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In February, The Guardian reported that editors at Wikipedia had voted to ban the Daily Mail as a source for the website after deeming it generally unreliable.

The Daily Mail, a UK-based daily print and online publication with a daily newsprint circulation of 1.5 million and 238 million unique visitors a month, responded with a series of angry articles, ambushed one editor at his mother's home, and released a statement saying it banned its own reporters from using Wikipedia as a source in 2014.

Except, Wikipedia never truly banned the Daily Mail. Many citations pointing back to the Daily Mail are still live, and new ones have appeared on Wikipedia since the kerfuffle. So what's going on?

H.G. Wells predicted the need for something like Wikipedia back in 1937, saying that without a world encyclopaedia to hold men's minds together in something like a common interpretation of reality, there is no hope whatever of anything but an accidental and transitory alleviation of any of our world troubles.

Wikipedia editor Andrew Davidson shared that quote at the beginning of a talk in London earlier this month in which he explained how Wikipedia editors clean up the site. The site's editors, who are volunteers, have always struggled over the essence of facts. Famous battles breaking out over the origin of hummus, when to use Gdansk versus Danzig, and how to spell the word yoghurt. This process is decentralized, democratic, and well-documented; these arguments play out on the "talk" pages for individual entries as well as forum threads dedicated to editor discussion, where they are saved forever.

There are no rules on Wikipedia, just guidelines. Of Wikipedia's five pillars, the fifth is that there are no firm rules. There is no formal hierarchy either, though the most dedicated volunteers can apply to become administrators with extra powers after being approved by existing admins. But even they don't say what goes on the site. If there's a dispute or a debate, editors post a "request for comment," asking whoever is interested to have their say. The various points are tallied up by an editor and co-signed by four more after a month, but it's not a vote as in a democracy. Instead, the aim is to reach consensus of opinion, and if that's not possible, to weigh the arguments and pick the side that's most compelling. There was no vote to ban the Daily Mail because Wikipedia editors don't vote.

The Daily Mail is known, especially online, for sensationalist content, sloppy reporting, borderline plagiarism, and the occasional fabrication. The paper made up an entire story with quotes and colorful description reporting the wrong verdict in the Amanda Knox trial. However, it has won kudos for original reporting and was named newspaper of the year at the latest Press Awards. Wikipedia editors frequently argued about its validity as a source in the discussion section for individual entries. In this case, an editor submitted a broader request for comment about its general reliability. Seventy-seven editors participated in the discussion and two thirds supported prohibiting the Daily Mail as a source, with one editor and four co-signing editors (more than usual) chosen among administrators declaring that a consensus, though further discussion continued on a separate noticeboard, alongside complaints that the debate should have been better advertised.

Though it's discouraged, the Daily Mail can be (and still is) cited. An editor I met at a recent London Wikimeet said he'd used the Daily Mail as a source in the last week, as it was the only source available for the subject he was writing about. The site has a link filtering tool that automatically bans spamming sites, text with excessive obscenities, and persistent vandalism (trends such as leaving "your mom" on pages), but it has not been activated for the Daily Mail.

The change is less of a ban and more of a general rule not to use Daily Mail references when better ones exist, said John Lubbock, communications coordinator for Wikimedia UK, the charity that helps fund and organise the encyclopedia, but doesn't direct its efforts.

Lubbock noted that the move means editors will replace Daily Mail links with better sources, but with some 10,000 in use, that work may never be fully completed. If there's no more reliable source, editors have to make a judgement call: if only the Daily Mail is saying something, can we trust it? If not, delete the fact. If so, keep the link.

That practice isn't new on the site, and it isn't limited to the Daily Mail. Buzzfeed is generally considered not reliable by Wikipedia editors discussing the issue on the Reliable Sources noticeboard, though such discussion isn't binding and won't be seen by many editors. While its listicles may be of little use to an encyclopedia, it has an investigations team and was shortlisted for a Pulitzer this year.

Meanwhile, less-reputable sources including Russia Today and Breitbart aren't listed as unreliable. However, editors on the site and those I spoke to pointed out that editors shouldn't need reminding that those aren't trustworthy sources.

Debate aside, the Daily Mail itself noted that the "vote" saw 53 editors decide for the millions who use Wikipedia, but the encyclopedia isn't a democracy. The Request for Comments pages where such debates happen are rooms for remote debate that anyone can take part in. And there, consensus isn't about tallying votes, but weighing the merit of arguments.

That means a minority could win a dispute by making a better case, though in the case of the Daily Mail, a majority of editors involved in the conversation did back the ban. It's a small slice of the the 135,000 people who edit the site each month, though one editor pointed out that the vote was watched by more than 2,000 users, more than a usual debate would see.

Editors often do reach consensus. They have to in order to disable open contributions for controversial pages, for example. They recently introduced tighter guidelines for entries on living people to avoid fake death reports and libel. They've also agreed to use systematic reviews rather than individual studies as citations on medical pages.

Enforcement is a different matter. These decisions are typically enforced by editors who revert changes that don't meet the agreed-upon standards. This means the back-and-forth continues on Wikipedia's pages. The Daily Mail decision supported using an automated edit filter, but with it not in place and no apparent plans to do so, there's no reason a person new to the site would even know about the ban. And even if an automatic edit filter was used, it wouldn't outright ban the Daily Mail as a source. Though that is technically possible, it would simply show a warning message but then let the editor still click to save the link to the Daily Mail. Remember, there are no firm rules.

In the end, there was no vote, there is no ban, and plenty of other newspapers have had similar treatment, with a Wikipedia guide to potentially unreliable sources listing the Sun, Daily Mirror, TMZ, and Forbes.com. Listing the Daily Mail as an unreliable source is merely a trump card for editors to batter each other with during their constant debates about sources. If you want to link to the Daily Mail, be prepared to defend why. If you can't, the link will be replaced.

As foolish as some Wikipedia battles may seem, eventually consensus is reached, reality is decided upon, and we can feel like we're on solid ground. The site's volunteer editors are bickering their way to a common interpretation of reality, something we desperately lack here in 2017, with newsroom cuts gutting fact-checking, the rise of fake news, and a president who constantly contradicts himself. We don't have the certainties we used to that leaves people unsure what's reliable and who to believe, one editor told me. People in politics play off that, to confuse people, to paralyze them.

Knowledge is power

The Whitehouse.gov reset broke Wikipedia links en masse

Heres what editors are doing about it.

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Wikipedia's method for sorting out good and bad sources is a mess - The Outline

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Mrinalini Mukherjee at MS University, Baroda1969. PIc/source: Jyoti Bhatt. Courtesy: The Baroda Archives project, Asia Art Archive

The late Mrinalini Mukherjee, who fashioned the most sensuous sculptures out of hemp, is a name that Indian art history cannot afford to miss out. Mukherjee, who passed away in 2015, was notable for her iconic figures at once robust and curvaceous inspired by goddesses, vegetation and archetypal forms. Her works are part of collections at Tate and New Delhi's National Gallery of Modern Art. It should come as a surprise, then, that Mukherjee got a Wikipedia page only about a fortnight ago.

A full list of her exhibitions and biographical details are just a click away now, thanks to a daylong event in Chandigarh called the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon. The event, organised by a non-profit called Heritage Lab, hits Mumbai on April 29 at Lower Parel's Piramal Museum of Art, where artists like Damyanti Chowla, Sunayni Devi, Nilima Sheikh and Madhvi Parekh are set to get Wikipedia entries. The Edit-a-Thon is an attempt to make the free online encyclopaedia a space where women artists from India can find equal representation as their male counterparts. "It is easy to find an artist like Amrita Sher-Gil on Wikipedia. She had an edge over others as she was declared a National Treasure artist. But, what about the remaining female artists?" says Medhavi Gandhi, who founded Heritage Lab in 2015.

Medhavi Gandhi

The feminine touch Gandhi, an MBA graduate who has been working towards improving the visibility of the arts and museums, has partnered with the Art+Feminism Movement (art.plusfeminism.org) to bring this Edit-a-Thon to India. The global movement, which started in 2014 in the US as "a conversation between four friends who wanted to create meaningful changes to the body of knowledge available about feminism and the arts on Wikipedia", partners with interested individuals and establishments the world-over.

Cultural theorist and curator Nancy Adajania says, "The Euro-American art worlds have become more vocal in recent times about the under-representation of women artists in art history. Museum exhibitions and publications on women artists are addressing this issue. In India, we have long had very prominent women artists, whose work has been well acknowledged. We need to ensure that global public platforms such as Wikipedia reflect this."

At a time when having a Wikipedia page seems to be the easiest, and the most obvious, Internet resource, what's stopping our artists from getting one of their own? "Editing a Wikipedia page is a gendered activity, with most of it being done by male users. There is a misconception that using a Wikipedia dashboard requires a knowledge of coding, but that's not the case at all. It is important that diverse sets of people add their research to these pages," says Gandhi, who was introduced to editing the online portal through members at Art+Feminism.

At the Edit-a-Thon in Chandigarhs Government Museum and Art Gallery, participants create a Wikipedia page for Sheela Gowda

Adajania says that the last decade has seen major publications on women artists such as Nalini Malani, Amrita Sher-Gil, Arpita Singh, Nilima Sheikh, Navjot Altaf and Sheba Chhachhi, among others. "Our publishing scene is definitely improving. However, in some cases, outsized and expensive publications can be a deterrent to those who are really interested in art," she says. Many of these publications, however, are housed at reputable museums across the country. The last two Edit-a-Thons that Heritage Lab organised at the National Museum, New Delhi, and Chandigarh's Government Museum and Art Gallery saw students, journalists and teachers use research material and publications housed in these museums' libraries. It is also, as she puts it, an important way for museums and their resources to connect with the virtual user.

"Several people asked us if this was an event meant for women only. It is for anyone who is interested," Gandhi adds. Did any art historian sign up? Not yet, says Gandhi.

What does the under-representation of women artists on Wikipedia say about the art milieu in India? Artist Sharmistha Ray, who draws on queer politics in her works, says, "If you look at the most significant pool of India's 10 galleries of established and emerging artists, the representation of women artists stands at about 36%. If you look at the international percentages of the gender split at major galleries, it's far less positive. So, overall, I would say India is in a better place. That's not to say it's a perfect balance yet."

As for Wikipedia, she adds, "It's not the measure of an artist by any standard. It's great if there's a bigger effort being made to represent women artists, but I would like to think that a Wikipedia entry is not the ultimate validation of an artist's legacy."

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Heritage Lab comes to Mumbai to help create space on Wikipedia for female artists - Mid-Day

Burger King's latest marketing stunt not only resulted in some less-than-flattering descriptions of its Whopper sandwich online but now Wikipedia is calling on the fast food chain to apologize.

On April 12, the chain unveiled a 15-second TV spot designed to trigger Google Home devices into reciting the definition of a Whopper, pulled from the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia.

Youre watching a 15-second Burger King ad, which is unfortunately not enough time to explain all the fresh ingredients in the Whopper sandwich, an actor playing a Burger King employee says directly into the camera. Any Google Home devices set to respond to voice commands were then set off when the actor said, OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?

BURGER KING'S GOOGLE HOME AD FAILS TO IMPRESS

At some point, public users changed the burger's definition and added "cyanide" as an ingredient in one version. Another user later changed the definition to say the Whopper is "the worst hamburger product" sold by the chain.

But now Burger King is being accused of tampering with the Whopper's page before the ad debuted.

In anopen letterposted Tuesday, several Wikipedia editors claim that it appears the burger giant was actually behind changes to the Whoppers official pagewhich is a clear violation of the sites rules since the edited version constitutes a hidden ad.

For years, the first sentence of the Whopper page read, The Whopper is the signature hamburger sold by the international fast-food restaurant chain Burger King and its Australian franchise Hungry Jacks. But a few days prior to the ads release, it was altered to include the burger's ingredients, reading, The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives or fillers, topped with sliced tomatoes, onions, lettuce, pickles, ketchup, and mayonnaise, served on a sesame-seed bun.

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The letter alleges that the new copy was inserted by two users (one namedFermachado123, which sounds strikingly similar tothe Whopper chain's senior vice-president of global-brand management Fernando Machado, and another user called Burger King Corporation.) The editors say the stunt broke several Wikipedia rules:"

No editor may insert advertising, marketing, or promotional material into any article. Our terms of use require all paid editors to prominently post the fact that they are paid, the person or company paying them, and any other relevant affiliations. Our conflict-of-interest guideline strongly discourages editors with a conflict-of-interest from directly editing an article, though they may propose suggestions on the talk page.

Now Wikipedia is demanding that Burger King apologize to our editors and readers as well as admit any wrongdoing and agree to comply with the sites rules going forward.

A representative for Burger King was not immediately available for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Wikipedia demands Burger King apologize after failed Google Home stunt - Fox News

Over at Quartz, reporter Nikhil Sonnad has splayed out the history of Wikipedias page on happiness, the emotion one feels when watching Deadwood or telling visibly irritated people even more about the video game Bloodborne. Despite the ease with which some of us can explain this concept, it turns out to be very difficult for philosophers and editors to pin down, and the eagerness of random Wikipedians to define happiness as things like eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs has not helped. Thus the relatively unsexy subject (compared to most-edited all-stars like George W. Bush and The Undertaker) has birthed a 6,000-edit monster of an entry that reveals Wikipedias workings in fascinating detail.

As Sonnad tells it, theres something heroic about the happiness pages arduous ascent toward meaning, as it has been harried constantly by teen vandals, lunatics, and trolls. The journey began in 2003 with a humble introduction reading Happiness is the state of being happy, which over the course of three years expanded to Happiness is a prolonged or lasting emotional or affective state that feels good or pleasing. Progress was slow:

By 2006, around the 700th revision, Wikipedians monitoring the happiness page were battling near-daily vandalism to preserve a definition only slightly more developed than [the original]. The only meaningful additions at this point are a list of feelings associated with happiness, and a list of feelings not associated with it.

In 2007, this edit happened:

The introduction subsequently traveled through phases of Buddhism, homophobia, and pretension until a single intrepid user cleaned it up:

Outright vandalism is easily reverted in a matter of minutes, but it takes months and an expert Wikipedian like DoctorW to remove one not-great line. This is part of what makes defining a subjective concept like happiness on Wikipedia more like a Socratic dialogue, and less like one person writing it alone. Many of Socrates debates end with total confusionnobody really knows what to think about virtue or piety or whatever is being discussed. That is, the result may not be authoritative, but it does incorporate the views of everyone involved.

As the piece details, the page received many further refinements and passionate defacements before arriving at its anodyne but impeccably Wikipedian 2017 form. Check the whole story out over at Quartz, especially if youre a fan of Wiki Wormhole.

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Read This: A history of happiness on Wikipedia - A.V. Club

Last week, Burger King unleashed an ad that angered the collective internet and one of the internets biggest names by designing a commercial that would intentionally trigger viewers Google Home devices, directing them to the Wikipedia page for the Whopper sandwich. Google responded swiftly by amending Home to no longer respond to the ads prompt: What is the Whopper burger? And now, it looks like Google wasnt the only one angered by the experiment.

Wikipedia has now posted an open letter to Burger King, accusing the brand of editing its Wiki page to include advertising, marketing, or promotional material, which is against the websites rules. The letter continues: Our terms of use require all paid editors to prominently post the fact that they are paid, the person or company paying them, and any other relevant affiliations, a possible reference to an update by a user called Fermachado123 (a name that closely mirrors that of Fernando Machado, BKs head of brand marketing).

Wikipedia also had some choice words for Eaters sister site the Verge, which in its reporting of the stunt, inserted incorrect information on the Burger King Wiki to see if Google Home would read the wrong information. (It did.) Wikipedia is asking for an apology to its editors and readers from all involved.

Wikipedia: Conflict of Interest/Noticeboard open letter [Wikipedia] Google Was Not Okay With That Burger King Ad [E] Burger Kings New Ad Forces Google to Recognize the Whopper [The Verge]

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Wikipedia Is the Next Internet Giant to Be Mad at Burger King - Eater