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MONTREAL More than 1,000 people are expected to attend the annual conference of Wikimania, which is being held in Montreal this year, from Aug. 9 to 11.

One of those taking part will be Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who took part in a question-and-answer session with The Canadian Press ahead of the event. Here are excerpts from the exchange:

CP: Why was Montreal selected this year?

JW: We hold Wikimania every year. It's our flagship event where we bring together volunteers from all around the world. We have a process whereby we have bids from various local communities as to why we should have Wikimania in the city. Montreal was chosen because they had the strongest bid and that was very good. Obviously, there's a lot of excitement around the first time we've had Wikimania in a francophone region.

CP: Given the phenomenon of fake news and the fact Wikipedia's content comes from members, administrators and contributors, how do you ensure quality control?

JW: Fake news has been primarily a problem of Facebook in that people see something that looks like a real news site and it's something alarming or it's exciting to them and they share it with their friends, and they share it and share it and share it and it passes from person to person to person amongst people who aren't particularly sophisticated consumers of news. Whereas the Wikipedia community is incredibly sophisticated, very media savvy...We've had very little impact of that kind of fake news.

CP: More and more people and public figures are being harassed online and are seeing their reputations attacked. What is Wikipedia doing to withdraw such pages?

JW: This is something that we're really very focused on. One of the things that I've always prided myself on is that Wikipedia is a community about knowledge, it's about a positive experience, it's about charity work. People give of their time. We take a very hard line on trolling and harassment...Like every website that's open to the public, you always have a few people who come on who are problematic."

CP: Wikipedia saw the light of day in 2001. Back then, not everyone was convinced of the reliability of the information being provided. How has the public's perception changed over the years?

JW: A very strong core value of Wikipedia is to be of quality. We've always said we wanted to be like a traditional encyclopedia quality or better. And obviously in the early days we weren't that...Over the years, people added more and more information and better sources. And of course, we learned a lot as a community. We've written huge policy guidelines and gotten a lot of experience about what kind of thing is useful to the reader, what kind of thing is a good source versus a weak source. So we've just matured over the years. Obviously, we're always careful to point out that Wikipedia is far from perfect. There are still mistakes in Wikipedia and that's something we're very diligent about. We don't want to get complacent.

More:
Question-and-answer session with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales - Times Colonist

The Hindu

Wikipedia writers setting up own library - The Hindu The Hindu The focus of Karavali Wikimedians is to write for Tulu, Kannada, and Konkani Wikipedia. and more »

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Wikipedia writers setting up own library - The Hindu - The Hindu

The Hindu

Degree students now study mobile banking, writing for Wikipedia ... The Hindu Mangalore University revises syllabi of Kannada language paper from this year. and more »

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Degree students now study mobile banking, writing for Wikipedia ... - The Hindu

The Village Reporter and the Hometown Huddle

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Free dating advice - Freeware online games wikipedia - The Village Reporter and the Hometown Huddle

Wikipedia representatives have gotten in touch with Pakistan Todayto clarify their role in Maryam Nawaz Sharifs JIT calibri debacle.

The representatives from Wikipedia talked to Pakistan Today about the strangeness of the situation, their quick actions to preserve the authenticity of the website and the allegations and harassment that some of their counter-vandalism team had to face, including concerning statements made by PTI spokesperson Fawad Chaudry.

One of the many elements that arose from the entire controversy surrounding thecalibri issuewas thevandalism of the Calibri fonts Wikipedia page.

In the immediate aftermath of the Calibri controversy breaking out, the Wikipedia page of the font was thoroughly vandalised by what initially seemed like a PML-N supporters and in retaliation the PTI supporters who, in this particular case, would be sticklers for the truth. It is of course not a bad idea, ignoring the liesand misrepresentations, to change the dates on a Wikipedia page in such a situation. It is only logical damage control after all. As could be seen by the fact that 150,000 people visited the Calibri wikipedia page after the controversy erupted when the usual traffic it gets in a day is 500.

The vandalism was controlled however thanks to Wikipedias quick acting volunteer based help desk which picked up on the increased page interest and edits, and worked towards rectifying it to its original position a number of times.

One of Wikipedias counter-vandalism teams members is Russia based Pakistani Saqib Qayum. Speaking to Pakistan Today,Saqib revealed that the editing had been tasking work and he had as a reward been harassed by PTI spokesperson Fawad Chaudry and had gotten a number of abusive emails from a number of unknown, presumably pro-PTI persons.

Because of my names visibility in the edit history, many people suspected that I am affiliatedwith PML-N and was removing the real release dates. On the contrary Iwas just reverting unverified information for which I have no conflict of interest.

PTI spokesperson FawadChaudry for example, called out Saqib as one of those responsible for the edits, hinting at him possibly being a paid crony. FawadChaudry had said in a tweet, User Saqib changed dates on Calbiri font Article on wikipedia interestingly same guy edited page of Maryam Nawaz. Saqib on the other hand cried foul, saying his name was prominent because he was repeatedly rectifying the attempts to alter the pages facts. He also said he had been targeted by other people as well that thought he was trying to alter the page to favour the PML-N narrative.

And since my email address is also public, I have receiveda few abusing emails by unknown people which hasprompted me to write the blog post as a clarification, he told Pakistan Today.

Saqib also went on to mention the strange nature of the occurrence and that although such things were the norm, he had not in his experienceseen anything like it.

There have been many occasionswhere I have seen unconstructiveediting and vandalism occurredon topics related to Pakistan that have had a high level of media or public interest, but my guess is nothing of this sort ever happened. The worst I have seen is people used Wikipediato character assassinate someone or to promote someone in undue manner.But this one is more sensitivedue to its connection with Font gate scandalwhich as noted by the Guardianthreateningthe government.

See more here:
Wikipedia counter-vandalism team member faces harassment from PTI activists - Pakistan Today