On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography. "The Iraq War: A Historiography of Wikipedia Changelogs" is a twelve-volume set of all changes to the Wikipedia article on the Iraq War. The twelve volumes cover a five year period from December 2004 to November 2009, a total of 12,000 changes and almost 7,000 pages. The set is part of a project exploring history and historiography facilitated by the internet, and visualising information, opinion, narrative and discussion, by James Bridle.
posted by shakespeherian
on Sep 7, 2010 -
38 comments
Predator vs *:
Na'vi,
Tintin,
Punisher,
Batman,
Jason,
Ewoks,
Spiderman,
Power Rangers,
Alien,
Wikipedia,
Wikipedia vs Predator,
Robocop,
Predator.
posted by zippy
on Apr 17, 2010 -
20 comments
Wikipedia is being sued for publishing the names of two convicted killers. Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed
well-known German actor Walter Sedlmayr in 1990. They were convicted of the crime in 1993 and sentenced to prison, and recently released. Under German law, publishing the name of a criminal after he has served his sentence is considered an undue infringement of privacy, and is illegal. Accordingly, the German Wiki removed the names of the killers off the page discussing the murder --- but the English language version of wiki, based in the US and operating under the First Ammendment, has not. Now the killers' lawyer has sued the Wikimedia foundation to get them to remove the names.
[more inside]
posted by Diablevert
on Nov 13, 2009 -
153 comments
Wikirank is an analytical tool that measures the popularity of trending topics on wikipedia. You can compare up to four topics and generate nifty embeddable graphs.
posted by peacay
on Mar 26, 2009 -
9 comments
Wikitrivia.net makes trivia questions out of Wikipedia pages. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it does pretty well for not having a magic AI that understands English. Hit reload if you get a question you don't like, or grab the
source code if you think you can make it better.
posted by tss
on Feb 12, 2009 -
14 comments
[Former Novell chief scientist] Jeff Merkey,... claims [Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy] Wales told him in 2006 that in exchange for a substantial donation from Merkey, he would edit his uncomplimentary Wikipedia entry to make it more favourable. Merkey made a $US5000 ([AU]$5455) donation in 2006... around the same time, Wales personally made changes to [Merkey's Wikipedia] entry after wiping it out completely and ordering editors to start over.
But it's all in a good cause, to keep Wikipedia ad-free, right? Well, no, according to
Danny Wool, Wales's former "right-hand man" at Wikipedia: Wool says
Wales used the contributions to pay for, among other things, Russian massages and as much as $650 on wine for a dinner for four, while Wales traveled at Wikipedia's expense. And though Wikipedia paid his expenses, Wool claims that Wales kept the proceeds:
"At one point [Wales] owed the Foundation some $30,000 in receipts, and this while we were preparing for the audit. Not a bad sum, considering that many of those trips had fat honoraria, which Jimbeau kept for himself."
posted by orthogonality
on Mar 11, 2008 -
93 comments
It was revealed last week that former Wikipedia Chief Operating Officer Carolyn Doran was
a convicted felon, her prior record includes four convictions for driving under the influence, two of check fraud and petty larceny, one hit and run with fatality, one unlawful wounding for shooting a former boyfriend, suspect in a murder case, and some suspicion surrounding the drowning death of her newlywed husband. Senior Wikipedians are
"shocked", and the waves are still reverberating as apparently something
totally secret and big is going down at the Foundation (that runs Wikipedia) that may radically alter the board for better or worse.
posted by stbalbach
on Dec 19, 2007 -
103 comments
