Articles about Wikipedia

Crowd-sourcing of information by Wikipedia has helped create a vast resource, used by millions of people. But the fact that anyone is free to contribute to the online encyclopedia means that there is potential for corruption.

Wikipedia has just banned hundreds of black hat editors which were found to have been paid to edit articles. It is a violation of Wikimedia's terms of use to accept money to promote people, companies, and interests on Wikipedia as the site is supposed to be free from bias and undue influence.

Continue reading →

Russia has placed a complete ban on Wikipedia because of an article about cannabis. The country's Federal Service for the Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) took exception to an article about charas -- a cannabis product popular in India.

The Russian Federal Drug Control Service deemed the article illegal because it included information about how the drug is made. Wikipedia's policy of not removing individual articles could mean that Russia's censors have no alternative but to block the site in its entirety.

Continue reading →

There have now been nearly 50 women who have publicly accused venerable comedian Bill Cosby of inappropriate sexual conduct throughout his entire career, but what will you find on his public Wikipedia page?

In his introductory Wikipedia paragraph, visitors will see nothing but the glowing commendations Cosby has earned over the years. Only in the deeply buried sections of his online encyclopedia entry will anyone eventually find a brief description of the ongoing sexual allegations and lawsuits. Visitors to the page are also greeted with a warning that "the neutrality of this article's introduction is disputed".

Continue reading →

There is a movement calling for the encryption of all web traffic. The cause of this could be laid at Edward Snowden's door, but there's no getting away from the fact that in recent years there is an increased interest in security and privacy. To this end, Wikimedia has announced that it is now using HTTPS to encrypt all of its traffic -- including that to Wikipedia.

We've already seen the US government embrace HTTPS, and companies like Google and Facebook are making it easier to control privacy settings. Apple has hit out at companies that fail to do enough to protect users' privacy, and Wiki media is taking the extra step of also implementing HSTS, just days after Microsoft announced that this would be supported by Internet Explorer 11 under Windows 7 and 8.1.

Continue reading →

Being bigger than Jesus is something that no one in the world can claim -- until now.

A new study of Wikipedia has found that Carl Linnaeus is the most influential person on Wikipedia and it means the 18th century Swedish biologist is more influential than a clutch of personalities such as Michael Jackson and Jesus Christ.

Continue reading →