Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-11-06/In the media
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Stuff a sock in it, Elon
Optional: Give a short WP:LEAD-like introduction statement here.
A Musky smell
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A tweet from the world's richest man and leading tweeter, Elon Musk, said that Wikipedia should change its name to "Dickypedia," offering Wikipedia a billion dollars to do so, "in the interests of accuracy". The tweet mockingly referred to a screenshot of a Wikipedia fundraising banner ("Wikipedia is not for sale. A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales").
An unprecedented explosion of articles in the press about Wikipedia followed.
- The Guardian opines that Wikipedia's very existence offends him and compares the "good internet" (Wikipedia) to the "bad internet" (Facebook and X, the website formerly known as Twitter).
- Rolling Stone writes that "Elon Musk Offers to Also Ruin Wikipedia", referring to how Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter a year ago and renamed it X, which is now valued at about $19 billion. Wikipedian Annie Rauwerda is quoted at length, saying for example "Frankly, I have been sick of thinking about Elon Musk for years and I do not think his tweets about Wikipedia are all that novel. I mean, "Dickipedia" isn't even the first disparaging nickname for Wikipedia he's touted this year." Rolling Stone also mentions Stephen Harrison's May 2022 article in Slate, about how the article about Musk had become controversial and difficult to edit.
- Harrison's new article in Slate, Wikipedia Is Covering the War in Israel and Gaza Better Than X focuses on how X is spreading misinformation about the war and how changes Musk has made only make matters worse. Musk has been focusing more on criticism from Wales, "trolling" Wales rather than addressing his specific points.
- Noam Cohen is the dean of the small group of journalists who specialize in covering Wikipedia. His opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, Elon Musk’s hate for Wikipedia reveals his true views on free speech focuses on the weaknesses of Musk's arguments against Wikipedia's accuracy. Musk's main tool is ridicule. Wikipedia's main tool is good-faith collaboration. Wikipedia is now on Musk's "roster of A-list enemies".
- The Hill added context by describing a back-and-forth Tweet-fest between Musk, Jimmy Wales and others. It highlights how a tweet where Musk questioned Wikipedia's fundraising propriety ("Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation wants so much money? It certainly isn’t needed to operate Wikipedia [...]") was undercut by X's own "Community Notes" weighing in providing facts that undercut Musk's arguments.
Wikipedians can be grateful for the support of all these journalists when we are under attack from the world's richest man. They all, in their own way, attest to the quality of our website and the power of collaborative editing. But they have individual views on the faults of Musk and X. Wikipedia's basic quality is almost universally recognized, but views on Musk's mistakes are as controversial as they are widespread.
In fact, the "Wikipedia is not for sale" fundraising banner that Musk mocked in his tweet had itself already been inspired by an earlier Musk-related Twitter controversy and the observation that it had generated a lot of public support for Wikipedia. As detailed by Jimmy Wales when he proposed using the "not for sale" wording in fundraising appeals back in December 2022:
"I saw a tweet from a New York Post journalist saying to Elon Musk (who had complained to his fans creating a silly "scandal" about a routine deletion debate) "I wonder how much Wikipedia would cost?" I responded in a quote tweet with a dry "Not for sale". [see also Signpost coverage] This got an extremely positive response (at this moment over 220,000 likes!) from people including many who said that they hadn't donated before but would donate now. I paid close attention to the negative responses but they were mostly from the sorts of people who claim that that community is basically full of CIA agents, etc.
This gave me an idea - people do love it about us that we are not like other websites. Wikimedia is a nonprofit, a charity, and therefore isn't subject to the kinds of risks and pressures that other major websites have. [...] So I propose this banner message, and welcome open testing of variants. [...] --Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:17, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
Other news outlets that have covered this story include NDTV, PC Magazine, Livemint, Vice, and Yahoo!. – S, H
U.K. Shadow Chancellor accused of plagiarizing Wikipedia in her new book
The Financial Times in "New book from UK shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves lifts from Wikipedia" accuses Rachel Reeves of wholesale plagiarizing from Wikipedia in The Women Who Made Modern Economics. There were lesser amounts of unattributed copying from The Guardian and several other sources. The Guardian reported that
Basic Books, the publisher, said some sentences should have been "rewritten and properly referenced" and pledged to review all sources in the book, but added that “at no point did Rachel seek to present these facts as original research”.
Reeves told the BBC that some sentences "were not properly referenced", but would be corrected in future reprints. She also told the BBC
I'm the author of that book, I hold my hands up and say, I should have done better....Obviously, I had research assistants on the book, but I take responsibility for everything that is in that book.
But for me, what I wanted to do is to bring together the stories of these women. And if I'm guilty of copying and pasting some facts about some amazing women and turning it into a book that gets read, then I'm really proud of that
Both The Guardian and the Financial Times highlighted the irony "that one of the themes of the book was the failure to properly acknowledge the work of female economists."
Other media covering the story include The Telegraph, The Independent, The Times, and i. – S, H
Websites are music
The New Yorker cartoonist Triana Muñoz draws websites (here) as if they were musical styles and gives the styles names in the captions. Not to ruin your viewing pleasure, we list the websites and give music to fit the captions.
- Google [1]
- Rotten Tomatoes [2]
- Yahoo [3]
- Buzzfeed [4]
- Weather Channel [5]
- Wikipedia [6]
- Miscellaneous sites [7]
- Neither X, nor Twitter made the cut – No cartoon, no caption – bonus track – S
In brief
- Who is Mike Johnson?: Johnson (R-LA) is the newly elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Not just another candidate for the post, but the actually elected Speaker, second in the line of succession for the presidency. Politico asked European and Canadian politicos, who they diplomatically granted anonymity, who he is. They were at an embarrassing loss for words until an Irish government advisor was found. He had looked up Johnson on Wikipedia.
- Maher steps up: Al Jazeera reports that former WMF CEO Katherine Maher replaced former Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave who had spoken too much about the Israeli-Gaza conflict, according to some of the conference's corporate sponsors. "In recent weeks Web Summit has been at the centre of the conversation, rather than the host. Its purpose was overshadowed by the personal comments of the event’s founder and former CEO, Paddy Cosgrave," according to Maher.
- Alleged antisemitism on Wikipedia: In February, Dr. Shira Klein will present a lecture on this subject at the USC Shoah Foundation (Shoah is Hebrew for The Holocaust). Earlier this year, Klein, together with Polish-Canadian historian Jan Grabowski, published an academic paper titled "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust", causing a significant amount of media coverage and on-wiki controversy, and prompting a re-opening of the long running arbitration case on "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland". See previous Signpost coverage in In the media (February 20, March 9, April 26, May 22), Recent research (March 9) and Arbitration report (May 22).
- Wikipedia pages deliver malware: Security Week describes a new "Wiki-Slack attack" that exploits a formatting glitch in Slack as "essentially a numbers game, meaning that the attacker needs to modify as many Wikipedia pages as they can and register domains for them, to ensure they can eventually infect a target of interest." TechRadar said that "sharing a Wikipedia link on Slack could be a serious security no-no".
- Sport records are "only interesting for Wikipedia"...says race team CEO: Mercedes' Formula One team boss Toto Wolff said team records are "only interesting for Wikipedia, which nobody reads anyway". Three-time Formula One world champion driver Max Verstappen (not driving for Mercedes) had other opinions. (ESPN)
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Discuss this story
I think that most readers will not understand the first part of the headline. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 09:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In discussing Elon Musk here and in this month's Signpost opinion column, where I've added an "Open Comment to Elon Musk" in the discussion section, maybe let's WP:Assume good faith to his purposely low-brow but humorous and unique way of getting his point across that Wikipedia could possibly use a bit more balance on some current topic pages. No matter what is said, done, or implied, Musk is a friend of Wikipedia given his foundation's past donations. Assuming good faith should ideally include assuming it both within and outside of Wikipedia's project boundaries. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:50, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"spoken too much about the Israeli-Gaza conflict" is an odd way to describe what got Paddy Cosgrave in trouble. Lots of people have said a lot about the conflict; the real issue is that Cosgrave seemed to be speaking on the side of the terrorists. Starting on October 7, he posted and liked dozens of anti-Israel tweets, including liking this post - of the Palestinian flag - on the day itself. I think he didn't say anything bad about Hamas or their actions until about a week later. Yaron K. (talk) 13:28, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In other news, Ahed Tamimi (mentioned in the Spectator section) was arrested today. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:55, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can't help but think Wales & Musk got to boasting about their -- er -- extracurricular activities, Musk came off second best, & decided to get back at Wales by trash-talking Wikipedia. (I doubt this did happen, but knowing a little about both men, I think it's plausible.) -- llywrch (talk) 21:34, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strange enough I take the rant of Musk as a compliment. It proves that what we are doing is sufficiently neutral.
The Banner talk 18:05, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
F1 in the signpost also Toto Wolff being angry will never get old https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/15/x-being-overrun-by-trolls-and-lunatics-after-musk-takeover-wikipedia-founder.html he fire back •Cyberwolf• 18:10, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yahoo didn't cover that. Complex covered that. There is nothing I like less[citation needed] than attributing a syndicated story to the publication that merely reprinted it. Nardog (talk) 06:35, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Follow-up on the Spectator-piece: Is it possible to save Wikipedia? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As a short, lighthearted breather from a certain social media platform's leader, Tumblr's CEO said he would be open to a meeting of the minds with the Foundation. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 04:47, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]