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On Reddit, user Amiantedeluxe has gone through the Wikipedia pages for countries around the world to create a map showing the most used word on each country's Wikipedia entry.It's the kind of thing that can send you down a rabbit hole where you lose way too much time digging around.

Efforts were made to make the information relevant.The map excludes words like "the," "government," and "country" to find more substantive terms.It's worth noting Wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone. That means there's often marketing and other forces at play. Also, pages often go on tangents, ignoring arguably more important history. Thus, it's safe to say there's little scientific about the "study."

Nonetheless, this is an interesting look at events that shaped the world.

Many nations focus on leadership with terms like "king" and "dynasty" cropping up most frequently. Geography looms large with "island" coming up for loads of island nations. Throughout much of the world, terms highlight conflict. North Korea's most common word is "South" and South Korea's most common word is "North." Meanwhile, "World" is seen across Europe, no doubt due to the prevalence of World War I and World War II.

Take a look at the full map above and zoom in on details here.

h/t Indy 100

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Dustin Nelson is a News Writer with Thrillist. He holds a Guinness World Record but has never met the fingernail lady. Follow him @dlukenelson.

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This Map Shows the Most Used Word on Every Country's Wikipedia Page - Thrillist

Countering the fake news threat has become a real challenge for social media platforms, which also serve as avenues of news dissemination along with the traditional media outlets.

When Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) recently said it, along with a consortium, is investing $14 million into the creation of a News Integrity Initiative, it came as a no surprise and reflected the kind of menace fake news is turning out to be.

Wikipedia founder James Wales is also part of the initiative spearheaded by Facebook, with academicians and non-profit organizations also joining them.

Wales for his part has also opted to go solo, launching WikiTribune, which is being promoted with the tagline evidence-based journalism.

WikiTribune identifies itself as a news platform that brings journalists and a community of volunteers together. "We want to make sure that you read fact-based articles that have a real impact in both local and global events. And that stories can be easily verified and improved," it said.

In a bid to present unbiased news with real facts, WikiTribune looks to ensure journalists write articles based on only verifiable facts. And it would present the sources to readers so that a reader can make up his own mind without being presented with prejudiced information.

WikiTribune is planning to take the advertisers out of the equation, as it is supposed to be 100-percent ad-free. In the process, the parties involved do not have any vested interest in anything other than providing real news. The website doesn't have any paywall, thereby giving access to everyone.

In order to involve community members, who otherwise have their say in the form of comments in the bottom of the article, WikiTribune intends to have professional journalists and community members work side by side as equals, supported by readers and not advertisers. These readers can take the role of monthly supporters. To increase transparency, WikiTribune intends to publish financials regularly.

Joining Wales would be a luminary of advisors, including former Apple marketing wizard Guy Kawasaki, renowned journalist Jeff Jarvis, English actress Lily Cole and academician and political activist Larry Lessig.

WikiTribune intends to raise finances from supporters, who it said really care about good journalism. Apart from plans to raise enough money upfront to get started, it seeks regular commitments from supporters to help in delivering real news.

And it seeks to channelize the money raised to finance hiring journalists rather than splurging on expensive offices.

WikiTribune suggested that it would refund all its supporters, minus transaction fees, if it doesn't achieve its goal of hiring ten journalists.

As of now, the website claimed to have 10,214 supporters and hired six of the 10 journalists targeted.

Objective reporting has suffered so much in recent times that there has been a real thirst for real news. The results of a survey by Fox News showed that 84 percent voters surveyed said they are concerned fake news is hurting the country, with 61 percent saying they are very worried and 23 percent suggesting they are somewhat concerned.

Interestingly, the survey also revealed that majority of the surveyed voters could not differentiate real news and fake news. One of the pressing problems many now quote is the cognizance of trusted source of information.

Against this backdrop, when someone offers to take upon them the onus of delivering trusted news and information, it is a more than welcome development.

News would tend to be the mere recitation of facts, with attributions to support the facts, if it takes the route of being merely fact-focused. This is unlikely to help readers in a big way. According to an article in ABC News, a proper journalist should sift through the facts, weigh them up and make editorial judgments about their relative strength and importance, and then present them in a way that illuminates the truth of a matter.

"This process of making editorial judgments about facts is fundamental to great journalism," the article said.

Making editorial judgment brings in an element of bias, which defeats the very purpose of which the news site is being launched.

A case in point is news sites such as PolitiFact that operate under the premise of extra rigorous evidence-based reporting have been criticized for a myopic interpretation of information. Such an approach promotes the idea that there is no room for differing or contrary interpretations to a news item.

There are doubts whether the editorial policy on the site will succeed in being as transparent as it promises and really fix the problem of fake news or just create a technocratic alternative to corporate media. Additionally, the fact-focused mechanical reporting may not augur well for the letter and spirit of reporting per se.

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Image Credit: By Wikitribune - https://www.wikitribune.com/, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Posted-In: ABC NewsNews Futures Politics Markets Tech Media General Best of Benzinga

2017 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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The Good And Bad In WikiTribune, Wikipedia Founder's Open-Source News Site - Benzinga

Theres a Wikipedia edit war going on right now on the page of the law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. That wouldnt be notable except for the fact that someone is trying to scrub Donald Trumps name from the page and Joe Lieberman is a special counsel at the firm. Lieberman is a frontrunner to head the FBI and his relationship with the firm has been a point of concern.

As President Trump continues to weigh a replacement for former FBI Director James Comeywhom he

Lachlan Markay, a reporter with the Daily Beast, pointed out the initial edits on Twitter. You can see screenshots of the edits below.

The user briefly removed Trumps name from the third sentence of the entry that reads, Notable clients have included Donald Trump,[4] Robert DeNiro, Celanese, ArvinMeritor, Liggett Group, Enron, WorldCom and Mia Farrow. The reference beside Trumps name goes to an article titled Meet Marc Kasowitz, the litigator who often represents Donald Trump. Currently, the reference has been restored despite a back and forth between admins and the anonymous editor.

Indeed, Kasowitz has represented Trump a number of times including in his defamation case against Timothy L. OBrien, author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald. An appeals court ruled against Trump. who claimed hed been defamed because OBrien said he wasnt a billionaire. Marc Kasowitz also threatened legal action against the New York Times last October when that paper published some of Trumps tax returns from 1995. Nothing ever came of the threats. Trumps general counsel Alan Garten told the Wall Street Journal in January that Marcs always been a guy you go to when you have complex, intricate legal problems.

With Trump in a very sticky situation after firing FBI Director James Comey and admitting that he did it to help put an end to an investigation of his campaigns ties to Russia, it would stand to reason that he would want someone friendly to take over the position. Who better than a lawyer at the firm that Trump turns to when he has complex, intricate legal problems. It would also stand to reason that Trump supporters would understand how bad that looks and want to keep it out of the public eye.

Taking a look at the IP address (66.190.119.13) of the Wikipedia editor thats trying to remove Trumps name reveals something odd. Their only other edits have been on Trump advisor Stephen Millers page and Trumps State of the Union address page, in both cases it was to make the Trump team look better. When you look up the location of the IP address you get this location in Horton, Alabama.

Is there anyone prominent from the Trump campaign in that area? Well, there is Bradley Williams, the only person from the nearby Cullman, Alabama who qualified as a delegate for Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. If you look up Bradley Williams in Horton, Alabama, you get this address.

Bradley Williams is the Director of Communications for the Cullman County Sheriffs Department, so it would stand to reason that he understands a little bit about public relations and might want to help save Trump some embarrassment. But, its worth noting that the address and IP appear to be just outside of Cullman County. So, we asked Mr. Williams if he was the one doing the editing. This was his response:

I was a Delegate for then candidate Donald Trump, however, I have no knowledge about edits to the wiki page you are speaking of or any other wiki page. I am not the only Bradley Williams in Alabama and I also dont live in Horton, Alabama. I live in Cullman County Alabama.

Fair enough. Its certainly a hell of a coincidence that a Bradley Williams appears to live pretty much exactly at the location of the IP address making edits to Wikipedia for Trump and a Bradley Williams was the only delegate for Trump in the area. But hey, weird stuff happens.

What we know for sure, is that someone wanted less attention to be paid to that particular Wikipedia entry and they have miserably failed.

[H/T Lachlan Markay, Timothy Burke]

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Someone Is Trying to Scrub Trump's Name From the Wikipedia Page of Lieberman's Law Firm - Gizmodo

One Reddit user has created a world map, showing the most common word used on each county's English language Wikipedia page.

The free online encyclopedia, whichanyone can edit, has over5,400,000 articles in English.

The map excludes linking words such as 'the', 'country' and 'government'.

It has shown some interesting results.

The most common used word on Ireland's Wikipedia site is 'state' while the most common in the UK is the word 'Ireland'.

French, German and Scandinavian users have the most entries about the 'World' while Spain and the US have 'War'. But this could be due to the World Wars.

Canada has 'Quebec' as its most common word, while Australians are looking for 'New' things.

Russia and several former Soviet countries have the term 'Soviet', while Poland's most popular term is 'European'.

Sauda Arabia's biggest Wikipedia term is 'King', while several of its neighbouring countries are have 'Oil', 'Arab' and 'World'.

Those living in Israel and Palestine have the most articles on 'Jewish' and 'Arab' respectively.

The most popular term for those in China is 'Dynasty'.

And those in South Korea are using the term 'South' the most, while those in North Korea are using the word 'North'.

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Map reveals the most common words on Wikipedia - Newstalk 106-108 fm

For those of you old enough to remember when the internet first became a thing, you might recall that, back in the 90s, websites were boxy and boring, fun stuff like social media and YouTube didnt exist, and the people that mostly put things online were basically thought of as mysterious and hyper-intelligent mole-people.

Twenty years later,everybody and their grandmas are website-building, blog-maintaining, and photo-editing like its always been second nature. This is largely thanks to the fact that, over the years, the aforementioned coding moleshave found ways to shortcut and streamline everything, so us regular folksdont need a computer science degree to be useful and active online. However, of all of the most frequently used websites in America, there is still one that makes life a little harder than it probably oughtto be in 2017.

Wikipedia the sixth most popular website in America can feel purposely set up to make editing difficult. If you think back to the mid-2000swhen Wikipedia was frequently mocked for getting factswrong, its tempting to wonder if theyve kept it hard to edit on purpose perhaps fewerpeople editing means fewererrors? In reality, Wikipedia is simply more complicated to edit than most other websites now, for a variety of old school technical and software reasons (andeven those are hard to understand).

One of the main problems Wikipedias editing interface has (at least partially) caused is a serious gender gap when it comes to the people who create and edit Wikipedia content. This has, in turn, created serious information gaps when it comes to profiling and dedicating pages to prominent women, whether they be female historical figures, artists, or authors.

In 2010, research done by the Wikimedia Foundation the company that runs Wikipedia discovered that around 87% of the websites editors identified as men.One of the first peopleto draw wider attention to that perplexing figure was Noam Cohen, a journalist forThe New York Times who wrote an article in January 2011 titled Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedias Contributor List. Cohens article demonstrated how a lack of female editors was affecting Wikipedias content:

the Wikipedia entry for Pat Barker was a mere three paragraphs, Cohen noted. Ms. Barker is an acclaimed writer of psychologically nuanced novels, many set during World War I. She is 67 and lives in England. By contrast, Niko Bellic had an article about five times as long as Ms. Barkers at the time. Its a question of demographics: Mr. Bellic is a character in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV.

Cohens articleprompted ex-Wikimedia director Sue Gardnerto go public with herresearch into why women were so frequently put off by the Wikipedia editing process. Gardnerconcluded the reasons were as follows:

1. A lack of user-friendliness in the editing interface 2. Not having enough free time 3. A lack of self-confidence 4. Aversion to conflict and an unwillingness to participate in lengthy edit wars 5. Belief that their contributions are too likely to be reverted or deleted 6. Some find its overall atmosphere misogynistic 7. Wikipedia culture is sexual in ways they find off-putting 8. Being addressed as male is off-putting to women whose primary language has grammatical gender 9. Fewer opportunities than other sites for social relationships and a welcoming tone

From that point on, not only has Wikipedia been surprisingly open about its own shortcomings listing them on pages likeWikipedia: Why Wikipedia is not so greatand Gender Bias on Wikipedia it has actively been providing resources totry and diversify the demographics of its editors. Theres the Teahouse,a friendly place to learn about editing Wikipedia; theres a Help page offering an extensive online manual about creating and editing pages; and theres a page about Wikipedias Visual Editor.

Even more surprisingly, the Wikimedia Foundation has, since 2011,been willingly assistingedit-a-thons that are set up by outside organizations such asArt + Feminismspecifically with the goal of fixing Wikipedias gender bias-related content problems. Put simply, if you and a large enough group of people in your vicinitycant figure out how to contribute to Wikipedia, there is a good chance that Wikimedia will send over an expert volunteer to walk you through it.Art + Feminism has, in the last three years alone, held 280+ events across six continents, to create and improve thousands of Wikipedia pages for artists.

So far this year, edit-a-thons have been held by the likes of San Francisco art non-profit The Laband New Yorks Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The Oakland Public Library started history edit-a-thons in 2013. At the end of last year, the UKs BBC, assisted by volunteers from Wikimedia UK, held 15 twelve-hourin 13 countries to grow the number of female editors and to add women who deserve to be recognized.

In addition, in 2010, Wikipedia set up theWiki Education Foundation, a San Francisco-based non-profit that was specifically createdto teach students how to share information on Wikipedia. The organizations website explains: Students research course-related topics that are missing or underrepresented, synthesize the available literature, and use our tools and trainings to add the information to Wikipedia. While contributing cited, well-founded information, they help combat fake news on the internet. After supporting tens of thousands of students, weve proven this model brings high-quality academic information to wide audiences.

At this point in history, undoubtedly one of the most valuable resources for feminist groups, and womenin general, is the internet. Its where women find each other, commiserate, plan protests, and engage in activism. Itsthe reason Januarys Womens Marchturned into a global event, and its the reason Brock Turner will probably never get a datefor the rest of his life.

It is well-documented that women and minorities have historically had their voices erased from the history books. Wikipedia offers a DIY tool to ensure those important figuresget written back in. Editing on Wikipedia might not be the most funway to spend your time online, and its probablynot the easiest, but the fact that Wikimedia is making genuine efforts to increase content and editorial diversity is a great step in the right direction. Organizing into groups and learning how to contribute to Wikipedia as an encyclopedic resourcecould quiteliterally impact history. There are few more powerful motivators than that.

Rae Alexandra is On Call Producerfor KQED Pop. Born and raised in Wales, she has written about punk and hardcore for magazines like Kerrang!, Rock Sound and Revolver; indie and pop music forJustinTimberlake.com; and a little bit of everything forSF Weekly and The Village Voice. She holds a postgraduate diploma in Magazine Journalism from the University of Wales and regularly destroys your favorite '80s movies at MovieRuiner.com.

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Wikipedia Knows It Has a Sexism Problem And Is Trying Surprisingly Hard to Fix It - KQED