In the news
WikiDashboard: visualisation of edits on Wikipedia
Truth in Metadata - WikiDashboard: WikiDashboard is a new tool from PARC that allows you to visualise edits to a particular Wikipedia page. On a particular screen, you can see the amount of activity on a given Wikipedia article over time, the contributions from a particular editor over time, and some other basic statistics. Information can also be gleaned about a particular user's editing habits. Termed "Social Transparency", this human-readable information can be used by Wikipedia readers to evaluate the quality of the edits that have gone into an article.
US election candidates' articles heavily scrutinised
On Wikipedia, Debating 2008 Hopefuls' Every Facet: The Washington Post notes that there is much editing interest in the Wikipedia biographies of 2008 US presidential candidates. It notes that the content on Wikipedia is highly influential, because it tends to show up high on web searches. Campaign aides, however, say that the matters that the editors war over are inconsequential. In the debates that ensue, editors have been accused of bias by being associated with one political party or another, and in some cases, administrators have been called in to protect articles from editing.
Other mentions
Other mentions in the online media about Wikipedia in the past week include:
- Professors caution students: Don't trust Wikipedia: Professors warn students not to put too much faith in Wikipedia articles and students should compare the information with that found on more traditional sources, but Wikipedia can be used to quickly brush up on a topic.
- I Steal Wikipedia Content And Get Away With It!: Are people copying off Wikipedia without being noticed, and vice versa?
- Ninja Assassination Squad: This is a recount of the unsatisfying experience of a Wikipedia editor, Badcop666 (talk · contribs).
Discuss this story
Why are there two random blogs in this section? The one isn't even specific- it just says "I had my two articles deleted, these people are psychopaths."-Wafulz 02:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Why not? Sure it's not "news" in the traditional sense, but I think it is useful to point to what others have been saying - I see the role of this section as a barometer of what other people think of Wikipedia. enochlau (talk) 02:30, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- The blogspot one is particularly vague. I get the impression we're trawling through peoples' personal rants here.-Wafulz 02:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for your comments, and I'll definitely take them on board when I next make a selection of what to cover. enochlau (talk) 03:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That was not a new editor (just a rarely contributing one), nor is their complaint that they gave it a chance very convincing, as they were obviously biased from the outset.[1] Vassyana 04:01, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]