Wikipedia Gets Critical Reception from UK Press at Wikimania 2014 113
metasonix (650947) writes On Sunday the 2014 Wikimania conference in London closed. Wikimania is the major annual event for Wikipedia editors, insiders and WMF employees to meet face-to-face, give presentations and submit papers. Usually they are full of "Wiki-Love" and good feelings; but this year, as the Wikipediocracy blog summarized, Wikipedia and its "god-king" Jimmy Wales came under considerable fire from the UK media — a very unusual occurrence. And much of it was direct criticism of Wales himself, including a very hostile interview by BBC journalist James O'Brien, who had been repeatedly defamed in his Wikipedia biography by persons unknown.
Meanwhile the general public in London... (Score:5, Informative)
A yahoo news article claims the general public in England trusts Wikipedia [yahoo.com] more than traditional news outlets.
And "defamed" or called out on something questionable? Genuinely asking, I never heard of this British journalist until today...
Re:Quit whaling on Jimmy (Score:5, Informative)
The guy who wrote the linked article (Andreas Kolbe) is legit. He contributes quite a bit to Wikipedia and I believe is interested in making it better. He's also critical of many aspects of it, but not trollishly so.
Much of the rest of Wikipediocracy is indeed filled with unsavory characters who're angry they weren't allowed to push various agendas on Wikipedia, though. What seems to have kicked it off initially, among other things, was one of its co-founders getting banned because he tried to expand his linkfarm business [wikipedia.org] into Wikipedia.
Read the article, it's nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
The linked article is just tabloid journalism.
I wrote a comment about how the media experts were focussing on the wrong problems and how they clearly -surprisingly- knew very little about Wikipedia and its problems - BUT then I read the source article and found it's just an attack piece, cherry picking the least interesting parts of the conference and painting every controversy as being the fault of an iron-fist dictat from the Wikimedia Foundation.
What I learned: wikipediocracy is a nonsense website.
Re:Copyright dispute with Wikipedia (Score:4, Informative)
A series of self-portraits taken by Indonesian monkeys has sparked a copyright dispute between Wikipedia and a British wildlife photographer, says Wikipedia is using his copyrighted images without permission. Photographer David Slater complained that Wikipedia rejected his requests for the images to be removed from the website. Although the monkeys pressed the button, Slater set up the self-portraits by framing them and setting the camera on a tripod. The Wikimedia Foundation claims that no one owns the copyright to the images, because under U.S. law, 'copyright cannot vest in non-human authors', the monkeys in this case.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/wor... [sfgate.com]
Let's see here:
1) "A series of self-portraits" -- I seem to recall a set of pictures initially, some of which could be considered self-portraits, many of which were of the general area the camera was pointed at with some monkey bits partially in the picture. This was not a selfie-shoot; some of the pictures just happened to be a) of the monkey and b) in focus.
2) Slater set up the self-portraits. False. Slater set up the camera, and was completely surprised by the monkey who came in while he wasn't paying attention and started taking random pictures. I read his original article before this whole thing blew up. Back then he was just excited to share this with the rest of the world. It's true that he curated the photos (got rid of the ones that weren't worth publishing), but there was no artistic intent in his leaving his camera unattended.
3) Non-human authors. This same public domain situation exists if you set up your camera with a motion sensor and capture your cat doing funny things. Unless you had intent (difficult to prove, and you have to PROVE it under copyright law), such images are in the public domain.
So yeah; the thing about a site like Wikipedia, is that everyone who wants free publicity but doesn't get the concept of making information FREELY available will try to coopt it for their own use -- and someone has to be the gatekeeper.
Personally, I think for 90% of the articles, Wales does a decent job as the final gatekeeper, and Wikipedia ends up as a more useful resource than Encyclopedia Brittanica. For that other 10%... 8% of it is stuff that should indicate almost immediately that you should go somewhere else for the real story. The final 2% is an issue, but is still a better hit/miss ratio than you'd get from pretty much any other third-party source.