Wikimedia IEG program will fund fourteen community-led projects
We are excited to announce the successful grantees from round two of the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2015 Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) program. Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) provide funding to individuals and small teams to take on projects with potential for online impact and that advance the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission and strategic priorities. These projects can take….
Artificial intelligence service “ORES” gives Wikipedians X-ray specs to see through bad edits
When anyone can edit any page of one of the biggest websites in the world, how can you evaluate all those changes? A Wikimedia Foundation research scientist and a team of volunteers has developed an artificial intelligence service to handle some of the highest-volume crowdsourcing issues on the internet.
Engaging women to narrow the gender gap: Andrea Kleiman
Since 2011, Kleiman has contributed tens of thousands of edits and arranged workshops for women in Argentina and Uruguay.
News on Wikipedia: Editors document Kansas City Royals’ World Series win
This week, the Kansas City Royals defeated the New York Mets to claim their first World Series in thirty years—and Wikipedia's editors were quick to react to the news.
Should I pay for a Wikipedia article?
At the end of August, volunteer editors on the English Wikipedia blocked 381 user accounts for so-called “black hat” editing—or more specifically, undisclosed paid advocacy. As the Wikimedia Foundation’s blog post defined it, undisclosed paid advocacy is “the practice of accepting or charging money to promote external interests on Wikipedia without revealing their affiliation, in violation of….
The first smile and photobomb ever photographed
Six months of work at the National Library of Wales is already showing great benefits.
Writing an open-access encyclopedia in a closed-access world
On Friday, Elsevier, one of the world’s largest academic publishers, announced its recent partnership with the Wikipedia Library—a program that helps editors access reliable sources to improve Wikipedia. The collaboration gave 45 ScienceDirect accounts to Wikipedia volunteers, to use the database’s scholarly literature for research when writing and editing the encyclopedia. The announcement led to….
Hundreds of “black hat” English Wikipedia accounts blocked following investigation
After weeks of investigation, volunteer editors on English Wikipedia announced today that they blocked 381 user accounts for undisclosed paid advocacy.
Despite headlines, frequent edits don’t cause inaccuracy
Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit. It didn’t surprise us to learn that articles considered to be controversial are frequently edited.
Wikipedia is better equipped to deal with systemic bias than traditional publishers
In 2010, the artists Ditte Ejlerskov and EvaMarie Lindahl contacted Taschen, a book publisher, to point out that out of 97 volumes published in the Basic Art series, only five included women: Tamara de Lempicka, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jeanne-Claude (who shares a volume and a Wikipedia article with her collaborator and husband Christo). Taschen asked the pair about which….