On Tuesday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the company had a new strategy to deal with conspiracy theories on the platform: dropping a handy Wikipedia link beneath videos on highly contested topics. And it looks like Wikipedia learned about this curious strategy at the same time as everyone else.
When State Representative Ramon A. Perez says he didn’t mean to print a screenshot of a Wikipedia page with open porn tabs, we believe him. When he says that he didn’t realize the open porn tabs were visible when he handed out the page, we believe him. When he says that he didn’t personally take the screenshot, it’s a…
There’s a Wikipedia edit war going on right now on the page of the law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. That wouldn’t be notable except for the fact that someone is trying to scrub Donald Trump’s name from the page and Joe Lieberman is a special counsel at the firm. Lieberman is a frontrunner to head the…
China and Wikipedia have always had a contentious relationship and it appears that authorities are beginning to realize that if they can’t allow access to the site, they’ll have to build one of their own. But the leader of the new project says “our goal is not to catch up, but overtake.”
Revision wars on Wikipedia amongst human editors is an all-too-common occurrence, but new research from the UK shows that similar online battles are being waged between the site’s software robots.
My kids aren’t playing Pokémon Go yet, but the older one had heard enough about it that he started reading up about it. When I looked at the screen after he’d been on the computer, I encountered this incredible wall of text:
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is familiar with people putting made-up bullshit online. As I mentioned, he founded Wikipedia. But this is on another level: Wales’ words got changed on a Chinese conference website to make it sound like he was pro-Chinese government surveillance.
There are many ways to judge the quality of a University: the results of its students, the research it produces, perhaps even the number of Nobel prizes it boasts. But how about using Wikipedia citations instead?
In the 21st century, you don’t need a record label connection or sexual favor to get backstage. All you need to know is how to edit a Wikipedia page.
After the internet had a chance to hear Ben Carson’s theory about the pyramids, #bencarsonwikipedia has popped up on Twitter. It’s a safe space where supporters are sharing facts that you might find on Wikipedia in some alternate universe where Carson gets elected. Here is a non-definitive sampling of the best.
After fifteen years of providing 11th-hour copy+paste material for high schoolers, the English-language version of Wikipedia has just hit a milestone: five million articles.
This amazing visualization brings together the world’s history from Wikipedia into an interactive timeline stuffed with information and images. If only history lessons at school had been this much fun.
Wikipedia is no stranger to scandals, but a quiet update on its administrators’ announcement board reveals a big problem. The site’s CheckUser team recently banned 381 editors’ accounts for “undisclosed paid advocacy.” In other words, these Wikipedians were secretly shilling for brands and even resorting to extortion.
It’s not only lazy students and Buzzfeed editors who steal from Wikipedia.
It’s no surprise that people tamper with Wikipedia entries on a regular basis, but it turns out that especially dedicated trolls have been sabotaging entries on politically controversial science topics like evolution and global warming.
As ubiquitous as high-speed data connections have become, there are still occasions when you won’t have as much connectivity as you might like, mostly while traveling and roaming abroad. If you want some reading material to pass the time while you’re squeezed for bandwidth, the official Wikipedia apps for iOS and…
If you’ve ever wondered what the most important Wikipedia page was—about any topic—wonder no longer: a team of researchers has developed the first open Wikipedia ranking. Here’s what’s most important right now.
If you find something confusing, you might find yourself uttering that what you’re dealing with is “all Greek” to you. But what do the Greeks say? And for that matter, what does everyone else around the world say?
Last week, we found out that someone at New York Police Department headquarters was manipulating Wikipedia articles on police violence to make themselves look better. The NYPD has identified two officers behind the police-friendly entries—and is doing shit-all about these on-the-clock edits.
Looks like the long arm of the law is trying to diddle Wikipedia into submission. Members of the NYPD are trying to scrub Wikipedia's entries about police violence.
