Reuters: Russian court fines Wikipedia over military ‘misinformation’. “The Wikimedia Foundation was fined 2 million roubles ($27,000) by a Russian court on Tuesday after the authorities accused it of failing to delete “misinformation” about the Russian military from Wikipedia, the courts service said.”
Boing Boing: The cryptid complications of Wikipedia’s editing policies. “This is (apparently) a great war simmering between Wikipedia editors and cryptid hunters. Cryptid enthusiasts, such as those who haunt r/Cryptozoology, accuse the open-source information website of being biased against their beloved beasts, dismissing such things as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster with pejorative descriptors of ‘pseudoscience’ (Or, worse — ‘folklore’).”
Press Trust of India: Company Employees With Fake Profiles Created False Praise About Gautam Adani, Says Wikipedia. “For more than a decade, sockpuppets – some of them being company employees – created ‘puffery’ around tycoon Gautam Adani, his family and the apples-to-airport group he helmed by adding non-neutral material and removing warnings from information on Wikipedia, the free internet-based encyclopedia has alleged.”
Chapman University: Research Reveals Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust . “New research by Chapman University and the University of Ottawa shows how a small group of individuals, with no ties to any government, can slowly erode reason and accuracy to promote ideological zeal and prejudice on Wikipedia.”
Bloomberg: Wikipedia is blocked in Pakistan over ‘sacrilegious’ content. “Pakistan has blocked Wikipedia services in the South Asian nation after the platform failed to remove ‘sacrilegious’ content. The action was taken because some of the content is still available on Wikipedia after the expiry of a 48-hour deadline, Malahat Obaid, spokesperson for Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, said by phone.”
Lifehacker: This App Turns the World Into a Wikipedia Scavenger Hunt. “You might think your know your hometown pretty well, but I’m willing to bet there’s a lot you don’t know—something noteworthy that happened in a spot you walk or drive past every day without thinking about, like the building that’s been there forever, or the park you relax in every now and then. Well, there’s an easy way to learn all about your neighborhood, or any neighborhood in the world, in a way that almost feels like playing Pokémon Go, but for real life.”
Context News: Wikipedia Middle East editors ban shows risks for creators. “Rights groups have accused the Saudi Arabian government of ‘infiltrating’ and seeking to control Wikipedia, after the Wikimedia Foundation banned 16 users for engaging in ‘conflict of interest editing’ in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Wikimedia Foundation: Wikipedia Gets a Fresh New Look: First Desktop Update in a Decade Puts Usability at the Forefront . “The updated interface, which comes on the heels of English Wikipedia’s 22nd birthday (January 15), prioritizes usability and modernizes the Wikipedia experience to make it easier for everyone to access, explore, and share knowledge. The update is rolling out today on English Wikipedia and is already live on 94% of the 318 active language versions of Wikipedia for all desktop users.”
BBC News: Alan MacMasters: How the great online toaster hoax was exposed. “For more than a decade, a prankster spun a web of deception about the inventor of the electric toaster. His lies fooled newspapers, teachers and officials. Then a teenager flagged up something that everyone else had missed.”
Slate: Russian Oligarchs Keep Dying in Suspicious Ways. Wikipedia Is Keeping a List.. “On July 9, an anonymous Wikipedia editor with the username ‘cgbuff’ started Wikipedia’s 2022 Russian mystery deaths article, which chronicles ‘unusual deaths of Russian-connected businessmen [that] occurred under what some sources suggest were suspicious circumstances.’ When the article was first published, it listed just nine Russian oligarchs.Today, it chronicles 17 deaths, and it’s been viewed more than 400,000 times.”
Lifehacker: Redactle Is Like Wordle but for a Whole Wikipedia Page. “Wordle is tiny; Redactle is big. Where Wordle asks you to solve a single five-letter word, Redactle presents you with an entire blacked-out wikipedia page, and not a stub, either.”
Slate: Wikipedia’s Fox News Problem. “Casual readers often ignore or skim over Wikipedia’s references, but they play a crucial role in its editorial process. The encyclopedia is a tertiary source, meaning that it aims to summarize the information found in secondary sources like newspapers. (Secondary sources themselves draw from primary sources like interviews.) Because of this pyramid structure, the secondary sources Wikipedia deems acceptable as references have a major influence on its content. If outlets like Fox News are permitted, Wikipedia’s view of the world will look more like Fox’s. Currently, more than 16,000 articles cite Fox News as a source. But its use has been controversial for years.”
How-To Geek: Wikipedia Wants a Sound Logo, and it Needs Your Help. “Wikipedia is a resource many of us go to when we need information, and its globe puzzle logo is almost universally recognized. Now, the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a sound that can be associated with it and be just as recognizable.”
Gizmodo: How Wikipedia’s ‘Deaditors’ Sprang Into Action on Queen Elizabeth II’s Page After Her Death. “RIP, Queen Elizabeth II. There are a lot of things to do in the digital realm when a monarch dies, and one of the first places people go when a famous person dies is Wikipedia. While some on the internet were glued to Twitter or the BBC, checking for news or watching the planes en route to Balmoral Castle, one group of dedicated Wikipedia editors sprang into action updating the late queen’s page in the minutes after Buckingham Palace announced the news.”
Rest of World: Doxxed, threatened, and arrested: Russia’s war on Wikipedia editors. “The organization that runs Wikipedia has also found itself targeted by Russia’s propaganda drive. In March, Russia passed a law that criminalized the publishing of any information about the military that the state considers to be false information. Under the new law, a Russian court fined the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, 5 million rubles ($88,000) for failing to remove what a Russian court claimed was disinformation about the war in Ukraine. The organization launched an appeal in June.”
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