Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-08/News and notes

News and notes

Second Wikipedian in Residence, citation needed for sanity

Second museum gets Wikipedian in Residence

The Children's Museum of Indianapolis (said to be the largest of its kind in the world) recently invited Wikimedians for a "backstage pass" tour, as described by Liam Wyatt (User:Witty lama) on his blog. It is currently hosting Lori Phillips (User:HstryQT) as a Wikipedian in Residence (see Wikipedia:GLAM/TCMI and Wyatt's guest post on the museum's blog), making it the second institution to use this concept, after the British Museum's pilot project earlier this year (see Signpost coverage).

Lori Phillips intends to "mine the museum" to discover good illustrations and material that could be used for Wikiprojects; they have already started photographing their collection for Commons along with compatible copyrights for Wikimedia's use. The Children's Museum is dedicated to the concept of "Family learning" and currently has no online catalog of their collection, but plans to have one soon. Lori Phillips is also helping the Museum Studies course run by IMA conservator Richard McCoy (User:RichardMcCoy) to write Wikipedia articles about notable artworks in the Indiana Statehouse.

Wyatt and Phillips talked with the staff about their concerns in working with Wikipedia. When asked by a staff member about Wikipedia's responsibility to minors, Liam Wyatt explained that Wikipedia is not censored for age-appropriateness, and there is ongoing work being done with issues related to controversial content. He also noted that there is "nowhere else on the unrestricted internet that is dedicated to making NSFW information as un-titillating as possible." In a staff-only presentation he pulled a Google result for "Sex" and chose Wikipedia's entry from the top results, he proceeded to show the article and the accompanying images - from human conception to an illustration of Sexual Dimorphism in a Pheasant. He mentioned that the staff was impressed with the educational and yet direct approach of Wikipedia.

See also Phillips' summary of a November 2 talk by Wyatt and Adrianne Wadewitz at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, "Wikipedia & GLAMs" (an interactive Prezi presentation by Wyatt), and last week's Signpost coverage of Liam Wyatt, Katie Filbert, Lori Phillips and Richard McCoy attending the "Museum Computer Network conference".

^{[citation needed]} for sanity

The October 30 Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C. (a gathering of an estimated 215,000 people to protest extremes in US media and to promote reasoned political discourse) featured numerous demonstrators ([1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]) bearing signs adapted from Wikipedia's "citation needed" template, among them Wikipedian (and Wikimedia Board member) User:Mindspillage (Kat Walsh), whose website shows some amusing juxtapositions with other signs at the rally. References to the template in popular culture date back at least to the July 2007 "Wikipedian protester" cartoon by webcomic xkcd (tooltip comment: "SEMI-PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION"), which has since been used in turn on Wikipedia:Citation needed to illustrate the concept, and had inspired earlier such demonstration signs. In 2008, Boing Boing reported on an artist who had printed little "citation needed" stickers for a "culture jamming" project, to mark dubious claims on public ads and signs.

"Citation needed" sign at the D.C. rally
Combined with a sign saying "Wikipedia is a valid source"
Chance meet of two {{citation needed}} signs at the rally
xkcd's "Wikipedian protester" cartoon

Briefly

Illustrated licensing tutorial: On the Wikimedia Foundation's blog, Guillaume Paumier has announced the availability of an illustrated licensing tutorial for Wikimedia Commons, commissioned from a freelance illustrator as part of the Multimedia usability project. Within three days, Wikimedia translators have already produced about 20 translations and about a dozen localized SVG versions.
Research consultant: Dario Taraborelli has been hired by the Wikimedia Foundation as a Research Consultant. He will be advising on and supporting strategic research projects for the foundation.[9]
"A bad first date?": A draft schedule for the GLAM-WIKI conference on November 26/27 in London has been announced. Alongside keynote presentations by Sue Gardner and Cory Doctorow it includes a talk by Tom Morgan, Head of Rights and Reproductions at the London's National Portrait Gallery, titled "Wikipedia and the National Portrait Gallery - A bad first date? A perspective on the developing relationship between Wikipedia and cultural heritage organizations" - in reference last year's legal issues (see Signpost coverage: "UK public gallery threatens Wikimedian" and the article National Portrait Gallery copyright conflicts; it is not publicly known whether they have been resolved yet).

Citizendium's finances running low: After the free collaborative online encyclopedia project Citizendium adopted a governance charter in September (see Signpost coverage), its newly elected "Management Council" took over leadership of the project from the outgoing editor-in-chief, its sole founder Larry Sanger. During this process "it has come to light that the financial situation of the project is not as sound as we had thought it to be", according to a November 6 announcement from the Council on the Citizendium forums. An earlier thread on the forums, titled "Finances running dry by the end of the year", was apparently publicly visible by accident and removed from public view soon, but not before having been captured, discussed and summarized at RationalWiki (its existence was later acknowledged by Citizendium's Managing Editor). It quoted an internal email from Sanger, where he warned that "we have just $1800 in the account and our hosting costs $700/month. ... It turns out that CZ's main benefactor ... is no longer interested in supporting CZ." Earlier this year, Sanger had told the Times Higher Education that he was considering "handing the reins to a university or a scholarly press" to ensure Citizendium's future (see Signpost coverage).

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Safe, harmless, giant atomic bomb? The Dark Peria (talk) 17:57, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Citizendium

The summary by RW looks potentially controversial, as it suggests (not-so-subtly) that ~~Sanger has been embezzling money (or at least that~~ there have been serious financial irregularities). I always thought that Sanger was a good but misguided person, I never thought something like this would happen; Sanger is a philosoper and Jimbo is/was a businessman -- this seems like role-reversal to me (Jimbo is now--to an extent--"in charge of" the largest encyclopedia ever and Sanger ~~is accused of embezzling~~). --N Y Kevin @797, i.e. 18:07, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any accusations of embezzlement. Powers ^T 19:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From RationalWiki: "The obvious question is whether Sanger himself pocketed $30,000 for his work on Citizendium and then jumped ship." Close enough. --N Y Kevin @247, i.e. 04:55, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, not close enough at all to introduce the word "embezzling" here, which I find quite irresponsible of you. If you read it in context with the previous sentence ("only two individuals received any compensation for their work on the project and they were Larry Sanger and an initial technical director"), "pocketed" clearly refers to the payment that has been openly stated at CZ:Personnel for a long time, i.e. money that can be presumed to have been intended by the donor for that purpose. The accusation by Rationalwiki would be that Sanger was only interested in working for CZ as long as he got a salary for it, and "jumped ship" (probably a reference to the Financial Times blog post last year[10]) when it stopped, or maybe also that the payment was too high. I am not sure these are fair charges, but in any case they are not asserting that illegal activities took place. Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't sure whether "embezzling" applied, so I qualified it with "serious financial irregularities," which arguable have happened if RW is to be believed. --N Y Kevin @682, i.e. 15:22, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I apolgoize, NYKevin; I overlooked that by "RW" you mean "RationalWiki". Even so, I agree with HaeB that the quoted text is not an accusation of embezzlement. Powers ^T 12:24, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also: "This left $20,000-$30,000 completely unaccounted for." Finally, I'd like to clarify that I'm not sure whether RW is perfectly accurate on this, nor am I sure who can be blamed for it if the numbers are accurate (I have not checked the numbers). I don't take any position on whether Sanger did or did not do anything unethical. --N Y Kevin @250, i.e. 05:00, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Too early to use the term "embezzle" without further proof, but what I find interesting is the reaction of citizendium to the crisis, or should I say lack of it. It appears in their discussions there has been no effort to investigate where the "missing" money went. We know from the donors page that at least US$75,000 was donated, maybe more not listed, and that $30,000 was blown on an unreliable server set-up. What happened to the remaining missing money has not been fully accounted for and probably wont be - citizendium didn't keep records nor financial statements, and they never appointed a treasurer or donors officer. What else that is intriguing is that there is no move to set-up a proper accounts system, so the same problem with donors moneys may likely happen again. Czobserver (talk) 10:13, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that a donation drive among CZ members is in preparation - here is a call for an US lawyer who would be willing to give pro bono advice on how to do so. Regards, HaeB (talk) 15:34, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Save Citizendium, help at Wikipedia:WikiProject Citizendium Porting. Rich Farmbrough, 18:34, 10 November 2010 (UTC).[reply]

A partial explanation of where the money went is here. --Banana (talk) 17:35, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Citation needed

User:Shimgray/Citation needed is a nice overview of references to the tag in popular culture. Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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