Archive for the ‘Wikipedia’ Category

Wikipedia ‘edit-a-thon’ in Surrey hopes to bridge knowledge gap about women in the arts – CBC.ca

A Wikipedia 'edit-a-thon' is being held at the Surrey Art Gallery on Saturday in the hope of improvingthe massive online encyclopedia's coverage of women in the arts.

The event, done in partnership with Vancouver-based Runghmagazine,will see volunteers gather at the art gallery and virtually to write and edit entries with a focus on art and feminism.

AlannaEdwards with the Surrey Art Gallery saysit's long been established that the vast majority of Wikipedia editors aremen, which can affect whatappears on one of the most-viewed websites on the planet.

"I think it's important to edit on Wikipedia because without women telling their own stories, without these stories being recorded, content can be skewed and become problematic," she said.

Wikipedia itself has acknowledged the gender gap.In a 2020 report, parent organization Wikimediafound 87 per cent of its contributors are male.

Edwards saysparticipants are encouraged to come with up with ideas for entries. Those seeking inspirationcan work on an entry for"pre-researched artists and artworks" from Surrey Art Gallery's permanent collection.

During a previous edit-a-thon, volunteers created an entry for local artist Roxanne Charles-George. Edwards said Charles-George was pleased with the result.

A similar event was held in Richmond Public Libraryin February to address gaps in knowledge about B.C.'s Black history.

Listen | A similar event in February addressed knowledge gaps about B.C.'s Black history

On The Coast4:47Black History Month Wikipedia edit-a-thon

"Everybody knows they go to Wikipedia first when you're doing research," librarianAdair Harper told CBC's On the Coast last month. "So it's reallyimportant to improve coverage there."

Edwards says attendees at Saturday's event can learn how to research, create a user account, and publish a Wikipedia page.

"You don't need experience," she said. "We're all learning together. There's small ways that you can make big changes."

The edit-a-thon will take place at Surrey Art Gallery onMarch 12 from noon to 4 p.m. Those who aren't able to attend in personcan take partvirtually.

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Wikipedia 'edit-a-thon' in Surrey hopes to bridge knowledge gap about women in the arts - CBC.ca

Jason Sudeikis keeps a Wikipedia page in his head of ‘Ted Lasso’ characters – austin360

It's possible that all the heart warming-ness of "Ted Lasso" all starts inJason Sudeikis' head.

OK, yes, the "Saturday Night Live" alum developed the show and helps write it, but we're talking about a whole other thing called the "Jason wiki."

The Jason wiki, or Wikipedia, is a catalog of each of the characters in the show's history that are not always shown in episodes. We learned about the wiki during the show's South by Southwest panel Monday morning.

Sudeikis, who plays Lasso, Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent, and Brendan Hunt, who plays Coach Beard, appeared via video chatbecause they arein London, where they started filming the show's third season about two weeks ago.

A supervising producer on the show, Kip Kroeger, and a "Ted Lasso" editor, Melissa Brown McCoy, appeared in person at the panel with Nancy Jundi of DigitalFilm Tree.

More: Sandra Bullock's message for people moving to Austin: Don't change it

Goldstein and Hunt both appeared to be in the back of two separate cars that were headed for the same location the fictional Richmondteam's locker room. Both would freeze and disappear from the screen during the broadcastto a packed room. Dozens of people lined up well before the panel's 10 a.m. start,and the line had to be extended outside at Austin Convention Center.

OK, back to the Jason wiki.

"With Jason, it's interesting, because we'll be sitting in the cutting room going overthe show and he'll start sharing deep, deep backstory that's in the form orthe context ofscenes or the perspective of characters and stuff like that. And it doesn't necessarily ever make it on the screen, but it informs so much of what's going on," said Kip Kroeger, a supervising producer on "Ted Lasso."

More: Daniel Radcliffe is looking for Austin's best barbecue at SXSW

Hunt, who also is one of the show's co-creators, said Sudeikis has a starting point for each of the characters and then the rest of the writers room will chime in to furtherdevelop the character. Even if the wiki notes don't end up in the show, they still affect how characters make their decisions, he said.

It was clear, even from a mostly virtual panel, how much the actors enjoy working with each other. Hunt was making jokes,Goldstein was cussing and Sudeikis was laughing.

When Hunt and Goldstein made it to the locker room set, they ran inside and gave each other a hug. The SXSW crowd cheered.

More: Hanging out with the Muppets, Brett 'Roy Effing Kent' Goldstein andBren Brown at ACL

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Jason Sudeikis keeps a Wikipedia page in his head of 'Ted Lasso' characters - austin360

Wikimedia says it ‘will not back down’ after Russia threatens Wikipedia block – The Verge

The Wikimedia Foundation has issued a statement supporting Russian Wikipedia volunteers after a censorship demand from internet regulators. On Tuesday, tech and communications regulator Roskomnadzor threatened to block Wikipedia over the Russian-language page covering Russias invasion of Ukraine, claiming it contained false messages about war casualties and the effects of economic sanctions, among other things.

On March 1st 2022 the Wikimedia Foundation received a Russian government demand to remove content related to the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine posted by volunteer contributors to Russian Wikipedia, reads the statement sent to The Verge via email. As ever, Wikipedia is an important source of reliable, factual information in this crisis. In recognition of this important role, we will not back down in the face of efforts to censor and intimidate members of our movement. We stand by our mission to deliver free knowledge to the world.

The Roskomnadzor demand, which was posted in Russian Wikipedias Telegram channel, demands Wikimedia address user edits from a February 27th version of the article. As translated by Wikimedia Russia, it takes issue with information about numerous casualties among the military personnel of the Russian Federation, as well as the civilian population of Ukraine, including number of children, as well as the need to withdraw funds from accounts in banks of the Russian Federation in connection with the sanctions imposed by foreign states. (While the wars casualties remain difficult to estimate, the United Nations has confirmed hundreds of civilian deaths in Ukraine since the conflict began last week, including at least 13 children, and acknowledged that its numbers likely underestimate the real death toll.)

Wikimedia Russia called the claims fundamentally impossible to evaluate and urged the government not to block access to the article which would effectively require blocking access to all of Wikipedia. It also noted that the page is constantly changing thanks to the work of its numerous editors. All these people have very different views on what is happening, and they are all very careful to ensure that someone does not insert false information or misleading wording into the article, the group wrote.

As Input notes, Russian authorities have sent a number of complaints about Wikipedia pages in the past. The government outright blocked the site in 2015 over a cannabis-related article, but the blackout was short-lived. However, the current threat is part of a larger online crackdown around the invasion one thats seen Russia block Twitter and Facebook in an effort to control the narrative around the war. Tuesdays takedown request threatened censorship. Denying people access to reliable information, at a time of crisis, can have life-altering consequences, warned the Wikimedia statement.

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Wikimedia says it 'will not back down' after Russia threatens Wikipedia block - The Verge

Art House and universities to host Art + Feminism – NJ.com

Art House is gearing up for Womens History Month as it hosts its Art+Feminism Art Talk and Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon on Wednesday, March 8 at 11 a.m. EST via Zoom.

Art House wont be alone for this as several universities will be joining in. Among the participants are Hudson County Community College, Seton Hall University, Paul Robeson Galleries at Express Newark, Rutgers University - Newark, and The Feminist Art Project, a program of the Rutgers Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities.

The Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon began in 2020. Those attending will learn how to edit and create Wikipedia pages for artists that are women, gender diverse, or people of color. The workshops goal is to amplify the voices of artists and cultural workers who are underrepresented in digital resources and the arts.

Since 2014, over 18,000 people at more than 1,260 events around the world have participated in edit-a-thons, resulting in the creation and improvement of more than 84,000 articles on Wikipedia and its sister projects, according to a press release from Wikipedia.

We are proud to partner again on this important virtual event supporting the worldwide movement to amplify gender diverse artists through Wikipedia, said Art House Producing Director Courtney Little. This is an incredible opportunity for community members to learn from each other and to enrich Wikipedia to include more voices and perspectives.

The event will feature closed captions autogenerated by Zoom. To request ASL interpreters, please email info@arthouseproductions.org at least 72 hours before the event. Free registration is available at https://bit.Ly/3tE8bYq. All are invited to register and edit or create a Wikipedia page for an artist.

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Art House and universities to host Art + Feminism - NJ.com

Evolution in time-lapse: overfishing in the seas, and smaller salmon – Wikipedia – Socialpost

Could a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil cause a hurricane in Texas? American meteorologist Edward Lorenz once asked this question to show that small intrusions into complex systems can have unexpected effects.

This phenomenon, known as the butterfly effect, also applies to the networks of nature, the interrelationships of which are rarely known. However, in many places people intervene without even losing thought of what they might call it.

Finnish biologists describe an interesting example of this in the current issue of the scientific journal to know. In their study, they showed how overfishing of capelin, a small school fish in the Barents Sea, causes the miniaturization of salmon that other fishermen pull from waters several kilometers away in the Finnish Tino River.

For their study, the team led by biologist Yann Czorlich of Finlands University of Turku evaluated data from 40 years of hunting and combined it with results from genetic analyzes of salmon. Biologists have found that there is a relationship between the size of the Capelin clan in the Barents Sea and the frequency of a particular genetic variant in the tino salmon genome, which makes the fish sexually mature earlier and become smaller. Whenever capelin populations collapsed due to overfishing which occurred several times during the study period this genetic variant accumulated in salmon.

According to the authors, this connection, surprising at first glance, has to do with the complex life cycle of salmon. Fish are born in the fresh waters of rivers and then migrate to the sea. They spend their childhood and adolescence there, so to speak. Once they are sexually mature, they migrate back to the river where they were born to lay eggs.

In the Barents Sea, capelin schools huge in good times are one of the main food sources for the young salmon that live there. If fishing fleets pull a lot of capelin from the sea, then predatory fish find little to eat. The deficiency appears to result in a change in their genome that causes the salmon to mature earlier and remain smaller. The study authors wrote in to know. Biologists also talk about evolution in rapid motion.

Charles Darwin, who established the theory of evolution more than 160 years ago in his book On the Origin of Species, still posits that evolution is a slow process. It must take thousands or even millions of years for new species to form through mutation and selection (macroevolution) or for existing species to change (microevolution).

In the Anthropocene that is, in the era formed by humans the species Homo sapiens changed their environment and thus the conditions of other animals and plants at a much faster rate than in the history of the Earth. In this large-scale involuntary experiment, animals and plants must change quickly in order to have a chance of survival.

It has long been known that humans, as a selection factor, can directly influence and accelerate the development of animals and plants. An example is the elephants in Mozambique that have lost their tusks because they make them unattractive to poachers and allow them to survive. For a similar reason, many large-horned sheep in the United States no longer have thick horns, but rather slim horns. Cod has become noticeably thinner and shorter in recent decades due to the infiltration of small specimens through the nets of fishing fleets.

The current study is one of the few understandable examples of how humans influence evolution not only directly, but also indirectly: salmon are shrinking because humans catch an entirely different fish in an entirely different place. Ironically, capelin in the Barents Sea is also widely fished to feed salmon in aquaculture.

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Evolution in time-lapse: overfishing in the seas, and smaller salmon - Wikipedia - Socialpost