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  • Our Mission:
  • 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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EXTRA CREAMY WIKIPEDIA – adventures in advertising

File:Obstjoghurt01.jpg

Yogurt.

By Nathalie Collida and Andreas Kolbe

You wouldn’t think of Wikipedia as an “extra creamy” website, but that is the term that professional Wikipedia writing company Wiki-PR, recently banned from Wikipedia, used on its website to advertise its services. In what appears at first glance like a badly written article on the history and various uses of yogurt, the narrative then takes an abrupt turn. It reads like this:

Yogurt is of foodstuff whose origins are shrouded in the mists of time. While there is no exact record as to when milk was first fermented into its yoghurt form, there is evidence from as early as 2000 BC of yogurt being produced and eaten.

In the present day, yogurt is available in an array of varieties and flavors. By utilizing different milks it has been possible to meet all kinds of specific dietary need. For those who are trying to lose weight, low calorie options are available, providing a sweet and healthy treat with which to end a meal.

As a dairy product manufacturer is vital that customers have access to accurate and unbiased information about both your brand ethos and your commitment to high quality production. A straightforward way to get this message across to consumers is to make a Wikipedia page. Utilizing the enormous popularity of Wikipedia means that you can easily and simply convey essential information about your company and your products in a format that is widely recognized and easily understood.

For many businesses, the question of how to get on Wikipedia can be troublesome to resolve. Wikipedia has a number of rules and guidelines that are designed to oversee who and what qualifies for a page of their own. Attempts to create a

…continue reading EXTRA CREAMY WIKIPEDIA – adventures in advertising

Wikipedia – the new ministry of truth

By Andreas Kolbe

Wikipedia, the crowdsourced online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, has often been credited with “democratising knowledge”. But it’s a strange sort of democracy. Wikipedia has a near-monopoly online: almost any search engine query will return a Wikipedia article as a top result. Most internet users only read the first search result. And in fact, users often do not even have to click through to Wikipedia. More and more material from Wikipedia is displayed on Google’s own search results pages, thanks to the Google Knowledge Graph panel and Google’s new snippet overlay. No wonder that there is such great interest from the most diverse parties to influence Wikipedia’s content.

News from Azerbaijan

A case in point is the government of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is an oil- and gas-rich former Soviet republic that has for more than two decades been ruled by the Aliyev dynasty. Likened in leaked US diplomatic cables to a mafia don, its current president Ilham Aliyev is seen as “increasingly authoritarian and hostile to diversity of political views.”

The 2014 Human Rights Watch report on Azerbaijan reads as follows:

The Azerbaijani government’s poor record on freedom of expression, assembly, and association dramatically deteriorated during the year. The authorities arrested dozens of political activists on bogus charges, imprisoned critical journalists, broke up several peaceful public demonstrations, and adopted legislation that further restricted fundamental freedoms. This crackdown was the backdrop for the October 2013 presidential election, in which incumbent President Ilham Aliyev was re-elected for a third term with 84.5 percent of the vote.

So when in September of last year an obscure news item about the Azerbaijani Wikipedia was raised for discussion in our forum, it seemed worthy of a second look. Published by Azeri business news portal abc.az, it told the world, in somewhat broken English:

…continue reading Wikipedia – the new ministry of truth

Are Wikipedia administrators human?

By Mila, with Yerucham Turing To unblock or not to unblock, that is the question … In this blog article, we’ll try to solve the problem algebraically with one variable. Let’s start with an equation: “Blocks are used to prevent damage or disruption to Wikipedia, not to punish users” + X (the user) states he is not going to edit Wikipedia + Wikipedia:Assume good faith = unblock, right?

.

Not so fast, say the wikipediots. Oh, those wikipediots! They don’t act as humans, they act as Wikipedians. They don’t speak English, they speak Wikipedian. They don’t use common sense, they use Wikipedian sense. “Trongphu” is a Wikipedian who is active on Vietnamese Wikimedia projects, and is a sysop on one of them. Two years ago he was blocked from the English Wikipedia indefinitely, and his talk page access was revoked. Trongphu had only one way to appeal the block: by sending an email to the list of admins, and that is what he did. Having already had his share of aggravation from the unfriendly English Wikipedia environment, Trongphu had decided to concentrate his efforts on volunteering on Vietnamese Wikimedia projects. Being blocked from the English Wikipedia had hurt Trongphu’s reputation on the Vietnamese projects. This is what he tried to communicate to the list when he requested his unblock:

*I’m requesting an unblock on condition that you will never see me here again. I promise to not edit here anymore, if I broke my promise, you’re welcomed to block me again. *Please, don’t make blocks punitive. It has become punitive. It is only hurting me. *It is still making a negative impact on me as a devout editor on Vietnamese Wikipedia. Once in a while, someone would bring up

…continue reading Are Wikipedia administrators human?