In the media
Political hijinks
WMF trumped again?
- Wikipedia engages the ‘nuclear option’ after Trump penis hack: reported in The Verge on 4 December, Russel Brandom's article discusses the recent spate of vandalism on Donald Trump's Wikipedia article, compromised administrator accounts, and the 'self-unblock' feature. Mentioning posts by users Swarm and John Cline, Brandom refers to a thread in which criticisms are expressed on unilateral action from the WMF. The Foundation responded to The Verge with: “Our Security department will be implementing new, more comprehensive password policies,” and “working with volunteers to raise awareness of password best practices among our volunteers to help prevent this kind of vandalism and account abuse in the future.”
British shadow cabinet minister now a shadow
- British member of parliament blacklisted from Wikipedia: In The Sun, a UK red top, Matt Dathan, Senior Political Correspondent reports on 2 December on the blocking of Labour Party MP Kate Osamor, former Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, following her editing of her Wikipedia page as user:Midnights1. Osamor resigned her senior front-bench position in the UK shadow cabinet on 1 December, and had been indefinitely blocked from Wikipedia on 3 June 2018 for making legal threats. Osamor's shadow ministry post has been filled by Dan Carden. The issue is also reported on 2 December by Henry Martin for Mailonline, the web version of another British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail.
In brief
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- In more on the Trump vandalism: Andrew Griffin of The Independent (an online-only UK newspaper) explains in a 23 November article, 'Siri doesn't appear to think highly of Donald Trump', how Apple's Siri is affected by false information in Wikipedia articles, however temporary it may be.
- Still more vandalism: On 30 November, Alex Myers, writing in The Loop (an online golfing digest) describes how the Stephen A. Smith Wikipedia article was vandalized with the addition of an amusing explanation for the initial 'A' of Smith's middle name.
- US government blames Google for Wikipedia articles: Inc. reports that United States congressman Louie Gohmert complained to Google CEO Sundar Pichai that Wikipedia's editors disallowed his paid staff member from editing the article about himself. Forbes and Vox similarly described Wikipedia's place in that public hearing. Conversation about Gohmert's editing is ongoing at Talk:Louie Gohmert.
- Google translations for Indonesia: Jaclyn Teng of TechinAsia in 'Google partners with Wikipedia to translate content for Indonesians' reports on 3 December about Google's initiative to have articles from the English Wikipedia translated into Bahasa Indonesia using their machine translation engine.
- Can't sleep? Read Wikipedia: Alan Farrell tells reporter Niamh Horan of the Independent on 24 November about his lifelong problems of getting to sleep: "My worst attribute is wikiloops. I might look at something on Wikipedia and I would research something and then I would click on a link to the next page and the next page and all of a sudden it's three hours later and you've gotten nothing done and you are in a wikiloop, going down a rabbit hole".
- 28,000 photos uploaded: Amid concerns expressed on infringement of copyright, The Wikipedia Israel chapter has uploaded a large number of photos taken from 1900 to 1946 in the region which eventually became the state of Israel, reports Stuart Winer in The Times of Israel on 29 November. Michal Lester, executive director of Wikimedia Israel, is confident that there has been no breach of legalities. Some of the photos are displayed on the Wikimedia Israel website (in Hebrew).
Merrilee Proffitt (left) with Christina Moretta (centre), and Andrea Davis (right), speaking about San Francisco Public Library resources at the Bay Area WikiSalon, June 2016.
- Book: Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge, Merrilee Proffitt, (2018). 256 pages. American Library Association. In the May 2018 edition of the magazine American Libraries, Phil Morehart discusses the book with the author with a focus on her research and its impact. The Signpost June issue this year mentioned her interview with Publishers Weekly.
Editor's note: Maybe it's time for someone to examine the potential for a Wikipedia article about the author.
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