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In the media

The Signpost's investigative story recognized, Wikipedia turns 18 and gets a birthday gift from Google, and more editors are recognized

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By Bri and Kudpung

The Wall Street Journal credits The Signpost for breaking story on Acting United States Attorney General

The Wall Street Journal credited a report from The Signpost

From The Wall Street Journal on December 26: Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Incorrectly Claims Academic All-American Honors, "Questions about Mr. Whitaker’s claims to have been an Academic All-American were raised Monday on Wikipedia Signpost, an in-house publication for Wikipedia editors, by a user named Smallbones."

United States national media and international media covered the story as well. A sample of the publications who reported the story after WSJ includes The Hill, Newsweek and Newser in the States;[1][2][3] Daily Mail and The Week in the UK;[4][5] The Japan Times, the Malay Mail, and Reuters internationally.[6][7][8] Only Newser and WSJ attributed The Signpost. – B

The Most Famous Person To Die In 2018

Stephen Hawking, one of Huffpost's top 20 celebrities who passed away in 2018. Pictured here talking to Barack Obama.

The Most Famous Person To Die In 2018, According To Data Science: – or Wikipedia. In a well researched article – at least some interesting stats – on 28 December James O'Malley of the HuffingtonPost reveals that 'more celebrities died in 2018 than in any year since at least 2010' – based on data extracted from Wikipedia: "...we’re here to determine who was the most famous person to die in 2018 and whether more famous people died this year than in previous years. ..." Paying tribute to Wikipedia's coverage of dead celebs, supported by numerous charts and tables, the article makes not only interesting reading but demonstrates again how useful Wikipedia can be: "The first problem when building a model for this is defining the parameters: Who exactly counts as a celebrity? Sure, we could simply pick whoever we remember dying, but this is science — which is why we turned to every serious academic’s favorite tool: Wikipedia." – K

Shoddy journalism

Olivia Colman at Moet BIFA 2014

"Olivia Colman reveals battle with Wikipedia over her age: ‘We’d have to see a birth certificate’ ", reports Amy Hunt on 29 January in woman&home. Award-winning English actress and Hollywood star Olivia Colman faced hostility from Wikipedia editors who refused to publish her correct age, making her 52 years old instead of only 44 (now 45) and then demanding her birth certificate before they would correct it. After several attempts to communicate with Wikipedia without a reply, Colman who has won over 35 major awards, retorted to the demand with ", ‘whose f****** birth certificate have you looked at in the first place to make me eight years older?’” Several other publications, including the Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Independent, Evening Standard, Sky News and Harper's Bazaar, have published the story based on a podcast with David Tennant. It would be a good story if it were true, but Wikipedia editors have thoroughly debunked Colman's claim in a discussion at Talk:Olivia Colman. Colman's birthdate has been reported correctly since 2006 with the exception of a short-lived case of vandalism.– K, S

In brief

Jim Henderson (Jim.henderson)
Jess Wade (Jesswade88)
KING-TV showed this image and the article it illustrates
  • 9,000 photos for Wikipedia: 'Wikipedia Photog and Unsung Hero of Community News'. Jonathan Sperling writing in Queens Daily Eagle on 4 January tells how 70-year-old Wikipedia editor Jim.henderson has taken many of the photos that appear daily in the New York press. "It’s a situation any community news editor in New York City can relate to," says Sperling whose article on Jim Henderson is covered in a Washington Post opinion piece by Stephen Harrison on 14 January.
  • Happy 18th birthday, Wikipedia. Let’s celebrate the Internet’s good grown-up, says Stephen Harrison in The Washington Post on 14 January. "Wikipedia’s rise is driven by a crucial difference in values that separates it from its peers in the top 10 websites: On Wikipedia, truth trumps self-expression."
  • Gender gap:
    • In an article in The Guardian on 12 December last year, Victoria Leonard, a University of London postdoctoral researcher in the department of history, states "...Wikipedia has a gender bias that really bites: between 84-91% of editors are men" explaining that "By illuminating positive female role models through initiatives such as #WCCWiki and the WikiProject Women In Red, we can make online spaces fairer and more inclusive, where women are allowed to succeed, and can be seen doing so. We just need a woke Wikipedia."
    • Jess Wade, a post doctoral physicist at Imperial College London gets more extensive attention from the press. In an article by Nisha Gaind in the current issue of Nature, one of the world's top academic journals, Wade is one of 'Nature’s 10 people who mattered in 2018.'
    • More coverage on Wade's Wikipedia work is provided by Ewan McAndrew, Siobhan O’Connor, Sara Thomas and Alice White in the 8 January issue of the NewStatesmanAmerica in 'From Chinese spies to award-winning geologists, we’re making women visible on Wikipedia', while last year on 24 July The Guardian science correspondent Hannah Devlin reveals that Wade had created 270 Wikipedia articles on women: "I had a target for doing one a day, but sometimes I get too excited and do three.” This year on 2 January Dianne Apen-Sadler writing for Mailonline provides an account of Wade's increased activity to complement the encyclopedia with more biographies on people from minority groups: "Every day in 2018 I started the @Wikipedia biography of a woman, person of colour or LGBTQ+ scientist or engineer. I’m up to 450 pages so far #womeninSTEM x #HappyNewYear."
  • Talking to CBS News on 20 January Ser Amantio di Nicolao, with over 3 million edits Wikipedia's most prolific editor, reveals more about his daytime job than he states on his user page and says he has written 35,000 articles. Time magazine once named him one of the top 25 most influential people on the internet, alongside President Trump, J.K. Rowling and Kim Kardashian West.[9] "People like Steven are incredibly important to platforms like Wikipedia, simply because they are the ones that are the lifeblood," said Kui Kinyanjui, vice president of WikiMedia communications.
  • Millions from Google:Google's recent gift of $3.1 million to Wikipedia and the endowment brings its total contribution in the last 10 years to more than $7.5 million according to Matsakis, Louise (January 22, 2019). "Google Gives Wikimedia Millions—Plus Machine Learning Tools". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028.
  • Bertha is no longer boring:A Seattle transportation tunnel and a Wikipedia article on Bertha (tunnel boring machine), an editor and his daughter on KING-TV [5]
  1. ^ The Hill Acting AG incorrectly claimed 'Academic All-American' honors on resume: report
  2. ^ Newsweek ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL MATTHEW WHITAKER WRONGLY CLAIMED 'ACADEMIC ALL-AMERICAN' HONORS ON RÉSUMÉ: REPORT
  3. ^ Newser [1]
  4. ^ Daily Mail (UK) [2]
  5. ^ The Week Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker apparently lied on his resume
  6. ^ The Japan Times (Reuters) [3]
  7. ^ Malay Mail (Reuters) [4]
  8. ^ Reuters, U.S. acting AG falsely claimed scholar-athlete honor: report, 26 December
  9. ^ "Meet the 25 Most Influential People on the Internet". Time. 2017-06-26.



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@Smallbones: Your article and the aftermath, about how WSJ and Newser did credit The Signpost whereas others did not, prompts me to ask the same question for Wikipedia. I was also creating another Wikipedia page University of Farmington scam just now where I stumbled on the same question when I saw that Washington Post had said in their article that Detroit Post had broken the story first and I felt morally obliged to mention it in the article too. So the same question.. Should Wikipedia name the origin of investigative stories, even small ones? This got me thinking and prompted me to ask a question on idealab too just now. What do you think Smallbones? (This has nothing to do with supporting or opposing, merely trying to understand this situation personally and in a better way from someone who has experienced it firsthand) Regards. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 15:51, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's an interesting question. I think that the Village Pump discussion has it more or less correct: Wikipedia is not news so there is *usually* no need to call out in the text who first reported it. Even so, putting the first news report as the 1st footnote, is a good idea. There are times when I mention the first source in the text, but it is a 2-edged sword. If only 1 source is putting their reputation on the line and making a truly remarkable statement that will be notable in the long-term, then our readers need to know that it's only 1 source, and they deserve credit or blame when they are right or otherwise. Once everybody is reporting the same thing, there's usually no reason to put the 1st source in the text of an encyclopedia.
What I really want to say here - one mention of last month's story in the WSJ is certainly enough for me. Other media were right to cite the WSJ because the WSJ did not just take my word on things. Via email they asked me some very detailed questions, and then they checked it out for themselves. There were a couple of things that I "knew" but couldn't check out in enough detail to add here. They were able to confirm them. The WSJ obviously has very good resources for fact checking, and when they checked out the story, that's the only thrill that mattered to me. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:45, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Congratulations to Smallbones. That article looked as though it required a lot of skilled background work, not to mention checking and re-checking (since a lot was at stake). Tony (talk) 11:01, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • +1 Nice work, Smallbones! Since the WSJ article is paywalled, here is the quote crediting the Signpost coverage: "Questions about Mr. Whitaker's claims to have been an Academic All-American were raised Monday on Wikipedia Signpost, an in-house publication for Wikipedia editors, by a user named Smallbones." -Pete Forsyth (talk) 04:09, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost: doing it for free since 2005.
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