Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-08-30/In the news

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Controversial edits on Canadian legislature

Jimbo interviewed by Mediaweek

Jimbo Wales recently sat down for an interview with Mediaweek, a trade magazine based in New York City, focusing on his involvement with the Wikia venture. The video interview is available online here. Wales co-founded Wikia in 2004 with Angela Beesley. He discusses the popularity of Lostpedia, stating that "there's a symbiotic relationship between the fans and the writers", shares his favorite wikis, the "Canon Hacking Development Wiki (about the CHDK project), the Recipes Wiki, and the Runescape Wiki. In relation to Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales indicates that the Foundation is focused on helping smaller wikis grow, putting particular attention on the Indian, Russian, and Arabic sites. The interview included reference to WikiLeaks, which Wales pointed out is not a true wiki: "people, please don't send me secret documents".

Needs expansion, this is an overview.


Briefly

  • The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that the Philippine Office of the Solicitor General lost a case in a court of appeal "for relying on Wikipedia as an authority". The case concerned a 1988 marriage, the 2007 annulment of which the office sought to overturn on the grounds of psychological incapacity. To counter the expert testimony offered by the ex-wife, it appears to have cited the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders according to the English Wikipedia. The ex-wife cited Wikipedia's own disclaimers, and the justices said that the state should have consulted "qualified psychiatric experts" instead.
  • US media theorist Douglas Rushkoff has announced that 10% of the proceeds from his new book (Program or be programmed: ten commands for a digital age) will go to the Wikimedia Foundation and Archive.org.
  • In a blog post, an intern at a US publishing house described her experiences as a Wikipedia newbie while writing the article about the company's magazine Global Traveler. She noted that Wikipedia had "a ton of rules" and also found the user interface confusing:
Everyday tasks done on the word processor become difficult and bothersome. Pressing ctrl and “B” no longer makes something bold. The Wikipedia user has to use apostrophes (‘’’) to initiate the bold and then another set of three apostrophes to end it. Similar programming techniques are used to get italics, bullets, lists and headings.
She said that her experience had given her "a new-found respect for the articles that people put up."


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Just to save everyone from reading the article, the murderer is apparently John Seigenthaler. JK. Kaldari (talk) 17:46, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The murderer's name has now been hidden - you must click on "Show" on a bar there to see it. For non-tech-savvy people, shouldn't there be a quick instruction to click on "show" if you want to see the name? -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:40, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Everyday tasks done on the word processor become difficult and bothersome." I concur wholeheartedly! I have always found it difficult and bothersome to type apostrophes in rapid succession. My fingers hurt when I do this. I am glad to see that I am not alone. </sarcasm> --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:40, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Myself, I have to agree with the intern. It's like going back to the days of Wordstar, with 5'25 floppies and green-over-black monochrome screens. In these days this formatting looks like rational because you only have to hit the "preview" button to check if you had forgotten to close a bold tag. In the old days you had to print the text in the printer. And those printers were sllloooowwww. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:58, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Markup has its disadvantages, of course, but the WYSIWYG systems to which everyone is accustomed these days require much more time and effort to code and produce less consistent results. Powers T 19:25, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I use a bit of javascript (code at the bottom of the post) to have these ctrl+b/i/etc. shortcuts work during editing. unfortunatly, it seems that won't work on IE :D DarkoNeko x 10:04, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wonderful javascript code. I wish I had this years ago. Thank you --Mahanga (Talk) 19:37, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly, I enjoy the fact that she's writing about our large pack of rules while posting an article she really shouldn't be creating in the first place :P --King Öomie 13:31, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are plenty of formerly secret documents cited in Wikipedia, and there were before Wikileaks ever existed. Are we now trying to let everyone share in the sum of all merely politically comfortable knowledge? If leaders like Jimbo and Sue don't stand up for volunteer journalism, they may find Foundation volunteers on the wrong end of the shield law working its way through Congress. Why Other (talk) 19:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We need to have a warning on the front page of Wikipedia. If you DO NOT want to know something please do not come to Wikipedia and look Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:47, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A noble suggestion, but it doesn't always work. For example, one doesn't know that The Moustrap has a surprise secret ending that one might not want spoiled until one is already reading the article. Powers T 20:32, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Agatha Christie—whose book sales are surpassed by those of only the Bible". According to our own article List of best-selling fiction authors, and the relevant source[1] used in it, her book sales are also surpassed by William Shakespeare. Fram (talk) 15:01, 6 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: doing it for free since 2005.
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