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In the media

Much wikilove from the Mayor of London, less from Paekakariki or a certain candidate for U.S. Congress

Arbitration committee thrust into the media spotlight

Jimmy Wales in Moscow, 2016

Wikipedia's Arbitration committee was thrust into the media spotlight this month, with several stories being published including "The 15 People Who Keep Wikipedia's Editors From Killing Each Other: Online committee called ArbCom tries to keep the peace at internet encyclopedia".

  • Arbcom keeps the peace The Wall Street Journal, by Corinne Ramey, May 7 (paywall).
  • ArbCom member User:NewYorkBrad The Wikipedia editor Ira Brad Matetsky (User:Newyorkbrad) is featured in Princeton Alumni Weekly for his role as an ArbCom member.
  • "Mystery Wikipedia editor", "witch-hunt", Arbcom coverage Also reported by Haaretz, the editor Philip Cross has drawn ire from a cohort of Russian-backed media (RT, Sputnik), Wikileaks (which tweeted a Craig Morris blog post), and former UK Labour Party politician George Galloway, who all accuse him of making biased, politically-targeted edits. Wikipedia's co-founder, Jimmy Wales, was even asked to weigh in on the dispute. Haaretz concludes that "Though Cross does have a clear political bent, it is not necessarily one that undermines the entire project that openly strives to reflect mainstream bias." The BBC discussed the issue and called it "a huge debate on the internet encyclopaedia - one of the world's most popular websites" (their words) – the same editing fracas that is subject of a case covered in this month's Arbitration report. The BBC story mentions the current Arbcom case.

The much-maligned EU Copyright Directive was passed on June 20 and slated for future consideration by the EU Parliament. A storm of warnings did nothing to prevent the law from passing, not even a dramatic intervention by Cory Doctorow that called out the potential horrible consequences, especially for Wikipedia:

Article 13 gets Wikipedia coming and going: not only does it create opportunities for unscrupulous or incompetent people to block the sharing of Wikipedia's content beyond its bounds, it could also require Wikipedia to filter submissions to the encyclopedia and its surrounding projects, like Wikimedia Commons. The drafters of Article 13 have tried to carve Wikipedia out of the rule, but thanks to sloppy drafting, they have failed: the exemption is limited to "noncommercial activity". Every file on Wikipedia is licensed for commercial use.

John Weitzmann, head of politics and law at Wikimedia Deutschland, also condemned the law ahead of the vote in a talk held at re:publica 2018, saying that if more people do not "take part in the dividends from a market ... with stakeholders that are too strong ... it is the task of cartel and competition law to correct this." Weitzmann expressed concerns that Article 13 "establish[es] a total filtration of all net platforms" with "freedom of speech delegated to complaint mechanisms".

Several media outlets, including German site netzpolitik.org and Gizmodo, also reported on the law. As the title of the Gizmodo article reads: "Memes, news, Wikipedia, art, privacy, and the creative side of fandom are all at risk of being destroyed or kneecapped."

Award for binary options exposé

The Trace Prize for Investigative Reporting was given to Simona Weinglass, the reporter who wrote a series of articles about the binary options industry for The Times of Israel, including "Wikipedia vs. Banc De Binary: A 3-year battle against binary options 'fake news'" which appeared exactly a year ago. That article covered The Signpost's February 2017 Special report by Smallbones. (The Times of Israel, "Times of Israel's Weinglass wins reporting honor for binary options exposé")

Smallbones provided this reaction for The Signpost:

Anybody who has edited anything related to binary options knows [Simona Weinglass's] contributions well. She took an organized crime topic where most newspapers fear to tread, if only to avoid libel suits, and opened it up so that the whole world could see it and smell it - the big picture and the smallest details. Her work moved the Israeli government to ban binary options, and just when it looked like political maneuvers would gut the bill, she took on some of the most powerful people in the Knesset and won that fight too. Remarkable journalism. Thanks Simona.

Digital commons becomes corporate picnic: donated Wikipedia content fuels for-profit Internet giants

Vice News reported that "GOOGLE LISTED “NAZISM” AS THE IDEOLOGY OF THE CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN PARTY" in the Knowledge Graph search result as a result of vandalism to the Wikipedia page. A related story appeared on front page of the Drudge Report, and the WMF apologized (?) via Twitter. US House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy criticized Google for the incident, and California Republican Party added criticism of Wikipedia (CBS). Also reported by tech media Search Engine Land, CNET, Wired, Gizmodo, the journalism school Poynter, & mainstream media RT, Fox News, Newsweek, Forbes and USA Today. See also this issue's Opinion.

After the high-profile vandalism event, WMF's executive director, Katherine Maher, wrote an op-ed in Wired magazine titled "Facebook and Google must do more to support Wikipedia", contrasting a community garden to a "corporate picnic" and calling attention to the digital commons' exposure to "overuse, exploitation and commodification".

In brief

Other contributors: 3family6

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  • Arguably state media are distinct from mainstream, if that's what you are saying. I don't know a better term for this instance, though. It was an attempt to separate these media from others I didn't cover in the article with truly "fringey" conspiracy stories about Philip Cross. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:36, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • What does "the Mayor of London actions London schools" mean? I could speculate that somebody meant he sponsors or recommends unspecified actions, maybe it's something else, why not just tell us clearly? – Athaenara 12:08, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is irresponsible and alarming: "Among the articles he edited were some related to ...". Thousands of editors edit controversial subjects that don't actually interest them personally or reflect on their psychology in any way, ranging from WP:WikiGnome cleanup edits to preservation of WP:Neutral point of view and deletion of obvious WP:Original research, as well as flagging citations to unreliable sources. I really hope The Signpost never does anything like that again. If someone is a crackpot, unethical, or criminally minded it's because they have an "issue" in the real world, not because of what pages they happened to have edited here.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  05:14, 17 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Though it wouldn't hurt to put those types of blockquotes in the green template, similar how those above were treated. I think the quote would display better sans the potshot, personally. Major journalists generally don't do a good job of covering WP so we have to work even harder to counterbalance their false equivalencies. But Bri, as always, appreciate the work you put into this so maybe the solution is that SMC feels free to contribute to the next edition? ;) czar 01:50, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a source for the Haaretz material that isn't behind a paywall? --Guy Macon (talk) 09:58, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

















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