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In the news

Citizendium on the rocks, Shankbone celebrated, and the week in vandalism

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By Skomorokh, Jorgenev and Tilman Bayer

Citizendium at 5: birthday candles or last rites?

A graph showing numbers of active editors of Citizendium through July 2011, compiled by RationalWiki. Like those of Wikipedia, the contributor data of Citizendium indicate a worrying trend.

On the occasion of Citizendium's fifth anniversary, Ars Technica interviewed its founder Larry Sanger (known for his role in starting Wikipedia until 2002) and editorial council member Hayford Pierce, presenting their "candid assessments of what went wrong, and what we can learn from the experience" and looking back at the "great debate about the merits of Wikipedia's radically democratic editing process" which had been prompted by Sanger's September 2006 announcement. "Citizendium turns five, but the Wikipedia fork is dead in the water" was the grim headline given to the interview. Last month, shortly after the anniversary of Citizendium's first announcement, the Signpost interviewed the project's managing editor Daniel Mietchen: "Citizendium, half a decade later".

Vandalism noted

Vandalism to the article on Anna Dello Russo this weekend was picked up in several places. Part of why it received so much attention was undoubtedly its unusually humorous nature. "As much as I'm trying to be pissed at whomever did this, it's kind of...hilarious", wrote Ology.com. The defacement was also noted by New York magazine's fashion desk.

Meanwhile, progressive magazine Mother Jones spotted intensive edit warring at the article about Walid Phares, a foreign policy advisor for U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. The nexus of the dispute was attempted detailing of Phares relationship with the right-wing Lebanese Forces during that nation's civil war. Finally, the Herald Sun documented alternately juvenile and death-threatening defamatory edits to articles on Australian politicians Robert Doyle and Ted Baillieu.

Occupy Shankbone

Dog "protester" at "Occupy Wall Street" (named by David Shankbone as one of his favorites among his photos of the demonstrations)

American magazine Good interviewed editor David Shankbone this week, portraying him as "The Most Important Occupy Wall Street Photographer You've Never Heard of". In the interview, he discussed his photography ("In 2003 I was on a volcano in Ecuador with some locals who ended up stealing my digital camera and all of my clothes, and it wasn’t until 2006 that I had a camera again."), the role it has played on Wikipedia, as well as his opinion of Occupy Wall Street. Shankbone had previously been interviewed as a "Thought Leader" in March for the PBS MediaShift blog by former WMF staffer Sandra Ordonez with the acclamation that he was "arguably the most influential new media photojournalist in the world."

In brief

  • Archive opens floodgates of out-of-copyright journals: JSTOR, the pre-eminent online archiver of academic journals in the humanities and social sciences, has released that portion of its journal content first published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere, a haul comprising 500,000 articles from a broad swathe of disciplines, accounting for about 6% of its total archive. The non-profit service had been widely criticised earlier in the year for its perceived reticence to facilitate free access to such material (see Signpost coverage: "Open-access activists clash with proprietary journal establishment" )
  • Wikipedians in the stacks: The Daily Targum excerpts highlights from an address given by librarian and long-standing administrator David Goodman (User:DGG) and fellow editor Ann Matsuuchi to Rutgers University librarians, covering familiar ground on the construction, culture and best use of the peer-generated encyclopaedia.
  • Amanda Knox coverage excoriated: In citizen journalism site GroundReport, Joseph Bishop slammed the Murder of Meredith Kercher article as "a rare failure at Wikipedia", accusing it of having been controlled by partisan "mostly European" administrators convinced of the guilt of the eventually-acquitted Amanda Knox, who had been among those charged with the murder. Bishop, who had led efforts to petition detailing the alleged failings of the article that attracted the sympathy of Jimmy Wales amongst others, hailed the recent thorough rewrite of the article by "Super Administrator" [sic] SlimVirgin, to whom he attributed more power on the site than anyone other than Mr. Wales himself.
  • Pyromania and graphomania compete for Halloween attention: New Zealand's Stuff magazine gave a roundup of Halloween-related Wikipedia lists and articles, while The Saginaw News noted the prominence of the Michigan city's arsonists in the article on Devil's Night, a tradition of seasonal mischief.
  • Female Wikipedians survey noted: The Melville House Publishing blog covered the recent informal survey of female-identified editors by Sarah Stierch. Concerns by those surveyed included a hostile and adversarial working climate, a culture of tolerance towards soft prejudice, and the widely observed phenomenon of stalking and harassment of female functionaries. See "News and notes" for more.
  • All Wikipedia, all the time: ARNnet reviewed as their "app of the day" All Of Wikipedia - Offline, an app for iPad, iPhone and iPad that provides users with offline access to an image-free version of the encyclopaedia. Costing US$8.99 and weighing in at 2.7mb for the app and up to 4gb for the database, it was judged by the reviewer to be a daunting download, and – for an otherwise free product – cheekily expensive, but ultimately a "good app for Wikipedia junkies", who may well welcome the increased access opportunity offered.
  • Foundation ramps up mobile ambitions: paidContent gave an overview of the Wikimedia Foundation's efforts in expanding mobile penetration on the occasion of the announcement of the imageless dedicated mobile platform Wikipedia Zero, noting the development as proof of the foundation's pledge to prioritise its mobile offerings and expansion in the Global South. A note of concern was voiced at the foundation's failure to sign any carriers onto its scheme to provide free access to Wikimedia content, but WMF senior manager of mobile partnerships Amit Kapoor was upbeat about attracting partners in India and China specifically. Media Nama meanwhile noted with interest Kapoor's ambitions for Wikipedia to be available even to those mobile users without a data plan. See "Technology report" for more.
  • Wikipedia.ee: Estonian Public Broadcasting trumpeted the Estonian Internet Foundation's ruling in favour of the Wikimedia Foundation against a speculator who had cybersquatted the Wikipedia.ee domain name with a duplicate copy of the Estonian Wikipedia.
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In regards to the section, "Foundation ramps up mobile ambitions," I would like to make a correction. WMF is not targeting operator partners in China at this time. Our focus is on India and developing countries in Asia excluding China. One of the factors we need to take into consideration is the degree of freedom readers and contributors have in accessing and editing the projects in the country in which they live. Also, I'm not sure what was conveyed from Amit's interview but there's not an issue with carriers not signing up yet. Amit has only expressed optimism since we just started this process and have already received lots of interest. Therefore, we expect good things to come. We'll update you on our progress. Kul (talk) 18:44, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Chinese censorship is a pain. I should know, I'm there now. However just about every teenager in Beijing has a VPN, and Wikipedia, other than one or two fifteen minute periods, hasn't actually been blocked since I've been here. I think that it's perhaps a bit irrational to exclude China from your development plans. Mind you, with Baidu in the picture, you might already be far too late to the party anyways. Still though, with 1.3 billion people and a rapidly increasing connectivity, it's an opportunity. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:03, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You know that Baidu plagiarizes Wikipedia articles right? OhanaUnitedTalk page 21:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Y'know, I wouldn't be the least surprised if the "Viva la Occupación" dog was Shankbone's own Chihuahua, Little Man... Circéus (talk) 19:50, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So what is the relation of David Shankbone to Wikipedia/Wikimedia? Beyond being an editor (User:David Shankbone)? With all due respect to David, I don't think Signpost should cover incidents when Wikipedians are interviewed or noted in media unless this is in their role as Wikipedians. I am not sure this was the case here; the interview mentions Wikipedia thrice, but at the very least, the Signpost article does not tell us we we (Wikipedians) should care about this interview. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 21:48, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The fact is that the media have made him as much of a WikiMedia public figure as Seigenthaler or Larry Sanger (which are mentioned in the signpost a lot more, whenever their public work/statements relate even distantly to Wp). Circéus (talk) 22:25, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Can you prove that? Who says that David is a WikiMedia public figure? Also, the red links suggest he is not notable, which is a contradiction: anybody who is a media figure is notable. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 23:37, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As a reader, I was not aware the Signpost had to bow to deletionism-minded ideas of notability. Circéus (talk) 23:44, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As a reader with precious little time, I expect Signpost not to waste my time with and today, a random Wikipedian was mentioned on a random website trivia. (Again, I am not taking any stabs at David, but I still don't see why the readers should care that he was interviewed; at the very least the article is badly written as it fails to tell us that). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:02, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad I didn't miss out on this since the Signpost covered it! An interview with a magazine on media, with somebody who's made major, impressive contributions (especially photos of and interviews with celebrities), discussing subjects relevant to giving away images in general, how Wikimedia projects get photos, etc., all introduced with a claim by the magazine that he's one of the most important documenters of the Occupy Wall Street protests. The Signpost mentions coverage of, say, GLAM collaborations by very non-notable editors, so why not this? —innotata 03:48, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Slow week. Being a New Yorker myself I'm interested in him regardless. ResMar 23:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Shankbone piece is of particular local interest for the first two paragraphs. The article's basically a great big ad for contributing to the commons as a hobby. Most of the point is that he's no-one special and he's giving good stuff away and having a whale of a time doing so, and that's something that is very much in our interests to foster - David Gerard (talk) 20:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Make sure we cover what matters to you – leave a suggestion.
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