Spanish police pursues BLP vandals, Jimbo interviewed, advice for experts and spammers

The Spanish police are investigating four Internet users for edits made in the months up to July 2009 to the Spanish Wikipedia's article about politician Javier Arenas of the center-right People's Party (PP). As reported[1] by news agency EFE on September 25, a resident of Albacete and one of a village in the Levante were recently summoned to testify at their local courts, joining as suspects two other Internet users that had come under scrutiny some months ago. According to the PP, whose complaint led to the investigation, the offending edits included "insults and coarse language" against Arenas and his family, and false information that was subsequently used by a government member to insinuate that Arenas had needed a long time to complete his law degree.

Various media reported on comments made by Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales on a recent visit to Malaysia. AFP ("Wikipedia founder says Malaysia should ditch censorship") quoted him as saying that "a very open flow of information" was important in "making sure that the people have the information they need" and that "I want to write that information (on sites like user-generated Wikipedia) so that my fellow citizens have the knowledge they need so they can't be oppressed."

On the other hand, Wales repeated earlier criticism of Wikileaks (see Signpost coverage: "Difficult relationship between WikiLeaks and Wikipedia"), a website set up to publish leaked information: As reported by Associated Press, Wales said that the site has committed an "irresponsible" act by knowingly releasing the contents of classified military information, and that it could potentially "put innocent lives at risk". In related news, Wales recently explained on Wikipedia why the domains wikileaks.com, wikileaks.net, wikileaks.us, wikileaks.biz, and wikileaks.mobi appear still to be registered to Wales' company Wikia, even though

Malaysian tabloid The Star quoted Wales [2][3] on various other topics, e.g. his education, negative media coverage by Fox News related to his deletions of sexual images on Commons earlier this year ("That controversy, says Wales, is all over, too. 'Fox News basically ran some outrageous, inflammatory stories that were absolutely not true'), the dispute over whether Larry Sanger should be called a co-founder of Wikipedia ("this so-called controversy has overshadowed his contribution not as co-founder but as a very important employee and a very important part of the early community"), a 2009 Wall Street Journal article about Wikipedia having lost 57,000 editors within a year ("I said, ‘Well, I found them – in my refrigerator’. It was just a badly done study") and many other topics.

Yet another interview with Wales was published a few days later in the Financial Times Magazine—a list of personal questions titled The Inventory. Asked for his "mentor", Wales said that one is Larry Lessig ("He was one of the first people who realised what I was doing at Wikipedia"). To the question "What ambitions do you still have?", Wales replied: "My goal for the next 10 to 20 years is to build Wikipedia in the languages of the developing world."

• Editing advice for experts: In an article published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, academics from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge provide "Ten simple rules for editing Wikipedia". The article explains core Wikipedia policies and guidelines such as Verifiability or Conflict of interest—although there is no mention of the Manual of Style—and focused on how these rules apply to editing by experts. One of the co-authors is longtime Wikipedian and MediaWiki programmer Magnus Manske.
• Editing advice for spammers: The SEO blog GAMBLING CA$H COW has published advice for Link Building on Wikipedia. The "tips for proceeding with a Wikipedia campaign" include building a good reputation within the community (e.g. obtaining barnstars for one's user page), directing the "flow of link juice" within Wikipedia, "making friends within the community" which can give support in an AfD, and avoiding anonymous editing to prevent Wikiscanner-like embarrassments.
• Band calls song "Wikipedia": The debut single of 1980s-style pop band "Ambassadors of Morocco", to be released on November 15, is called "Wikipedia", according to an announcement on British music web site Glasswerk. Apart from the title and the frequent exclamation of "Wikipedia, Wikipedia!" in the lyrics, the song and video clip do not contain obvious references to Wikipedia.

← Previous "In the news"

Next "In the news" →

In this issue

4 October 2010 (all comments)

News and notes

In the news

Book review

WikiProject report

Features and admins

Arbitration report

Technology report

+ Add a comment

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.

I don't get the "in my refrigerator" joke. Is it meant to be a macabre serial killer joke?--greenrd (talk) 09:04, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fox news is already reporting on Wales' murder confession. Gigs (talk) 13:13, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is just that the refrigerator is a place missing things sometimes turn up - usually food items or at least kitchen related, but sometimes my reading glasses. Rich Farmbrough, 13:36, 5 October 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Indeed, I have found my car keys in the fridge once. Though... I would be impressed with anyone who could fit 57,000 people in a refrigerator. bahamut0013^words_deeds 15:23, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One possibility could be a reference to the notion of Women in Refrigerators (a bit further done here). Tabercil (talk) 20:56, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why the PLoS article needed to mention Wikipedia's Manual of Style; not only do many established Wikipedians either ignore it or are unaware of its existence, it doesn't provide anything that a combination of the guidance of more familiar academic style guides (such as the MLA Handbook) & studying relevant Featured Articles would. A more important omission would be the no original research policy, since the natural inclination of any expert would be to add new & original material to an article, & getting tripped up by this policy could inadvertently discourage people we'd obviously desire for their expertise. In any case, the article could only cover so much ground & obviously some things had to be left out. -- llywrch (talk) 16:14, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have you written any featured articles or lists? While Wikipedia's growth is far too large to keep every page concurrent with our highest standards (as stated in the MoS and as states so virulently by the project's opposers), nominations there have to be dead on. The MoS is indeed a very important document. But, as with the MLA handbook, almost no one has read the whole thing =) ResMar 22:54, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How are you saying nor is more important? Imo, it's one of the most vauge back-bracers of wikipedia. What kind of desperate, desperate person would want to try to publish their research via Wikipedia? Even with articles that are completely unreferenced, 99% of the time everything or almost everything there is true, regardless of sourcing. ResMar 22:57, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry that you're offended for calling your baby ugly; I call them as I see them. I'm sure many Wikipedians would consider MoS as another of "the most vague back-bracers of wikipedia.[sic]" I mentioned WP:NOR simply as an example, but in my experience many experts coming to Wikipedia for the first time have run afoul of NOR simply because they don't know better: the intent of publication in scholarship or academia is to contribute original work -- which is antithetical to Wikipedia's mandate. As for Manual of Styles, every periodical & publishing house has one, & professionals who want to publish expect to find one. -- llywrch (talk) 16:08, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not by "baby" and I don't maintain it. In fact, I've never even read the whole thing in one sitting. If you have a problem with it, contact Tony1. I have yet to meet anyone who has this problem. In fact, it is mostly the "common" user adding unsourced statements that lead to things tagged with ((references needed)) tags. ResMar 21:02, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]