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Submission + - Is Wikipedia biased for Israel and against Palestinians? 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Wikipedia's pro-Jewish bias has been discussed in Wikipedia-criticism circles for years, but today the Wikipediocracy blog ran a item relating to it that will attract controversy: it proves that English-language Wikipedia is heavily biased in favor of Israeli and Jewish subjects, and against Palestinians. And it starts with very disturbing examples — Wikipedia biographies of Israeli and Palestinian children who were killed in the endless civil war. Specifically, articles about Palestinian children who were killed by Israelis are almost guaranteed to be deleted from the "encyclopedia of record", while articles about Israeli children killed by Palestinians receive "special protection".

Submission + - Wikipedia sits on $60 million while begging for money to keep the site ad-free 2

Submitted by Andreas Kolbe
Andreas Kolbe writes: The latest financial statements for the Wikimedia Foundation, the charity behind Wikipedia, show it has assets of $60 million, including $27 million in cash and cash equivalents, and $23 million in investments. Yet its aggressive banner ads suggest disaster may be imminent if people don't donate and imply that Wikipedia may be forced to run commercial advertising to survive. Jimmy Wales counters complaints by saying the Foundation are merely prudent in ensuring they always have a reserve equal to one year's spending, but the fact is that Wikimedia spending has increased by 1,000 percent in the course of a few years. And by a process of circular logic, as spending increases, so the reserve has to increase, meaning that donors are asked to donate millions more each year. Unlike the suggestion made by the fundraising banners, most of these budget increases have nothing to do with keeping Wikipedia online and ad-free, and nothing to do with generating and curating Wikipedia content, a task that is handled entirely by the unpaid volunteer base. The skyrocketing budget increases are instead the result of a massive expansion of paid software engineering staff at the Foundation – whose work in recent years has been heavily criticised by the unpaid volunteer base. The aggressive fundraising banners too are controversial within the Wikimedia community itself.

Submission + - Wikipedia defames a college basketball player - for six years

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A truly disturbing Wikipediocracy report describes possibly one of the worst defamation jobs in Wikipedia's history: a claim that Boston College basketball player Joe Streater was involved in a point-shaving scandal during the 1978-79 season. Not only was Streater not even a member of the team at the time, this "subtle vandalism" was repeated by news organizations such as Yahoo Sports and the AP wire service. Inserted by an anonymous IP address in 2008, it was not removed until last week, when a sports blogger pointed it out. Once again, Wikipedia gets a fact so wrong, it might have ruined a man's life. And the journalists who cheerfully repeated this Wikipedia hoax have yet to be criticized for encouraging Wikipedia "citogenesis".

Submission + - What do your donations to keep Wikipedia "online and ad-free" really pay for? (wikipediocracy.com)

Submitted by Andreas Kolbe
Andreas Kolbe writes: As the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) prepares for its main annual fundraiser, many Wikipedia readers are presented with a banner inviting them to donate an amount equivalent to the "price of buying a programmer a coffee". It's to keep Wikipedia "online and ad-free", the site says. However, this masks the fact that the WMF’s revenue, assets and expenses have risen by about 1,000% in recent years. While the WMF got by on annual donations totaling $5 million in 2007, it now wants over $50 million a year, despite reporting net assets of $45 million last summer and having taken another $50+ million in donations since then. Most of this money is not spent on keeping Wikipedia "online and ad-free", but on a ballooning bureaucracy that sees a select group of Wikipedians transitioning from unpaid volunteer to paid tech staff positions, creating a two-tier society and causing outgoing Executive Director Sue Gardner to raise concerns over the potential for "log-rolling and self-dealing" last year. Meanwhile, the WMF’s software engineering work has been judged inept by the unpaid volunteer community. The VisualEditor (VE), a WYSIWIG editor touted as "epically important" by Jimmy Wales, was so buggy and caused so many errors (such as inserting chess pawn characters in Wikipedia articles) that volunteer administrators rebelled, going over the Foundation's heads to disable VE as the new default editor. Last month's new Media Viewer feature was equally controversial. The WMF had to create a new access right, "Superprotect", to prevent angry volunteer administrators from disabling it, bringing community relations between the WMF and the volunteer community to a new low. An open letter protesting the WMF’s actions acquired an unprecedented number of signatures. Flow, a planned Facebook-style revamping of Wikipedia discussion pages that has been in development for some time, is already mired in controversy, with volunteers complaining that the WMF is turning a deaf ear to their concerns. Donors should be aware that most of their money is not used to keep Wikipedia online and ad-free. It's not used to improve Wikipedia’s reliability either. Instead, it funds the further aggressive expansion of an organization that's at loggerheads with its volunteer community and criticized for having a "miserable cost/benefit ratio".

Comment Fort Sumter.org (Score 1) 3

by Stanistani (#47717723) Attached to: The latest Wikipedia code-word for "dysfunction" is "Superprotection"
The WikiMedia Foundation, even though they know that prominent members of the editing community are outraged, still have not realized the extent of the ill feeling they have caused. The compact between the content creators and the fundraisers has been broken. This will be bad for both unless the new Executive Director, Lila Tretikov, can step in and heal the rift. Instead, she is siding with the WMF's development team.

Submission + - Pranks, hoaxes, manipulation: Virtual Unreality on Wikipedia (wikipediocracy.com) 2

Submitted by Andreas Kolbe
Andreas Kolbe writes: Kids confess on Reddit that in order to wind up a classmate named Azid, they added his name to the Wikipedia article on Chicken Korma. Two years on, and Azid is established online as an alternative name of the dish. A prankster twice changes the name of the inventor of the hair straightener, and both names are now widely credited with the invention online. Another kid writes in Wikipedia that coatis are also called Brazilian aardvarks, and incredibly, the name catches on in newspapers, even a university press book. Governments around the world seek to control Wikipedia content through anonymous contributions. Misinformation and propaganda on Wikipedia spread like a virus into other publications: how pranks, hoaxes and manipulation undermine the reliability of Wikipedia, and indeed the fabric of consensual reality.

Submission + - Media Viewer: yet another Wikipedia scandal in the making 3

Submitted by metasonix
metasonix writes: As reported on Wikipediocracy today, the Wikimedia Foundation's software developers created a new "Media Viewer" feature to show high-resolution Wikipedia images in a pop-up window. It worked, but had many problems. Result: "One month after implementation, volunteer administrator Pete Forsyth unceremoniously switched the new feature off, only to find his change reverted by none other than the Wikimedia Foundation’s Deputy Director and VP of Engineering and Product Development, Erik Möller, who threatened to remove Forsyth’s administrative privileges. Möller in turn has now been hauled in front of Wikipedia’s arbitration committee, accused of overstepping his authority." This is roughly similar to a group of volunteer police cadets attempting to remove their chief of police, for changing department policy. The story is bizarre, and it perfectly underscores the dysfunctional and twisted internal culture of Wikipedia.

Submission + - A Wikipedia content-abuse story -- only with real-world violence 1

Submitted by metasonix
metasonix writes: Once again, the Wikipediocracy website has uncovered a substantial abuse of the truth on Wikipedia. Like the "Qworty" debacle that ran in the news media last year, this post describes people who are deliberately inserting misinformation and attacking anyone who criticizes them for it. Unlike Qworty, it involves two editors — one is simply not very competent, the other (called only "Henry" here, possibly for fear of the author's safety) is not only protecting her, he is also posting his own phony articles and outright lies on Wikipedia. By the way, he spent years in prison for beating a woman with a pool cue.

Submission + - German Wikipedia Has Problems With Paid Editing -- And Threats Of Violence 2

Submitted by metasonix
metasonix writes: As German journalist Marvin Oppong learned recently, there are a number of people who work to make articles about certain corporations and trade groups on German Wikipedia "look better". And when Oppong published his discoveries, one reaction was an openly violent threat, aimed at him, posted on de-WP's "Kurier" noticeboard. Just as with English Wikipedia, it is apparently a "terrible crime" to criticize German Wikipedia, even when Jimbo Wales's "bright line" rule on paid editing is being violated. Unlike English WP, the Germans will threaten to "curbstone" people for saying it.

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