Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-11-06/In the media
 Article display preview: | This is a draft of a potential Signpost article, and should not be interpreted as a finished piece. Its content is subject to review by the editorial team and ultimately by JPxG, the editor in chief. Please do not link to this draft as it is unfinished and the URL will change upon publication. If you would like to contribute and are familiar with the requirements of a Signpost article, feel free to be bold in making improvements!
| ||||
Stick a sock in it, Elon (still not right))
Optional: Give a short WP:LEAD-like introduction statement here.
A Musky smell
A tweet from the world's richest man and leading tweeter, Elon Musk, said that Wikipedia should change its name to "Dickypedia," offering Wikipedia a billion dollars to do so, "in the interests of accuracy". An unprecedented explosion of articles in the press about Wikipedia followed.
- The Guardian opines that Wikipedia's very existence offends him and compares the "good internet" (Wikipedia) to the "bad internet" (Facebook and X, the website formerly known as Twitter).
- The Rolling Stone available here writes that "Elon Musk Offers to Also Ruin Wikipedia" referring to how Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter a year ago and renamed it X, which is now valued at about $19 billion. Wikipedian Annie Rauwerda is quoted at length, saying for example "Frankly, I have been sick of thinking about Elon Musk for years and I do not think his tweets about Wikipedia are all that novel. I mean, "Dickipedia" isn't even the first disparaging nickname for Wikipedia he's touted this year." Rolling Stone also mentions Stephen Harrison's prophetic article from Slate, published in April, about how the article about Musk was becoming controversial and difficult to edit.
- Harrison's new article in Slate, Wikipedia Is Covering the War in Israel and Gaza Better Than X focuses on how X is spreading misinformation about the war and how changes Musk has made only make matters worse. Musk has been focusing more on criticism from Wales, "trolling" Wales rather than addressing his specific points.
- Noam Cohen is the dean of the small group of journalists who specialize in covering Wikipedia. His opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, Elon Musk’s hate for Wikipedia reveals his true views on free speech focuses on the weaknesses of Musk's arguments against Wikipedia's accuracy. Musk's main tool is ridicule. Wikipedia's main tool is good-faith collaboration.
- The Hill gives a timeline of a back-and-forth Tweet-fest between Musk, Jimmy Wales and others. Musk questions Wikipedia's fundraising propriety. Wales tells him that "Wikipedia is not for sale." X's "Community Notes" weighs in providing facts that undercut Musk's arguments.
Vice.
The Globe and Mail, Wikipedia now on Musk's "roster of A-list enemies"
Wikipedians can be grateful for the support of all these journalists when we are under attack from the world's richest man. They all, in their own way, attest to the quality of our website and the power of collaborative editing. But they bring individual takes on the faults of Musk and X. Wikipedia's basic quality is almost universally recognized, but Musk's sins are as controversial as they are widespread.
Other news outlets that have covered this story include NDTVPC Magazine Livemint, and Yahoo.
U.K. Shadow Chancellor accused of plagiarizing Wikipedia in her new book
The Financial Times in New book from UK shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves lifts from Wikipedia accuses Rachel Reeves of wholesale plagiarizing from Wikipedia in "The Women Who Made Modern Economics". There were lesser amounts of unattributed copying from The Guardian and several other sources. The Guardian reported that ...
Reeves told the BBC that some sentences "were not properly referenced" but would be corrected in future reprints. She also told the BBC
I'm the author of that book, I hold my hands up and said, I should have done better....Obviously, I had research assistants on the book, but I take responsibility for everything that is in that book.
But for me, what I wanted to do is to bring together the stories of these women. And if I'm guilty of copying and pasting some facts about some amazing women and turning it into a book that gets read, then I'm really proud of that
Other media covering the story include The TelegraphThe Independent, The Times, and i,
Websites are music
The New Yorker cartoonist Triana Muñoz draws websites (here) as if they were musical styles and gives the styles names in the captions. Not to ruin your viewing pleasure, we list the websites and give music to fit the captions.
- Google [1]
- Rotten Tomatoes [2]
- Yahoo [3]
- Buzzfeed [4]
- Weather Channel [5]
- Wikipedia [6]
- Miscellaneous sites [7]
- Neither X, nor Twitter made the cut – No cartoon, no caption – bonus track – S
In brief
- Who is Mike Johnson?: Johnson (R-LA) is the newly elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Not just another candidate for the post, but the actually elected Speaker, second in the line of succession for the presidency. Politico asked European and Canadian politicos, who they granted diplomatic anonymity should this be "diplomatic immunity?, who he is. They were at an embarrassing loss for words until an Irish government advisor was found. He had looked up Johnson on Wikipedia.
- Maher steps up: Al Jazeera reports that former WMF CEO Katherine Maher replaced former Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave who had spoken too much about the Israeli-Gaza conflict, according to some of the conference's corporate sponsors. "In recent weeks Web Summit has been at the centre of the conversation, rather than the host. Its purpose was overshadowed by the personal comments of the event’s founder and former CEO, Paddy Cosgrave," according to Maher.
- Antisemitism on Wikipedia: Dr. Shira Klein will present a lecture on this subject at the USC Shoah Foundation (Shoah is Hebrew for The Holocaust). Klein's views on this topic are well known in the context of the long running arbitration case on "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland". See previous Signpost coverage. (check my text's neutrality please -sb)
- Wikipedia pages deliver malware: Security Week describes a new "Wiki-Slack attack" that exploits a formatting glitch in Slack as "essentially a numbers game, meaning that the attacker needs to modify as many Wikipedia pages as they can and register domains for them, to ensure they can eventually infect a target of interest." TechRadar said that "sharing a Wikipedia link on Slack could be a serious security no-no".
This page is a draft for the next issue of the Signpost. Below is some helpful code that will help you write and format a Signpost draft. If it's blank, you can fill out a template by copy-pasting this in and pressing 'publish changes': {{subst:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Story-preload}}
Images and Galleries
|
|---|
To put an image in your article, use the following template (link): This will create the file on the right. Keep the 300px in most cases. If writing a 'full width' article, change
Placing (link) will instead create an inline image like below [[File:|300px|center|alt=Placeholder alt text]] CAPTION
To create a gallery, use the following to create |
Quotes
| |||
|---|---|---|---|
To insert a framed quote like the one on the right, use this template (link): If writing a 'full width' article, change
To insert a pull quote like
use this template (link):
To insert a long inline quote like
use this template (link): |
Side frames
| ||
|---|---|---|
|
Side frames help put content in sidebar vignettes. For instance, this one (link): gives the frame on the right. This is useful when you want to insert non-standard images, quotes, graphs, and the like.
A caption
For example, to insert the {{Graph:Chart}} generated by in a frame, simple put the graph code in to get the framed Graph:Chart on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change |
Two-column vs full width styles
|
|---|
|
If you keep the 'normal' preloaded draft and work from there, you will be using the two-column style. This is perfectly fine in most cases and you don't need to do anything. However, every time you have a However, you can also fine-tune which style is used at which point in an article. To switch from two-column → full width style midway in an article, insert where you want the switch to happen. To switch from full width → two-column style midway in an article, insert where you want the switch to happen. |
Links and such
|
|---|
By the way, the template that you're reading right now is {{Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue}} (edit). A list of the preload templates for Signpost articles can be found here. |
Discuss this story
I think that most readers will not understand the first part of the headline. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 09:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In discussing Elon Musk here and in this month's Signpost opinion column, where I've added an "Open Comment to Elon Musk" in the discussion section, maybe let's WP:Assume good faith to his purposely low-brow but humorous and unique way of getting his point across that Wikipedia could possibly use a bit more balance on some current topic pages. No matter what is said, done, or implied, Musk is a friend of Wikipedia given his foundation's past donations. Assuming good faith should ideally include assuming it both within and outside of Wikipedia's project boundaries. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:50, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"spoken too much about the Israeli-Gaza conflict" is an odd way to describe what got Paddy Cosgrave in trouble. Lots of people have said a lot about the conflict; the real issue is that Cosgrave seemed to be speaking on the side of the terrorists. Starting on October 7, he posted and liked dozens of anti-Israel tweets, including liking this post - of the Palestinian flag - on the day itself. I think he didn't say anything bad about Hamas or their actions until about a week later. Yaron K. (talk) 13:28, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In other news, Ahed Tamimi (mentioned in the Spectator section) was arrested today. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:55, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can't help but think Wales & Musk got to boasting about their -- er -- extracurricular activities, Musk came off second best, & decided to get back at Wales by trash-talking Wikipedia. (I doubt this did happen, but knowing a little about both men, I think it's plausible.) -- llywrch (talk) 21:34, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strange enough I take the rant of Musk as a compliment. It proves that what we are doing is sufficiently neutral.
The Banner talk 18:05, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
F1 in the signpost also Toto Wolff being angry will never get old https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/15/x-being-overrun-by-trolls-and-lunatics-after-musk-takeover-wikipedia-founder.html he fire back •Cyberwolf• 18:10, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yahoo didn't cover that. Complex covered that. There is nothing I like less[citation needed] than attributing a syndicated story to the publication that merely reprinted it. Nardog (talk) 06:35, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Follow-up on the Spectator-piece: Is it possible to save Wikipedia? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Ignore them they are clearly high on some strong shit •Cyberwolf•talk? 18:34, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- At least O'Sullivan's First Law is a redirect to something. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:10, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As a short, lighthearted breather from a certain social media platform's leader, Tumblr's CEO said he would be open to a meeting of the minds with the Foundation. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 04:47, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]