Scottish Parliament computers might have been used to edit Wikipedia, report says

As first reported by The Scottish Sun, and then shared by The National, a few computers from the Scottish Parliament's headquarters might have been used to edit the Wikipedia articles of several MSPs from all over the political spectrum. Both newspapers correctly remind that all kinds of edits made to a specific page are automatically archived in its history: in this case, the original inquiry found that the IP addresses of some unregistered users apparently trace back to Holyrood. If confirmed, this would represent an evident breach not only of the parliamentary code of conduct, but also Wikipedia's rules on conflict of interest.

The main subject involved in the inquiry is Scottish Liberal Democrats leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton. Back in February 2021, the MSP received widespread backlash after being caught insulting his fellow politician Maree Todd, who was then serving as the Minister for Children and Young People, during an online institutional meeting. On February 16 of the same year, user Alex B4 added a short mention of the incident, which included a National article that further criticized Cole-Hamilton for his inappropriate apologies to Todd. However, on February 24, an IP user stepped in to remove references to the incident entirely: then, they proceeded to cut down part of the information provided on Cole-Hamilton's expenses for his campaign ahead of the 2016 elections, calling them " ad hominem attacks". All of the content was eventually restored by Alex himself on March 7. Since then, another IP user deleted some of the references about the 2021 incident again, replacing them with an unsourced statement claiming that Cole-Hamilton wrote a letter saying sorry to Todd, before apologizing to her in person – a statement that is still up at the time of writing this piece.

Other notable MSPs involved in the report are incumbent Scottish First Minister and SNP leader, Humza Yousaf, who was added to a list of "notable alumni" of the US-backed International Visitor Leadership Program; Reform UK Scotland leader, Michelle Ballantyne, who had an entire section about her political controversies removed from her article; and, finally, incumbent Minister for Cabinet and Parliamentary Business, George Adam, whose love for football club St Mirren F.C. was further highlighted on his page – curiously, Adam was the only one who immediately responded upon being contacted by The Sun, and it looks like he just had a good laugh out of the "incident". – O, B and RTH

Taylor Tomlinson hosts a wikirace on live TV

In a recent episode of CBS-hosted comedy panel show After Midnight, aired on February 12, 2024, host Taylor Tomlinson arranged a special wikirace as part of one of the show's mini-games, Wikipedia Link. In the occasion, her fellow comedians Vinny Thomas, Riki Lindhome and Rob Huebel took turns to guess how many clicks it takes to go from Snoop Dogg to the Great Depression on the English Wikipedia.

Tomlinson introduced the game by deeming Wikipedia as "humanity's CliffsNotes", as the three panelists then shared increasingly unorthodox guesses, ranging from weed to The Grapes of Wrath. Although it was Huebel who eventually found the right number of articles needed to complete the race, specifically five (including the two aforementioned pages), Tomlinson revealed quite an unexpected pattern: from Snoop, to Peanuts, to Howdy Doody, to Wonder Bread, to the 1939 New York World's Fair, to the Great Depression. However, in the comments below the video extract available on the show's YouTube channel, several users have stated there are even shorter paths connecting the two pages.

No matter who is right, it's safe to say Taylor and the rest of the After Midnight staff deserve a shout-out for helping popularize the wikirace trend and, by extension, Wikipedia as a whole. – O

Selena Deckelmann profile

The MIT Technology Review has published a profile of the Wikimedia Foundation's CTO, Selena Deckelmann. The main focus of the piece is how Deckelmann sees the place of Wikipedia in the age of chatbots:

Deckelmann argues that Wikipedia will become an even more valuable resource as nuanced, human perspectives become harder to find online. But fulfilling that promise requires continued focus on preserving and protecting Wikipedia’s beating heart: the Wikipedians who volunteer their time and care to keep the information up to date through old-fashioned talking and tinkering. Deckelmann and her team are dedicated to an AI strategy that prioritizes building tools for contributors, editors, and moderators to make their work faster and easier, while running off-platform AI experiments with ongoing feedback from the community. “My role is to focus attention on sustainability and people,” says Deckelmann. “How are we really making life better for them as we’re playing around with some cool technology?”

However –

Today Deckelmann sees a newer sustainability problem in AI development: the predominant method for training models is to pull content from sites like Wikipedia, often generated by open-source creators without compensation or even, sometimes, awareness of how their work will be used. “If people stop being motivated to [contribute content online],” she warns, “either because they think that these models are not giving anything back or because they’re creating a lot of value for a very small number of people—then that’s not sustainable.” At Wikipedia, Deckelmann’s internal AI strategy revolves around supporting contributors with the technology rather than short-circuiting them. The machine-learning and product teams are working on launching new features that, for example, automate summaries of verbose debates on a wiki’s "Talk" pages (where back-and-forth discussions can go back as far as 20 years) or suggest related links when editors are updating pages. “We’re looking at new ways that we can save volunteers lots of time by summarizing text, detecting vandalism, or responding to different kinds of threats,” she says.

The article also discusses the potential need for Wikipedia to meet its readers elsewhere online, naming the Foundation's Wikipedia ChatGPT plugin as an example. – AK

In brief

• Wikidata and Wikipedia as arbiters of truth: The Australian edition of The Spectator, noting that Wikipedia feeds internet search results on Google, Yahoo!, or Bing, as well as question-answering systems such as Siri, Amazon Alexa, or AI language models, wonders "how safe it is to crowdsource the truth".
• You're fired: Controversial radio talk show Coast to Coast AM recently claimed that "a cabal of hardcore skeptics and UFO debunkers has surreptitiously seized control of hundreds of Wikipedia pages". What's more, a change.org petition has been set up to "Demand Wikipedia to Dismiss Editors Suppressing UAP Phenomenon Information": one of its over 600 supporters stated that the platform "should show all sides of an issue without demanding so-called 'scientific evidence'".
• Where's my cut?: According to infamous news website BNN Breaking, under the surface of Wikipedia lies the " Billion-Dollar Web of Deception, Lies & Elite Manipulation", as evidenced by "deliberate distortion" in the articles about BNN Breaking's founder Gurbaksh Chahal, his wife, and BNN Breaking itself.
• Endorsed by law professor: Pepperdine Law associate professor Jacob Charles actually trusts Wikipedia, so much that he said you should all go read the article about State constitutions in the United States right away.
• Endorsed by librarians: UC Berkeley Libraries appears to have coined the term "wikiphiliacs" in an announcement of a Valentine's Day special edit-a-thon. The always-reliable Google Trends tells us that it's likely to be truly novel.
• But also not endorsed by librarians (do your own research): The Georgia State University Library recently hosted a seminar on how to use books, journals and portals like Gale eBooks for research, "instead of relying on Wikipedia".
• Endorsed by meme as "generally reliable source": A Wikipedia-themed meme went viral on Twitter/X last week, reaching over 13 million views. Based on the "midwit" meme format featuring three Wojak characters of low, average and high intelligence, the meme mocks the supposedly naive concern "Nooooo anyone can edit it!" (expressed by the "midwit" character) with the supposedly more valid take that "Wikipedia is generally a reliable source" (expressed by both the low and high intelligence characters).
• Wikipedia: The Telos of the internet: In an article for the The Daily Northwestern, Scott Hwang praised Wikipedia's ad-free, community-centered model and strict rules on neutrality and verifiability, deeming the platform as the real-life version of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• Argentine edit-a-thon: Wikimedian and UNLP professor Fernando Archuby was recently interviewed on Argentine radio station Radio Antena Libre, as he hosted a work-shop in his local community to help people learn how to edit Wikipedia and improve the articles related to the natural and cultural heritage of northern Patagonia.

• Wish I'd thought of that, whatever it is: The Guardian recently reported about the overnight success of Harlesden-based developer TJ Gardner, who last year made roughly £‎280,000 out of creating apps that are basically made of a start button, a click counter, "some lo-fi acoustic beats looping endlessly in the background" and... a cute creature from Wikimedia Commons.
• Online Images Amplify Gender Bias: The Independent has reported on a recent study which proved how online pictures can inadvertently amplify gender bias – see related Signpost coverage in Recent research.
• Robot accountants versus Wikipedia: David Pierce reported for The Verge on how robots.txt works and is especially robust on several platforms, including Wikipedia, and how the rise of AIs could be a problem for "robot accounting".
• Российский encyclopedia considers copying from Wikipedia: Meduza, Russian Wikinews and other sources reported on some statements from Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who suggested copying Wikipedia in its entirety, as well as Russian fork Ruviki, to expand another analog of the platform, Znanie. Wiki.
• Yoruba Wikipedia hits 25 million views in 2023: Nigerian newspaper The Nation has reported that the Yoruba Wikipedia hit 25 million annual views in 2023, up from about 17 million annual views in 2021, thus officially becoming the most-visited Yoruba-language website.
• Florida man nominated for deletion: The discussion that led to the (temporary) deletion of Miami-Dade County mayoral election candidate Manny Cid seemingly sparked backlash from the Republican politician himself, according to the local press.
• The Pacific Northwest has its own encyclopedia: The Seattle Times has shed a light on Historylink, an online encyclopedia of Washington state history that has CC-BY content, but can't exactly be deemed as a "fork"... since it's actually older than Wikipedia itself.

• They have the time, the life experience, and they know what they want to write about: AFP let us discover the stories of the Czech seniors who have been involved in " Seniors Write Wikipedia", a project started in 2013 by the national branch of the WMF to help elderly people learn how to edit the Czech Wikipedia. One of the participants, retired librarian Jirina Kadnerova, summed up her enthusiasm about contributing to the platform by saying, "When I write about something, I want to lay my hands on it".
• Wikipedia use rejected in U.S. court: Law360 has noted that a judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade decided to reject attempts from the Department of Commerce to use Wikipedia articles in support of their plans to expand vertical shaft engine tariffs. And if you're wondering about that vertical engine thing which is currently a redlink, we think they are gasoline motors for small machines, of the type made by Zongshen in China and Briggs and Stratton in the United States.

• Wikipedia's AI worries: The Financial Times covered Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales' latest interview for Japan's The Nikkei. In the interview, Wales said a well-known AI self-censored after beginning to reply about the Tiananmen Square massacre.
• This should not be so routine: In a formal complaint to Columbia University, the head of diversity, equity and inclusion at the university's Irving Medical Center, Alade McKen, was alleged to have plagiarized approximately 20% of his doctoral thesis from Wikipedia, among other sources. The news were reported by Fox News and The Washington Free Beacon – with the latter even showing the matching passages, including "a near-verbatim facsimile of Wikipedia's entry on Afrocentric education" running about two pages in the dissertation.