DOCSLIB.ORG

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-07- 01/In the Media

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-07- 01/In the Media Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-07- 01/In the media From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia < Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost​ | 2015-07-01 ← BACK TO 1 July 2015 VIEW LATEST ISSUE CONTENTS IN THE MEDIA EU freedom of panorama; Nehru outrage; BBC apology By Gamaliel, Jheald, Andreas Kolbe, and utcursch European Parliament decision-day approaches on freedom of panorama A week now remains until the vote, expected on 9 July, when the European Parliament will express either its approval, disapproval, or lack of opinion on the question of freedom of panorama in the European Union, and battle lines are being drawn. (See earlier Signpost article "Three weeks to save freedom of panorama in Europe", and review of initial press coverage last week). Following approval at Wikipedia talk:Freedom of Panorama 2015, sitenotice banners have now been activated above articles, warning readers of the over 40,000 images currently on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons of modern buildings and public art that depend on the Freedom of Panorama copyright exception (drawing coverage including from BBC World Service Spanish (http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/07/150701_tecnologia_li bertad_panorama_wikipedia_miedo_fotos_lv), as well as an acerbic piece in The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/02/wikipedia_jumps_on_bogus _photo_scare_to_tell_us_the_internet_is_breaking_again/) by frequent Wikipedia critic Andrew Orlowski); while a petition at Change.org supporting freedom of panorama has been steadily growing and (as of 1 July) is now approaching 200,000 signatures. On 2 July, the French MEP Jean-Marie Cavada, who had proposed the text effectively calling for an end to commercial freedom of panorama in the EU, announced that he would no longer be supporting this proposal, and would now be calling on all MEPs to delete it. With the direct threat averted, Dimitar Dimitrov (dimi_z), Wikipedia's person on the spot in Brussels, called for (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? title=Commons%3AFreedom_of_Panorama_2015&type=revision&d iff=164828262&oldid=164819584) the banner campaign to be stood down. Wikipedia is "a U.S. monopoly" ... acting "to the detriment of the entire European cultural sector" The words of MEP Jean-Marie Cavada, set against an image of the European Parliament building in Strasburg, blacked out to demonstrate the current lack of Freedom of Panorama in France, as presented on the blog (https://juliareda.eu/2015/06/who-is-behind-the-attack-on-freedom-of-panorama/) of Julia Reda MEP. Earlier in the week, Cavada, whose text, adopted by the legal affairs committee, proposed that "the commercial use of photographs, video footage or other images of works which are permanently located in physical public places should always be subject to prior authorisation from the authors or any proxy acting for them", had slammed defenders of freedom of panorama (http://jeanmariecavada.eu/ma-position-sur-le-droit-de-panorama/) as acting "under the guise of defending free access to works on behalf of users", when their fight was "actually one conducted primarily to allow US monopolies such as Facebook or Wikimedia to escape the payment of fees to the creators". Cavada's position closely reflects that of the French copyright collecting society ADAGP (http://www.adagp.fr/en), the Society of Authors in the Graphic and Plastic Arts. For ADAGP, the "cultural patrimony" of its members is at stake Rotterdam Centraal station ... ... and L'Hemisfèric, Valencia: examples used to highlight consequences of a removal of freedom of panorama (http://www.adagp.fr/en/actuality/urgent-panorama-exception): their rights to be in control of the commercial utilisation of their works, and to refuse to see them modified, misrepresented, or used in the advertising of products or causes of which they disapprove. ADAGP has strongly been pushing a line of "no reuse without remuneration" in the Parliament, and a key current objective of the society is to negotiate an agreement with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, Picasa and others similar to the arrangements that Google has with music labels, to acknowledge and pay out for copyrights in user-taken images of buildings and sculptures uploaded to the sites. The society retains approximately 25% of the gross of copyright licenses that it administers. According to ADAGP, it believes that between 10– 20% of image rights, currently generating net payments of between 3 and 6 million euros per year, relate to sculptures or buildings in France that would be affected by freedom of panorama. This would also represent a loss of income to ADAGP itself of between about 1 and 2 million euros per year. The society has been circulating a Q&A flyer (http://www.authorsocieties.eu/uploads/GESAC%20Panorama%20 exception_Flyer_June15.pdf) on the "Panorama Exception" to MEPs, to which the Wikimedia Brussels team has prepared a rebuttal. Some of the (https://twitter.com/heald_j/status/616331893332701184) maps (https://twitter.com/heald_j/status/616332873050759168) used by ADAGP have also been called into question. According to Cavada, Wikipedia's insistence on providing images "in high definition format, open for editing, with the ability for use for commercial purposes" was "a deliberate attempt to avoid paying rights to authors, heirs or collecting societies", and contended that MEP Julia Reda's original proposals "especially for the benefit of those service providers" would "do nothing more for consumers, but would formalize the pursuit of their activities with impunity to the detriment of the entire European cultural and creative sector". (26 June) In a rejoinder (http://blog.wikimedia.fr/la-liberte- de-panorama-au-service-des-biens- communs-7650) posted on 1 July, Wikimédia France hit back that the bracketing with Facebook showed that Cavada "completely misses the collaborative movement and the commons", and added that The Haus Le Corbusier on the Weissenhof Estate, Stuttgart, We understand why Germany – a country with rightsholders like to have freedom of panorama – used their works on Wikipedia. by Wikimédia France to Without the possibility of illustrate its response commercial reuse, we are a great free advertising brochure, so long as Wikipedia changes the rules that have made ​it the world cultural site by accepting [non-reusable] non-free content, according to the wishes of these private companies. The stakes are clear enough. Freedom of panorama can lose some income to certain authors or assigns, which is fairly easy to calculate. But it can also generate economic activity, by removing obstacles, including for the transformation of works and "unforeseen" reuse. The impact is more difficult to assess because all the possibilities and therefore earnings are not known at the time the decision to open the valves is taken. Gains are not only economic, but also societal. The free dissemination of knowledge is not just about money. The possibility of commercial re-use and economic innovation that may result are for us a way to reach our true goal: improving the well-being of all, through better dissemination of knowledge. For herself, Reda, writing in a blog-post (https://juliareda.eu/2015/06/who-is-behind-the-attack-on-freedom- of-panorama/) (1 July), considered that the Cavada proposal should not be seen as the product of an evil lobby, but rather was symptomatic of a general approach by the MEPs on the legal committee, [extending] the same attitude and convictions they apply to all copyright reform issues ... siding entirely with existing art, made by the few lucky enough to profit from yesterday’s business models, at the expense of the new and independent, which modern technology and connectivity enables the many to create and share. She also condemned a tendency of much of the media that she considered had jumped on this as an opportunity to "bash the European Union": Don't blame the EU for your MEPs: ... I want to make it very clear: This [horrible] idea was hatched by representatives elected by the people, and passed (so far) by representatives elected by the people. No shadowy bureaucrats were involved. If you want to prevent situations like this one, elect better representatives – and stay involved. Contending views of freedom of panorama were presented by Wikimedia's Dimitrov (http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/16/our- man-in-brussels-dimitar-dimitrov/) and ADAGP, together with five other witnesses, on the morning of 2 July (agenda (http://www.polcms.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/upload/605c5b59 -843d-403f-9424- 6ea155f2c79b/Draft%20agenda%20meeting%202%20July%202015- uploaded.doc)) at a hearing of the working group on intellectual property rights and copyright reform (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/juri/subject- files.html?id=20150128CDT00182) of the legal affairs committee of the European Parliament, with Jean-Marie Cavada in the chair. Unfortunately it would seem that the meeting was not covered by broadcast streaming or recording, although some slide-packs may be available after the event. Meanwhile, with the deadline for amendments (1 July) having passed, it is now (https://twitter.com/senficon/status/616263134626582528) confirmed (https://twitter.com/c3o/status/616265093144297472) that the Parliament will be faced with a three-way choice in the vote itself next week: to "recognise" Freedom of Panorama (proposed (http://www.marietjeschaake.eu/2015/07/safeguarding-the- freedom-of-panorama/) by the Dutch liberal MEP Marietje Schaake along with other members (https://www.facebook.com/MeinPanoramaMeineFreiheit/pho
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance
    Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance Andrea Forte1, Vanessa Larco2 and Amy Bruckman1 1GVU Center, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology {aforte, asb}@cc.gatech.edu 2Microsoft [email protected] This is a preprint version of the journal article: Forte, Andrea, Vanessa Larco and Amy Bruckman. (2009) Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance. Journal of Management Information Systems. 26(1) pp 49-72. Publisher: M.E. Sharp www.mesharpe.com/journals.asp Abstract How does “self-governance” happen in Wikipedia? Through in-depth interviews with twenty individuals who have held a variety of responsibilities in the English-language Wikipedia, we obtained rich descriptions of how various forces produce and regulate social structures on the site. Our analysis describes Wikipedia as an organization with highly refined policies, norms, and a technological architecture that supports organizational ideals of consensus building and discussion. We describe how governance on the site is becoming increasingly decentralized as the community grows and how this is predicted by theories of commons-based governance developed in offline contexts. We also briefly examine local governance structures called WikiProjects through the example of WikiProject Military History, one of the oldest and most prolific projects on the site. 1. The Mechanisms of Self-Organization Should a picture of a big, hairy tarantula appear in an encyclopedia article about arachnophobia? Does it illustrate the point, or just frighten potential readers? Reasonable people might disagree on this question. In a freely editable site like Wikipedia, anyone can add the photo, and someone else can remove it. And someone can add it back, and the process continues.
    [Show full text]
  • State of Wikimedia Communities of India
    State of Wikimedia Communities of India Assamese http://as.wikipedia.org State of Assamese Wikipedia RISE OF ASSAMESE WIKIPEDIA Number of edits and internal links EDITS PER MONTH INTERNAL LINKS GROWTH OF ASSAMESE WIKIPEDIA Number of good Date Articles January 2010 263 December 2012 301 (around 3 articles per month) November 2011 742 (around 40 articles per month) Future Plans Awareness Sessions and Wiki Academy Workshops in Universities of Assam. Conduct Assamese Editing Workshops to groom writers to write in Assamese. Future Plans Awareness Sessions and Wiki Academy Workshops in Universities of Assam. Conduct Assamese Editing Workshops to groom writers to write in Assamese. THANK YOU Bengali বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়া Bengali Wikipedia http://bn.wikipedia.org/ By Bengali Wikipedia community Bengali Language • 6th most spoken language • 230 million speakers Bengali Language • National language of Bangladesh • Official language of India • Official language in Sierra Leone Bengali Wikipedia • Started in 2004 • 22,000 articles • 2,500 page views per month • 150 active editors Bengali Wikipedia • Monthly meet ups • W10 anniversary • Women’s Wikipedia workshop Wikimedia Bangladesh local chapter approved in 2011 by Wikimedia Foundation English State of WikiProject India on ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA ● One of the largest Indian Wikipedias. ● WikiProject started on 11 July 2006 by GaneshK, an NRI. ● Number of article:89,874 articles. (Excludes those that are not tagged with the WikiProject banner) ● Editors – 465 (active) ● Featured content : FAs - 55, FLs - 20, A class – 2, GAs – 163. BASIC STATISTICS ● B class – 1188 ● C class – 801 ● Start – 10,931 ● Stub – 43,666 ● Unassessed for quality – 20,875 ● Unknown importance – 61,061 ● Cleanup tags – 43,080 articles & 71,415 tags BASIC STATISTICS ● Diversity of opinion ● Lack of reliable sources ● Indic sources „lost in translation“ ● Editor skills need to be upgraded ● Lack of leadership ● Lack of coordinated activities ● ….
    [Show full text]
  • The Culture of Wikipedia
    Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia Good Faith Collaboration The Culture of Wikipedia Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. Foreword by Lawrence Lessig The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Web edition, Copyright © 2011 by Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. CC-NC-SA 3.0 Purchase at Amazon.com | Barnes and Noble | IndieBound | MIT Press Wikipedia's style of collaborative production has been lauded, lambasted, and satirized. Despite unease over its implications for the character (and quality) of knowledge, Wikipedia has brought us closer than ever to a realization of the centuries-old Author Bio & Research Blog pursuit of a universal encyclopedia. Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia is a rich ethnographic portrayal of Wikipedia's historical roots, collaborative culture, and much debated legacy. Foreword Preface to the Web Edition Praise for Good Faith Collaboration Preface Extended Table of Contents "Reagle offers a compelling case that Wikipedia's most fascinating and unprecedented aspect isn't the encyclopedia itself — rather, it's the collaborative culture that underpins it: brawling, self-reflexive, funny, serious, and full-tilt committed to the 1. Nazis and Norms project, even if it means setting aside personal differences. Reagle's position as a scholar and a member of the community 2. The Pursuit of the Universal makes him uniquely situated to describe this culture." —Cory Doctorow , Boing Boing Encyclopedia "Reagle provides ample data regarding the everyday practices and cultural norms of the community which collaborates to 3. Good Faith Collaboration produce Wikipedia. His rich research and nuanced appreciation of the complexities of cultural digital media research are 4. The Puzzle of Openness well presented.
    [Show full text]
  • Group Identification, Goal Setting and Social Modeling in Directing Online
    Organizing without Formal Organization: Group Identification, Goal Setting and Social Modeling in Directing Online Production Haiyi Zhu, Robert Kraut, Aniket Kittur Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA15213 {haiyiz, robert.kraut, nkittur}@cs.cmu.edu ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION A challenge for many online production communities is to Online production communities are becoming increasingly direct their members to accomplish tasks that are important important in creating innovative products in the networked to the group, even when these tasks may not match world. These organizations have successfully aggregated individual members’ interests. Here we investigate how the efforts of millions of volunteers to produce complex combining group identification and direction setting can artifacts such as GNU/Linux and Wikipedia. Currently most motivate volunteers in online communities to accomplish large online projects primarily rely on a paradigm of self- tasks important to the success of the group as a whole. We direction in which contributors work primarily on the tasks hypothesize that group identity, the perception of belonging they are interested in. This paradigm provides a number of to a group, triggers in-group favoritism; and direction benefits. Contributors are motivated to work on the tasks in setting (including explicit direction from group goals and which they are intrinsically interested in and are likely to implicit direction from role models) focuses people’s choose tasks in which they already have some expertise [4]. group-oriented motivation towards the group’s important However, this approach breaks down when there are tasks. We tested our hypotheses in the context of conflicts between the interests of the contributors and the Wikipedia's Collaborations of the Week (COTW), a group interests of the project as a whole.
    [Show full text]
  • COI Editing and Its Discontents
    Wikipedia @ 20 Paid With Interest: COI Editing and its Discontents William Beutler Published on: Jun 10, 2019 Updated on: Jun 19, 2019 License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0) Wikipedia @ 20 Paid With Interest: COI Editing and its Discontents Image credit: Jim Pennucci. 1. Everyone involved with Wikipedia has some kind of interest in what it says. In the classic formulation, its volunteer editors are inspired to empower a global audience by compiling information in an accessible format. Practically speaking, though, most participate because the project appeals to their personality, their sense of justice, or there's an ego boost in deciding what the world knows about their pet subject. Its readers care simply because they want to learn something. For the most part, this works very well. Things are rather different when the motivation is financial. Most contributors consider editing Wikipedia to promote a business a morally different endeavor, and its readers, too, may be alarmed to learn some edits are made not to benevolently share knowledge with the world, but because the writer has a material stake in how the topic is represented. And yet the structure of Wikipedia makes this tension inevitable. The site's vast influence owes something to the fact that anyone can influence it, so when those described in its virtual pages decide to do exactly that, the result is one of Wikipedia's most challenging existential dilemmas. Wikipedia's favored terminology for this is "conflict of interest", referred to in shorthand as "COI"— although other terms such as "paid editing" or "paid advocacy" are often encountered.
    [Show full text]
  • Wiki-Hacking: Opening up the Academy with Wikipedia
    St. John's University St. John's Scholar Faculty Publications Department of English 2010 Wiki-hacking: Opening Up the Academy with Wikipedia Adrianne Wadewitz Occidental College Anne Ellen Geller St. John's University, [email protected] Jon Beasley-Murray University of British Columbia, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.stjohns.edu/english_facpubs Part of the Education Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Wadewitz, A., Geller, A. E., & Beasley-Murray, J. (2010). Wiki-hacking: Opening Up the Academy with Wikipedia. Hacking the Academy Retrieved from https://scholar.stjohns.edu/english_facpubs/4 This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at St. John's Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of St. John's Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Wiki-hacking: Opening up the academy with Wikipedia Contents Wiki-hacking: Opening up the academy with Wikipedia Introduction Wikipedia in academia Constructing knowledge Writing within discourse communities What's missing from Wikipedia Postscript: Authorship and attribution in this article Links Notes Bibliography Wiki-hacking: Opening up the academy with Wikipedia By Adrianne Wadewitz, Anne Ellen Geller, Jon Beasley-Murray Introduction A week ago, on Friday, May 21, 2010, we three were part of a roundtable dedicated to Wikipedia and pedagogy as part of the 2010 Writing Across the Curriculum (http://www.indiana.edu/~wac2010/abstracts.shtml) conference. That was our first face-to-face encounter; none of us had ever met in real life.
    [Show full text]
  • Embracing Wikipedia As a Teaching and Learning Tool Benefits Health Professional Schools and the Populations They Serve
    2017 Embracing Wikipedia as a teaching and learning tool benefits health professional schools and the populations they serve Author schools’ local service missions, suggesting that embracing Wikipedia as a teaching and learning Amin Azzam1* tool for tomorrow’s health professionals may be globally generalizable. A network of health Abstract professional schools and students contributing to Wikipedia would accelerate fulfillment of Wikipedia’s To paraphrase Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales, audacious aspirational goal—providing every single “Imagine a world where all people have access person on the planet free access to the sum of all to high quality health information clearly written human knowledge. in their own language.” Most health professional students likely endorse that goal, as do individuals Keywords who volunteer to contribute to Wikipedia’s health- related content. Bringing these two communities medical education; medical communication; together inspired our efforts: a course for medical Wikipedia students to earn academic credit for improving Wikipedia. Here I describe the evolution of that Introduction course between 2013 – 2017, during which 80 students completed the course. Collectively they “Imagine a world in which every single person on the edited 65 pages, adding over 93,100 words and planet is given free access to the sum of all human 608 references. Impressively, these 65 Wikipedia knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.”1 pages were viewed 1,825,057 times during only the students’ active editing days. The students’ Some might consider this audacious statement a efforts were in partnership with communities naïve dreamer’s fantasy. Yet even at 16 years old, outside of academia—namely Wikiproject Medicine, Wikipedia continues to rank amongst the top 10 most 2 Translators Without Borders, and Wikipedia Zero.
    [Show full text]
  • How to Contribute Climate Change Information to Wikipedia : a Guide
    HOW TO CONTRIBUTE CLIMATE CHANGE INFORMATION TO WIKIPEDIA Emma Baker, Lisa McNamara, Beth Mackay, Katharine Vincent; ; © 2021, CDKN This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction, provided the original work is properly credited. Cette œuvre est mise à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), qui permet l’utilisation, la distribution et la reproduction sans restriction, pourvu que le mérite de la création originale soit adéquatement reconnu. IDRC Grant/ Subvention du CRDI: 108754-001-CDKN knowledge accelerator for climate compatible development How to contribute climate change information to Wikipedia A guide for researchers, practitioners and communicators Contents About this guide .................................................................................................................................................... 5 1 Why Wikipedia is an important tool to communicate climate change information .................................................................................................................................. 7 1.1 Enhancing the quality of online climate change information ............................................. 8 1.2 Sharing your work more widely ......................................................................................................8 1.3 Why researchers should
    [Show full text]
  • Why Medical Schools Should Embrace Wikipedia
    Innovation Report Why Medical Schools Should Embrace Wikipedia: Final-Year Medical Student Contributions to Wikipedia Articles for Academic Credit at One School Amin Azzam, MD, MA, David Bresler, MD, MA, Armando Leon, MD, Lauren Maggio, PhD, Evans Whitaker, MD, MLIS, James Heilman, MD, Jake Orlowitz, Valerie Swisher, Lane Rasberry, Kingsley Otoide, Fred Trotter, Will Ross, and Jack D. McCue, MD Abstract Problem course on student participants, and improved their articles, enjoyed giving Most medical students use Wikipedia readership of students’ chosen articles. back “specifically to Wikipedia,” and as an information source, yet medical broadened their sense of physician schools do not train students to improve Outcomes responsibilities in the socially networked Wikipedia or use it critically. Forty-three enrolled students made information era. During only the “active 1,528 edits (average 36/student), editing months,” Wikipedia traffic Approach contributing 493,994 content bytes statistics indicate that the 43 articles Between November 2013 and November (average 11,488/student). They added were collectively viewed 1,116,065 2015, the authors offered fourth-year higher-quality and removed lower- times. Subsequent to students’ efforts, medical students a credit-bearing course quality sources for a net addition of these articles have been viewed nearly to edit Wikipedia. The course was 274 references (average 6/student). As 22 million times. designed, delivered, and evaluated by of July 2016, none of the contributions faculty, medical librarians, and personnel of the first 28 students (2013, 2014) Next Steps from WikiProject Medicine, Wikipedia have been reversed or vandalized. If other schools replicate and improve Education Foundation, and Translators Students discovered a tension between on this initiative, future multi-institution Without Borders.
    [Show full text]
  • Wikimania Presentation.Pptx
    WIKIPROJECT X or, how we learned to stop worrying and love Lua modules An exposition on the work of WikiProject X, January to July 2015, and plans for the future By James Hare and Kim Schoonover Wikimania 2015 • Mexico City July 19, 2015 Wait, what is this? A WikiProject is an on-wiki working group focusing on a task or a subject area Term used on English Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons For example The problem Many have started but fallen apart Difficult to navigate Outdated technology Unrealized potential The solution Research Design Experimentation Let’s begin! Step 1: Research Step 1: Research WikiProject Stories: Users shared experiences running or interacting with WikiProjects We encoded statements for “benefits” and “obstacles” Step 1: Research Benefits: Active discussion and participation (13) Guiding editor activity (10) Documentation (5) Welcoming to newcomers (5) Recent changes list (3) Active recruitment (3) Dispute resolution (2) Organized workflow (2) Serves previously identified community (2) Community identity (1) Categorizing work (1) Coordination with other language editions (1) Help desk (1) Dedicated organizer base (1) Deletion sorting (1) Coordinating editor work (1) Step 1: Research Obstacles: Low project participation (12) High organizing burden (5) High onboarding burden and rule creep (5) Community conflict (4) High technical burden (3) High maintenance burden (3) Project scope issues (1) Request for additional participation (1) Step 1: Research Design Research Reviewing existing WikiProjects Compiling list of WikiProject
    [Show full text]
  • Academic Research About the Reliability of Wikipedia.Odp
    Academic research about the reliability of Wikipedia 台灣維基人冬聚 Taipei, January 7, 2012 T. Bayer Perspective of this talk ● About myself: – Wikipedian since 2003 (User:HaeB on de:, en:) – Editor of The Signpost on en:, 2010-11 – Working for the Foundation since July 2011 (contractor, supporting movement communications) – Editor of the Wikimedia Research Newsletter (together with WMF research analyst Dario Taraborelli): Monthly survey on recent academic research about Wikipedia Reliability of Wikipedia ● Standard criticism: “Wikipedia is not reliable because anyone can edit” – … is fallacious: ● Yes, one traditional quality control method (restrict who can write) is totally missing ● But there is a new quality control method: Anyone can correct mistakes ● But does the new method work? ● Need to examine the content, not the process that leads to it Anecdotes vs. systematic studies ● Seigenthaler scandal (2005, vandalism in biography article). Public opinion problem: Unusual, extreme cases are more newsworthy and memorable – and because of “anyone can edit”, these tend to be negative for WP. ● Scientists are trained not to rely on anecdotes: The 2005 Nature study ● “first [study] to use peer review to compare Wiki- pedia and Britannica’s coverage of science” ● 42 reviews by experts ● Errors per article: Wikipedia 4 , Britannica 3 ● Britannica protested, Nature stood by it ● 6 years later, still the most frequently cited study about Wikipedia's reliability ●Brockhaus – “the” German encyclopedia ● “generally regarded as the model for the development of many encyclopaedias in other languages” (Britannica entry “Brockhaus Enzyklopädie”) ● 1796: First edition ● 2005: 21st edition (30 volumes) ● 2009: Editorial staff dismissed, brand sold Stern (news magazine) study, 2007 ● Compared 50 random articles in German Wikipedia and Brockhaus ● Not peer-reviewed, but conducted by experienced research institute ● Wide range of topics ● Wikipedia more accurate: Brockhaus 2.3 vs.
    [Show full text]
  • Editing Wikipedia: a Guide to Improving Content on the Online Encyclopedia
    wikipedia globe vector [no layers] Editing Wikipedia: A guide to improving content on the online encyclopedia Wikimedia Foundation 1 Imagine a world in which every single human wikipedia globebeing vector [no layers] can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment. This is the vision for Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, which volunteers from around the world have been building since 2001. Bringing together the sum of all human knowledge requires the knowledge of many humans — including yours! What you can learn Shortcuts This guide will walk you through Want to see up-to-date statistics about how to contribute to Wikipedia, so Wikipedia? Type WP:STATS into the the knowledge you have can be freely search bar as pictured here. shared with others. You will find: • What Wikipedia is and how it works • How to navigate Wikipedia The text WP:STATS is what’s known • How you can contribute to on Wikipedia as a shortcut. You can Wikipedia and why you should type shortcuts like this into the search • Important rules that keep Wikipedia bar to pull up specific pages. reliable In this brochure, we designate shortcuts • How to edit Wikipedia with the as | shortcut WP:STATS . VisualEditor and using wiki markup • A step-by-step guide to adding content • Etiquette for interacting with other contributors 2 What is Wikipedia? Wikipedia — the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit — is one of the largest collaborative projects in history. With millions of articles and in hundreds of languages, Wikipedia is read by hundreds of millions of people on a regular basis.
    [Show full text]