The Signpost

In the media

Google and the flu; Adrianne

Editor's note: In the media will now be a monthly section, published the first edition of each month, and will cover Wikipedia and more broadly the Wikimedia movement over the preceding month. Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to bringing you more great editions of ITM in the future. This edition includes summaries and links to what should have been in issues dating back to February.

Wikipedia outdoes Google in tracking flu

Boston Children's Hospital postdoctoral fellow David McIver and a team have determined that using page view statistics from Wikipedia, they can track flu progression better than the Center for Disease Control can using Google searches.

The researchers seek to have a more "holistic" view of where flu-like symptoms are prevalent. Jay Walsh, WMF Communications Director, commented that the WMF is "always excited and intrigued when people make new/creative uses of our data, within the boundaries of the law and our privacy policy." He did caution, however, that data of this nature should be extrapolated and analyzed only by medical professionals. Only time will tell the effectiveness of the data, but for now, it appears to be an interesting and exciting alternate use of Wikipedia.

Passing of Adrianne Wadewitz

The Signpost has previously covered the sad fact that a famed, beloved Wikipedian Adrianne Wadewitz has died in a rock climbing fall. The New York Times published an obituary that recapped her life and work on Wikipedia. WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner commented: "It is a huge loss for Wikipedia. She may have been our single biggest contributor on these topics—female authors, women's history." Noam Cohen wrote for the Times that "Ms. Wadewitz's interest in rock climbing played out on Wikipedia. Her last editing was to improve an article about Steph Davis, a prominent female climber and wingsuit flier. In Ms. Wadewitz's hands, the article became filled with personal details, spectacular photos, a highlighted quotation and 25 footnotes." Wadewitz's presence is already missed on Wikipedia.

February

More recently

References
  1. ^ Steiner, Thomas (February 5, 2014). "Bots vs. Wikipedians, Anons vs. Logged-ins". Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web - WWW '14 Companion. p. 547. arXiv:1402.0412. doi:10.1145/2567948.2576948. ISBN 9781450327459.
  2. ^ "The Shadowy World of Wikipedia's Editing Bots". Emerging Technology From the arXiv. MIT Technology Review. February 13, 2014.
  3. ^ "New app tracks Wikipedia edits by Internet bots and humans". Press Trust of India. New Delhi Television. February 24, 2014.
  4. ^ Joshi, Chinmay (February 24, 2014). "Bots Vs. Wikipedians App To Track Edits By Bots On Wiki Pages". CrazyEngineers.



















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