Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-07-22/In the media
Novelists annotate Wikipedia; Wales promotes TPO; Working for free
Three novelists annotate their Wikipedia articles
The magazine New York reports that three novelists "have found a way to control the Wikipedia narrative" by using the annotation website Genius to annotate their own Wikipedia articles. They have supplied numerous thoughtful and introspective comments about their work, friends, and collaborators, which are sure to be mined for future Wikipedia edits. They have also made substantial comments about the effect their Wikipedia articles have had on them, an in-depth reflection that is rarely seen from the subject of an article—more common are angry complaints or passing comments in an interview. New York writes that these authors have used Genius "mostly as a way to play with the form but also as a way to correct, explain, and rewrite a story that someone else has written about them." (July 16)
Emily Gould
Emily Gould (Friendship) wrote about her article:
| “ | I’ve always really hated my Wikipedia page—it’s so far away from how I think of myself and my career. It’s made me think of Wikipedia differently as a research tool—I take it with a massive, whopping, deer-lick-sized grain of salt. A lot of my page isn’t exactly inaccurate, it’s just from a bizarre standpoint. This is never what a human would sit down and write—even a human who really hated me. Who is Emily Gould, what does she do? What is an Emily Gould? This is like the accrual of all of the moments when the internet has been paying attention to me minus the ones that actually mattered. | ” |
One of those moments is the subject of the greater part of the text in her Wikipedia article, a "Criticism" section devoted to a 2007 panel discussion on the CNN show Larry King Live, where Gould, who was co-editor of Gawker at the time, was confronted about a Gawker feature by Jimmy Kimmel. She wrote:
| “ | This section feels disproportionate to the rest of my page. I get four sentences for “Career” and then “Criticism” is two paragraphs that end with a sad note about how I had to get therapy? That isn’t cool ... I’ve never looked at Jimmy Kimmel’s Wikipedia page but I’m sure it has a better “Criticism” to “Career” ratio. | ” |
Gould reflected on the classification of her occupation as "writer, editor, blogger":
| “ | I guess I’ve got to cut Wikipedia some slack because what do I do really? What would I call that? I would like to be known as an author—that seems like a thing that I am. I wrote some books. Author means “wrote books.” | ” |
Gould also noted that her birth year (cited to a 2014 print publication) was incorrect and wrote of her dislike of her infobox photo, taken by a Wikimedian in 2009:
| “ | This photo is so bad. I know Wikipedia basically has to use some stock photo that some random person took of you because they can’t use anything that anyone wants to claim the rights to. They can’t use for example my author photo or any photo of me that has ever been in a magazine or a newspaper. They can’t use a photo that was taken by a photographer. That’s why everyone’s Wikipedia photo is so terrible.
I can’t remember exactly what I was doing in the photo—I think I was moderating some panel. 2009 was the year I took yoga teacher training and I was the chubbiest I have ever been in my life. It’s also a bad angle and I’m also wearing this weird leather vest that’s kind of popping at the seams. It’s just the worst photo and I hate it so much. |
” |
Sheila Heti
The article for Sheila Heti (How Should a Person Be?) describes her as "a Canadian writer and editor". Heti wrote, "I don’t feel particularly connected to Canadian literature" and "I don’t know why it says, 'and editor' at the top. I always find that kind of weird." Of her inclusion in the category Category:Canadian women novelists, Heti concurred with Amanda Filipacchi's prominent criticism of Wikipedia's gender categories (see previous Signpost coverage) and wrote, "I think it would be better not to have this category at all." She was, however, pleased with her inclusion in Category:Living people, quipping "This is the best category to be in."
Like Gould, Heti objected to her infobox photo, which was also taken by a Wikimedian, this one in 2013. Unlike Gould, Heti removed it "because it was the worst photo that had ever been taken of me. It was a camera photo from a bad angle, blurry, and I felt I looked disgusting. I considered replacing it but I felt too cautious and left it blank."
Heti reflected on Wikipedia's ability to magnify and propagate minor comments and incidents. Included in her article is a comment from a 2007 interview in which she said, "Increasingly I'm less interested in writing about fictional people." Heti wrote:
| “ | I don’t know who put that in there. For a while, every person who interviewed me referenced it. It’s such a tell: you instantly know that someone has done basically no research and has only read your Wikipedia page. It’s been practically ten years since I said this—interests change. It’s funny how one thing you say can become so big when one person thinks to put it on your Wikipedia page. People think it’s more important than everything else because it’s on Wikipedia. | ” |
Chris Kraus
Chris Kraus (I Love Dick) discussed the creation of her article in August 2006:
| “ | This was originally put up by my friend Ariana Reines. There was a time when everyone was getting Wiki pages, which I guess was around the time of Ariana’s The Cow—that’s the way we’re dating it—which was 2006. Suddenly you had to have a Wikipedia page—it was the go-to thing. So everybody had to have one and that’s why I asked Ariana to do it, as part of a trade. She did me a favor, and I did her a favor. What did I do in exchange? I really don’t remember. Maybe I blurbed her book? But that seems like a lot to ask in exchange for writing a whole wiki page! I hope I did more than that. | ” |
Her current opinion of the article, however, is negative:
| “ | I’ve never read my Wikipedia page. It’s horrible, too embarrassing. My understanding is that anybody can go in and change it at any point. I looked at it once and it was just so awry and inaccurate. I realized there was no point fixing it or paying attention to it because it was out of my control, so I wasn’t going to think about it. | ” |
Wales promotes The People's Operator US launch
The People's Operator is a UK-based mobile virtual network operator and social networking service which allows its customers to direct 10% of what they spend to charities of their choice. TPO is coming to the United States, and TPO chairman Jimmy Wales is the public face of their rollout. Wales told Vanity Fair that he saw parallels between his work for TPO and Wikipedia: "I’ve discovered in my work that if you can give people the tools they're looking for, that allow them to accomplish the goals that they have for themselves, they can do amazing things. Here, if you want to raise money for your local hospital, we can give you the tools to do that." In a wide-ranging interview with HuffPost Live, Wales touched on a number of topics besides TPO. (July 21)
When asked about the Sunshine Sachs controversy (see previous Signpost coverage), Wales encouraged PR companies to be "transparent" and said of undisclosed paid editing:
| “ | I think it's a really bad idea for them to do this, because they get caught and it embarrasses their clients. There's better ways to deal with Wikipedia. You know, we're very open, people can email us and say 'we've got this correction, we've got this information' and sometimes unethical PR people—and there are lots and lots of ethical PR people—but the unethical ones think 'I'll just make up a fake ID and pretend to be someone' and so one and it embarrasses their client and so on. It's like, you could have just sent us an email, you could have just gone to the talk page and said 'hey, there's a problem here, here's some sources', you know. The community is very passionate about getting it right. | ” |
Wales spoke about Wikipedia's involvement in the NSA lawsuit (see previous Signpost coverage) and his reaction to British Prime Minister David Cameron's call to ban encryption:
| “ | I think it's just technological incompetence. One of the most important things we can do is improve the security of the internet. ... and that means end-to-end encryption everywhere. That's what he should be campaigning for. And just the idea that you can ban encryption, or ban end-to-end encryption, is just nonsense. It's impossible, it's math. You can't ban math. | ” |
Wales reflected on changing perceptions of the quality of Wikipedia over the years:
| “ | The community's always been passionate about quality. But of course, when you first start writing, and when you've first got a small group of people ... it's going to be incomplete, it's going to be weak in various ways, but because we've maintained a passion for doing something amazing for the world, for really getting it right, then over the years it just continues to improve. So we've earned a little bit of respect, but we've still got a long way to go. | ” |
One of those ways is the gender gap:
| “ | The gender balance in the community is not good, and this leads to certain kinds of biases in the content. When your typical Wikipedian is a technical person, tech geek, 26 year old male, no kids, there's a certain profile of a typical Wikipedia user, which means they're very, very interested in some topics and they know very little and not very interested in some topics. So we want to have people from very diverse backgrounds who'll have an interest in all kinds of different subjects, because then they can build quality work in the areas that we're currently neglecting. | ” |
Working for free
In the wake of the volunteer moderator uprising on the social media website Reddit, Caitlin Dewey of the Washington Post examines how and why people work for free on websites on the social web. As she bluntly puts it "A century ago, you might’ve dubbed it robber-barony or sharecropping — if not, you know, outright slavery. In 2015, though, we call it the social Web: a glorious dystopia where everybody works for likes — as in, “for free” — while a handful of tech tycoons profit." Dewey notes that the free labor of Wikipedia's volunteers "plays a large role in the $51 million in donations that Wikipedia scored last year — and also in the staggering $16.5 billion in revenue that Google reported in 2014", especially due to the inclusion of Wikipedia data in Google's Knowledge Graph.
Dewey spoke with Justin Knapp (Koavf), the most prolific of those volunteers who is at the top of the List of Wikipedians by number of edits. Dewey writes "With nearly 1.5 million contributions, the 33-year-old Wikipedian is more active on the site than literally anyone else — including members of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation’s paid staff." Dewey contrasts the billions taken in by tech companies with Knapp's life in Indianapolis, where he works three jobs and drives a fifteen-year-old car. She identifies Knapp's motivation with the sociological term "affective currency", which describes intangible motivations and benefits that such people get out of their work. Knapp says "I understand that some people want to be paid to do what they love. But when you put a number on the thing you love, it can't be priceless. If you don't put a number on it, you assign the value and the meaning to it, yourself — you don't negotiate that with the market."
Efforts to compensate such volunteer labor are still in their infancy. One idea mentioned by Dewey was offered by Wikipedian Dorothy Howard (Vaughn88) last year in an essay where she raised "the question of compensating certain classes of 'super-editors' for major contributions." She suggested following the model of YouTube's Partner Program by compensating those editors through donations to Wikipedia. She wrote "This type of project would allow for more fair digital labor practices and would compensate viewers for their major contributions to the site's legitimacy as a reliable source." (July 22)
Congressman's bizarre tweet prompts Wikipedia vandalism
On July 17, a pro-immigration reform Twitter account posted a picture of Julian Castro, the Democratic Party United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, along with a statement he made on MSNBC regarding the possibility of Latino voters favoring the Republican Party: "The GOP can kiss the Latino vote goodbye." Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa, tweeted in response "What does Julian Castro know? Does he know that I'm as Hispanic and Latino as he?"
The meaning of King's tweet is unclear. King, who is of Irish, Welsh, and German ancestry, is not Latino, as many critics on Twitter immediately pointed out. NBC News notes that "King is not listed among Hispanic members of the House in a list kept by the House Press Gallery." However, Castro was born in San Antonio, Texas and is of Mexican descent. NBC News and Politico speculated that the tweet was in reference to reports that Castro is not fluent in Spanish. (Many Americans of Latino descent do not speak Spanish.) Both news outlets reported that King's office did not respond to their requests for clarification.
A number of political news outlets and blogs, including Mediaite, Salon, and Raw Story, noted that King's Wikipedia article was quickly updated to reflect King's declaration. "Hispanic" was added to his Irish, Welsh, and German ancestry, cited to the tweet. His name was translated into Spanish from "Steven Arnold 'Steve' King" to "Esteban Arnoldo 'Steba' Rey". A comment was added claiming King admitted to being "the child or grandchild of illegal immigrants." All of these changes were quickly reverted. Unlike most cases of vandalism driven by off-site events, the vandalism quickly subsided and article protection was not required. Two days later, however, King's infobox picture was replaced with that of professional wrestler Rey Mysterio.
King has a history of offensive and racially-charged remarks about Latinos and immigrants. Most notoriously, in 2013 he said of the children of illegal immigrants: "For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert."
In brief
- Bollywood flops: The International Business Times notes the appearance of some Bollywood films, including Aag, Machhli Jal Ki Rani Hai, and Humshakals, in the article List of films considered the worst. (July 23)
- In other political vandalism: The Washington Post reported that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's Wikipedia article was "essentially deleted" twice, the second time being replaced with the statement ""Lets [sic] be fair, nobody cares about him." The article had been semi-protected since July 10, but the vandalism was performed by autoconfirmed accounts. The editors were warned and the vandalism was quickly reverted. (July 22)
- Konkani Wikipedia launched: The Times of India reports on the launch of the Konkani Wikipedia, nine years in the making. See this week's News and Notes for more details. (July 19)
- India makes the Top 25: The Times of India reports on the presence of the articles Vyapam scam and Baahubali on the Top 25 Report of most viewed Wikipedia articles. (July 19)
- Wikipedians in Residence: Inside Higher Ed and Times Higher Education both discuss the new Wikipedian in Residence at the West Virginia University and the WiR program in general. (July 17, 20)
- Offline reading: Gizmodo explains how to save Wikipedia articles for offline access using the official apps for Android and iOS. (July 17)
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Discuss this story
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Emily Gould
OMG I just love her comments and can sooooo sympathize! Of course I have spoken with many subjects of Wikipedia articles who have asked me to brush up theirs and out of curiosity I always take a look, but more often than not I feel just as helpless as she does in many cases, despite all of my experience as an editor. When it comes to BLP's I just feel lost. I often leave the keyboard with an unsatisfied feeling of "this is the best I can do, and it's still really lousy". I wish there was a genius website where I could post similar views but from the "experienced Wikipedia editor" side of things. Of course she is quite correct about the criticism-career ratio, and I often create articles on the fly because I watched something on TV (though not "Larry King Live"). My moment of caring about those on-the-fly articles is disproportionate to the articles I created from one of my lists of my main hobby, which is 17th-century art, so I will pretty much ignore those on my watchlist (unless I have personally interacted with the subject, in which case I feel a mild sense of responsibility, but not much more than that). I despair again and again behind my computer screen when I see that my photograph taken with a nervous hand of some notable person or place or artwork is really just not up to snuff. I will go ahead and upload it anyway under the motto "a terrible photo is better than none" but I am always plotting ways to get a better one. Thanks for posting these perspectives, because it shows how dismally unsatisfactory our current set of tools for editors really is. If I had wrote the Emily Gould page and read that feedback just now, of course I would respond. The problem is that I never receive any feedback except from bots or other Wikipedians. As for Sheila Heti's comments about nationality and amplification of minor quotes, I can only concur that those are both very valid arguments that everyone suffers from on Wikipedia, both alive and dead. All I can say is that she's right, but it's thanks to our deeply nationalistic system that many articles get created and watched. It's the artists who (Heaven forbid!) travel to foreign countries or start speaking and writing in foreign languages that are doomed to oblivion entirely. Jane (talk) 07:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Working for free
I am delighted to see this topic covered so well, in such a large mainstream publication.
The Knowledge Graph panel is part of Google's strategy to keep users on Google's own, ad-rich pages, and to increase ad clicks. It is a factor in the vast increase in revenue Google has been able to achieve: Google announced $17.7bn in revenue for the 2nd quarter of this year, averaging close to $200 million a day. (Bing follows the same strategy with its Satori panel.)
Now, if – for the sake of argument – 1/365th of Google's ad revenue were due to its being able to show Wikimedia content that keeps users on Google pages a little longer, and trains them to look at the right hand side of the page where the ads are, then Google might each year want to pay one day's revenue towards the Wikimedia community. Just out of the kindness of their hearts, right? As a thank you.
To date there have been about 2.5 billion edits to Wikimedia sites, of which probably around 2 billion to the various Wikipedias.
https://tools.wmflabs.org/wmcounter/
So, for a very, very rough calculation – if, once a year, Google donated one day's revenue to the Wikimedia community, how much would that be per edit? About 10 cents. I have made about 55,000 edits to Wikipedias, so that would translate to about $5,500 for me, annually. Yay!!
But hang on ... maybe I've totally overestimated the advertising value of the Knowledge Graph panel, or the contribution of Wikipedia, Commons and Wikidata to its content. Let's assume I have overestimated it by a factor of ten. That would still mean that I should get about $5,500, once every ten years. As luck would have it, I will have been on Wikipedia for that long in the not too distant future. Yay!!!!
Again, this is what Wikipedians would get if Google set aside the advertising revenue of *one day per decade* to say thank you to Wikipedians. We haven't even mentioned Facebook and Bing (which has a nifty timeline in its Satori panel, copying Wikipedia sentences that mention years). Andreas JN466 13:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Steve King
The original article was very skewed and lacked a world view. King is american. No other country would recognize his historey He is not German or Irish or any other European citizen. It's clear from the sources that the issue being discussed is politicians that have national roots but not language. Two fluent spanish speakers were highlighted. The sources make it clear that the language connection is significant. King may have descendants from Spain or Germany but neither country nor any citizens would consider him German or spanish. He's American and that is obviouse to 1st generation, Spanish speaking immigrants. That point was made in the reliable sources when they cited two, non-hispaniv but fluent speakers. --DHeyward (talk) 08:03, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
speculationdiscussion that a particular BLP was transgender. It's time to WP:DROPTHESTICK. Gamaliel (talk) 20:16, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]Quoting Jimbo
Is this accurate? Shouldn't it be "so on"?
"'I'll just make up a fake ID and pretend to be someone' and so one ..."— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:41, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]