Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-07-31/In the media

Politics starts getting rough: Are we ready for the sharp elbows?

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Politics starts getting rough

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• What's the capacity of the Williams Arena in Greenville, North Carolina? Your two choices are A. 8,000 or B. 20,000. It seemed simple enough until U.S. President Donald Trump held a campaign rally there with his supporters shouting "send her back." The Charlotte Observerin"A Trump campaign tweet, the capacity of ECU’s coliseum, and what it did to Wikipedia" notes that a small edit war on this question followed the rally. The answer: 8,000 is the seating capacity; 20,000 also includes people on the floor of the arena, those standing outside the arena, at the airport and lining the street.
• "Donald Trump’s Wikipedia Entry Is a War Zone", in Slate back in May, covered the "brutal, petty battle over every word" waged in Donald Trump's entry. Ten editors are mentioned by their usernames, but『readers know little or nothing about who exactly is presiding over one of the internet’s most high-profile sources about the most powerful person in the world.』The dispute over the terms "racially charged" vs. "racist" was one of many disputes noted. "The dynamic on Trump’s page may be a relentless, exhausting tug of war. But ... disagreement—even heated, churlish, insult-hurling disagreement—is often not ultimately a bad thing."
• "A bitter turf war is raging on the Brexit Wikipedia page" according to the April Wired UK article, including "death threats, doxxing attempts and accusations of bias". They ask "who gets to decide what counts as neutrality?" Five editors are mentioned using their usernames.
• "Behind the Edit Wars – Indian election battles are being fought on Wikipedia, too"inQuartz India in May during the 2019 Indian general election detailed a tactic, in which a biography was vandalized and then a screenshot of the vandalized article was distributed in social media. After a Time magazine piece on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the author's Wikipedia article was vandalized. According to Pratik Sinha of fact-checker Alt News, Wikipedia is now "an active source of misinformation” in Indian politics.
• The Weaponization of Wikipediaablog and podcast by conservative broadcast journalist Sharyl Attkisson focuses on Wikipedia's "agenda editors", who, according to Attkisson, are often biased ideologues or paid PR editors. She denies that she has done anti-vaccine reporting as stated in the Wikipedia article on her. At the so-called "Sharyl Attkisson Wikipedia Biography Page" she takes the next logical step and writes a "Wikipedia article" the way she'd like to see it. She does make a few mistakes however. The puzzle global trademarkonher page appears to violate our trademark policy. Most of the content comes from the real Wikipedia page, but she forgets to attribute her copying as required by the CC BY-SA license. She also leaves out all the references. How good can an encyclopedia article be without references? Other than a list of her awards, there's very little added to the article. Mostly she just removed information. Good idea, bad execution.
• If you think English-language political disputes are tough, try a Russian one. Meduza, a Russian-language news website based in Latvia published "Revenge of the editors, Wikipedia has blocked a group of users who edited Russian-language articles to praise local governors and take down opposition activists" about the banning of eight editors on the Russian Wikipedia as sockpuppets. See this sockpuppet investigation (in Russian). The more established financial newspaper Vedomosti summarizes Meduza's analysis. Combining the most extreme versions of the dispute, it might appear that the owner of Russia's main Wikipedia-paid-editing firm has accused "Putin's chef" of whitewashing political articles. The Signpost cannot verify any of these accusations and notes the oversighters made their decision to block the eight editors based on technical evidence.
• Harvard Business Review published "Are Politically Diverse Teams More Effective?" which recaps the effect of editors' political diversity on Wikipedia articles. Various versions of this paper have been published, reflecting the now-popular view that articles with editors of diverse political views are better or more neutral. See previous coverageinThe Signpost.

Wikipedians in the news

• "Most Wikipedia Profiles Are of Men. This Scientist Is Changing That." Jess Wade is interviewed in the New York Times about the 670 articles she's written on women scientists. Wade's series started in 2017 with climatologist Kim Cobb and some of her favorites include mathematician Gladys West, physicist June Lindsey, and pharmaceutical nanoscientist Ijeoma Uchegbu. Interviewer Maya Salam also asks about her motivation, her work process, and what can "one woman ... solve?" Judging from Wade's popularity in the media – she appears in the mainstream media as much or more than Wikipedia stalwarts Jimmy Wales, Katherine Maher, and Stephen Pruitt – she's helping to solve a great deal.
• Katherine Maher on the Politico "Women Rule" podcast "The dumb stereotype about women and tech that will not die"
• Amber Berson becomes the first Wikipedian-in-residence at Concordia University accordingtoThe Montreal Gazette. She'll be dedicating one day a week to her WiR role while working on a PhD in art history and at the same time teaching at LaSalle College. She has been the Canadian coordinator for Art+Feminism for 6 years. As a WiR she plans to cover a range of activities including teaching people to be better Wikipedia readers, teaching the basics of editing, and getting others involved with community initiatives, for example translating articles into indigenous languages.
• "Mike Dickison has been New Zealand’s highest-profile, and possibly only, encyclopaedia salesperson" according to Newsroom's article The travelling Wikipedia salesperson. Dickison's one-year adventure as New Zealand's Wikipedian-at-large has just ended. He traveled 16,000 kilometres (9,900 mi), stayed in 55 different places, and helped liberate content from 33 organizations. He also helped coordinate Wikipedia's response to the Christchurch mosque shootings. See previous coverage in The Signpost.

Odd bits

Many Wikipedians may be too busy building our encyclopedia, or dealing with our usual squabbles, to see the wide range of topics involving Wikipedia that are covered by the media. The odd bits this month include a book review, a country rapper in a promotional video, a Commons photographer accused of "predatory" copyright lawsuits, Gaelic Football statistics, Indian police forces, the British schools curriculum, and our inclusion in a lunar library.

• Chuck Klosterman switches to fiction from his usual non-fiction on sports, culture and music. Time magazine writes in its review of the short story collection, Raised in Captivity, about the short story "Rhinoceros", "an old friend who has gained some infamy by committing the 'insouciant cybercrime' of permanently deleting Wikipedia entries."
• Watch: Lil Nas X Corrects His Own Wikipedia Page – a video from Capital FM – shows Lil Nas X staring at a computer screen and commenting on the Wikipedia article about him – a Wikipedia Fact Check. Despite a claim in the text, Lil Nas X doesn't seem to edit the article, and there's little or no evidence in the article history to suggest that he did. The format of a celebrity reading and commenting on "their article" goes back at least to 2009 with WBEZ's Wikipedia Files series. Loudwire's "Wikipedia:Fact or Fiction" series has had well over 100 episodes, mostly covering heavy metal bands. It's a great format for letting Wikipedians know when we've made mistakes, but Lil Nas X just mumbles away his opportunity.

Photo of Kenny Chesney as now displayed at Commons. This photo was involved in an earlier lawsuit with the photographer suing for $150,000

In this issue

31 July 2019

News and notes

In the media

• As usual, a useful compilation of stories. Thanks. One comment, though, regarding The Weaponization of Wikipedia a blog and podcast by conservative broadcast journalist Sheryl Attkisson focuses on Wikipedia's "agenda editors". I'm not at all familiar with this person/dispute, but "podcaster doesn't like their article, complains on own website" seems to stand out from the rest of the entries on this list. No problem with covering the dispute, but maybe let's wait for anyone else to pick it up first? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:41, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • You might be right to wait for a better mention in the media. But she is a pretty well-known media figure on her own (formerly with CBS, etc.) now airing on Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair is quietly a very big news outlet with similarities to Fox. Somebody at Signpost suggestions mentioned this a a possible "Gobbler of the Month" last month. I half-way agreed, but I also like the various formats where people get their views across to Wikipedians on "their article". Several years back there was a long discussion on "the right of reply" to Wikipedia. Of course that right has always existed in different formats. So I'll just say I have mixed feelings. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:51, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding "She denies that she has done anti-vaccine reporting as stated in the Wikipedia article on her", that makes it sound like the article has a sentence or two about this. In fact, that article includes an subsection, "Anti-vaccine reporting", with eight citations. In short, it isn't "Wikipedia" that is saying something that Attkisson doesn't like, it's lots of reliable sources. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:20, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yeah, my sentence on that is correct but understated (which is better than being overstated). I didn't want to concentrate on the old issue, but look at the idea of essentially 'writing your own Wikipedia article off-Wiki' which to me, at least, is more interesting than the pretty typical 'BLP dispute with multiple reliable references on one side'. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:51, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• That Schoolweek article is short but neat, about editing wikipedia and readjust sex ed to talk about other practices -Gouleg (Talk • Contribs) 19:16, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Regarding the Metabrainz story, this is discussed in commons:Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2019/06#MetaBrainz_sued,_lawsuit_dismissed_with_prejudice,_but_waiting_for_Wikimedia_Commons_to_act and commons:Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive_74#User:Nightshooter_-_block_&_deletion_request. Bovlb (talk) 17:09, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's a good link that I hadn't noticed. Thanks. As is common on Commons they talk about all aspects of the situation but don't ultimately decide on much. But Commoners did take action on their own. See the extra caption at the bottom of the Kenny Chesney photo above. The same extra caption has been placed on the other 20 photos uploaded by that photographer. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:12, 2 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• How do I access the lunar backup? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:52, 23 August 2019 (UTC).[reply]
  
  • I think the general idea is that you should be an alien from a billion years in the future who has easy access to quick and cheap space travel, but who has never read Wikipedia. Some of that is not 100% impossible. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:08, 28 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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