Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-06-30/In the media

The disinformation age: or is it the information error?

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The disinformation age

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Information and disinformation

• There's a lot Wikipedia can teach us about fighting disinformationinWired discusses the case of Maria Butina – a Russian convicted in the United States of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent of the Russian Federation – and how she possibly tried to edit the Wikipedia article about herself. Wired then compares the effectiveness of Wikipedia's methods to combat disinformation with the efforts of Facebook, YouTube, etc.
• The sad decline of the sensible company name in the Financial Times uses the "Wikipedia test" which asks whether finding out what a company actually does is easier to determine from its name, from its website, or from Wikipedia.
• 'The case of an iconic watch: how lazy writers and Wikipedia create and spread fake "facts"' a good case study of citogenesis from KSNV TV.
• DJBooth points out Wikipedia's errors in rap articles and how they spread across the internet.
• The battle for Craig Wright's Wikipedia pageonDecrypt describes the Wiki-battle by possibly paid editors over the old, and likely irrelevant question of who is Satoshi Nakamoto.
• Using Wikipedia for medical research? What to watch for, American Medical Association includes a link to AMA Journal of Ethics How Should Clinicians Engage With Online Health Information?
• The New York Times crossword rewarded readers who know the answer to a tussle between Wikieditors. (7 letters starting with E)
• An edit war at Timothy Parker (puzzle designer) erupts according to Forbes after Parker is accused of plagiarizing crosswords from, among others, The New York Times.

The North Face vandalizes Wikipedia

In May 2019 The Signpost reported that The North Face, a global chain clothing store, paid their marketers to replace Wikipedia's photos of parks, mountains and other nature sites with their advertisements. Media coverage of the scandal continues.

• Of the dozens of articles covering the vandalism only Fast Company tells it exactly like it is: "This seemingly cheeky move is actually at the vanguard of a pernicious emerging movement that we’ll call asshole advertising."
• The North Face’s Wikipedia Stunt Goes South by law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips states "The North Face’s manipulation of Wikipedia images is a form of native advertising and may be subject to the FTC’s advertising disclosure requirements."
• Deseret News『If you want to market your product, don’t mess with Wikipedia to do it.』We'd like to think so, but doesn't this kind of editing happen every day?
• Engadget states that "moderators and the site itself may have to be more prepared for surreptitious plugs like this, even if they're unlikely to happen again in the near future." How unlikely is that?
• Stephen Harrison on Slate gives a excellent summary of the hack itself, then focuses on a "highly meta" followup "a discussion taking place on Wikipedia about whether Wikipedia should include information within that subject’s Wikipedia article about how that subject covertly and unethically edited Wikipedia."
• A History of Brands Hacking WikipediainAdAge mentions Burger King, SeaWorld and NBC News and links to Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia.
• PR Week quotes Francis Ingham, director general of the Public Relations and Communications Association, who packs so much right and so much wrong into so few sentences.『It is absolutely and always wrong for PR practitioners to break the PRCA Code of Conduct by posting fake pictures or fake facts on Wikipedia. Sadly, it is also the case that Wikipedia’s procedures are opaque, confusing, and often self-defeating. While the organisation is correct to ask that its customers abide by its rules, it is completely at fault for ensuring that those rules remain quite frankly so strange and so confusing. Wikipedia would be a more reliable source of factual information if it engaged more constructively with those offering to provide those facts.』So who is completely at fault?
• Outdoors emphasizes that TNF Brazil – a licensee, not a subsidiary – ran the program.
• Travel Weekly quotes TNF Brazil's CEO Fabricio Luzzi's initial statement “Our mission is to expand our frontiers so that our consumers can overcome their limits. With the ‘Top of Images’ project, we achieved our positioning and placed our products in a fully contextualised manner as items that go hand in hand with these destinations.”

Adding and deleting women

• Video: The Wikipedia gender gap in the University of Washington's UW News

External videos
Exploring the gender gap in Wikipedia editors, 3:09, June 11, 2019, University of Washington

Rosiestep and FloNight appear in this video about UW research into the reasons for Wikipedia's gender gap. Rosiestep says "Amanda Menking and Wanda Pratt's work is important, so I was happy to participate in this project, and the follow-up video... I'd be interested in hearing feedback from members of the Wikimedia community as well as non-Wikimedians after they view the video."

• A Ridiculous Gender Bias On Wikipedia Is Finally Being CorrectedonRefinery29 describes a women's football (soccer) project sponsored by Adidas. Bustle joins in with "Wikipedia Is Getting More Female Footballer Profiles, Thanks To This Much-Needed Initiative." The North Face could learn something from this.
• Male Wikipedia editors are deleting women, says Sandi ToksviginThe Times. Good try, but she gets a few facts wrong. "There are about 350,000 uber-volunteers and they tend . . . to be the same kind of guy . . . sitting in his pants. They are actively editing women out and women’s achievements are not being inputted."

In brief

• The Culture War Has Finally Come For Wikipedia is the first of many articles that will likely appear on the Fram-ban. It's got all the pieces in place, harassment, ArbCom, editor revolt, the WMF, though "culture war" seems a long stretch.
• Associations Now shows how linguists really know how to throw an editathon: “having snacks really helps.”
• Sacramento Report: The New Front in the SB 50 Battle Is Toni Atkins’ Wikipedia Page in the Voice of San Diego shows how California politicians know how to write an article, having money really helps.

For further coverage of Wikipedia in the news see List of articles about Wikipedia

In this issue

30 June 2019

Discussion report

News and notes

Unless I am mistaken, Aaron Mak "Donald Trump's Wikipedia Entry Is a War Zone", Slate, which contained some legitimate criticism of en.wp power-users by an en.wp admin and by the journalist, was mentioned neither in May or June. This is puzzling as it's very unlikely to have been an oversight: was it considered to be unreliable? impolitic? (I mean it does have someone making snide comments like: "It sounds like you have an issue with bold editing or perhaps the world is moving too fast for you." (The article mentions that the author would later be reprimanded for ignoring consensus.) I strongly encourage people to read that article to understand how reasonable outsiders view en.wp's problematic power users. 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 19:08, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@SashiRolls: It was an oversight. Feel free to include this in the next issue. Go to Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom, click "in the media", and present this however you like. This is a standing invitation and anyone would have told you the same earlier. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:15, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, BR, but I've actually just added it directly since that seemed much simpler and more timely.🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 19:24, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @SashiRolls: it is a very good article. In my prep for this column there's a gap that you might help me fill. About 2-3 days before deadline I pretty much have to ignore new articles coming out, and for a couple of days after I take a break from reading about Wikipedia. It's just a time management thing. If you see good articles in that gap please let me know. I'll probably be going for fewer articles and more topics, as well as longer write-ups, (do we need 12 articles on The North Face?), so they may be harder to fit in. Also I have a bias toward newer articles, which means I forget about the gap. Any help appreciated. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:34, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@SashiRolls: You said you "just added it directly" but I can't see that edit; perhaps you left the window open? In any case, it's probably better to mention this article in the July issue, while explaining it was missed in May and June. — JFG ^talk 01:57, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• I enjoy this regular column and am usually surprised by how much media coverage Wikipedia still receives. I mean, it's not 2005-2006 coverage but still, magazines regularly find article subjects here within the editing community. Between this column and recent research, Wikipedia is continually getting scrutinized which I think usually benefits the project. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:15, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• I realize it was right in the setup that this isn't quite 100% up to WP:RS standards, but I still had to laugh...

Male Wikipedia editors are deleting women, says Sandi Toksvig in The Times. Good try, but she gets a few facts wrong. "There are about 350,000 uber-volunteers..."

Wait, is she telling us that there are over three hundred thousand sad, basement-dwelling men with too much time on their hands, all gung-ho on editing Wikipedia?! Well, that's a bloody relief, I guess we can all relax and slack off a bit, with all those hands on deck! All those editors should be able to handle the workload and still find plenty of time for Cheetos runs, their misogynistic editorial pet projects, genital-scratching contests, and whatever else they typically engage in. ...I'd invite Toksvig to pitch in, since she's so misinformed about just how large a community there really is behind-the-scenes here, but if all of her sourcing is this fanciful then maybe that's a bad idea. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 04:28, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly (because she is a national treasure, for whom I have had the greatest respect for many years) this is not the only time that Sandi Toksvig has been badly misinformed, to use a charitable word, about Wikipedia in recent days. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red#Mention on leading UK show: as well as repeating the claim that artices about women are being deleted, she has also claimed that articles about women are not being created, and that Wikipedia is 9% about women and 90% about men. 213.205.240.14 (talk) 17:25, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and yes. She is a national treasure (and OBE) from what I understand. Yes she was sadly mistaken. I didn't mean to make fun of her, but sometimes it's important to point out mistakes that good people make. I'm just wondering now upon review - should I have included this short blurb? Please let me know here. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:15, 2 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a huge fan of Toksvig and I thought the blurb was still fair. — Bilorv (he/him) _(talk) 16:54, 2 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• The Forbes article on Parker is from 2016, as was the related edit war, for reference. SnowFire (talk) 05:12, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SnowFire: Good catch, but Bri's The New York Times crossword really was in June (We had an all night editing party. Sorry!) Smallbones_(smalltalk) 06:20, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• • • @Smallbones: There actually was some recent development on that crossword scandal, but it was a retrospective video by the fellow who caught the shenanigans in the first place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aHfK8EUIzg SnowFire (talk) 06:44, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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