says for over a month "This wiki has been
closed for now." Is there any outlook on whether 'for now' means 'for ever'
or that it will be re-opened at some time? I am asking because I want to
know what to do with the interwiki for the bot. If the wiki is closed down
for good, I intend to remove them silently; if it will be opened up again
some time soon, I want to keep them in the same way as to 'normal'
Wikipedias.
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
At 12:03 12/03/2007, you wrote:
>On 11/03/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > everything is measured. Worthiness is this new word created by the American
> > television guy and it means whatever you make it.
>
>You are thinking of "truthiness". Worthiness is a well-established
>English word, I don't know how long its history is but I am guessing
>it extends back well before the history of television.
The Oxford English Dictionary indeed lists "Thruthiness", redirecting
to "Truthy" described as " Characterized by truth; truthful, true.
Hence "truthiness, truthfulness, faithfulness.".
Regards,
Ian Tresman
No, Verifiability has never been the criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia.
Every branch of McDonalds can be verified by looking them up in phonebooks--that
does not mean that they are notable and should be included. If anything the
criteria for notability have eroded somewhat, so that topics that would have
been deleted on sight are included as a matter of course.
Danny
In a message dated 3/11/2007 9:20:02 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
it(a)knowledge.co.uk writes:
In the old days, Jimbo described "Verifiability" as the criteria for
inclusion in Wikipedia, and this was endorsed by the description of
"Notability".
Not any more. "Notability" has been redefined as equating
to: worthiness, "attracting attention", supported by secondary
sources, popularity, consensus, or perceived truth.
And articles that are not considered "note-worthy", or balderdash,
are now deleted, rather than described as such.
Is this what Jimbo wants?
Regards,
Ian Tresman
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