Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-06-28/In the media

In the media

YOUR ARTICLE'S DESCRIPTIVE TITLE HERE

By Smallbones, Bri, Chris troutman

Optional: Give a short WP:LEAD-like introduction statement here.

Are Wikipedians silencing perspectives outside the community accepted point of view?

How Wikipedia Became a Battleground for Racial Justice, in Slate by Stephen Harrison examines the inner workings of knowledge production in English Wikipedia, using his usual combination of the analysis of talk page debates, policies, the evolution of articles, and editor interviews.

He describes the production process as "part collaboration and part combat", and focuses on deletion debates as an expression of practices and policies that discourage positive change. The deletion nominations of the new group WikiProject Black Lives Matter and the article Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman are closely examined, including the intervention of individual administrators who may have misapplied policy to prevent changes in controversial areas. He writes:

[Wikipedia's] rules-based view of neutrality may not be as neutral as it seems. "Wikipedia contributors have begun operationalizing a definition of neutrality in order to silence perspectives outside the community accepted point-of-view," [social scientist Jackie] Koerner said in an email. Take the case of Black Birders Week, a series of online events to celebrate black naturalists and birders. This initiative was conceived in response to last month’s racially charged incident in Central Park. In connection with Black Birders Week, Wikipedia editors created new articles about black bird-watching leaders like Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, the Ghanaian-born American activist who co-founded the movement. After Opoku-Agyeman's Wikipedia page went up, so-called deletionist editors moved to have it removed. The deletionist editors argued that even though Opoku-Agyeman had been written up in places like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, she was only given passing mention by those sources and therefore was not sufficiently “notable” to merit her own Wikipedia page. At the end of the day, more editors voted to keep the article for Opoku-Agyeman, whose page remains online. But the incident itself shows how the notion of neutrality can be weaponized by some factions to keep certain knowledge off of the encyclopedia.

The Signpost notes that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman was plagued by sockpuppets - starting with the nominator. Discounting the socks, the outcome of the deletion debate was 32 keep versus 4 delete !votes. One editor preferred redirection.–B

Ryan Merkley talks to the Lawfare Podcast for fifty-one minutes

• The Lawfare Podcast: Ryan Merkley on Why Wikipedia Works Lawfare (blog)

This podcast episode is the third part of three discussing the influence of disinformation in what they describe as an often-unreliable internet. Myopically insisting that they "are a disinformation podcast" they suggest that Wikipedia is vulnerable to disinformation. Introduced as the Chief of Staff to the WMF Office of the Executive Director, Ryan Merkley handles himself well; explaining that volunteers, not WMF employees, control content on Wikipedia and that a combination of pending changes, bots, and human editors prevent untruths from spreading on Wikipedia. Merkely adroitly points out that the nature of the semantic wiki, the openness of talk pages and history tabs insulate Wikipedia.

He states that Wikipedia's appearance of reliability is "trust that community has earned" but points out that Wikipedia looks good in part because so much other media looks bad, saying "attacks on traditional journalism that have reduced trust in media, behaviors of media not in line with some of the traditional values of what media should do, like fact-checking" have eroded once reliable sources, causing second-order effects here because we need reliable sources, causing third-order effects because outlets like Google use Wikipedia in information they republish. Merkely admits that against a state-sanctioned disinformation campaign, Wikipedia, like any other social media outlet, would be helpless. The interviewer asks, with concern to the "homogeneity in the community of editors", how the WMF's upcoming universal code of conduct will tamp down harassment. He agrees that some in the audience may have heard that Wikipedia is unfriendly to women and persons of color asserting that "parts of our communities have been hostile" but that he's "really proud" of the Board of Trustees' work on the Code of Conduct and that the code is meant to create a baseline of enforcement upon which communities can improve. –CT

Lead story 3

Facebook tests Wikipedia-powered information panels, similar to Google, in its search results in TechCrunch

• earlier story Facebook Adds Wikipedia Knowledge Boxes in Search Results in Social Media Today.

In brief

• Join the Science Gallery in exploring the ‘erased voices’ of Wikipedia in Silicon Republic invites us to a June 11 "Wikithon" that was all about diversity. Moderated by Shubhangi Karmakar, the first disabled QTIPOC (queer, transgender and intersex people of colour) youth advisor at Science Gallery Dublin, the program hoped to document "notable yet overlooked BIPOC" (black, indigenous and people of colour) "in STEM and media."
• 15 Wikipedia Pages About Historical Queer Actors, Writers, And Figures You'll Want To Read Right Now in BuzzFeed started by asking readers for their own lists. The final list included Marlene Dietrich, Josephine Baker, Colette, Tallulah Bankhead, Bayard Rustin, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and nine others.
• Bayard Rustin was a key figure in the civil rights and gay rights movements published by AV Club's Wiki Wormhole series. Bayard, despite being openly gay, was a major figure in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. He pioneered the Freedom Riders protests starting in the 1940s. He mentored Martin Luther King, Jr. on the fine points of non-violent protests. He was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, technically under the supervision of A. Phillip Randolph, where MLK gave his famous I Have a Dream speech. Starting in the early 1980s, he campaigned for gay rights.
• Wikipedia founder: 'This contact tracing app situation in the UK is the height of incompetence' in The Telegraph reports how Jimmy Wales has told the UK government that they have wasted millions of pounds writing a COVID-19 contact tracing app that would have invaded the privacy of the people it was supposed to have protected. The app could be written using off-the-shelf software to maintain privacy. Jimmy said that he'd do the job within two weeks "at zero cost to the taxpayers" if the government agreed.
• ‘A woman’: Wikipedia page records trials and achievements of invisible women in France 24 shows how French headline writers discriminate against women. For the original French Wikipedia article, translated into English, see this month's Humour article.
• Autonomous Zone in Seattle and on Wikipedia: Referring to CHAZ, Fast Company wrote Seattle's 'Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone' already has a Wikipedia page, but it might not last on June 10. Articles in the mainstream press and a presidential tweet effectively derailed the deletion debate. As of June 27, the zone appears to be in the process of closing down, but several hundred protestors remain according to The Wall Street Journal (paywalled).
• Saskatchewan doctor keeps COVID-19 Wikipedia info accurate with encyclopedic dedication from the CBC. Doc James is from Saskatchewan and practices medicine in British Columbia.
• "Salacious and false rumors from unreliable sources": that is a lawyer for Zion Williamson talking about Wikipedia, according to the News & Observer.

Odd bits

• CBC radio has a weekly program on Saturdays, which started June 15 about an on-air Newfoundland-Labrador editathon, supported by Memorial University, a Wikipage and dashboard.
• The Mattoon (Illinois) Journal-Gazette Times-Courier gives the The 24 most unusual town names in Illinois. They documented 15 of the names with Wikipedia articles:Goofy Ridge, Normal, Birds, Oblong, Beardstown, Muddy, Sandwich, Ransom, Cairo (pronounced care-o, not kay-ro), Wyoming, Golf, Mechanicsburg, Benld, Bone Gap, and Mineral. Nine were not documented by Wikipedia articles: Standard, Boody, Hometown, Time, Royal, Equality, Industry, Joy, and Lost Nation. Somehow the newspaper missed Chicken Bristle which is just 30 miles north of Mattoon via Tuscola.

Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next month's edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page.

This page is a draft for the next issue of the Signpost. Below is some helpful code that will help you write and format a Signpost draft. If it's blank, you can fill out a template by copy-pasting this in and pressing 'publish changes': {{subst:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Story-preload}}

Images and Galleries

Sidebar images To put an image in your article, use the following template (link): [[File:|center|300px|alt=TKTK]] O frabjous day. {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler image-v2 |image = |size = 300px |alt = TKTK |caption = |fullwidth = no }} This will create the file on the right. Keep the 300px in most cases. If writing a 'full width' article, change |fullwidth=no to |fullwidth=yes. Inline images Placing {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Inline image |image = |size = 300px |align = center |alt = Placeholder alt text |caption = CAPTION }} (link) will instead create an inline image like below [[File:|300px|center|alt=Placeholder alt text]] CAPTION Galleries To create a gallery, use the following <gallery mode = packed | heights = 200px> |Caption for second image </gallery> to create

Quotes

Framed quotes “ Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet... ” — AUTHOR, SOURCE To insert a framed quote like the one on the right, use this template (link): {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler quote-v2 |1 = |author = |source = |fullwidth = }} If writing a 'full width' article, change |fullwidth=no to |fullwidth=yes. Pull quotes To insert a pull quote like “ Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet... ” use this template (link): {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Quote |1 = |source = }} Long quotes To insert a long inline quote like The goose is on the loose! The geese are on the lease! — User:Oscar Wilde — Quotations Notes from the Underpoop use this template (link): {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/block quote | text = | by = | source = | ts = | oldid = }}

Side frames

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. A caption Side frames help put content in sidebar vignettes. For instance, this one (link): {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler frame-v2 |1 = Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. |caption = A caption |fullwidth = no }} gives the frame on the right. This is useful when you want to insert non-standard images, quotes, graphs, and the like. Example − Graph/Charts Further information: Category:Graph, chart and plot templates A caption For example, to insert the {{Graph:Chart}} generated by {{Graph:Chart |width=250|height=100|type=line |x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y=10,12,6,14,2,10,7,9 }} in a frame, simple put the graph code in |1= {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler frame-v2 |1= {{Graph:Chart |width=250|height=100|type=line |x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y=10,12,6,14,2,10,7,9 }} |caption=A caption |fullwidth=no }} to get the framed Graph:Chart on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change |fullwidth=no to |fullwidth=yes.

Two-column vs full width styles

If you keep the 'normal' preloaded draft and work from there, you will be using the two-column style. This is perfectly fine in most cases and you don't need to do anything. However, every time you have a |fullwidth=no and change it to |fullwidth=yes (or vice-versa), the article will take that style from that point onwards (|fullwidth=yes → full width, |fullwidth=no → two-column). By default, omitting |fullwidth= is the same as putting |fullwidth=no and the article will have two columns after that. Again, this is perfectly fine in most cases, and you don't need to do anything. However, you can also fine-tune which style is used at which point in an article. To switch from two-column → full width style midway in an article, insert {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-block-end-v2}} {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-block-start-v2|fullwidth=yes}} where you want the switch to happen. To switch from full width → two-column style midway in an article, insert {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-block-end-v2}} {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-block-start-v2|fullwidth=no}} where you want the switch to happen.

Article series

To add a series of 'related articles' your article, use the following code Related articles Visual Editor Five, ten, and fifteen years ago 1 January 2023 VisualEditor, endowment, science, and news in brief 5 August 2015 HTTPS-only rollout completed, proposal to enable VisualEditor for new accounts 17 June 2015 VisualEditor and MediaWiki updates 29 April 2015 Security issue fixed; VisualEditor changes 4 February 2015 More articles Draft namespace, VisualEditor meetings 25 December 2013 Sockpuppet investigations, VisualEditor, Wikidata's birthday, and more 6 November 2013 Last call for Wiki Loves Monuments; Community–WMF tension over VisualEditor 25 September 2013 Making Wikipedia more accessible 4 September 2013 Gallery improvements launch on Wikipedia 28 August 2013 The VisualEditor Beta and the path to change 31 July 2013 Defining consensus; VisualEditor default state; expert and layperson terms in article titles 31 July 2013 VisualEditor in midst of game-changing deployment series 3 July 2013 VisualEditor will "change world history" 12 June 2013 VisualEditor, elections, bots, and more 12 June 2013 The Visual Editor: Where are we now, and where are we headed? 25 March 2013 Visual Editor "on schedule" for July rollout 18 March 2013 Looking ahead to 2013 7 January 2013 The new Visual Editor gets a bit more visual 10 December 2012 Second Visual Editor prototype launches 25 June 2012 Visual editor demo launched, hailed as "most important change to our user experience ... ever"; but elsewhere over-hasty deployments criticised 19 December 2011 Full steam ahead on Visual Editor, the avoidance of lock-breaking and 1.18b1 release 7 November 2011 {{Signpost series |type = sidebar-v2 |tag = VisualEditor |seriestitle = Visual Editor |fullwidth = no }} or {{Signpost series |type = sidebar-v2 |tag = VisualEditor |seriestitle = Visual Editor |fullwidth = yes }} will create the sidebar on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change |fullwidth=no to |fullwidth=yes. A partial list of valid |tag= parameters can be found at here and will decide the list of articles presented. |seriestitle= is the title that will appear below 'Related articles' in the box. Alternatively, you can use {{Signpost series |type = inline |tag = VisualEditor |tag_name = visual editor |tag_pretext = the }} at the end of an article to create For more Signpost coverage on the visual editor see our visual editor series. If you think a topic would make a good series, but you don't see a tag for it, or that all the articles in a series seem 'old', ask for help at the WT:NEWSROOM. Many more tags exist, but they haven't been documented yet.

Links and such

This department (In the media): Next issue · Next next issue · Search for previous Arbitration report: Arbitration · Arbcom · Archives · Cases · Enforcements Discussion report: News and notes: In the media: Google News · TechMEME By the way, the template that you're reading right now is {{Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue}} (edit). A list of the preload templates for Signpost articles can be found here.

← Previous "In the media"

In this issue

28 June 2020 (all comments)

News and notes

Community view

Gallery

In the media

Discussion report

Featured content

Arbitration report

Traffic report

News from the WMF

Recent research

Interview

Humour

Opinion

On the bright side

In focus

WikiProject report

+ Add a comment

Discuss this story

These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try .

• As a Mexican female deletionist, this sucks; if anyone starts calling the other a SJW, that's a huge red flag -Gouleg (Talk • Contribs) 14:04, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
  • @Gouleg: seeing "Social Justice Warrior" on Wikipedia does seem to be strange. What have people got against social justice? What else do people discuss about social policy other than their views of what social justice means? I guess sometimes their views of social justice come across as "I earned it and you can't get it - that's the law" or "we need to protect people just like me from being exploited" but ultimately that's just their sincerely held view of social justice. The "warrior" part used to bug me - I don't want to go to war with anybody. But expressing my views on social policy is not going to war. All in all, if somebody calls you a SJW, just take it as a compliment. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:46, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
    • I think more people just started using it as a way to dismiss or ridicule people with those kind of opinions, it's silly but sadly it does seem to work as a way for them to try and diminish that person's points. Still the acronym, excluding the "warrior" part perhaps, isn't something something dislikable IMO, which is why it makes it weirder so like Smallbones said, compliment it is I suppose. SnowingCrystals (talk) 07:35, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I agree with Gouleg: The term "SJW" is useful, because it tells me that the person using it is (probably) not worth the effort of engaging with (in much the same way as a conspiracy theorist is not worth engaging with). It's a form of name-calling and tantamount to a personal attack, regardless of your political leanings or what you think it "really means." We should all be capable of a higher level of discourse than that. --NYKevin 21:09, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
• As a part of public space debates Wikipedia really needs critical observers like that Slate article. It's not wrong at all to get the goings-on of Wp procedures mirrored. All the worse if the noticed factions partly consist of sockpuppets as [[User:Bri]|Bri] commented. -- And like NYKevin I agree with Gouleg: being named as SJW should be seen as tantamount to a personal attack and be socially sanctioned (especially if not evidently true). To prevent a polluted atmosphere inside Wikipedia we need to ban those microaggressions by toxic terms. -- Just N. (talk) 21:45, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  

The Signpost is written by editors like you — join in!

Home

About

Archives

Newsroom

Subscribe

Suggestions