Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-10-03/In the media

In the media

History is written by whoever can harness the most editors

By Smallbones, Bri, and Andreas Kolbe

"Losers just got a lot of time on their hands"

Make sure and punch in before reading this issue. Because, you know, volunteering for things is what losers do. Some people say so, anyway.

Elon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu met to discuss many topics including the state of Israel's democracy, anti-semitism, and artificial intelligence. They also managed to discuss the death of Socrates, plus Madison and Hamilton, as well as Musk's love of encyclopedias. But Wikipedia is not part of the love story.

The discussion was broadcast on the web platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk owns, with a transcript here. We'll stick to what they think of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias, starting with Musk's early reading.

Musk: ...If I’d had the internet back then with the great movies, video games and that kind of thing, I probably would’ve read much less than I did. I kind of read the encyclopedia out of desperation because I didn’t have anything else to read.

Netanyahu: You read the whole encyclopedia?

Musk: Yeah, pretty much. I’d get something that I’m not that interested in and obviously skip past it. But yeah, pretty much.

Netanyahu: That’s desperation.

Musk: It was desperation. No, I was just like, "I’ve run out of books."

Netanyahu: But I think it was probably a better encyclopedia than the one… These digital encyclopedias today, which unfortunately are edited in ways that don’t necessarily bring out the balanced views of things.

Musk: Yeah, I mean, the fun thing about, say, Wikipedia, is there’s an old saying "history is written by the victors". And it’s like, "Well, yes, but not if your enemies are still alive and have a lot of time on their hands to edit Wikipedia."

Netanyahu: History is written by the people who can harness the most editors.

Musk: Yeah, I mean, whoever, the losers just got a lot of time on their hands and it’s like, “What do they do?” Edit Wikipedia. And literally, so yeah.

–S

Wikipedia is a model for Harvard

Is this a model for Harvard? Or is this a model for Harvard?

According to a Harvard Crimson column, Harvard students have all come to rely on Wikipedia.

We trust that Wikipedia can grant us quick and detailed information about nearly anything we can imagine. The site is a modern miracle. Within seconds, we can access acute knowledge on quantum field theory, a biography of Helen Keller, or detailed summaries of every single episode of Breaking Bad."

The reason for our encyclopedia's success, according to these student journalists, is our model of editing, starting with be bold. Talk pages, the prohibition on article ownership, with debate, discussion, and collaboration lead to consensus.

Perhaps these students haven't seen some of the more vicious Wiki-debates, but they understand what is going on here better than Elon Musk and Benjamin Natanyahu. –S

Wikiracing at Wikimania

Some other people think Wikipedia is pretty cool too. Especially high-school and college students, and attendees at this year's Wikimania according to The Art of Wikiracing by Stephen Harrison in Slate. Wikiracing is a simple game to see who can go fastest from article A to article B by clicking blue links in the articles. For example, who can go the fastest from "Jimmy Wales" to "Stroopwafel". See TheWikiGame if you'd like to play on the same platform used by the Wikimaniac contest. SuperHamster won the competition.

Harrison attempts a deep dive into the subject, going from lateral thinking to dopamine. But this topic is just about fun and is probably too shallow for his usual mind expanding approach. If you want to try it, just click lateral thinking and see how many pages it takes to get to dopamine. Or – for something almost as simple – try Elon Musk to Benjamin Netanyahu. –S

Tabloid: Vile trolls?

One of the Internet trolls that caused a ruckus

"Vile internet trolls edit Sir Michael Gambon’s Wikipedia page minutes after his death", according to The Express's headline, a couple of hours after the actor's death. A check of the Wikipedia article's history reveals that the headline's claim is, at best, over-blown.

The news of Gambon's death hit Wikipedia at 11:37 (UTC) on September 28. The edit changed one word "is" to "was". After 4 minutes and 7 edits a "recent death" banner was added to the top of the article saying "initial news reports may be unreliable". Five minutes (8 edits) later one IP editor made an edit and then a minor correction in very poor taste - they included the word "herpes". The edits were quickly reverted and the editor warned not to repeat the mistake. The whole incident was over in two minutes, maybe less. The Express editors might consider the edit "vile", but "sophomoric" would be more appropriate.

Recent changes patroller WindTempos, who reverted the "vile" edit, replied to our inquiry. "I'm not surprised to see poorly informed Wikipedia coverage in the tabloid press, but I'm baffled as to how one IP editor's childish vandalism could be considered remotely newsworthy. In any case, it's a striking reminder of how visible even the shortest lived of edits can be."

Looking further in the article's history there was another sophomoric edit 42 minutes later that included the word "masturbation". It was reverted a minute later. Those edits are by far the worst in the first hour after the actor's death.

The tabloid magnified their exaggerated claims, and its garish headline, with a jumbled explanation of how Wikipedia works: "it is understood that anyone can edit a Wikipedia page, and the company instead employs people to monitor edits and delete and rectify them as required." Unpaid volunteers such as WindTempos patrol our articles and other volunteers contribute and edit the overwhelming bulk of the content. The Express should know, after almost 23 years of Wikipedia's existence, that the Wikimedia Foundation and its employees, make essentially no edits to the encyclopedia articles. Kudos to WindTempos and all patrollers!

We understand that The Express employs editors to monitor their stories and headlines, but that they are not always able to rectify their errors. –S

In brief

New Haven has a car park designed by Paul Rudolph. And some college.

The Matilda effect, named for Matilda Joslyn Gage, and described by Jess Wade in the media

• Maryana Iskander named one of three new Yale trustees: The Yale Daily News welcomed the Wikimedia Foundation's CEO Maryana Iskander to Yale's main governing body, the Yale Corporation, where she is expected to serve a six year term on the 16-person board. Iskander is a 2003 graduate of Yale Law School.
• Lordy, lordy: Wikipedia host warns Online Safety Bill threatens UK presence according to UK Tech News, The New York Times, Computer Weekly and many other news sources. The House of Lords passed the bill on September 19 and it will become law with Royal assent. The new law will require age verification and the WMF states that it will be unable to comply with the law, which could force Wikipedia out of the U.K. (See also earlier coverage: "Foundation and British chapter launch last-ditch attempt to get Wikipedia exempted from the UK's sweeping 'Online Safety Bill'")
• Flickypedia: Flickr announced a new software tool called Flickypedia that streamlines sharing of CC-licensed images from Flickr to Wikimedia Commons. They honor the earlier work by Magnus Manske whose Flickr2Commons tool has been used by "nearly 2,000 users uploading an impressive 5.4 million files over the past decade". (See also our brief coverage of an earlier community-facing announcement of the project)
• Google is so last year, Wikipedia has all the risma: TikTok "is partnering with Wikipedia to bring information to users directly in-app" to produce Wiki search results [1] (The Verge). ABC says "Gen Z is bypassing Google for TikTok as a search engine: 'They don't have a long attention span,' a social media expert says."
• To delete or not to delete? That was the question: Should the Wiki article on Yaroslav Hunka be deleted? The Toronto Sun covered this Article for deletion that's about the Ukrainian-Canadian who was recently honoured by the Canadian Parliament during Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to Ottawa. The problem is that Hunka served in the SS Division Galicia during World War II, leading to embarrassment for many Canadian politicians and the resignation of Anthony Rota, the speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, who had called him "a Canadian hero" on the floor. The article was kept. –S
• Was that 25 gold medals, or only 24? Check Wikipedia: Nellie Biles, mother of Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, says she checks Wikipedia for her daughter's sports accomplishments when she isn't sure. [2] (USA Today)
• ChatGPT plug-in: Mint features a short summary of a conversation with Chris Albon, the Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Machine Learning, on the Wikipedia ChatGPT plug-in, available as an experimental beta feature to ChatGPT Plus subscribers. For previous Signpost coverage of the plug-in, see the July issue of Recent Research.
• "Constantly astounded by who doesn't have a Wikipedia page" Jess Wade was interviewed by The Guardian, discussed the Matilda effect and other things at the intersection of science, biography, and Wiki.
• Engage, but at a distance: PR Daily, a webzine published by Ragan, did an article about the importance of Wikipedia to a company's public profile, using the pageviews of OceanGate as an example. They concluded (reasonably) that "uninvolved editors should be the ones to implement suggested edits, never a brand or PR firm attached to the topic."