Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2014-11-05
Predicting the flu; MH17 conspiracy theories
Using Wikipedia search data to predict the flu
Rachel Feltman, in The Washington Post (November 4), examined research in which a team, mostly from Los Alamos National Laboratory, headed by Kyle Hickman developed a model that enabled them "to successfully predict the 2013-2014 flu season in real time" by employing "an algorithm to link flu-related Wikipedia searches with CDC data from the same time." Apparently when individuals search for information about the flu and its symptoms in Wikipedia when they feel ill, this generates data useful in forecasting the flu season. Feltman also noted another study in April gathered similar results using data from Wikipedia.
Feltman wrote that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognizes that it does not track the spread of the flu very well. This may be because many flu sufferers choose to weather it out at home rather than seeking medical treatment. Another factor is the time lag in healthcare providers reports to the CDC. This gives the CDC an accurate picture of the extent of the flu, but only about two weeks after the fact. Recognizing that there are better means of tracking the disease through internet searches and social media, the CDC has instituted a competition to find better flu models.
The MIT Technology Review (November 3) also covered the article. It quotes Hickman and his colleagues as saying that "Wikipedia article access logs are shown to be highly correlated with historical influenza-like illness records and allow for accurate prediction of influenza-like illness data several weeks before it becomes available," but that "since our model does not account for reinfection or multiple strains of influenza, the tail of the epidemic is not predicted well after the peak of flu season has past."
An abstract and a PDF of the original article, "Forecasting the 2013--2014 Influenza Season using Wikipedia", can be found here.
Wikipedia features in Flight 17 conspiracy theory
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The International Business Times reports (October 26) on a new documentary from the Russian RT called MH17 - The Untold Story. The documentary claims that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which crashed in the Ukraine in July, was shot down by a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 and presents Wikipedia edits it deems as suspicious.
In the West, it is generally accepted that Flight 17 was shot down by a Buk missile system operated by pro-Russian separatists. The New Republic reports that conspiracy theories denying this abound in Russia and are promoted by the Russian government and media. The most prominent theory, and the one proposed by the RT documentary, is that the flight was shot down by a Ukranian Sukhoi Su-25, a close air support jet widely used in Eurasian air forces. The New Republic cites edits to Wikipedias in multiple languages in support of this theory, some of them originating from Russian government and media organizations.
The problem with this theory is that the service ceiling of the Su-25 is 7000m according to its manufacturer. Flight 17 was flying at over 10000m before the crash. Russian military officials have claimed that the Su-25 can reach and operate at the higher altitude, and a number of Russian edits to Wikipedia have altered the maximum altitude of the Su-25 accordingly.
In the documentary, Peter Haisenko, a former Lufthansa pilot, supports the theory that Flight 17 was shot down by an Su-25 and claims that Wikipedia was actually edited to reduce the maximum altitude of the jet.
| “ | If you look on Wikipedia at the Su-25 plane, the aircraft they say was in the vicinity of MH-17, you'll suddenly see the maximum altitude entered as 7000 meters. A few months earlier, the same description in English and German, listed this to be about 10000 meters. This was changed in the run-up to this crash. | ” |
In brief
- The Daily Targum reports (November 6) on a Wikipedia workshop at Rutgers University about improving articles related to feminism.
- Lifehacker identifies "The Best Wikipedia Features Still in Beta" (November 5): hovercards, the other projects sidebar, HHVM, New Search, and VisualEditor.
- In Matter, Stephen Lurie discusses the Wikimedia Stewards, whom he calls "The 36 People Who Run Wikipedia" (November 5).
- The Northwest Missourian opines "Wikipedia doesn't deserve the flak it gets from professors" (November 5).
- The Enfield Independent notes (November 4) the deletion of a section called "Involvement in Expenses Scandal" from the Wikipedia article for Enfield North MP Joan Ryan, which was not the first time the material has been removed from the article. The October 29 edit, which was immediately reverted, originated from an IP address assigned to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
- The Myanmar Times profiles (November 3) the Burmese Wikipedia and talks to its only currently active administrator. The Burmese Wikipedia currently has 32,314 Burmese language articles.
- In Time, Denver Nicks asks "Can Wikipedia Predict the Elections?" (November 3). He looks at article traffic statistics from http://stats.grok.se for candidates in the US 2014 midterm elections.
- ABS-CBN reports (November 3) on the vandalism of the Wikipedia article for Jejomar Binay, Vice President of the Philippines.
- Vocativ reports (November 3) on edit warring on the article of US Senator and election candidate Mark Udall.
- The Irish Independent talks (November 2) with Jimmy Wales.
- Lifehacker and other technology websites are reporting (October 30) on a new Google Chrome Extension called WikiTweaks. It simplifies the Wikipedia display by removing the sidebar and article warning banners, provides a mouseover preview like the Navigation Popups tool, and keeps a history of recently visited articles.
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Sweet dreams on Halloween
Summary: It is, perhaps, ironic that humanity chose the week of Halloween to finally put its fears to bed. Let's face it: 2014 has been a year of tragedies, conflicts, plagues and pain, and eventually something had to break. After 12 weeks, ISIS finally fell out of the top 25, while our more current obsession, Ebola, fell by 50%. Whether we at last came to terms with our limited ability to affect events, shoved those events under the carpet, or just decided to let go and move on, we turned our eye to more positive things, such as sports heroes, hotly anticipated movies, and lifelong learning; two Google doodles appeared in the top 25 for the first time since the beginning of August.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of October 26 to November 1, 2014, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Halloween 
1,780,144 
A personal note: Halloween is my favourite holiday. Not because I'm morbid (though I am), but because it's the one holiday you can't kitsch to death. It's not really surprising that it came top this week. After months of real-life horror, it was time to revel in some that couldn't hurt us. 2 Jonas Salk
1,433,164 
The world's reaction to Ebola has revealed just how distant we have become from devastating disease. In 1952, a polio outbreak in the US killed over three thousand people and permanently disabled another 21,000. That such numbers now seem horrifying is largely due to this man, who developed the vaccine that (for the developed world at least) relegated them to the back shelf of history. Thanks to a Google doodle to celebrate his 100th birthday, many more got to learn that history. Here's hoping it aids the UN's plan to finally send polio the way of smallpox. 3 Happy New Year (2014 film) 
816,053 
Views have nearly doubled this week for this 2014 Bollywood film starring Shahrukh Khan (pictured), which stormed the Indian box office on Diwali weekend and has now grossed an astonishing Rs 3.4 billion ($55 million) worldwide in just 13 days, making it already the 6th highest-grossing Bollywood film of all time. The comedic caper movie tells the story of a motley crew entering a world dance competition to get close to a valuable trove of diamonds. It is difficult to imagine a more Bollywood plot than that. 4 Madison Bumgarner 
753,386 
Speaking as someone from Britain, can I say that guy has the coolest name ever? Anyhoo, this pitcher for the San Francisco Giants sent the Kansas City Royals packing at the World Series final by allowing just two hits in five innings. 5 Ebola virus disease
750,990 
Numbers are down by 50 percent after four straight weeks at number one, which means we may finally be recovering from our collective panic attack. Not that that has had much of an effect on our leaders, as the only news from this outbreak this week (aside of course, from the increasing death toll) has been North Korea banning all foreign tourists and a nurse already cleared of the virus challenging an arbitrary three-week quarantine. Quite the reaction to a virus that has so far killed 10, yes 10, people outside of its three-nation epicentre. 6 Facebook
617,016 
A perennially popular article. 7 Ultron
558,101 
Ultron, a comic book villain in the Marvel Comics family, will be the subject of the 2015 film Avengers: Age of Ultron, and played by James Spader (pictured). A week-early leak of the film's trailer propelled the article into the Top 10 last week, and it has yet to leave. Marvel cheekily blamed Hydra, a fictional terrorist group in the Marvel universe, for the leak. One could question whether the leak was intentional and has already been added to the resume of some marketing guy at Marvel Studios. 8 The Walking Dead (TV series)
542,553 
The show's fifth season premièred on 12 October. 9 John Gotti 
520,506 
You wouldn't want to be the guy who ran over and killed a Mob boss's son, even accidentally. But someone did, and, he was never heard from or seen again, as Reddit found out this week. 10 1989 (Taylor Swift album)
518,044 
The country/pop singer Taylor Swift released her latest album on October 27, and also removed her singles from Spotify, taking a stand for her earnings. Weirdly though, she didn't remove her singles from YouTube, which charges even less than Spotify and allows pirated content to compete with her legitimate uploads.
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