Tag Archives | Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s First Wikipedian of the Year is Propagandist for Kazakh Dictatorship

By on December 26, 2012 in News 0

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has some explaining to do.

Via Daily Dot:

Some of Wikipedia’s harshest critics have dug up an embarrassing bit of Wikipedia history in recent days. Most notable: The site’s first-ever Wikipedian of the Year is a former paid propaganda flack for the authoritarian Kazakh government, known for its iron control over free media and awful human-rights record.

Rauan Kenzhekhanuly is a Kazakh government man through and through. The former first secretary at the country’s Russian embassy also served as Moscow Bureau chief for the National TV Agency, a government propaganda arm launched by the daughter of Kazakh’s all-powerful president-cum-dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Now Kenzhekhanuly runs WikiBilim, an organization devoted to ballooning the size of the Kazakh language Wikipedia. But while WikiBlim may be a non-profit, it’s also backed financially by the state’s sovereign oil wealth fund, which is run by none other than the President Nazarbayev’s son-in-law.

… Read the rest

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The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia

By on November 4, 2012 in News 26

We all rely far too much on Wikipedia without questioning the veracity of the source. As a reminder of the fallibility of the user-generated entries, Dan Nosowitz exposes the climate change denier Ken Mampel at PopSci:

“All I am is a contributor. I have no title, I’m just a Joe Blow,” says Ken Mampel, a currently unemployed 56-year-old living in Ormond Beach, Florida. He’s also largely responsible for the Wikipedia article about Hurricane Sandy. If it isn’t already, that article will eventually become the single most-viewed document about the hurricane. On the entire internet.

In an unpaid but frenzied fit of news consumption, editing, correction, aggregation, and citation, Mampel has established himself as by far the most active contributor to the Wikipedia page on Hurricane Sandy, with more than twice the number of edits as the next-most-active contributor at the time this article was written.

And Mampel made sure that the Hurricane Sandy article, for four days after the hurricane made landfall in New Jersey, had no mention of “global warming” or “climate change” whatsoever.

… Read the rest

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Embarrassing Congressional Edits To Members’ Wikipedia Pages

By on July 20, 2012 in News 4

Here’s what politicians wished you didn’t know. Via Buzzfeed, a choice rundown of Congress members’ attempts to alter their own Wikipedia biographies (including Harry Reid, whose underlings scrubbed out the section “Relationship to Jack Abramoff and his firm”):

A search through the House of Representatives IP address on Wikipedia shows which pages have been edited by Congressional staff. The IP address, shared by all Congressional offices offers a glimpse at who decided to do a bit of historical airbrushing.

1. Rep. Mike Coffman: Removed edits to an incident saying President Obama was “in his heart, just not an American.”

2. Rep. Allen West: Removed an incident in which he called members of the Progressive Caucus “Communists.”

3. Rep. Bennie Thompson: Removed Thompson’s entire “Controversies” section.

4. Rep. Grace Napolitano: Added information noting that a controversial loan she made to her campaign, which was being repaid with interest, had been completely repaid.

… Read the rest

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Missing Wikipedia? Here’s How You Can Access It

By on January 18, 2012 in News 16

As most Internet users already know, leading Internet companies like Google, Wikipedia, and Craigslist are protesting the SOPA legislation very publicly today, with Wikipedia totally blacked out. But, if you really, really need to access Wikipedia today, they have kindly explained how to come in through the back door:

Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?

Yes. During the blackout, Wikipedia is accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. You can also view Wikipedia normally by disabling JavaScript in your browser, as explained on this Technical FAQ page. Our purpose here isn’t to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it’s okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message.

Wikipedia blackout

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Wikipedia Censoring 9/11 Truth

By on September 12, 2011 in News 160

Wikipedia-logoWhatever editorial credibility Wikipedia may once have had, this report in the New York Times totally destroys it:

As the nation marked this terrible anniversary, people invariably turned to Wikipedia to learn about the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly two million page views were registered last September for the article “September 11 Attacks,” a typically Wikipedian effort with exhaustive, even picayune, details of the events, bolstered by nearly 289 footnotes. This September, the total page view number could be something like six million.

Likewise, readers have repeatedly turned to the article “9/11 Conspiracy Theories.” The article — similarly detailed with 299 footnotes purporting to explain accusations of faked video footage or controlled demolition of the two buildings — had 400,000 page views last September, and is on pace to have more than a million views this year.

One thing is certain, however. Not one of those visitors got to the conspiracy theories page by making a hypertext leap from a link in the main article about the Sept.

… Read the rest

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Selling Wikipedia Pages As Kindle eBooks

By on September 9, 2011 in News 4

WikiFocus BooksThis article identifies a supposed ebook “author” whose 887 different ebooks were all apparently cut-and-pasted directly from Wikipedia entries!

The “WikiFocus” series targets obscure niches with few competing ebooks, like Hello Kitty, Aquaman, or the comic strip Archie.

“Of the 887 ebooks, all but 10 earned terrible reviews, averaging one star or less,” this article notes, “or received no reviews at all.”

A typical review? “This ‘book’ is just a word for word copy of the Wikipedia page.”

(And a least one other “author” has attempt the same trick, trying to pass off a Wikipedia page about Charlie Sheen as an $18.95 biography!)… Read the rest

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The 404 Attacks – Meme or Scheme?

By on August 29, 2011 in News 5
Nothing Is True

Photo: Mr.Bigg23 (CC)

[UPDATE: the Wikipedia page has been deleted.]

A Wikipedia article that’s been the subject of some internal argument there (based on the fact that much associated with this meme is by its nature unverifiable) was brought to my attention by one of the readers of my books. I can’t say I’m entirely enthusiastic about the possible uses that this thing might be put to in the hands of a group like Anon — though it seems to already be “their” M.O. anyway, and the dis-organization is structured along the same lines as the fictitious (?) “Mother Hive Brain” in a way that’s always amused me more than a little. In a world teetering on the brink, and in the midst of issues such as “NymWars,” this topic at the least seems finally ripe for discussion as well as action. From Wikipedia:

In practice, the 404 Attacks are a technique for disseminating disinformation through various networks.

… Read the rest

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Robots May Get Their Own Internet

By on February 9, 2011 in News 15
Photo: Lorenzo Natale (CC)

Photo: Lorenzo Natale (CC)

Is this the beginning of machines relying on machines? BBC News reports:

Robots could soon have an equivalent of the internet and Wikipedia.

European scientists have embarked on a project to let robots share and store what they discover about the world.

Called RoboEarth it will be a place that robots can upload data to when they master a task, and ask for help in carrying out new ones.

Researchers behind it hope it will allow robots to come into service more quickly, armed with a growing library of knowledge about their human masters.

The idea behind RoboEarth is to develop methods that help robots encode, exchange and re-use knowledge, said RoboEarth researcher Dr Markus Waibel from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

“Most current robots see the world their own way and there’s very little standardisation going on,” he said. Most researchers using robots typically develop their own way for that machine to build up a corpus of data about the world.

… Read the rest

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Rush Limbaugh: Wikipedia Hypocrite

By on September 17, 2010 in News 7

Rush_LimbaughSo Rush, is Wikipedia reliable, or not? Report from Gawker:

“Everybody in the world knows you don’t believe anything on Wikipedia,” Rush Limbaugh told his listeners last year. So, uh, it must be embarrassing for him that he just used Wikipedia as a source—and got his facts wrong.

On Tuesday, Limbaugh told his listeners about Judge Roger Vinson, of the Federal District Court in Pensacola, Florida, is presiding over a legal challenge to the country’s new health-care reform law. Here’s a transcript, quoting liberally from Vinson’s Wikipedia article:

Who is this judge? Judge Clyde Roger Vinson is a Ronald Reagan appointee. Judge Clyde Roger Vinson is an avid hunter. He’s an amateur taxidermist. Do you know what a taxidermist is? That’s right. For our liberal caller today, this would not be good news. A taxidermist stuffs dead game. If you go into a big, all-male club, you’ll see some moose head over the fireplace.

… Read the rest

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