Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-12-27/In the media: Difference between revisions
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=== Did a presidential candidate edit Wikipedia? You be the judge === |
=== Did a presidential candidate edit Wikipedia? You be the judge === |
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''The Washington Post'' explores the journalism of [[Ashley Feinberg]] in [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/24/how-reporter-who-found-mitt-romneys-secret-twitter-has-turned-online-sleuthing-into-beat/ ''How the reporter who found Mitt Romney’s secret Twitter has turned online sleuthing into a beat''] Feinberg's previous work has included an article on at least one paid editor on Wikipedia, Ed Sussman. Her most recent article focuses on whether a presidential candidate edited the Wiki article about himself. Despite not coming to a firm conclusion, the article is a masterpiece of online investigation. The Post quotes a Tweet from ''Wired'' editor Caitlin Kelly saying that Feinberg is a "master at the height of their powers," and compares reading Feinberg’s investigation to watching Monet paint waterlilies. Kelly continues on her [https://twitter.com/caitlin__kelly/status/1208224002667417600 twitter account] "when (the article) got to the metadata I was cheering." |
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Sometimes, because of Wikipedia's rules, ''The Signpost'' can't fully discuss matters that everybody else on the internet is perfectly free to discuss. In a remarkable article, a remarkable journalist nails down a remarkably close relationship between two accounts and and a presidential candidate. |
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<small>–[[User:Smallbones|S]]</small> |
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''The Signpost'' has seen a few online investigations in its time. We can state that we've never seen a more impressive one than Feinberg's last effort. If we were to see similar investigations into other participants in the US presidential elections, you should expect to see an explosion of interest in her methods.<small>–[[User:Smallbones|S]]</small> |
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===In brief=== |
===In brief=== |
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Revision as of 13:06, 24 December 2019
 Article display preview: | This is a draft of a potential Signpost article, and should not be interpreted as a finished piece. Its content is subject to review by the editorial team and ultimately by JPxG, the editor in chief. Please do not link to this draft as it is unfinished and the URL will change upon publication. If you would like to contribute and are familiar with the requirements of a Signpost article, feel free to be bold in making improvements!
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"The fulfillment of the dream of humanity" or a nightmare of PR whitewashing on behalf of one-percenters?
Optional: Give a short WP:LEAD-like introduction statement here.
A Nobel lecture, "we are not capable of bearing this enormity of information"
Olga Tokarczuk, 2018 Nobel laureate in literature, gave her Nobel Lecture, The Tender Narrator, on December 7, 2019 . Her references to Wikipedia, both to the promise of Wikipedia and the "disappointing" fulfillment of that promise, are close to the heart of the lecture's message. Extracts of the passages are given below. Wikilinks added.
John Amos Comenius, the great seventeenth-century pedagogue, coined the term “pansophism,” by which he meant the idea of potential omniscience, universal knowledge that would contain within it all possible cognition. This was also, and above all, a dream of information available to everyone. ... Will not knowledge within easy reach mean that people will become sensible ... ?
When the Internet first came about, it seemed that this notion would finally be realized in a total way. Wikipedia, which I admire and support, might have seemed to Comenius ... the fulfillment of the dream of humanity — now we can create and receive an enormous store of facts being ceaselessly supplemented and updated that is democratically accessible to just about every place on Earth.
A dream fulfilled is often disappointing. It has turned out that we are not capable of bearing this enormity of information, which instead of uniting, generalizing and freeing, has differentiated, divided, enclosed in individual little bubbles...
–S
Firm accused of whitewashing articles for one-percenters
- See this month's Special report for more analysis of the claimed article whitewashing by Status Labs.
The Wall Street Journal published a 2,000 word article by Rachael Levy on December 13 titled "How the 1% scrubs its image online" detailing efforts of Status Labs to control media and Wikipedia coverage of its clients. The subtitle was "Prominent figures from Jacob Gottlieb to Betsy DeVos got help from a reputation management firm that can bury image-sensitive Google results by placing flattering content on websites that masquerade as news outlets". The article named specific Wikipedia editor or editors.
According to The Wall Street Journal, articles edited by Status Labs operatives included bank executive Omeed Malik,[1][2] biomedical company Theranos,[3] and hedge fund Citadel LLC.[4]
An account named in the WSJ report as a related operative, Jppcap is now indefinitely blocked for "advertising or self-promoting in violation of the conflict of interest and notability guidelines". The publishing of this article by the Journal also led to the opening of a discussion on the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. –B
Business Insider has reported on a less nefarious instance of editing on behalf of a wealthy and powerful individual, namely technology businessman Elon Musk. After perusing the Wikipedia article about himself "for 1st time in years", Musk took to Twitter to suggest some edits, including the removal of the label "investor" from the short description, since he insisted "I do basically zero investing." Musk also apparently jokingly supported the replacement of the word with the term "business magnet"—as opposed to business magnate. User:TechnologicalScribe subsequently altered the short description accordingly and added in the edit summary that the changes were made "as requested by Elon Musk". The phrase "business magnet" has since been removed from the short description.
Did a presidential candidate edit Wikipedia? You be the judge
The Washington Post explores the journalism of Ashley Feinberg in How the reporter who found Mitt Romney’s secret Twitter has turned online sleuthing into a beat Feinberg's previous work has included an article on at least one paid editor on Wikipedia, Ed Sussman. Her most recent article focuses on whether a presidential candidate edited the Wiki article about himself. Despite not coming to a firm conclusion, the article is a masterpiece of online investigation. The Post quotes a Tweet from Wired editor Caitlin Kelly saying that Feinberg is a "master at the height of their powers," and compares reading Feinberg’s investigation to watching Monet paint waterlilies. Kelly continues on her twitter account "when (the article) got to the metadata I was cheering."
The Signpost has seen a few online investigations in its time. We can state that we've never seen a more impressive one than Feinberg's last effort. If we were to see similar investigations into other participants in the US presidential elections, you should expect to see an explosion of interest in her methods.–S
In brief
- Experts see more opportunities for growth for Myanmar Wikipedia: Text text text.
- ACOUSTICS GROUP PROJECT LOOKS TO IMPROVE SOUND-RELATED WIKIPEDIA PAGES: Text text text.
- Wikipedia and Women in STEM: BBC Radio interviewed British physicist Jess Wade on her efforts to create more articles on women experts in science, math, and technology, with specific focus on the sudden, recent tagging of many articles she has edited for notability concerns by an IP address editor (the portion of the broadcast relevant to Wikipedia begins at 9:30). Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Katherine Maher was also reached for comment. She expressed concern about the gender imbalance in Wikipedia's content and editing community, but praised the community response to the taggings, including the blocking of the IP editor. More details at this issue's Op-Ed by Wade.
- 'A way to keep our language alive': How the Atikamekw Nation uses Wikipedia to promote its language in Manawan, Quebec.
- "Wikipedia for waste" launched as knowledge sharing platform
- The Cincinnati Art Museum Hosts an Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon
- These Bitcoin skeptics want to kill Wikipedia's Lightning page: Robert Stevens of Decrypt worries about the views expressed in the developing deletion discussion for Lightning Network, a payment protocol for blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. –Ib
- Fortune reports on London edit-a-thon and UK elections go to the dogs: about eight editors gather in Shoreditch on election night. Fortune concentrates less on the political writings of the edit-a-thoners, and more on their other interests such as the British Kebab Awards, The North London Literary Festival, and the somewhat more political Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality, Boris Johnson’s dog Dilyn, and Dogs at polling stations.
- Slate is impressed by how civil Wikipedia editors are. The Very Respectful Wikipedia Battles Over "OK Boomer" –H
- AI overlords? Maybe not.: "Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales is Taking on Facebook and the Dangers Lurking in the Rise of Artificial Intelligence", Newsweek, December 12. Jimbo gives Newsweek some thoughts on the rise of surveillance capitalism and the future of alternative funding models, drawing from Wikipedia's success.
- Dalit deletions: In The Asian Age, activist Sanghapali Aruna writes about the outcome of an edit-a-thon at MIT for Dalit History Month: 82 out of 105 edits were deleted. She says that "knowledge creation in India is traditionally dominated by 'upper caste' scholars who create knowledge for a primarily 'upper caste' audience" and says that Wikipedia's notability and other policies have institutionalized the same imbalance.
- Battle over newspaper editor's bio Morning Star mentioned contentious editing culminating in page protection of the article Tom Newton Dunn. Dunn is political editor at another UK paper, The Sun.
- Indigenous language Wiki The Taipei Times noted the launch of a new language Wikipedia – Sakizaya, the language spoken by the Austronesian Sakizaya people who are indigenous inhabitants of the island of Taiwan. See News and notes for more.
- Online assault?: According to The Washington Post and The New York Times, the Wikipedia page of journalist Kurt Eichenwald had their death falsely reported, and other anti-Semitic vandalism, at about the same time he was sent a tweet that induced a seizure.[1][2]
- Subtitle: Text text text.
References
- ^ "Former Bank of America Corp. executive Omeed Malik also received services from Status Labs, according to people familiar with the matter." – WSJ
- ^ "A Wikipedia page about Mr. Malik also became the first result in a Google search of his name, displacing news articles. Following a Journal query, Wikipedia removed Mr. Malik's page." – WSJ
- ^ "Disgraced blood-testing startup Theranos Inc. also received services from Status Labs, according to former employees. An editing account used by Status Labs ... according to people familiar with the matter ... made several favorable edits to Theranos' Wikipedia page. One edit removed a reference to an article in the Journal reporting Theranos devices often failed accuracy requirements." – WSJ
- ^ "The hedge fund of billionaire Ken Griffin, Citadel LLC, hired Status Labs to edit information on Wikipedia in 2015 about the fund's investments and Mr. Griffin's art collection, according to a person familiar with the matter." – WSJ
This page is a draft for the next issue of the Signpost. Below is some helpful code that will help you write and format a Signpost draft. If it's blank, you can fill out a template by copy-pasting this in and pressing 'publish changes': {{subst:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Story-preload}}
Images and Galleries
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To put an image in your article, use the following template (link): This will create the file on the right. Keep the 300px in most cases. If writing a 'full width' article, change
Placing (link) will instead create an inline image like below [[File:|300px|center|alt=Placeholder alt text]] CAPTION
To create a gallery, use the following to create |
Quotes
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To insert a framed quote like the one on the right, use this template (link): If writing a 'full width' article, change
To insert a pull quote like
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use this template (link): |
Side frames
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Side frames help put content in sidebar vignettes. For instance, this one (link): gives the frame on the right. This is useful when you want to insert non-standard images, quotes, graphs, and the like.
A caption
For example, to insert the {{Graph:Chart}} generated by in a frame, simple put the graph code in to get the framed Graph:Chart on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change |
Two-column vs full width styles
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If you keep the 'normal' preloaded draft and work from there, you will be using the two-column style. This is perfectly fine in most cases and you don't need to do anything. However, every time you have a However, you can also fine-tune which style is used at which point in an article. To switch from two-column → full width style midway in an article, insert where you want the switch to happen. To switch from full width → two-column style midway in an article, insert where you want the switch to happen. |
Links and such
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By the way, the template that you're reading right now is {{Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue}} (edit). A list of the preload templates for Signpost articles can be found here. |
Discuss this story
Double standards? A few weeks ago I asked if it is ok for Signpost (and Wikipedia in general) to link to a news article that does link to an outing hate page with death threats against editors and such, and the resulting ANI discussion seemed to have closed with most people saying 'not a problem'. So what's different in this case? I wonder if the difference is that the people outed on said page are not admins, but this time the person being outed is an admin (or has active admin friends)? Just a hypothesis (as I have zero knowledge of who might have been outed), but I wonder why this time such a swift and decisive action was taken. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:12, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Where is the censorship of the Signpost?
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Harassment#Mainspace outing about whether Wikipedia usernames identified by reliable sources constitute outing. As I have pointed out in that discussion (and directly to Smallbones), the original Slate story which sparked this has been linked from Talk:Pete Buttigieg since December 21st. I have linked the Washington Post article in that thread without it being oversighted or me being blocked. The claim of Signpost censorship simply does not hold water. This is a distraction from the policy issue under discussion. Bitter Oil (talk) 17:37, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]