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From English to Arabic: Are Wikipedias Egalitarian Values Getting Lost in Translation?

The internet would be unrecognizable without Wikipedia. Thanks to the digital, open-collaborative encyclopedia, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, we now have unprecedented access to the sum of human knowledge; everything our species has learned and experienced, written, digitized and catalogued in easily digestible records. And it is all a few screen taps away.

If only things were that simple. This absurdly easy access masks a far more complicated reality. After all, Wikipedia attempts the impossible feat of keeping a record of the vast, universal human experience; the countless singularities, distinctions and paradigms it encompasses, and the great forces and events that have shaped peoples lives since the beginning of time.

The online encyclopedia, which is maintained by a community of contributors and volunteer editors, writers and researchers from across the world, has over 300 editions and is available in virtually all languages and dialects. This makes Wikipedia a fairly diverse platform, but as with all things created in the image of men, women are far from equally represented.

In Egypt, the MENA region and the Arabic-speaking world at large, a group of volunteers and contributors have been working tirelessly, creating over 1,000,000 articles for the Arabic edition of Wikipedia since its launch in 2003.

On Wikipedia, content [written by and about] men is four times that of women and nine out of 10 editors are men, so there is a very big gap, Amira*, a volunteer editor with over 600 entries on Arabic Wikipedia tells Egyptian Streets.

The Wikipedia gender gap has long been a challenge, not to mention a PR nightmare for the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that hosts and publishes the encyclopedia. With the foundation exercising little editorial control over the digital encyclopedia, Wikipedias content, policies, triumphs and shortcomings all reflect the community of contributors and volunteers who maintain its different editions.

These gaps may reflect outright sexism and misogyny or more insidious forms of discrimination, such as unconscious gender bias, but according to one of Wikimedias own, gender inequality is rife on the whole World Wide Web, not just Wikipedia.

Content gaps exist all over the internet and Wikipedia especially. Womens [representation] is low on the internet in general. On Wikipedia, [woman-authored] articles are less than 20 percent, Ahmed*, a Cairo-based Wikimedia Foundation coordinator, explains.

In an effort to address its gender gap, the Wikipedia community has launched countless initiatives and projects to encourage womens participation, such as competitions and edit-a-thons focused on women editors and subjects, as well as womens issues and women-focused themes.

The point is to close the gender gap and increase feminist content on Wikipedia. For us, it is also about increasing Arabic content, so we started to work, and many initiatives have been launched since mid 2014, Amira explains.

Despite being ongoing for the past five years, this concerted effort to increase womens representation on the platform culminated in 2019, with the first edition of WikiGap, a joint project with the Swedish government. This years global edition of WikiGap, which started on the 8th of March, in honor of International Womens Day, and runs until the 8th of April, is focused on developing content about women human rights activists.

The Arabic edition, which only ran until the 14th of March, saw 570 articles created for the WikiGap Egypt edit-a-thon, compared to 127 last year. This visibility encourages more women to participate, according to Nadine*, an Egyptian medical student and Wikipedia editor.

When it is women writing about women, it is not just about unbiased views, it also attracts more women to edit and write. When the person in charge of the initiative is a woman, women will be more incentivized to participate, she remarks.

With this effort to create more women-focused content, the Wikipedia community is not only hoping to broaden the scope of its content, but also to attract more women editors to render a more accurate representation of womens history.

A woman writer will better understand the experiences of the women she is writing about, Ahmed adds.

Despite this marked increase in womens representation and the growing awareness of the importance of womens visibility, other content biases, prejudices and gaps emerge on the platforms many editions.

There are also gaps when it comes to demographic distribution; content by contributors from North America and Western Europe is much greater than from Africa, Asia and South America. These are all types of gaps. I can tell you that we have a long way to go in order to achieve balanced content on the internet and there are massive efforts being exerted in order to change that, Ahmed says.

For the digital encyclopedias Arabic edition, WikiGap had to undergo a few alterations. In Egypt and the MENA region, where gender inequality and other political, social and cultural issues extend to every aspect of public and private life, the local edition of the competition, announced by the Swedish Embassy in Egypt, called on potential participants to write about women in any field of their choice, perhaps conveniently steering clear of contentious social justice and political issues.

This transvaluation when moving between languages, cultures and worlds is nothing new. As with many multilingual content platforms and publications, events are retold from differing and, at times, conflicting perspectives. This explains why Hebrew Wikipedia refers to Israels occupation of the West Bank as the Jewish states rule of Judea and Samaria.

Similarly, Arabic Wikipedia has also taken on Arab and Muslim cultural perceptions about gender and sexuality, drawing criticism for its queerphobic editorial policy after deleting an article about late Egyptian human rights activist and gay icon Sarah Hegazi, citing lack of notability, despite there being Wikipedia entries about her in eight other languages, as well as an Arabic article on Egyptian Wikipedia.

These erasures can be chalked up to oversight, unconscious bias, or deeply entrenched cultural perceptions, but unlearning damaging and axiomatically immoral social constructs is imperative for the integrity of Wikipedia, which is something the Wikimedia Foundation is keen on addressing.

The idea is for everyone to participate regardless of their beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, color, etc. The Wikipedia community tries to put in place policies that give everyone the right to express themselves and participate and to guarantee that the content is unbiased and for it to be substantiated by sources. Any community can make mistakes, but the efforts being made by the Wikipedia community are aimed at creating the most unbiased content possible.

The Wikimedia Foundation supports the community in these decisions, and supports its independence when it comes to taking these steps and enacting these policies in order to develop unbiased content, Ahmed says.

History, we are often told, is written by the victors. This disclaimer accompanies all of the knowledge we hold, reminding us that there is still so much we dont and cant possibly knowthat when the vanquished died, all their secrets, narratives and struggles were laid to rest with them.

The promise of Wikipedia is that we dont have to doubt the messenger and take everything they tell us with a grain of salt. The platform, we like to think, is distortion-proof because we have all taken part in writing it and we were all represented in the process by people who look and think and feel and love like us.

If you want to create balanced content, it must be representative of the world. The world is not a white American man. It is made up of men and women, people of different viewpoints, beliefs, and different sexual orientations, from different parts of the world, Ahmed muses.

Preserving Wikipedias integrity for posterity is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time, because it is the keeper of the worlds memory. And if we fail our moral responsibility to pass down a true and honest retelling of our lives and times and histories, history will judge us as harshly as we have those who came before us.

*Names have been changed to protect sources anonymity.

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From English to Arabic: Are Wikipedia's Egalitarian Values Getting Lost in Translation? - Egyptian Streets

Shhhh! This stop is a bit quieter. Kelly Diamond joins us to talk all things library-related. Well explore library services and well also chat a bit about ULIB 101, which is a course that the library offers during Maymester. Kelly will also share some noteworthy tips for reaching a librarian when you need one.

Transcript

Hi everyone. And welcome to our next episode of the Online Road Map. Today we have the head of Library, Office, Curriculum, and Instruction, Kelly Diamond with us. We're excited to have you here Kelly, to talk about May-mester and some of the resources that may be available throughout the summer term.

Thanks for joining the show. Thanks for inviting me. So I didn't just get started here. I wanted to see if you would go ahead and tell us a little bit about who you are and your affiliation with the university. I actually started out teaching English here. I was a composition instructor. I taught English 101and English 102 and the technical writing class and the business writing class.

So I think every writing class that they offered, I taught, but I decided on a career change. So I went back to school and got my Master of Library and Information Science. And because I'm a professional student, I then went back and got a graduate certificate in instructional design. And I worked for a little bit as a reference librarian.

And then I was moved up to this position where I get to the. Teach online and design classes and things like that. And as part of my being a professional student, I'm now currently working on my EDD from the University of Florida. So as if I don't have enough to do a spare time, I like to watch, I like to crochet.

I watch true crime documentaries, which sometimes disturb people, but, and I really like bad reality. Paranormal shows the cheesier, the worst, the production values, the more I enjoy them. And I'm owned by two cats. That's fantastic. I too like yourself. I'm a lifetime student. I feel like it's always good to be learning new stuff.

So I continued to go back to school. I have a feeling that when I retire, I'll probably go back to school again, because I'm just, I don't know. I can't stay away from. Being in school. It's very weird. So yeah, I feel you, I totally feel you and I love paranormal activity, so that's just a little sidebar.

We can, we can discuss that offline later. Well, thank you so much. So yeah. Why don't you give us a little background, if you can, about WVU libraries and some of the resources and services that they provide to our students? Well, there are four libraries in the system. There's the downtown campus library.

There's the Evansdale campus library. That's where my office is the Health Sciences Center library. And the Law library. A lot of students think that they can't go into the Law Library if they're not a law student or a lawyer. And you can, if you're actually researching some legal topic, you're more than welcome to go to the Law Library.

The downtown library also has the West Virginia and regional history center. So there are lots and lots of resources. Most of our resources are online now. And that was a trend that happened pre pandemic, but I we've tried to really, really boost our online resources because a lot of students are quarantined or they don't feel comfortable coming into a classroom.

And I would say, I know this sounds a little cheesy, but I think the best resource we have or the people who work there, I often tell students that, you know, no matter what your question is, if you go to the ASCA librarian service we have, which is on our web page, it's a little bit. Box at the top, it says, ask a librarian.

If you click on it, you can talk, have instant messages with a librarian. Or if it's something you're not in a big hurry about, you can leave a message or you can text no matter what your question is, if that person doesn't know what it is, they will find the person who knows that answer for you. So I always tell people don't hesitate to ask us questions because that's, our job is to find answers.

We also have lots of lots and lots of online books. eBooks are very popular databases with all kinds of articles, datasets, and we also have things called research guides, which are kind of a mini websites that are curated for certain classes. So. Oh, and I was the liaison to the English department. I had a special lib guide or research guide for English 102.

So everything that students needed to complete an English one or two assignment would be on that research guide. So lots and lots of stuff. I just encourage students just to go Library's web page and just click around and explore. Yeah, that's great. I know, even as an advisor, in my previous role at the university, I would sometimes go on the, ask a librarian for our students.

They would come to us and ask questions and I would be like, well, that'd be fine night out for you. So it is fantastic. And I will say that somebody always got back to me in a timely manner, which I super appreciated. So I think that's a great resource for the students as well. Just to see what's out there and what what's available, and it might be an online article that they can send you or book, or it might be an eBook or, you know, or it might be something that you can come pick up whatever the case may be, but it's definitely a helpful tool.

So I know that we're excited about may master this being the first time that we're able to get it rolling since. You know, unfortunately last year we wanted to run it, but with COVID it just didn't happen. So, so we're really excited about it this year. So why berries is offering a course? So can you tell us a little bit about the course that you are offering during May-mester.

Sure. It's ULIB 101, which is introduction to the library research. It's two credits, two whole credits, which makes it really popular. We teach this class over the winter intercession and I taught that last winter. Intercession. And we had 27 students. It was very popular. So the course is ULIB 101 introduction to library research, and in some ways the name doesn't really convey everything that students will learn or get for their two credits worth.

So we do talk about how to use it. A few basic library databases. There's also a dataset resource that we have. That's really, really good. Data always looks good in research papers, but we also talk about the kind of sources that students encounter in their daily lives. So. We all use Google. I mean, we all use Wikipedia.

I use Wikipedia. I'm no, no sense of pretending we don't. We do but there are ways to use it more effectively and sort of like I call tricks and tips. So we talk about things that Google can do that maybe students weren't aware of and how to use Wikipedia effectively. So for example Wikipedia actually grades it's articles that they have, and you don't see that immediately.

You have to actually sign up for an account and create some settings. It's not user-friendly and I don't know why they don't make it user-friendly but if you do that, you can see the, the articles that are actually very high quality. I would say. Feature articles in Wikipedia are probably the same quality is something you can pick up from the standard.

It's like the PD you'd pull off the shelves or online. They're very well done, but you have to know where to find that writing to kind of get that. And Wikipedia is also helpful because they list all the sources that they use. And most of those are linked. So if you're doing a paper on something, it's.

I always tell students, go to the Wikipedia article and then scroll down to the bottom and it'll have all the sources and that's where you can start your research. So we talk about things like that. The class also the student's research something of particular interest to them. And we encourage people to write about something they know a lot about or passionate about, and it doesn't have to be academic.

We have we have a lot of people who write about their hobbies. So for example, I had a student who had pet rabbits and she researched the best diet for rabbits, which is kind of complicated. I never realized how complicated it was to feed a rabbit. But so it's something that students you can, if you ever wanted to flick your hobby on other people for three weeks, it's a class to do that.

So you research something that you're really interested in. And we also talk about ways to kind of when you encounter information. In the wild, so to speak is how to try to suss out how credible or valuable it is because that's as anybody knows, it's a real problem anymore to see things, you know, on Twitter or Facebook or whatever.

And, you know, you look at and you think, wow, is this really true? So we sort of talk about that a little bit. That's awesome. So a lot of how to use the library and the resources to do the research and your classes, that's valuable, you know, for all students at the university. So that's awesome. Yeah. We've had students who I've had seniors take the class and they.

And usually say on the evaluations, I wish I had this class when I was a freshmen, you know, so I think it's valuable for anybody. Cause like I said, it, it will teach you things like post-graduation to kind of deal with the information world. But even if you're a freshman or a sophomore, I think it you'll take something away from that will help you in other classes.

For sure for sure. And I know Wikipedia is out there, you know, I mean, it's a source that everybody says don't use it, but it is one that, you know, still, if there's a way to know that the information that you're getting is useful and viable and valuable. That's awesome that you guys are teaching that in that class too.

Yeah. It's just, it's just being realistic, you know, it's, it's there and if it's there, you know, it's good to teach people, okay, this is the best way to use it. And this is how you find out this, this article, this Wikipedia article. It was not very good, but this one is pretty good. So, yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic.

So what would you say are some of the benefits of taking the, you live course in May-mester then? One benefit is it will help you in your future classes. I believe the second benefit is students can transfer a lot of the skills that they use or learn in this class to post-graduation. I, I think a lot of people when you're an undergraduate, and I know I thought this, you don't realize how much research and writing you have to do in whatever job you have.

And so it's always good to kind of get those skills down. No matter what job you have. So I think a lot of this will transfer and also, and like I said, this is kind of a fun benefit. You get to talk about your hobby or what you're really interested in for three weeks. So hopefully that makes it a little more enjoyable for students.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So in terms of students who should take the course, you know, what type of students would you recommend the course to? I would say, well, I guess any student, I think maybe students who maybe have a little library, anxiety, I think that would be good. I know sometimes when students encounter are databases or proprietary databases, Some of them are not as user-friendly as they should be.

And it can be a little intimidating and frustrating and students sometimes. You know, get frustrated and they go back to Google, right? So I think this will help alleviate some of the anxiety. I think students who would like to get a two credit, just to be honest, as students who need a two credit hour class and you're going to learn something and you get, like I said, you get to research something you're passionate about.

I would recommend that they take it. I'd also recommend that maybe students who are a little hesitant about taking an online class like I said earlier, I have a certificate in instructional design and this class was always designed to be taught online. So it's very, a lot of the, many of the things that are very deliberate for an online environment.

Also myself and the other person who teaches this class were both very hands on with online instruction. One of the, I think one of the difficulties students encounter is that. They don't get a lot of feedback or interaction with the instructor, which is difficult in the online environment, but Celia that's the woman who teaches is going to be teaching this summer.

She and I are both very hands-on with emailing every I emails in the, during the winter session. I email students every day. I know Celia emails, her students every day. I'm very, we're very responsive. If there is a problem or an issue, I usually try to solve it within a working day. Now, a lot of times students are night owls and they might email me at nine 30 or 10 o'clock at night and I will respond and say, Hey, I got your email.

I will take care of this the next day. And I think students appreciate that. Just being heard. Okay. I, she knows I have an issue. She'll take care of it. So if you're a little nervous about taking an online class, don't be, this class is designed for that. And we have instructors who are very happy and willing to work with students.

Yeah. That's, that's also a great advice. I know, you know, this is an accelerated course and not only for the students. Right. But for the faculty too. So I know they're logging in and you guys are logging in daily as well in assisting students. So that's good to know for, for the students, for sure. Students, you know, are still able to use the library resources through may master in summer rates.

So can you talk a little bit about what they may be able to use during the summer term, whether it's in person or online, what, what does that look like during summer for, for our students? In summer, it looks pretty much like it does during the fall and spring semesters. Really. The only thing that might change is the hours of operation for the physical building.

And I would go to the library's web page to check the hours. But other than that, ASCA librarian is working the interlibrary loan. Office that gets your articles from other libraries they're working to get your articles or your books. People are there to check out things. I'm not sure about tutoring though.

And that's something you would might want to check with the library's webpage or whoever does your tutoring. I know in the past they have met students there, but to be honest, I'm not sure if that's going to be happening in the summer, but your best bet is always to check the library's website. So anything that you're doing in the library.

During spring semester, you can do it in the summer. That's fantastic. So check out that website guys, for sure. And then as far as student contact, so I know you mentioned going through the website, are there any specific contact hours that they should be looking to receive responses back or is there a phone number, email address, or should they just really go through the ASCA librarian?

What, what do you recommend from like a best practice? I would go to the ASCA librarian and use the chat. If you want something immediately. And even if you don't want anything immediately just go to the chat and whoever is attending, it will take your request and they'll probably email the person, or they might even, that person might even be on chat and they're just not, they just didn't pick your question up and they can transfer you to the person who could answer that.

So that would be the first step. Okay. And if you do go to the ASCA line, ASCA librarian page, there is a form you can fill out. So you can say you have a question at two weeks clock in the morning, which sometimes I do. I wake up at two o'clock in the morning and don't worry, but you can actually go and fill out a form and it gets put in what we call hopper.

And then the next morning someone will pick it up and then get in touch with you and answer it. So going through the website, going through ASCA library, and those are definitely I think, the best ways then to contact you guys. Right? Correct. Okay, awesome. That's good to know. So I wanted to, to wrap it up, asking all of our guests, what one piece of advice you would like to offer for students that May-mester in summer term?

And this can be about the course or just the library in general, but yeah. Yeah. If you could just offer one piece of advice up to our students. Sure. So, like I said, I'm working on my EDD from the university of Florida and it's all online. Unfortunately we can't go to Florida for on-sites, which it's kind of disappointing, but.

Here's what I do is I set a time to quote unquote, attend class. And this is what I recommend for students to do. So pick a time every day of the week and do classwork that time. So for me, I'm I wake up pretty early in the morning. I'm awake at five 30. So I attend quote unquote, attend my classes from about six to seven 30 every morning.

So I log in, read my discussion posts post things do my assignments. And I get in that habit of attending class, because the main problem I've see with students and even in my graduate class, I've noticed this people it's very easy to get behind in an accelerated class. So. Make a commitment to yourself, put it in your calendar, attend class every day.

And this is like another piece of advice. So just tack this one on for free. If you ever run into a problem, email your instructor, as soon as possible. People who teach these accelerated classes are very invested in teaching. So if you have a problem or an issue, let them know as soon as possible and they'll help you with whatever it is.

Yeah. Honestly, the classes go so quickly, right? They go quickly on a normal semester. I feel like, right? So these accelerated ones, if you get, start getting behind, then it becomes a lot more difficult to, to make it up. So definitely the communication piece is key too. Yes, I would agree. Absolutely well, Kelly, I really appreciate it.

I appreciate you taking the time to meet with us and talk with us a little bit about library and on what you guys are offering in the summer and in may master. And we're really excited to get the semester rolling here. And everybody's looking forward to the sunshine in West Virginia, because we've had nothing but snow.

So I appreciate your time. Well, thank you for inviting me. All right. Well, we will see you guys next time on the Online Road Map and Kelly, thanks again.

Thank you.

See the article here:
Online Roadmap Podcast: The Road to Research with Library - The Daily Athenaeum - thedaonline

Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, published a blog postthis month declaring that the online encyclopedias neutral point of view policy is dead due to the rampant left-wing bias of the site. Noting the article on President Donald Trump, Sanger contrasted its extensive coverage of presidential scandals with the largely scandal-free article on former President Barack Obama.

Sanger also criticized Wikipedias coverage of religion and other controversial topics. After Fox News reported on his blog post, many Wikipedians ignored the bias Sanger identified and instead responded by attacking the conservative outlet as well as Sanger.

On May 14, Sanger published a blog piece titled Wikipedia Is Badly Biased and started by declaring Wikipedias Neutral Point of View policy dead. Having founded the online encyclopedia with Jimmy Wales and having been involved in the original drafting of the policy, Sanger offered particular insight into its development and its practice in recent years. On the current policys rejection of providing equal validity to different views, Sanger stated this went directly against the original policys intent and that as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science.

Providing examples, Sanger noted former President Obamas article excludes most notable scandals during his Administration, such as the bungled ATF Fast and Furious operation that armed Mexican cartels who killed a U.S. border agent or the targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS. By contrast, Sanger pointed to Trumps article containing overwhelmingly negative sections on the President regarding his public profile as well as investigations and impeachment. The sections critical of Trump and his presidency are nearly as long as those dealing with his presidency overall. He further criticized Wikipedia repeatedly saying Trump makes false statements rather than attributing such characterizations to sources.

Wikipedias coverage of other contentious political topics such as abortion were also criticized with Sanger singling out Wikipedia claiming abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine. He pointed out how articles on legalization of drugs and gay adoption were focused on positives with little to no mention of criticisms. In the latter case, Sanger noted the section on debate about gay adoption only included arguments in favor rather than any against it. Sanger also criticized Wikipedias coverage of religion describing the article on Jesus as a liberal academic discussion focused on assorted difficulties and controversies without explaining traditional or orthodox views of those issues.

Further criticism was directed at Wikipedias handling of scientific issues, where Sanger acknowledged some would consider a bias towards science to be desirable. However, he noted that it is not always clear what constitutes a legitimate scientific view and Wikipeda tends to take for granted and aggressively assert the views of the scientific establishment despite scientific minorities rejecting or criticizing these views such as on global warming. In the end, Sanger called on Wikipedias community to concede that they have abandoned neutrality, while stating this was unlikely as Wikipedia editors live in a fantasy world of their own making.

After his post was covered by Fox News, editors on Wikipedia posted about his remarks on a discussion page for the sites other co-founder, Jimmy Wales,where users bring issues to his attention and seek his comments. While Wales has yet to respond to Sangers criticism, many other editors responded to the news, though most avoided addressing his concerns about political bias. Instead, editors mainly focused on criticizing Fox News with one of the first editors responding stating fact and neutrality have their own bias, and one largely at odds with Fox. One cynically suggested Sangers criticism was him angling for a position at the network.

Editors on Wikipedia often dismiss criticism of the sites history of left-wing bias, despite repeated incidents such as editors burying information about CNNs blackmail controversy, an editor running a smear campaign against then-nominee for the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh, or Antifa supporters downplaying the far-left groups violent conduct including by censoring mention of the attack on journalist Andy Ngo. Smears of President Trump have included listing him and various prominent conservatives as advocates of a Neo-Nazi conspiracy theory for talking about South African farm attacks. Editors contrarily defended then-incoming New York Times editor Sarah Jeongs bigoted anti-white commentary.

Wikipedias bias was particularly evident on Russiagate as editors sought to purge reliable sources that criticized Russia hacking allegations and continued pushing the Trump campaign collusion theory, such as by insisting on the credibility of the infamous Steele Dossier, despite Muellers report into alleged Russian interference finding no evidence supporting the theory. They also repeatedly spun articles on the Ukraine controversy against Trump and censored the alleged name of the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the impeachment drive.

Editors have even banned numerous conservative news sources, including Breitbart, sometimes citing their unfavorable reporting of the Russiagate narrative as evidence.

Having departed Wikipedia in its earlier years, Sanger has been a critic of the sites path in the time since and has attempted to help or establish various alternatives to the site such as Citizendium and Everipedia. In his blog post he cites his latest project Encyclosphere, which seeks to build a network of online encyclopedias with a variety of perspectives similar to the blogosphere. Such alternatives have struggled to challenge the dominance of Wikipedia due to Big Tech sites such as YouTube and Facebook heavily incorporating and favoring Wikipedia.

Media outlets increasingly tout the reliability of Wikipedia, many citing it as the solution to fake news and numerous recent pieces describing it as a vital information source on the coronavirus pandemic. Wikipedia is so widely relied on that studies found its content shapes scientific research and economic patterns. News outlets and academic textbooks have sometimes copied Wikipedia content uncredited, such as the sites heavily slanted article smearing the GamerGate anti-corruption movement in gaming, which has been copied extensively by outlets including the BBC and USA Today. Given widespread adoption of Wikipedia by establishment institutions, the criticism from its co-founder will likely go unheeded.

T. D. Adleredited Wikipedia as The Devils Advocate. He was banned after privately reporting conflict of interest editing by one of the sites administrators. Due to previous witch-hunts led by mainstream Wikipedians against their critics, Adler writes under an alias.

Read more:
Wikipedia Co-Founder: Site's Neutrality Is 'Dead' Thanks ...

Everybody uses Wikipedia.

Its currently the 8th most visited website in the U.S. and the 13th most trafficked site in the world. The website bills itself as the free encyclopedia, providing knowledge free of charge to a global user base. However, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, hopes that some companies will pay for it.

Dont worry, itll still likely be free for you, dear Mashable reader. But for companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, Wikipedia is hoping to charge them for publishing its content.

A new report by Wired looks into a brand new division under the Wikimedia umbrella called Wikimedia Enterprise. In a first for the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise will offer a paid service targeting Wikipedias biggest users: Big Tech companies.

Wikimedia Enterprise, according to the organization, will provide a commercial product that tailors Wikipedias content for publication on services provided by Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon services that millions upon millions of people use every day.

Input a query into Google and the search engine will often provide a snippet from Wikipedia right there on the page. Users dont even have to leave Googles search engine for their answer. Ask Apples Siri or Amazons Alexa a question and both the virtual assistants will dig into Wikipedias archives to spit out an answer for you. YouTube even depends on Wikipedia to fight misinformation on its video platform.

Wikipedias current cost to the multi-billion dollar tech conglomerates? Nothing. Its completely free of charge.

In a 2018 interview with TechCrunch, Wikimedia Foundation Chief Revenue Officer Lisa Seitz-Gruwell shared that while Wikipedias content is free to use by all, some companies were exploiting the organization by not reciprocating.

For now, Wikimedia Foundation's $100 million budget is funded by donations from users and grant money provided to the Wikimedia Foundation. Some of the companies they're looking to charge, like Google, have donated millions of dollars to the organization. The year Gruwell spoke to TechCrunch, however, the tech outlet pointed out that Amazon had donated nothing.

According to the Wikimedia Foundation, these companies currently have employees and, in some cases, entire teams, working on delivering Wikipedias content through its own systems. The paid service provided by Wikimedia Enterprise will help do that work for them and, in turn, bring in a new revenue stream for the nonprofit.

Obviously, Wikipedia will continue to be free for its regular global user base. In fact, Wikimedias Seitz-Gruwell tells Wired that the free service currently being used by Google and the other Big Tech companies will continue to be available to even those for-profit corporations.

So will Big Tech kick back some of its profits to Wikipedia, a service that has provided them so much free content for years? According to Wikimedia Foundation, the organization is already in talks with these companies and deals may be reached as early as June.

A more pressing question, however, is how will Wikipedias army of volunteers react? The organization has depended on its volunteers to actually create, research, update, moderate, and fact-check its content since the websites founding. Will they view this as Wikipedia selling out? Will some want compensation for their work in return? Big Tech has been profiting off of services utilizing Wikipedia at no-charge for years. Now that Wikipedia looks to get paid, will its volunteers look to be compensated too?

Update: March, 16, 2021, 7:55 p.m. ET: The original story contained a sentence that read, "However, the nonprofit which runs Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, hopes that it soon wont be free for everybody." For the sake of clarity, we changed it to, "However, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, hopes that some companies will pay for it."

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Wikipedia wants to charge Google, Amazon, and Apple for using its content - Mashable

Wikipedia's parent company has revealed it is set to launch a new paid-for service for companies that take information from the online encyclopedia.

The new Wikimedia Enterprise platform will only apply to companies that use content from Wikipedia, with the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook set to be affected.

However normal everyday users of Wikipedia will still be able to access the service for free.

Wikimedia Enterprise will look to provide "paid developer tools that make it easier for companies and organizations to consume and re-use Wikimedia data," the company noted.

The new endeavour is thought to be set to launch later in 2021, with the Wikimedia Foundation already revealing some parts of the modalities of the new programme.

While the regular Wikipedia offering will be free, the new option is an experiment toward sustainability and maintaining independence for the platform.

Top tech companies use Wikipedia in myriad ways, such as Googles knowledge boxes, as well as voice assistants like Amazons Alexa and Apples Siri using data from the same platform.

Some fund Wikipedia through donations, but many others that use Wikipedia resources in a major way, get away without even so much as a thank you note.

"This is the first time the foundation has recognised that commercial users are users of our service. We've known they are there, but never really treated them as a user base," Lane Becker, a senior director at the Wikimedia Foundation, told Wired.

Premium customers could see themselves getting access to Wikipedia data delivered quicker, or formatted in a way that suits them best - ultimately solving some of the most in-depth issues for these tech giants.

This is about setting up the movement to thrive for decades to come, to weather any storm, and to genuinely stand a chance at achieving the mission first conceived 20 years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation wrote in an online essay.

Were going to need more resources, more partners, and more allies if we are going to achieve the goals implicit in our vision statement.

Via Wired

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Wikipedia is getting a 'premium' paid version - but you can't get it - TechRadar