Wikipedia's Fascinating Facts

The English Wikipedia has a section on the main page called "Did you know..."(generally abbreviated DYK) which includes interesting facts from recently started or recently expanded Wikipedia articles. Today's DYK is reproduced below:

... that a 1631 Bible commanded readers to commit adultery?
... that Sonia Chang-Díaz won a seat in the Massachusetts Senate after her opponent was accused of stuffing her bra?
... that in 1825, the Court of Exchequer declared all contracts by hobbits illegal and void in England?
... that if you go to a local store three weeks from today, you can probably find Asher Roth asleep in the bread aisle?
... that Caviar, Chardonnay, and Hot Cocoa compete for the love of Ray J?
... that baseball Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby had his first plate appearance against King Lear?
... that both Egypt and the Holy Land were originally settled by Germans?
... that Sir Winston Churchill competed in the Tall Ships Race with an all-female crew?
... that Wikipedia now has an article about everything?

Wikipedia, Australia and Censorship

I've previously discussed censorship of Wikipedia by Great Britain. It appears that Australia may be the next democracy to attempt to censor Wikipedia. Australia currently has a secret blacklist of websites which are censored. Nominally the list is to deal primarily with child pornography but no one can tell what precisely is one the list since it is secret. As with the websites censored by Great Britian, there is no clear system of oversight of what gets added to the list. Activists have attempted to show that additions to the list are arbitrary and poorly thought out. Recently, they succeeded in getting an anti-abortion website with graphic pictures of aborted fetuses added to the list. Moving on, the activists then added links to the website in various online fora, using it as an example of a how the list was running rampshod over peoples free speech rights. The Australian Communications and Media Authority responded by sending one of the online fora a nasty note telling them to take out the link or be subject to large fines and risk having their forum added to the list. Wikipedia in reporting on this ongoing controversy has linked to the blacklisted abortion website. The activists understand what this means:

"If ACMA blacklists their own Wikipedia page, well that says it all doesn't it? If they don't, that is a very, very strong reason to call them hypocrites for making vastly different responses to two sites linking to the very same material."

It should be interesting to see over the next few days how ACMA responds.

Wikipedia, Great Britain and Censorship

ISPs in Great Britain are censoring Wikipedia. From the Wikinews article:

Wikinews has learned that at least six of the United Kingdom's main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have implemented monitoring and filtering mechanisms that are causing major problems for UK contributors on websites operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, amongst up to 1200 other websites. The filters appear to be applied because Wikimedia sites are hosting a Scorpions album cover which some call child pornography. The Scorpions are a German rock band who have used several controversial album covers and are perhaps best known for their song, "Rock You Like a Hurricane".

The evil wiki witch Durova already has an entry on this topic which I recommend reading. My own analysis follows.

While there has already been a large amount of reaction against this perceived censorship accompanied by cries that of course this image is not child porn, I can see how a reasonable individual might consider the image to be over the line. The image in question consists of a nude girl of about 11 years of age with an apparent lens crack over her genitalia. Moreover, the pose the girl is in is a pose which would arguably be sexual if that pose were done by an adult even if she were fully clothed. However, it is clear that the image is legal in the United States and the State of Florida where the Wikipedia servers reside.

The censorship has been done in a very hamfisted fashion. Among other consequences it forces the majority of people accessing Wikipedia in Great Britain to do so only through a handful of IP addresses. This is making it difficult for Wikipedia admins to deal with vandalism from anywhere in Great Britain and is making it difficult for people in Britain to edit Wikipedia in general.

There are two issues which I find particularly disturbing.

First, the ISPs made the decision after the Internet Watch Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to stoping child pornography on the internet, decided that the image was close enough to child porn to be included in their list. There's thus nothing even resembling an appeal process or any form of transparency about these decisions. Indeed, even now the IWF has not clarified whether any other pages on Wikipedia are being similarly censored.

Second, many of the people in Great Britain who have attempted to access the page have received a 404 error rather than be told that the content is being censored. If this occurs in less prominent cases people might not even realize there is censorship occurring and simply assume that the server in question is down or has some other problem. This is thus a subtle form of censorship which can be hard to detect.

Update: David Gerard appeared on the Today show to talk about this. He has a transcript of that appearance as well as his thoughts on the matter.

Sarah Palin and Wikipedia, part II

It appears that both the New York Times and I missed the real story about Sarah Palin and Wikipedia. Shortly after I posted my previous post, I received an anonymous tip to look at the edits to the article from August 21st. Those edits, by an anonymous IP address, are much more interesting than the edits by Young Trigg.

The edits appear to be done by what may be a professional PR person.

The editor’s IP address, 71.138.164.23, which most likely corresponds to a home DSL line, has no other edits to the English Wikipedia. Using a home address to make edits is something that the smarter PR people have engaged in after repeated scandals in the press made clear to them that using IP addresses corresponding to their organizations was a bad idea.

Now, the individual edits in question:

First, the editor toned down the wording on the Monegan incident, replacing discussion of Monegan being fired with a statement that he had been “dismissed.”[1] The editor then also removed material disputing Palin’s version of events and removed material noting the ongoing investigation.[2]

The editor also changed the section on Palin’s approval ratings so that the headline was “High approval ratings” and similarly toned down a section header that had the word “controversy” in it.[3]

Now, one aspect of the edits is subtle and can be easily missed: The editor downplayed the later articles about the Monegan incident so that if one followed the links one would go to the less negative material in an earlier newspaper article. This is more obvious if you look at the entire set of changes: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sarah_Palin&diff=233280080&oldid=233206699

There are two other points that suggest that these edits were made by a PR individual: When changing section titles, the individual capitalized the entire section title. For example, “Matanuska Maid Dairy controversy” became “Matanuska Maid Dairy Closure.” Similarly, “Approval ratings” became “High Approval Ratings.” Now, a regular Wikipedian would be familiar enough with the Wikipedia manual of style not to do this. Moreover, the edits all occurred in an eight minute span. That speed of editing for someone who is not a regular Wikipedian, including the addition new sources to an article, would be difficult without prior planning. That is most consistent with a PR person having a set plan and then implementing it.

Finally, the individual in question made one other edit, also on the 21st. This is the individual’s only edit aside from the Palin article. The editor moved Palin to the top of the list of rumored Republican vice-presidential candidates.[4] This edit is particularly interesting, because as of the 21st, there was very little noise about Palin as a candidate at all. While we must speculate, it is quite possible that these edits were made by an insider to the McCain campaign, a possibility that both the Times and I missed.



[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sarah_Palin&diff=233279156&oldid=233206699
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sarah_Palin&diff=next&oldid=233279397 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sarah_Palin&diff=next&oldid=233279635
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sarah_Palin&diff=prev&oldid=233279830 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sarah_Palin&diff=prev&oldid=233279830
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republican_Party_(United_States)_vice_presidential_candidates,_2008&diff=prev&oldid=233280302

Sarah Palin, Wikipedia, and The New York Times

The New York Times had a recent article on edits to Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia biography that appeared to clean up and expand the article a few hours before her selection as the Republican vice-presidential candidate was announced.

The New York Times article is inaccurate. There is one minor inaccuracy, one factual error, and one serious omission.

First, the minor inaccuracy: The Wikipedia user’s name in question was not “YoungTrigg” but “Young Trigg” with a space. This isn’t as trivial as it might seem: Wikipedia user names are very sensitive and someone trying to follow-up on the article might have difficulty finding the pages discussed in the New York Times article if they did not know this and were not familiar with navigating Wikipedia. Furthermore, this shows sloppy reporting. I could understand how a copy-editor might change “YoungTrigg” as one word to “Young Trigg” as two words but I am at loss to find an explanation other than sloppiness for going in the other direction.

Second, the factual error: The New York Times claims that Young Trigg’s edits to the Palin article were “all positive.” This is false. As Trigg pointed out on his talk page after the matter blew up on Wikipedia, Trigg expanded the section concerning the state-trooper controversy. The addition, while not negative, is not positive either. Indeed, the overall thrust of the edit is to add more negative material about Wooten, the state trooper who Palin is accused of trying to get fired due to familiar disputes. The edits in question also contain some minor elements which could be construed as making the section more positive for Palin. However, the expansion in general makes the section more prominent in the article and does not make Palin look good. From the timestamps, it appears that the New York Times writer, Noam Cohen, read Trigg’s talk page after this comment was made.[1]

Third, the omission: What happened to the article overall shows how well the system on Wikipedia works. Young Trigg’s edits that were well-sourced and relevant (most of them) stayed in. Edits that were slanted towards Palin or otherwise not-neutral were removed. Most of Trigg’s edits have stayed for the simple reason that most of them were good edits. So even if Trigg was an operative sent by the McCain campaign (which frankly, I doubt), this shows Wikipedia triumphing over that.

This quick self-correction is connected to a general point that I’ve tried to make before that seems to often get lost: people often say that Wikipedia is fine for non-controversial topics but is bad for controversial ones. The almost exact opposite is true. Controversial topics have many more editors looking at them and thus will be more likely to be neutral and well-sourced.

One final remark: in Wikipedia and Wikimedia circles Noam Cohen is considered to be be one of the more accurate reporters on Wikipedia matters. This article is about average for him. As far as I can tell, the primary reason that Cohen is highly regarded is not that he is a such an accurate reporter, but that almost everyone else is far worse.

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[1] The New York Times article notes that the Young Trigg account retired. The retirement announcement on the page was added in the same edit that Trigg made his comment that he had not made only positive edits.

Alternative medicine and Wikipedia

A group of alternative medicine practitioners have announced that they are going to start their own wiki to counter Wikipedia which is not sufficiently positive about alternative treatments. They complain that people who read Wikipedia articles on alternative medicine are being “systematically exposed to anti-CAM data.” I’ll let that phrase speak for itself. I’m not going to examine in detail the incredible idiocy and willful ignorance on display here other than to note that they have stated that any anti-CAM data on the wiki will be swiftly removed. This will apparently occur regardless of the truth, falsity or verifiability of the data in question. There is an excellent post over at The Lay Scientist discussing this detail. I’m also not going to discuss how the first group to come to mind to also try to start their own Wiki was extreme right wing Christians.[i]
What I’m actually going to address is a related issue. Some of the commentators who have remarked on this new wiki have in passing attacked Wikipedia. For example, in the otherwise excellent post I linked to above, the author felt a need to say that the alternative medicine proponents "have finally grown tired of trying to insert their claims into the sewerage system of the collective consciousness that is Wikipedia." This is unfair to Wikipedia and to the hundreds of editors who work on Wikipedia’s articles about fringe ideas.
It is a testament to how well Wikipedia functions that extremist groups that are unable to handle Wikipedia’s neutral point of view policy are not able to successfully subvert Wikipedia articles. They have been forced to go elsewhere to promote their extreme minority viewpoints. This is an example of Wikipedia succeeding. This isn’t complete success: Ideally, these people would stay and help make actually neutral articles. But the reader can be confident that for most major alternative medicine claims such as homeopathy and magnet therapy, the articles will accurately reflect what scientific studies have discovered about the topics whether positive or negative. The articles will include the claims made by practitioners and will neutrally discuss what the scientific community thinks of those claims.

[i] However, I cannot resist pointing out that Conservapedia has recently decided that Leif Ericson never came to America. Apparently, claims that he did are part of a liberal plot to undermine the achievements of the Christian explorer Christopher Columbus. I’m not making this up. And before anyone comments, yes I know that Ericson was almost certainly Christian.

While I’m pointing out absurdities on Conservapedia, they also recently announced on their mainpage that “41 students have already signed up for Conservapedia's in-person class this fall, perhaps making it the largest pre-college American History class in the world." Again, I’m not making this up. And moreover, they seem to think that a large student/teacher ratio is a good thing.

Edit on January 28, 2009: The linked to edits at Conservapedia are apparently no longer functioning. I am currently attempting to determine if this is due to Conservapedia's running server problems or if it is due to deliberate attempts to send them down the memory hole. I will post a followup entry when I have more information.

A short rant about major media and Wikipedia

At the risk of sounding like yet another blogger attacking the "Mainstream Media" sometimes there really is a mainstream media and sometimes the media really just doesn't get it. Take for example this quality piece of journalism from The Age which describes how a "hacker" altered the Wikipedia page for Mick Keelty, the Australian Federal Police Chief. Newsflash to reporter John Kidman who wrote this piece: it doesn't take a hacker to alter a Wikipedia page, all you need to do is click on "edit this page." Oh, and Wikipedia semi-protecting a page isn't news either. A glance at the protection log shows that literally hundreds of pages are protected or semi-protected on any given day. If in 2008 there are still major news outlets that don't understand how Wikipedia works at the most basic levels and don't bother doing their research is it any wonder why people don't trust the general media? One doesn't need to believe in any malicious conspiracy by the right-wing/left-wing/capitalist/communist/Wolbachia sympathizing media. You just need to see the incompetence and laziness.