The Signpost's investigative story recognized, Wikipedia turns 18 and gets a birthday gift from Google, and more editors are recognized: Heroes and unsung heroes: many good news stories about the work we are all doing together.
Stephen Hawking, one of Huffpost's top 20 celebrities who passed away in 2018. Pictured here talking to Barack Obama.
The Most Famous Person To Die In 2018, According To Data Science: – or Wikipedia. In a well researched article – at least some interesting stats – on 28 December James O'Malley of the HuffingtonPost reveals that 'more celebrities died in 2018 than in any year since at least 2010' – based on data extracted from Wikipedia: "...we’re here to determine who was the most famous person to die in 2018 and whether more famous people died this year than in previous years. ..." Paying tribute to Wikipedia's coverage of dead celebs, supported by numerous charts and tables, the article makes not only interesting reading but demonstrates again how useful Wikipedia can be: "The first problem when building a model for this is defining the parameters: Who exactly counts as a celebrity? Sure, we could simply pick whoever we remember dying, but this is science — which is why we turned to every serious academic’s favorite tool: Wikipedia." – K
Shoddy journalism
Olivia Colman at Moet BIFA 2014
"Olivia Colman reveals battle with Wikipedia over her age: ‘We’d have to see a birth certificate’ ", reports Amy Hunt on 29 January in woman&home. Award-winning English actress and Hollywood star Olivia Colman faced hostility from Wikipedia editors who refused to publish her correct age, making her 52 years old instead of only 44 (now 45) and then demanding her birth certificate before they would correct it. After several attempts to communicate with Wikipedia without a reply, Colman who has won over 35 major awards, retorted to the demand with ", ‘whose f****** birth certificate have you looked at in the first place to make me eight years older?’” Several other publications, including the Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Independent, Evening Standard, Sky News and Harper's Bazaar, have published the story based on a podcast with David Tennant. It would be a good story if it were true, but Wikipedia editors have thoroughly debunked Colman's claim in a discussion at Talk:Olivia Colman. Colman's birthdate has been reported correctly since 2006 with the exception of a short-lived case of vandalism.– K, S
KING-TV showed this image and the article it illustrates
9,000 photos for Wikipedia: 'Wikipedia Photog and Unsung Hero of Community News'. Jonathan Sperling writing in Queens Daily Eagle on 4 January tells how 70-year-old Wikipedia editor Jim.henderson has taken many of the photos that appear daily in the New York press. "It’s a situation any community news editor in New York City can relate to," says Sperling whose article on Jim Henderson is covered in a Washington Post opinion piece by Stephen Harrison on 14 January.
Happy 18th birthday, Wikipedia. Let’s celebrate the Internet’s good grown-up, says Stephen Harrison in The Washington Post on 14 January. "Wikipedia’s rise is driven by a crucial difference in values that separates it from its peers in the top 10 websites: On Wikipedia, truth trumps self-expression."
Gender gap:
In an article in The Guardian on 12 December last year, Victoria Leonard, a University of London postdoctoral researcher in the department of history, states "...Wikipedia has a gender bias that really bites: between 84-91% of editors are men" explaining that "By illuminating positive female role models through initiatives such as #WCCWiki and the WikiProject Women In Red, we can make online spaces fairer and more inclusive, where women are allowed to succeed, and can be seen doing so. We just need a woke Wikipedia."
Jess Wade, a post doctoral physicist at Imperial College London gets more extensive attention from the press. In an article by Nisha Gaind in the current issue of Nature, one of the world's top academic journals, Wade is one of 'Nature’s 10 people who mattered in 2018.'
More coverage on Wade's Wikipedia work is provided by Ewan McAndrew, Siobhan O’Connor, Sara Thomas and Alice White in the 8 January issue of the NewStatesmanAmerica in 'From Chinese spies to award-winning geologists, we’re making women visible on Wikipedia', while last year on 24 JulyThe Guardian science correspondent Hannah Devlin reveals that Wade had created 270 Wikipedia articles on women: "I had a target for doing one a day, but sometimes I get too excited and do three.” This year on 2 January Dianne Apen-Sadler writing for Mailonline provides an account of Wade's increased activity to complement the encyclopedia with more biographies on people from minority groups: "Every day in 2018 I started the @Wikipedia biography of a woman, person of colour or LGBTQ+ scientist or engineer. I’m up to 450 pages so far #womeninSTEM x #HappyNewYear."
Talking to CBS News on 20 JanuarySer Amantio di Nicolao, with over 3 million edits Wikipedia's most prolific editor, reveals more about his daytime job than he states on his user page and says he has written 35,000 articles. Time magazine once named him one of the top 25 most influential people on the internet, alongside President Trump, J.K. Rowling and Kim Kardashian West.[9] "People like Steven are incredibly important to platforms like Wikipedia, simply because they are the ones that are the lifeblood," said Kui Kinyanjui, vice president of WikiMedia communications.
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