Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-07-03/In the media
Journo proposes mass Wiki dox, sponsored articles on Fandom, Section 230 discussed
Hakuna Matata and Wiki donations
Georgia Tech announced a forthcoming paper by Casey Wichman and Nathan Chan. Though only the abstract and the Georgia Tech announcement are currently available, we can say that it appears the people who watch a video of the "
We promise to dig a little deeper when the paper is available. – S
To move Forward we must name names?
While it's impossible to accurately predict what the reaction of the broader editoriat might be to such a policy, we can only guess at how it would play out, although Citizendium and Baidu Baike provide obvious case studies.
Which is why I'm surprised to see Shira Klein, a respected scholar, devote any energy into proving that entries about the Holocaust are false. More baffling is her attempt to correct them by diving into Wikipedia's rabbit warren of arcane rules for article review — administered by volunteer site police who gleefully hide behind pseudonyms.
"Widespread" is accurate: the English version of Wikipedia has 6,676,896 articles, which were viewed 10 billion times last month, on 756 million unique devices, and edited by 39 thousand unique users during that time. "Disinformation" seems unlikely — articles can be edited at any time, they occasionally contain nonsense, and their contents are often the subject of contentious partisan debate, but they are provided without warranty. The Wikipedia article Reliability of Wikipedia, aptly enough, summarizes the state of the matter in great detail (checking the references for an encyclopedia article is a standard component of scholarship).
The Signpost takes no position on the Holocaust in Poland dispute, other than to predict that, unfortunately, it will continue. – S, J
What happens when adverts are allowed
Recently, however, Fandom has begun to question that control: on June 14th, the McDonald's Wiki page on "Grimace" (a mascot character used in the company's advertising campaigns) was modified heavily at the behest of McDonalds. Afterwards, editing was fully protected (i.e. to administrators only) with the summary "switching over entirety of grimace article at mc∂onald's[sic] request, just for the length of this campaign in 2023".
The previous version can be seen here: it admittedly probably wouldn't have survived on Wikipedia, but it nonetheless features a long list of obscure trivia: he danced at a baseball game in July 2012, and was subsequently not seen in the company's promotions, except for Happy Meal toys in Malaysia. The version it was replaced with, on the other hand, gives a slimmed-down "greatest hits", presumably omitting ads that McDonalds finds irrelevant to their current campaign, and ends with "At participating McDonald’s for a limited time. While supplies last. Grimace’s Birthday Meal includes choice of 10 pc. McNuggets® or Big Mac® © 2023 McDonald’s. ADVERTISEMENT: This page is sponsored by McDonald’s."
The article's main contributor, Nathan Steinmetz (nom de poste Humanstein) said of the edits:
McDon*ld's took over the Grimace wiki page and removed all the real world information, appearances, and citations that I've added over the years and turned the whole page into one big in-universe ad for the birthday promotion :(
Like I can just add it back but what's the point if they're literally paying a dude to undo it. They're partnering with Fandom for an ad campaign for the page now too..
In an interview with Kotaku, he says that "While The Grimace is a very silly page for this to whole thing to be about, I think it probably sets a really bad precedent that an IP holder can approach Fandom or whoever and have user generated content basically 'suppressed' and replaced with a press release".
While Grimace is a silly mascot character created to sell hamburgers, and his appearance in Malaysian Happy Meal toys is largely irrelevant to the broader arc of history, this does raise some questions for the "information ecosystem" writ large. For example, the Ford Motor Company has a site on Fandom, with a (rather brief) article about Henry Ford — should it mention those antisemitic pamphlets he endorsed? Well, it currently does.
In a Wikia of another age, would a
Meanwhile, Wikipedia itself has not been completely immune: an article about the
Section 230 discussion
C-SPAN has video coverage and a full transcript of an event hosted jointly by New America and the Wikimedia Foundation. The topic: regulating big tech companies and social media platforms, and in particular Section 230.
Introductory remarks by U.S. Senator
Ultimately, with AI ascendant, the panel seemed agreed that Section 230 was more vital than ever to safeguard the continued existence of the ecosystem of content and sources formed by Wikipedia and the Internet Archive and that Congress should appreciate that –
We are an ecosystem that is so crucial to not only global knowledge but American competitiveness. If you just want to ... pander to make America really competitive in this area, keep 230 around so that we are still in that leadership position.
— Andrew Lih, time code 1:40:18
– AK
Disinformation, dat information
The U.S. Republican Party is targeting universities, think tanks and also the Wikimedia Foundation "to undermine the fight against false claims about elections, vaccines and other hot political topics", reports
The New York Times' article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation only once, as one of the targets. It remains unclear whether the Foundation is a defendant in the lawsuit, or just one of the recipients of the committee's letters and subpoenas. It appears to be the latter, based on the fact that Wikimedia and Wikipedia are not mentioned in America First Legal's press release about the lawsuit (filed "on behalf of Jill Hines, the co-Director of
In brief
- Meetup: Yahoo! Life says the monthly Brooklyn Public Library meetup was highlightedin a TikTok video posted by Annie Rauwerda and attracted some potential new 'pedians.
- It's smashing: Smashing Magazine has a "behind the curtains" interview with the designers of the new Wikipedia interface, Vector 2022. See prior Signpost coverage about the redesign.
- Molly White interview: German business magazine Brand eins features an interview with cryptocurrency critic and Wikipedian Molly White.
- Language divide: Global Voices reports on the way Google and Wikimedia are seeking to bridge the language divide in Africa.
- Legal setback in France: The Wikimedia Foundation has lost an appeal in its French court case, reports Legalis (see previous Signpost coverage).
- Open letter: The open letter by Wikimedia UK on the Online Safety Bill (see News and notes for further information) has attracted coverage by cybernews.com and uktech.news.
Discuss this story
To move Forward we must name names?
72.213.11.193 (talk) 13:55, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Um, no, you deliberately and controversially took a position on the dispute while the case was ongoing at arbcom.What happens when adverts are allowed
On theOther
Hakuna Matata and Wiki donations
Why does this story claim that [1] and [2], the full paper was already published on June 6. Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
? According to both