The Inquisitr » wikipedia

Wikipedia under fire for publishing Rorschach “cheat sheet”

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:48:26 +0000

Psychologists are getting their panties all knotted up because Wikipedia has ostensibly ruined their Rorschach Ink Blot party. The controversy came to light yesterday with a New York Times article regarding the well-known and oft-mocked “ink blot” test. Proponents of Wikipedia are opposed to suppression of freely available knowledge, and this includes the 90-year-old diagnostic tool.

The debate raged on a small scale for months due to the publication of one of the ten Rorschach plates, but in June, all Wikipedian hell broke loose. James Heilman, a doctor from Canada, posted all ten plates and common responses to each. Dr. Heilman explained his motivation to the Times:

“I just wanted to raise the bar — whether one should keep a single image on Wikipedia seemed absurd to me, so I put all 10 up,” Dr. Heilman said in an interview. “The debate has exploded from there.”

Dr. Heilman further illustrates the impetus behind his actions:

“Restricting information for theoretical concerns is not what we are here to do,” Dr. Heilman said, adding that he was not impressed by the predictions of harm from those who sought to keep the Rorschach plates secret. “Show me the evidence,” he said. “I don’t care what a group of experts says.”

To illustrate his point, Dr. Heilman used the Snellen eye chart, which begins with a big letter E and is readily available on the Wikipedia site.

“If someone had previous knowledge of the eye chart,” he said, “you can go to the car people, and you could recount the chart from memory. You could get into an accident. Should we take it down from Wikipedia?”

Indeed, the most vocal of Wikipedia’s critics in this debate seem to be those who stand to lose money over the publication of the plates. At 90 years old and having been ingrained in pop-psychology for years, the test has to be of limited value as it stands. While doctors have had nearly a century of responses to study, it has to be taken into account that Wikipedia is not the only place a determined test-cracker can get the lowdown on Rorschach results. Instead of blaming Wikipedia for being a platform for mass-distribution of information again, the complaining parties need to accept that we live in a time where this kind of thing is not only possible, but highly likely.

Is it not the responsibility of those to which we entrust our medical care to be aware of and proactive about concerns such as the corroded value of certain diagnostic tools? Rather than bemoaning the inevitable, shouldn’t they be hard at work finding a new way to gain insight into humanity’s supressed urges?

[Image courtesy of two gay Darth Vaders being dusted simultaneously by blue crabs as seahorses laugh at their predicament.]

Wikipedia damages shaky credibility with Rohde coverup

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:50:15 +0000

Earlier this month, we learned about the kidnapping and subsequent escape of Times reporter David Rohde in Afghanistan. But did you know Wikipedia was in on it, too?

Back in November of 2008, Rohde was taken near Kabul and held for nearly seven months- all the while, the Times managed to execute a surprisingly successful media blackout, which very well may have saved Rohde’s life. But yesterday the Times ran a piece detailing how they worked behind the scenes to kill the story on Wikipedia, with the help of founder Jimmy Wales, time and time again.

It’s an interesting conundrum for Wikipedia. The site is kind of a mascot for new media, how our concept of citation and fact has been shaped by the ubiquitous source, the benefits of crowd-sourcing versus the possibly biased opinions of one or a handful of crusty old academics. I’ve often argued that while vandalism on Wikipedia happens, undetected bias or other academic pollution is just as likely in traditional sources for citation and learning- and arguably more dangerous because people don’t use the “grain of salt” rule there. It even famously spawned a Colbert segment on “Wikiality.” (Colbert is a known and shameless Wikipedia vandal.)

But as Wikipedia struggles to maintain legitimacy as a source for reliable information, this story casts a new light on the issue. Luckily for Wikipedia, this issue was clearly life or death. But what if it isn’t? Or what if it’s just a ho-hum person and not a NY Times reporter? And how can you stop the crowd from releasing possibly harmful information- and should you? If so, when? In the Times piece, Jimmy Wales said in reference to a particularly fervent editor who tried repeatedly to edit the Rohde entry:

“We had no idea who it was,” said Mr. Wales, who said there was no indication the person had ill intent. “There was no way to reach out quietly and say ‘Dude, stop and think about this.’ ”

But the crowd is not necessarily sympathetic to the nuances of these particular gray areas. Wales unfroze the page personally that Saturday, the day Rohde’s release was finally reported.

When the news broke Saturday, the user from Florida reposted the information, with a note to administrators that said: “Is that enough proof for you [expletives]? I was right. You were WRONG.”

A professor at NYU who studies Wikipedia commented on the controversy in the piece as well.

“Wikipedia has, over time, instituted gradually more control because of some embarrassing incidents, particularly involving potentially libelous material, and some people get histrionic about it, proclaiming the death of Wikipedia. But the idea of a pure openness, a pure democracy, is a naïve one.”

[Image: XKCD]

Psychologist: Wikipedians are close-minded

Steven Hodson — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:26:32 +0000

Not only are they closed-minded but they are also grumpy, or so says Yair Amichai-Hamburger of the Sammy Ofer School of Communication in Israel.

Along with a team of psychologists Yair surveyed 69 Israeli contributors to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and compared them to a sample of 70 students that were matched age-wise and amount of Internet usage. As expected the Wikipedians were more comfortable online but much to everyone’s surprise they scored low on agreeableness and openness. This was based on the results from a questionnaire that looked at five traits: openness to experience and ideas, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

Amichai-Hamburger speculates that rather than contributing altruistically, Wikipedians take part because they struggle to express themselves in real-world social situations. "They are compensating," he suggests. "It is their way to have a voice in this world."

This is consistent with previous research on online communication, says Scott Caplan of the University of Delaware in Newark, who suspects that heavy users of sites such as Digg and Twitter may have similar characteristics. "People who prefer online social behaviour tend to have higher levels of social anxiety and lower social skills," he says.

Source: The New Scientist – Psychologist finds Wikipedians grumpy and closed-minded

Let the countdown to edited Wikipedia pages begin 5 … 4 … 3 … 2

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Wikipedia cat knows the truth

Duncan Riley — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:00:47 +0000

It are fact: I know it because I edited the Wikipedia article.

Church of Scientology kicked off of Wikipedia

Steven Hodson — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:13:00 +0000

In what The Register is calling an exclusive they are reporting that Wikipedia has banned any and all contributions from all the IPs owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its ~~minions~~ associates. This decision by Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee in a vote of 10 – 0 (1 abstention) will take effect immediately.

While Wikipedia has been known for previous banning, some silly and some not so stupid, people who have been rather exuberant in their editing of the so-called facts in Wikipedia entries this is the first time they have officially barred edits from a high profile organization.

According to evidence turned up by admins in this long-running Wikiland court case, multiple editors have been "openly editing [Scientology-related articles] from Church of Scientology equipment and apparently coordinating their activities." Leaning on the famed WikiScanner, countless news stories have discussed the editing of Scientology articles from Scientology IPs, and some site admins are concerned this is "damaging Wikipedia’s reputation for neutrality."

One admin tells The Reg that policing edits from Scientology machines has been particularly difficult because myriad editors sit behind a small number of IPs and, for some reason, the address of each editor is constantly changing. This prevents admins from determining whether a single editor is using multiple Wikipedia accounts to game the system. In Wikiland, such sockpuppeting is not allowed.

I wonder if this means well see another case of Tom Cruise couch jumping as he rants against Wikipedia and shouts censroship.

Wikia Search finally canned

Duncan Riley — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:36:35 +0000

Wikia Search, pitched by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales as a Google killer when it launched in January 2008 is no longer.

Wales wrote in a post that Wikia Search “has not been enjoying the kind of success that we had hoped” and then blamed the economy for the demise.

Wikia Search failed to find an audience, which in turn meant that it failed to establish a credible search index. The idea was to take Wikipedia crowd sourcing to search, so search results were edited and inserted by users. Things started to look bad in August last year, when Wikia launched a toolbar that allowed users to scrape results from Google; as I wrote at the time, providing a tool that encourages users to use a competing search engine (one that was claimed would be killed) reeked of desperate times.

Wales says that he may return to search again in the future, but we wouldn’t count on that being any time soon.

British Schools May Trade History For Twitter

JR — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:46:37 +0000

Students in the U.K. may soon swap out some history classes for Twitter education, if a recently proposed suggestion gets adopted. The idea is part of a government review of the primary school curriculum in England, the BBC reports, and could lead to some sweeping changes.

The report calls for kids to spend school time learning how to effectively use sites such as Twitter and Wikipedia. It’d also add curriculum on blogging techniques, podcasting, and other Web-oriented skills.

Some reports say the added time would be taken from history, possibly even replacing studies on the Victorian period or World War II. Education officials say that history will always be a “core part of education.” It just may be condensed, it seems, to make room for topic of modern tech education.

It’s no surprise that plenty of people are a-twitter about the possible shift in focus. One does have to concede, though, that while an understanding of history can be seen as an important part of a child’s education, the practical hands-on tech skills are likely to have a more direct impact on his professional success. Finding a way to balance the curriculum and bring those topics into the equation seems like a smart move that more educators should consider.

Let’s just hope the latest wave of fail whale appearances dies down by the time the lessons begin.

Twitter

Paul Reiser Not Dead, No Matter What Wikipedia Said

Duncan Riley — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:56:43 +0000

Mad About You star Paul Reiser has had a brush with premature death this week, Wikipedia style.

Multiple edits to Reiser’s Wikipedia page noted that “On December 27th, 2008 Reiser was discovered dead in the Squallahassee River where he reportedly enjoyed fly fishing. No foul play was suspected” or variations there in.

While the picture of Reiser on his Wikipedia page has him looking older and wider than when we last saw him on television, he’s also alive and kicking. My bet is being a quiet period, a certain board that shall remain nameless is having some fun again. Previous victims of fake deaths include Miley Cyrus.

U.K. ISPs Blacklist Wikipedia Over Album Cover Image

JR — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:21:05 +0000

The U.K.’s Internet watchdog organization has blacklisted a Wikipedia article for the first time.

The article is about the Scorpions’ 1976 album “Virgin Killer.” The album, as the Wikipedia article explains, features a very young-looking naked girl on its cover. A cracked glass effect covers her lower region, but her upper-half is completely exposed and visible. Some countries chose to replace it with an alternative image when the album came out, Wikipedia explains.

For some reason, all these years later, someone has complained to the British Internet Watch Foundation about the image — and the group has decided to censor it. The IWF says someone reported the Wikipedia page through a form on its Web site. A statement says:

“As with all child sexual abuse reports received by our Hotline analysts, the image was assessed according to the UK Sentencing Guidelines Council (page 109). The content was considered to be a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18, but hosted outside the UK. The IWF does not issue takedown notices to ISPs or hosting companies outside the UK, but we did advise one of our partner Hotlines abroad and our law enforcement partner agency of our assessment. The specific URL (individual webpage) was then added to the list provided to ISPs and other companies in the online sector to protect their customers from inadvertent exposure to a potentially illegal indecent image of a child.”

The vast majority of U.K.-based ISPs use the blacklist maintained by the IWF, which is a non-profit, non-governmental organization.

The Wikipedia article, fittingly enough, has already been updated with this development. The Wikimedia Foundation also released its own statement about the incident, noting that the IWF blacklisting has also prevented U.K. Internet users from being able to edit any Wikipedia articles.

“It is a huge problem,” the statement says. “There are tens of thousands of people in the UK who regularly edit Wikipedia: roughly one quarter of all edits to the English Wikipedia are made from inside the UK. The Wikimedia Foundation is dependent upon the contributions of volunteer editors in order to fulfill its educational mission. It cannot afford to have UK-based editors excluded from participation in the encyclopedia.”

As to the legality of the image, the Wikimedia Foundation says it has “no reason to believe the image has been held to be illegal in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world” and points to the fact that the image is also posted on pages within Amazon, where the album is available for purchase.

“We are frankly baffled as to why the IWF would choose to target Wikipedia — an encyclopedia, run by a charitable organization, which has been repeatedly gauged as equivalent in quality to conventional encyclopedias — for censorship. And we are particularly displeased that the IWF chose to censor not solely the image, but also the explanatory article text which described and contextualized the controversy surrounding the image, in a neutral and educational fashion,” the organization says.

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Excellent news: you can now spam Knol in foreign languages

Duncan Riley — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:30:44 +0000

Google has announced the expansion of its online encyclopedia Knol into new languages, opening up the service for spam in three new languages.

Google Knol now supports French, Italian or German along with its native English spam, a move that is sure to be welcomed by spammers in some of Europe’s biggest countries.

Knol launched in July 2008 and was immediately billed as a Wikipedia killer by some, by offering shared ad payments against every page. But the encyclopedia with paying Adsense ads quickly became the target of spammers; the ideal of a free-for-all anyone can post anything promoted by Google was naturally abused about 5 seconds after they hit the on button.

Bonus points to AFP for this description of the service “Google on Thursday made its version of communally-constructed online encyclopedia Wikipedia multi-lingual, opening its Knol compendium to nuggets of knowledge shared in French, Italian or German.” Sounds like a well rounded Knol entry to me

College Humor Nails Wikipedia

Duncan Riley — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:02:35 +0000

The College Humor team takes on Wikipedia through a practical demonstration of Wikipedia in the class room. Genius.

Top 20 Web 2.0 Services

JR — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:10:17 +0000

Ever wonder who’s on top when it comes to Web 2.0 services? Hitwise Intelligence has some answers.

The research company has released a list of the top 20 Web 2.0 sites based on U.S. visits in July. It used Wikipedia’s definition of a service designed “to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.”

Drumroll, please…

1. MySpace — 44.14% market share
2. eBay — 16.22% market share
3. Facebook — 13.03% market share
4. YouTube — 9.88% market share
5. Wikipedia — 4.76% market share
6. Craigslist — 3.14% market share
7. Yahoo Answers — 1.41% market share
8. myYearbook — 1.05% market share
9. Tagged — .95% market share
10. Flickr — .86% market share
11. Bebo — .71% market share
12. Meebo — .59% market share
13. BlackPlanet.com — .52% market share
14. GaiaOnline.com — .45% market share
15. Blogger — .40% market share
16. Adam4Adam — .35% market share
17. hi5 — .35% market share
18. WikiAnswers — .33% market share
19. IMEEM — .31% market share
20. LiveJournal — .30% market share

Hitwise points out that many of these are still independent and non-acquired. Also of note: Digg did not receive enough traffic to crack the top 20, according to the analysts.

MySpace Slipping In UK Traffic

JR — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:38:39 +0000

Facebook is reaching new heights in the UK — and that means MySpace is slipping.

New analysis out from Hitwise today shows Facebook taking 45 percent of all social network traffic in the UK in June. Both Bebo — now in second place, with 25 percent — and MySpace — in third, with just under 15 percent — have lost significant numbers over the past several months.

Perhaps more intriguing, though, is the deeper analysis ranking all sites considered Web 2.0 — not just social networks. Facebook is still a strong first in the UK there, but YouTube is the next most visited service. Bebo came in third, Wikipedia was fourth, and MySpace was down to fifth for the month of June.

On the whole, HitWise says one out of every five URLs accessed in the UK belonged to one of those five services.

No Surprise: Wikipedia’s Traffic Comes From Google

Duncan Riley — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:38:00 +0000

New figures released by Nielsen Online so that all but 10% of Wikipedia’s traffic comes from search engines and other sites, and that most of that traffic comes from Google.

Referrals from Google make up 61% of all visitors to Wikipedia from homes, and 66% from work places. Yahoo delivers 19% and 16% respectively.

Wikipedia’s reliance on search traffic has been long known, but with Google Knol on the way (eventually) this year, any decision to down grade Wikipedia’s place in Google’s search results in favor of Knol could easily wipe out over half of the sites traffic overnight.