We have been reporting to you about the media black out of the Kermit Gosnell murder trial. But this takes it to a new level. Wikipedia is considering deleting the article citing, among other things, that it is nothing more than a “local” news story.
Here’s the article and a screenshot:
But as it turns out …
The story has resolved itself already. Only one person voted to delete. Everyone else was “Keep” or “Strong Keep.”
After careful consideration and some research, I have come to the conclusion that this article is a hoax—a clever and elaborate hoax, but a hoax nonetheless. An online search for “Bicholim conflict” or for many of the article’s purported sources produces only results that can be traced back to the article itself. Take, for example, one of the article’s major sources: Thompson, Mark, Mistrust between states, Oxford University Press, London 1996. No record at WorldCat. No mention at the OUP site. No used listings at Alibris or ABE. I can find no evidence anywhere that this book exists. Not being able to find any trace of an OUP book published within, say, the past 40 years? Ridiculous. If this book exists, then the original author of this WP article owns the only copy. I was similarly unsuccessful in tracking down Srinivasan Vasantakulan’s Bharatiya Struggles (1000 AD – 1700 AD) (shown with an ISBN for a Swedish children’s book) or David D’Souza’s Roots of conflict in Portuguese Goa (also with an erroneous and unlikely ISBN). In addition, consider the comment by another editor on the article’s talk page concerning the problems with the dates in the article. If I’m wrong about this, I’ll look like a right idiot, but there are too many troubling things about this article to ignore.
The Daily Dot’s Kevin Morris has a great breakdown of the Bicholim Conflict’s downfall.
Remember how that design firm recently did a spec redesign of Wikipedia to show what they think could be done with the product? Strangely enough, an actual Wikipedia designer was making a redesign pitch of his own around the same time. Compare and contrast. (via Hacker News)
This creative agency thinks it can redesign Wikipedia to be more usable, and it’s on to something (via Creative Agency Launches “Wiikipedia Redefined”)
But really, does Wikipedia need to be redesigned? It’s not the prettiest site on the internet, but unlike Craigslist, it’s easy to use in its current form. It feels like a great promotion for the creative agency, however. Thoughts?
You sir make a horrible title.. It should be AWESOME SPECTACULAR PLUGIN RAGES THROUGH FACEBOOK!Dru Mundorff, the creator of LilyJade, a shady Facebook app • Defending his idea in the comments of Russell Brandom’s BuzzFeed article talking about how shady it is. The cross-platform browser plugin, which tricks users into installing it, replaces all the ads on other sites with his. Classy. He’s made a quarter-million bucks off the thing in just two weeks, has already drawn a comment from Wikipedia, a cease-and-desist from Facebook, is for sale on hacker forums, and and as Brandom points out, what he’s doing is gray-area but legal, since users are installing it themselves. Great. Be careful what you click, guys. This is a new generation of malware. And it works on nearly everything.
Bob Stein, who worked at Encyclopedia Britannica as well as Atari during its glory days, worked with Alan Kay, along with Disney animator Glenn Keane, on a series of illustrations back in 1982 showing off his idea for an “Intelligent Encyclopedia,” one which can tell you about earthquakes, stocks, and history, all within the palm of your hand. Laptops didn’t look like this for nearly a decade, and the ideas behind the encyclopedia eventually showed up on Wikipedia two decades later. But, really, what Atari was working on was essentially an iPad with a keyboard. “The most interesting thing for me today about these images is that although we foresaw that people would be accessing information wirelessly (notice the little antenna on the device in the “tide pool” image),” Stein notes, “we completely missed the most important aspect of the network — that it was going to connect people to other people.” Stein’s ideas aren’t a total loss — the guy did essentially invent the multimedia CD-ROM and co-founded The Criterion Collection — but just think if he actually implemented this idea.
It’s the culmination of a very, very long trend. In a way, it’s a sad moment, but it’s the way technology moves on. Even if we think Britannica is what we want, we really want Britannica on an iPad or a phone, accessible to us all the time, not in dusty books on the shelf – no matter how beautiful those might be.Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales • Discussing the recently-announced plan by Encyclopaedia Britannica to end the publication of its print edition. Wales made the statement in Nigeria, where he’s currently at in an effort to push the user-edited encyclopedia’s growth, particularly an edition in the Yoruba language. But unlike the U.S., where internet access is common, most people use the internet on phones in Nigeria, growth is difficult to encourage. The Yoruba language edition, for example, is mostly getting built up by a single dominant user. It’ll be interesting to see what Wikipedia represents as it continues to grow worldwide.
» Well, that sure worked: During the “great blackout” yesterday, one of the only things you actually could do with Wikipedia was get the information about your local congressperson, so to lodge a complaint against the SOPA and PIPA legislations that were the order of the day. This stripping down to such a basic, singular function proved to have just the effect Wikipedia had hoped for, as evidenced by the figure above; this surge in popular outcry clearly rattled quite a few on Capitol Hill, as numerous former supporters have changed their tunes.
Our inaugural Wikipedia, at 12:01 am, on the occasion of the site’s return.
Don’t judge. We never saw that show.
And a million schoolkids breathed a sigh of relief. (BTW, in case you missed anything from Wednesday’s Great Blackout, here’s how our day went.)
The tech industry says it wants to stop such crimes, but it also calls any tangible effort to do so censorship that would “break the Internet.” Wikipedia has never blacked itself out before on any other political issue, nor have websites like Mozilla or the social news aggregator Reddit. How’s that for irony: Companies supposedly devoted to the free flow of information are gagging themselves, and the only practical effect will be to enable fraudsters. They’ve taken no comparable action against, say, Chinese repression.
Now, let’s take a step back here. Let’s go back to the prior post we put up. Are we gonna have to throw out some motha@*&!in Clay Shirky on ya? The problem is not the law as written. It’s the burden of proof. Basically, you’re going to put any mom-and-pop startup in a position where they have to monitor every single transaction that goes through their site to ensure it doesn’t link to an illegal foreign site. And to twist the issue to make them look like hypocrites for not taking political stances on other things? Come on. This directly affects their bottom line. It weighs them down in bureaucracy. If Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had to work around barriers like this, they probably would’ve stuck with phone phreaking. The problem here is not the explicit solution; it’s the consequences and side effects.
The Wall Street Journal is a great newspaper saddled by an editorial page written by a bunch of people who haven’t been outside of their bubbles in the past 20 years, buoyed by a subscriber base unlike any other in newspapers, and influenced by one of the more obsessive minds in the business industry. And here’s this board, scolding a sector that bothered to defend itself against a lobbying prowess the best way they know how — through word-of-mouth. These sites that went down today should be lauded for not letting themselves get bullied. Yes, the people who wrote this article? They’re bullies, shouting off in the distance, far away from the crowds.
This is a travesty of an editorial; it damages the reputation of one of the greats.
Wrote a thing.
Hat tip to this headline writer.
Congrats Tumblr!
Don’t screw this up Yahoo.
In 2007, I was...
I started tumblr when I was at one of the lowest points of...
Exclusive: How the Syrian Electronic Army hacked the...
Game, set, and match. via @Encarta95
And friends, we have our first Great Blackout meme.
The Wikipedia blackout presents a horrifying picture of a world with no knowledge. So does the Fox News website, which is running normally.Andy Daglas (via kateoplis)
“Today is gonna be the the day/Wikipedia’s gonna close for you/By now you should’ve known how/Jimmy Wales was gonna screw you fools/I can’t believe that anybody acts the way you do/About research”
“‘F*@& me’, the words are in the tweets/Of the kids who all ignored the news/Not sure you’d heard of it before?/This blackout against SOPA’s rule/Didn’t you see the giant message plastered on the page/For ‘Mountain Dew’?”
“And all the time I have to work is fading/And all the tools I have to search are missing/There are many things that I/Would like to find tonight/But I don’t know how”
“And you say ‘maybe/I’m gonna play a game/or something/’cause after all/I’m a slacker, y’all’”
![newsweek:
Tweets from kids trying to use Wikipedia for their homework—and failing. SOPA!
[h/t gangster curator Katie Notopoulos]
We knew it was gonna happen. It’s totally satisfying, right?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxzcrtxnzC1qzs5cqo1_500.png)
Tweets from kids trying to use Wikipedia for their homework—and failing. SOPA!
We knew it was gonna happen. It’s totally satisfying, right?
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