Johann Hari, opinion columnist for the British newspaper The Independent, finally admitted to being behind the now-banned user " David r from meth productions", as well as using prior published statements in interviews without proper attribution.
In Hari's published apology, he details the nature and extent of his editing:
The connection between Hari and User:David r from meth productions first surfaced in a Diary piece for The Spectator by Nick Cohen in July (see Signpost's initial coverage on 11 July), and was quickly followed up investigative work by the lawyer and writer David Allen Green – who has a concluding blog post on the matter at the New Statesman website.
Hari has returned the Orwell Prize he was given and has agreed to take time off and undertake a journalism course. One of the victims of Hari's activities on Wikipedia, Cristina Odone, wrote an article entitled " Johann Hari hounded me for years: all he gets is four months' unpaid holiday from the Independent. But the truth will come out":
Hari's apology has, of course, been subject to considerable negative reaction ( Erik Wemple at the Washington Post asked: "Hey, like, how is a journalism training course going to cure the ills of Johann Hari? A look at his own disclosures shows that his sins are sins of character, not training. Does he really need some instructor to tell him not to libel someone on Wikipedia?"). Hari's activity on Wikipedia has been discussed in a number of media outlets including The Guardian, The Economist and The Telegraph. William Beutler also discussed the story on The Wikipedian.
Business Insider caught up with board president of Moveon.org and search guru Eli Pariser for insights into the changing nature of search in an era of increasing personalisation. Pariser had first taken note of the implications when he noticed Facebook had gradually been narrowing down the content it highlighted to him based on the political compatibility between him and the content's authors, part of a trend among websites to profile users based on their past browsing habits and to display content that is likely to appeal more prominently than that which is not.
Pariser's subsequent investigations found that the more websites tried to algorithmically tailor content to what they imagined users were looking for, the less universally oriented sites like Wikipedia featured prominently in search results. As attempts to make content as personally relevant to individual users represent a driving concern of most major websites other than Wikipedia, this could threaten the unparallelled stature of Wikipedia in search (particularly Google search) rankings that has been widely credited for its dominance as a top ten global online resource. This week, the encyclopaedia was reported to have been overtaken by microblogging service Tumblr in Quantcast-measured pageviews.
Johann Hari, opinion columnist for the British newspaper The Independent, finally admitted to being behind the now-banned user " David r from meth productions", as well as using prior published statements in interviews without proper attribution.
In Hari's published apology, he details the nature and extent of his editing:
The connection between Hari and User:David r from meth productions first surfaced in a Diary piece for The Spectator by Nick Cohen in July (see Signpost's initial coverage on 11 July), and was quickly followed up investigative work by the lawyer and writer David Allen Green – who has a concluding blog post on the matter at the New Statesman website.
Hari has returned the Orwell Prize he was given and has agreed to take time off and undertake a journalism course. One of the victims of Hari's activities on Wikipedia, Cristina Odone, wrote an article entitled " Johann Hari hounded me for years: all he gets is four months' unpaid holiday from the Independent. But the truth will come out":
Hari's apology has, of course, been subject to considerable negative reaction ( Erik Wemple at the Washington Post asked: "Hey, like, how is a journalism training course going to cure the ills of Johann Hari? A look at his own disclosures shows that his sins are sins of character, not training. Does he really need some instructor to tell him not to libel someone on Wikipedia?"). Hari's activity on Wikipedia has been discussed in a number of media outlets including The Guardian, The Economist and The Telegraph. William Beutler also discussed the story on The Wikipedian.
Business Insider caught up with board president of Moveon.org and search guru Eli Pariser for insights into the changing nature of search in an era of increasing personalisation. Pariser had first taken note of the implications when he noticed Facebook had gradually been narrowing down the content it highlighted to him based on the political compatibility between him and the content's authors, part of a trend among websites to profile users based on their past browsing habits and to display content that is likely to appeal more prominently than that which is not.
Pariser's subsequent investigations found that the more websites tried to algorithmically tailor content to what they imagined users were looking for, the less universally oriented sites like Wikipedia featured prominently in search results. As attempts to make content as personally relevant to individual users represent a driving concern of most major websites other than Wikipedia, this could threaten the unparallelled stature of Wikipedia in search (particularly Google search) rankings that has been widely credited for its dominance as a top ten global online resource. This week, the encyclopaedia was reported to have been overtaken by microblogging service Tumblr in Quantcast-measured pageviews.
Discuss this story
Johann Hari
The Council of the Orwell Prize have today issued a statement.-- A bit iffy ( talk) 13:25, 27 September 2011 (UTC) reply
Article title
There is a bit of gray here, so I'm not personally going to change the title, but "recants" isn't quite the right word - it should be "confesses". To recant is to publicly disavow a position or statement that one has made in one's own name, previously; in this case, what is being disavowed is surreptitious editing, not an open, avowed position regarding what is right and wrong. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:49, 27 September 2011 (UTC) reply
Michael K. Williams
I found the erroneous fact in the article from May to October of 2007 but I don't see that it was readded more recently. Seems a bit unfair to complain of something broken and fixed that long ago. Rmhermen ( talk) 07:21, 30 September 2011 (UTC) reply
What is "Newtonian conception"?
Regarding: "... quite differently to the traditional Newtonian conception held in business circles".
What does "Newtonian conception" mean in this context? Reference to something (planets) orbiting a central thing (the Sun)? -- Mortense ( talk) 09:27, 30 September 2011 (UTC) reply
Wikipedia vs Tumblr
The important thing to remember here is that this is based on absolute pageviews - not uniques! -- U5K0'sTalkMake WikiLove not WikiWar 21:04, 1 October 2011 (UTC) reply