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  • We exist to shine the light of scrutiny into the dark crevices of Wikipedia and its related projects; to examine the corruption there, along with its structural flaws; and to inoculate the unsuspecting public against the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense that issues forth from one of the world’s most frequently visited websites, the “encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”
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A feminist’s Wikipedia biography

By Andreas Kolbe

Anita Sarkeesian is a media critic and video blogger whose work focuses on sexism in video games. Her video blog, Feminist Frequency, is used as reading material in numerous universities’ women’s studies courses. Last year Sarkeesian became the target of a sustained harassment campaign because of her Kickstarter project, Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. The attacks on her were coordinated from various video game forums.

Sarkeesian was subjected to a torrent of hate on YouTube – thousands of abusive and often sexually explicit hate messages. At the same time, her Wikipedia biography was vandalised. Sarkeesian herself spoke of harassment via Wikipedia vandalism.

She posted a screenshot of her vandalised biography on her blog:

The image below shows the result of the vandalism that took place over the course of June 5th and 6th, 2012. This was not done by just one or two trolls but was a coordinated cyber-mob-style effort involving a whole gang working together. The screenshot below was downloaded directly from one of the internet forums organizing the harassment. They were proudly posting this image as a trophy to boast about what they were doing and to encourage others to join in.

Sarkeesian's Wikipedia biography at the height of the June 2012 harassment episode.

Sarkeesian’s Wikipedia biography at the height of the June 2012 harassment episode.

The vandalism included changing the text, changing the page categories, changing the external links to re-reroute to porn sites and adding a drawing of a woman with a man’s penis in her mouth captioned with “Daily Activities”.

Some of the vandalism was subtle, and bore the marks of insider knowledge. Adding

…continue reading A feminist’s Wikipedia biography

Wikipedia – Men and children first

By Nathalie Collida and friends

It’s no secret that Wikipedia has a shortage of female editors. According to a survey commissioned by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2011, a mere 8.5 per cent of the people contributing to the online encyclopaedia identify as women. In a recent op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times, Sue Gardner – who became the figurehead of Wikipedia when she signed up as Executive Director with the Wikimedia Foundation 5 years ago – tried to explain this by focusing on what she perceives as the “geeky, tech-centric, intellectually confident, thick-skinned and argumentative” nature of the average Wikipedian. Outside observers, among them Web2.0 expert Joseph Reagle, add another component to the mix: good old-fashioned sexism. His latest study, “’Free as in sexist’ Free culture and the gender gap” examines how the combative locker-room culture of Wikipedia’s male contributors – a good portion of whom are teens and pre-teens – makes women less likely to participate. While Reagle’s journal article relies heavily on previously published analyses and interviews with Wikipedians, we’ve decided to take a look under the bonnet of Ms Gardner’s million-dollar on-line empire, with examples taken not just from articles but also from areas of the encyclopaedia and its sister projects often overlooked by its readers: the talk pages of articles and editors as well as various discussion boards.

Wikimedia Commons and the art of masturbating in public

Natka Brown is a Russian-born language teacher who not only contributes to Wikipedia but also uses the site and its picture library Wikimedia Commons with her 8-year-old granddaughter by her side. During an unrelated search on Commons, she came across one of the thousands of pictures of male masturbation hosted on the project. Surprised and offended, she started a conversation on the Mediawiki IRC channel and was

…continue reading Wikipedia – Men and children first

Who’s the best Yoruban Wikipedian of them all?

By Gregory Kohs

Wikipedia has some problems with diversity. Something like nine out of ten editors of Wikipedia are male. About three-quarters are under the age of 30. And the vast majority are white. So, probably as an effort to make Wikipedia appear more “global”, the project’s co-founder Jimmy Wales invented an annual prize called the “Global Wikipedian of the Year” award.

In its inaugural year, 2011, the honor was bestowed by Jimmy Wales on a Kazakhstan government-supported official named Rauan Kenzhekhanuly.

The prize included a $5,000 grant, personally from Jimmy Wales.

We certainly hope that Jimbo cleared his $91,679 in 2010 personal debt obligations before he gave $5,000 to a former Kazakh government agent. In all, the award to and interest in Kazakhstan proved to be highly suspicious, as first reported here by Andreas Kolbe of Wikipediocracy and by my own Examiner report. The story was then picked up by The Telegraph and other world media. It certainly put a retroactive blemish on the 2011 Global Wikipedian of the Year award.

Come 2012, Jimmy Wales surely was thoughtfully thinking about who would receive the honor of that year’s Global Wikipedian award. In March 2012, Jimbo would notice the Yoruba Wikipedia (covering content in a native African language spoken mostly in Nigeria) and acknowledge the work of its most prolific editor. A further hint would come in April 2012, when Jimbo began to drum up PR for the Yoruba language Wikipedia, which he called the “most popular African language for Wikipedia”, at 29,000 articles. This surprised some people who noted that Swahili has more speakers than Yoruba. Well, working behind the scenes on the Yoruba Wikipedia was one User:Demmy who had written

…continue reading Who’s the best Yoruban Wikipedian of them all?