Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-01-17/In the media

In the media

Year-end roundups, Wikipedia's 16th birthday, and more

Contribute —

In brief

If the BLT's simplicity earns its inventor "hero" status, what of the villain who invented this monstrosity?

Seeking sandwich history: A Gizmodo advertorial for the Hormel meat company asked about the invention of the BLT: What Hero Invented the BLT? The author quoted the Wikipedia article and looked for further information about the history of the sandwich. Our BLT article was first created in September 2002. Despite the article's having achieved the good article status in 2011, no one has uncovered such a "heroic" inventor. Lucikly, Hormel has not attempted to claim inventorship to date. Though not mentioned by Gizmodo, there was a period of time where our article on S'mores claimed they were invented by "Loretta Scott Crew", a falsehood which still gets repeated from time to time. (December 16)

From popular music to popular editing: Billboard, best known for its "Billboard Hot 100" ranking of popular music, covered English Wikipedia's most frequently edited articles of 2016 in Death, Donald Trump and Kanye West Had Year's Most Edited Wikipedia Articles. (It was only the "Hot 20," though.) You can see Wikipedian EpochFail's methodology here. (December 23)

More creative use confirms that the King has left the building: Two reporters at Buzzfeed recently decided to use not just Wikipedia but Wikidata to see how 2016 stacked up against all other years since 1900 in regards to significant celebrity deaths (the verdict was that 1977, which as the authors admit anyone who was alive that year will indeed remember as the year we lost Elvis at 42, among others, was as bad as 2016 if not worse). Their twin metric involves:
- number of backlinks from within enwiki, as reported in Wikidata, and,
- total number of articles in different-language Wikipedias. (December 30)

Top ten Wikipedia stories of 2016: Wikipedian WWB presented his picks for the top stories of last year. A worthy complement to our own rundown; he caught some good ones that we missed, as well as covering many of the same stories. (January 3)

Students heard that Google was trustworthy and Wikipedia was not: That's the message Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd heard in researching her book It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. She wrote up the issue in Did Media Literacy Backfire?, a post for the Data & Society Points blog. (January 5)

Comrades mourn red-linking: Canada Free Press wrote up an unsuccessful campaign to save an article about satire website The People's Cube (archive) article from deletion (AfD discussion). The People's Cube website also celebrated the demise of the article with various graphics and commentary: The People's Cube Article has just been Deleted from Wikipedia (article and commentary). The article was deleted for lack of notability. (January 10)

Beyond the locker room: When a Miami Dolphins quarterback took a hard hit during a football game, editors got busy vandalizing the Matt Moore article to report him as "deceased". The edits and Twitter reaction were noted by sportswriters at all22.com and the Palm Beach Post. The Post article also noted a trend in such edits relating to sports events. (January 9)

Viewing stats make beautiful music: In a story about past "Best New Artist" Grammy winners, the Tucson Sun covered the entertainment data project PrettyFamous. Using Wikipedia article view statistics as part of an algorithm to assign a "Musician Score", the project determined artist popularity and interest. (January 13)

“

Musician Score. This is a score out of 100 that is a weighted average of a musician's Wikipedia page views over the last 30 days, the Wikipedia page views over the last 30 days of the bands they were/are in, the number of followers they have on Spotify and the Wikipedia page views of both their releases as solo artists and in bands.

”

Whither wiki wiki? Mental Floss published an overview of wiki inventor Ward Cunningham's vision for the evolution of collaborative software. A Brief History of the Wiki—and Where It Might Be Going Next recaps Cunningham's descriptions of the Smallest Federated Wiki since 2012, and speculates about how it could address Wikipedia's challenges around bias and diversity. (January 15)

404 no more: The Internet Archive, the non-profit maintainers of the Wayback Machine, announced a new extension for Google's Chrome browser, that helps the user navigate to an archived copy of "dead" web pages. Bleeping Computer published an overview of the extension, which may help Wikipedia editors and readers access archived materials. (January 15)

Academia and Wikipedia: compatible after all? FOSS advocate Don Watkins interviewed LiAnna Davis of the Wiki Education Foundation, for opensource.com: Can academic faculty members teach with Wikipedia? (January 16)

Recapping the blemishes: Former Signpost editor in chief Andreas Kolbe covered "sixteen of Wikipedia's biggest cock-ups" in the Register, to mark the site's 16th birthday.

Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or contact the editor.

← Previous "In the media"

In this issue

In the media

Discuss this story

These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache.

Quote from above on Buzzfeed's survey of celebrity deaths: "the verdict was that 1977 ... was as bad as 1977 if not worse". That's one useful survey. Andrew Dalby 11:32, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed - thanks! -Pete Forsyth (talk) 11:35, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

'404 no more' Am I blind or did we forget to link to or name such an extension? What a great way to be non-helpful: "there is this cool tool you may find useful. We won't link it and won't mention its name. Go see if you can find it with those vague clues." Fail. Can the author please expand this blurb with something that won't make people waste few minutes trying to find this extension?--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:28, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

https://blog.archive.org/2017/01/13/wayback-machine-chrome-extension-now-available/ links to it; added. 174.16.120.55 (talk) 17:33, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Piotrus, blind, perhaps? But don't let that slow you down. I've made the link a little clearer, and I will find an intern to brutalize for this transgression. Please feel free to contact our subscription department for a full refund on this edition! -Pete Forsyth (talk) 17:46, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, I still don't see a link to the extension in the old version. Just article about the extension. The blog link is better, but I wonder, is there any reason not to link to the installation page at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak ? I mean, why not make it easy to people? Anyway, thanks for the note, better few hoop jumps needed than no info at all :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:28, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Piotrus, your initial comment was quite hostile. I am not personally offended, but I am quite concerned about the ideas that our authors in general might have to contend with this kind of response. Please understand: if somebody were to attack one of your research reviews with the level of hostility you have shown here, I would not tolerate it. This may or may not matter to you, but I'm sure it matters to some of our contributors.

We could use more help in collecting and writing up these pieces. If you would like to take it on, please let me know. If you contribute regularly, you will have a great deal of influence over how things are described and linked. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 01:36, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Peteforsyth You are right I was... a bit too frank, or sarcastic. I usually try to keep my temper, but around that time I was dealing with another wiki problem, and, well, it's no excuse. I hope nobody was offended, it was not my intention, I just wanted to point out that an important link was missing/obscured, and should have done it in a more neutral tone. Once again, I appreciate the time that you and others put towards writing those pieces. Cheers, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 15:09, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for acknowledging. You have no quarrel from me, the initial version was less than ideal. I think now, it's fine; the extension itself is prominently linked in both the blog post and the news story. I appreciate your feedback, and this followup means a lot to me. Thank you, as well, for your excellent research reviews. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 19:26, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Installed the extension. Nice :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:58, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please let us know if you find yourself using it for the long term! -Pete Forsyth (talk) 19:26, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost is looking for new talent.

Home

About