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Posted May 02, 2017 15:00:30

Media organisations are having to regain the trust of their audiences as "fake news" spreads and faith in established institutions erodes, according to Wikimedia Foundation executive director Katherine Maher.

The foundation manages the Wiki-branded websites, including online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which is among the most visited sites in the world.

Ms Maher said in the era of fake news and "alternative facts" it was critical for websites that spread information to "shore up" trust among their followers.

"With great respect for the press, for a very long time now there has been an assumption of trust," she told News Breakfast.

"What I'm really seeing from many outlets is a conversation that they're having with their readers around what do we need to do in order to regain your trust?

"That's not just about providing transparency into the newsroom or where information comes from, but really thinking about what is it that people are looking for and how can we provide things that actually matter and resonate in their lives in a way that offers value."

Since it was established in 2001, Wikipedia has grown enormously to include more than 40 million articles in more than 250 languages.

One of its defining features is that anyone can edit the articles and it is managed largely by a community of volunteers called Wikipedians who self-regulate entries.

This has led to criticism among academics, particularly that it's not a reliable source on its own, despite its popularity making traditional encyclopedias increasingly obsolete.

Ms Maher said each Wikipedia article relied on citations to secondary sources, including trusted media reports, and she encouraged a healthy level of scepticism among the website's readers.

"We don't think of ourselves as citizen journalists. We know that secondary sources can be wrong," she said.

"The types of sources we want to have in Wikipedia are publications and outlets that engage in fact checking and issue corrections when they get things wrong.

"Even when you have contested facts or contested information, Wikipedia tries to provide you some sort of consensus amidst all that complexity."

Despite Wikipedia's attempts to remain a neutral source of information, it is not immune to exerting a level of control and curation over what information it presents.

Earlier this year, the Wikipedians made the call to ban the Daily Mail as a source that could be cited in articles, arguing it had a "reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication".

Ms Maher acknowledged this was an unusual intervention by the Wikipedia community.

"I use the Daily Mail example with some trepidation because it is one of the only sources that I know that has been explicitly, as a source, currently blocked from being used in Wikipedia articles," she said.

"The way they [the Wikipedians] normally do things is they assess on an individual basis the reliability of a source."

Ms Maher has previously been critical of Facebook for the way it curates what people see, telling news website Value Walk: "When I'm looking at a Facebook feed I don't know why information is being presented to me. Is it because it's timely? Is it because it's relevant? Is it because it's trending, popular, important? All of that is stripped out of context."

She said Wikipedia did not seek to curate or control.

"It's not about maintaining a list of credible sources and a list of blocked sources, which I think is ... the more blunt-force approach we're seeing from social networks," she said.

"We do see different things when we log into social networks, but on Wikipedia you see one version of an article."

Topics: internet-culture, media, australia

Read the original here:
Wikipedia aims for 'consensus and trust' as fake news spreads, boss Katherine Maher says - ABC Online

A parody of the famous We Can Do It! poster. Aderivative work by Tom Morris via Wikimedia Commons.Public domain.

The Wikipedia article on Gender bias on Wikipedia states matter-of-factly that numerous studies and surveys have found that a dominant majority of Wikipedia editors are male, citing the figures of anywhere between 85-91.5%. Its a cause for concern for both the community at-large and the Wikimedia Foundation, the entity that manages the worlds largest free online encyclopedia, because this demographic disparity may contribute to a systematic bias found in its content.

The Wikimujeres (Wikiwomen) project has been working in Spanish and Catalan-speaking countries to help change those demographics. According to their website:

Somos un grupo de usuarias de Wikipedia preocupadas por la diversidad y la neutralidad de la Wikipedia y dispuestas a trabajar para disminuir (y en un futuro eliminar) la brecha de gnero y culturas que existe en la enciclopedia ms consultada en internet.

We are group of Wikipedia users concerned about the diversity and neutrality of Wikipedia and we are willing to work to reduce (and in the future eliminate) the gender and culture gap that exists on the most widely consulted encyclopedia on the internet.

Their goal is to involve more women as active editors who can also contribute more content related to women, such as biographies, as well as content created by women editors in the developing world. Holding weekly meetings in two locations in Madrid and Barcelona, outreach plays an important role in the form of trainings and edit-a-thons, which are organized, often in-person events designed to work collaboratively on creating new or improving Wikipedia articles.

Photo by Montserrat Boix via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Recent edit-a-thons focused on adding new articles about women photographers and women scientists were co-organized by Wikimujeres and wereheld at the Medialab-Prado in Madrid.

See original here:
Wikimujeres Wants More Women Editors to Fix Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance - Global Voices Online

Hillary Clinton today gave her first full interview since dramatically losing the US presidential election and has placed the blame for her downfall on Russian hackers, FBI director James Comey and Wikileaks.

"If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president," Clinton told CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour at a women's event in New York.

That was a reference to a letter sent from FBI director James Comey to Congress on October 28, 2016 which stated the federal investigator was looking into newly discovered messages that were linked to the private email server run by Clinton while Secretary of State.

The letter reopened a constant line of attack on Clinton less than two months after it had effectively been put to bed, with an FBI report saying it had found no wrongdoing and no hacking of her server.

The "new" emails, found on the phone of dick-texting former politician Anthony Weiner who was husband to Clinton aide Huma Abedin, turned out to be nothing at all, as the FBI officially noted two weeks later just two days before the election. But by then the damage was done. It is understood Comey was required by law to disclose the probe to Congress.

Clinton also flagged the release of emails taken from the account of her campaign director John Podesta by Russian hackers and supplied to Julian Assange's vanity project Wikileaks as key to her defeat.

"I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey's letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off," she argued, noting the "unprecedented interference" by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Just for good measure, she also blamed the media and woman-hating for her failure to take the top job. Asked by Amanpour whether misogyny had played a role in the first female presidential candidate losing, Clinton replied: "Yes, I do think it played a role."

And then, somewhat bizarrely given the effort put into highlighting external forces as destroying her bid, she said that she took "absolute personal responsibility" for losing to Donald Trump.

While there is little doubt that the hacks, Comey's completely unnecessary letter, and misogyny played a role in Clinton's defeat, the fact that the former first lady and senator was unwilling or unable to see the flaws in the performance of both herself and her staff is, ironically, one of the main reasons she lost.

A new book out last month, Shattered, dug into Clinton's campaign and reached some pretty damning conclusions about her team's election efforts many of which were flagged but ignored during the long journey to the polls.

Although Clinton lost some states by very narrow margins (and easily won the popular vote) which supports the idea of Russia/Comey tipping the balance her team also took some states like Wisconsin and Michigan for granted and paid the price.

While those high up in the Clinton campaign kept playing to their core supporters, and even started talking up the possibility of turning Texas (Texas!) blue, those on the ground were complaining that she was failing to connect with working-class white voters, as well as undecided and young voters.

The book Shattered places a big part of the blame on the over-confidence of her campaign manager Robby Mook on a data analytics program he used that provided predictions of polls. Mook placed the program's insights above those of his local organizers and even her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and directed resources accordingly and wrongly.

There is no way the program could have accounted for Donald Trump's wildly unorthodox and populist campaign. And it almost certainly was not capable of understanding the dueling personalities of a TV celebrity willing to say anything and a firm establishment figure that many voters had disliked for over a decade.

In addition, it seems that Clinton never learned the lessons from her failure to beat Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate at the previous election, and continued to surround herself with long-term supporters thanks to her habit of valuing loyalty over competence.

Even the sudden, unexpected success of Bernie Sanders as a potential Democratic candidate failed to wake up the Clinton campaign to the realities of what was happening.

In large part that's because Hillary Clinton has lived within a bubble of the super-rich and powerful for nearly 20 years. When you are paid over $200,000 just to give a speech, you have no meaningful connection to 99.9 per cent of voters.

Even now, having lost in the most spectacular fashion to probably the least-qualified US presidential candidate in history, Clinton is unable to see her and her team's own failings.

No doubt, she hopes that the ongoing investigations into the numerous and deeply troubling links between Vladimir Putin's intelligence services and senior members of the Trump campaign will exonerate her failed bid for the presidency.

But the truth is, dodgy email security aside, Clinton didn't win because not quite enough of America liked her or wanted her to be their commander in chief.

Excerpt from:
'It's Russian hackers, FBI and Wikipedia wot won it' Clinton on her devastating election loss - The Register

Wikipedia has been banned in Turkey.

The Turkish government has blocked Wikipedia as part of its latest attack on dissent.

Turkey's Information and Communication Technologies Authority said Saturday that a court had ordered a "protection measure" against Wikipedia, CBS News reported. The country uses such measures to cut off access to websites for "national security and public order."

Turkey had been making demands of the online encyclopedia, including that the site remove content critical of the government, which Wikipedia refused to do.

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, responded to the ban with a promise to try to end it.

"Access to information is a fundamental human right. Turkish people, I will always stand with you and fight for this right," he said in a tweet.

While the loss of Wikipedia is no small thing, Turkey's crackdown over the weekend also included firing thousands of civil servants and shutting down more civil groups and health clinics, the New York Times reported. Altogether, the Times reported, about 140,000 people have been "purged" and over 1,500 civil groups banned since last year's failed coup attempt.

The latest crackdown comes less than two weeks after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a referendum vote that expands his powers.

See original here:
Turkey cuts off Wikipedia amid dissent crackdown - CNET

ISTANBUL Turkey has blocked online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the telecommunications watchdog said on Saturday, citing a law allowing it to ban access to websites deemed obscene or a threat to national security.

The move is likely to further worry rights groups and Turkey's Western allies, who say Ankara has sharply curtailed freedom of speech and other basic rights in the crackdown that followed last year's failed coup.

"After technical analysis and legal consideration ... an administrative measure has been taken for this website (Wikipedia.Org)," the BTK telecommunications watchdog said in a statement on its website.

It cited a law that allows it to block access to individual web pages or entire websites for the protection of public order, national security or the well-being of the public.

Turkey's communications ministry said Wikipedia was attempting to run a "smear campaign" against Turkey, saying some articles purported that Ankara was coordinating with militant groups, state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

"Instead of coordinating against terrorism, it has become part of an information source which is running a smear campaign against Turkey in the international arena," Anadolu quoted the ministry as saying in a statement.

The ban would be lifted if Wikipedia met the government's demands, Anadolu said.

Under the law, the watchdog is required to submit its ban to a court within 24 hours. The court then has two days to decide whether the ban should be upheld.

'CENSOR CONTENT'

A block on all language editions of the Wikipedia website was detected at 8:00 a.m. (1.00 a.m. ET) on Saturday, monitoring group Turkey Blocks said on its website.

"The loss of availability is consistent with internet filters used to censor content in the country," it said.

When attempting to access the webpage using Turkish internet providers, users received a notice the site could not be reached and a "connection timed out" error.

Monitoring groups have accused Turkey of blocking access to social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook, particularly in the aftermath of militant attacks.

The government has in the past denied blocking access to some sites, blaming outages on spikes in usage after major events. But technical experts at watchdog groups say the blackouts on social media are intentional, aimed in part at stopping the spread of militant images and propaganda.

Since last year's failed coup, authorities have sacked or suspended more than 120,000 people from the civil service, police and judiciary and arrested more than 40,000 on suspicion of ties to terrorist groups.

President Tayyip Erdogan says the measures are needed given the scope of the security threat Turkey faces.

Turkey last year jailed 81 journalists, making it the world's top jailor of journalists, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence and Ros Russell)

LONDONSocial media were heavily criticized by a committee of British lawmakers on Monday for failing to do enough to remove illegal and extremist material posted on their sites, and for not preventing it appearing in the first place.

JEDDAH Saudi Arabia wants German companies Siemens and SAP to play an important role in furthering the kingdom's "digital transformation", company officials said on Sunday during German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to the country.

The rest is here:
Turkey blocks access to Wikipedia - Reuters