Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/In the media
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YOUR ARTICLE'S DESCRIPTIVE TITLE HERE
Optional: write a lede — not necessarily a WP:LEAD. Interesting > encyclopedic.
Faster, higher, stronger and older
[edit]Stephen Harrison in Slate (paywalled) covers the oldest living Olympians, while noting that they are no longer automatically considered to be notable and deserving of a Wikipedia article unless they've won a medal. His source material is from Paul Tchir, a San Diego State University sports historian can be viewed here
Next time, check Wikipedia first
[edit]The New York Times reports on Earl M. Washington, a convicted art forger who is now serving a 52 month term in Federal prison. Washington sold woodblock prints and the intricately carved woodblocks themselves, "more than 3,000 blocks and more than a million prints," sometimes claiming they were antiques dating back to the 16th-17th centuries. After a 2004 Forbes magazine questioned the authenticity of the prints and reported accusations of Washington copying M.C. Escher prints, Washington took a break from the scam until about 2010.
Dr. Douglas Arbittier, who owns a private museum of antique medical instruments bought 130 prints from Washington from 2013–2016 for about $118,810 according to the thesearticles. Washington and Arbittier then lost contact for a few years. Arbittier began to suspect that the works were forgeries. About 2018 he began a Javert-like pursuit of information about Washington and his forgeries.
In 2020 Arbittier read the Wikipedia article about Washington. "The world comes crashing down at that point," he told the Times. "It was gut wrenching because, oh my God, why did I spend all that money, but also it was a betrayal of the trust and relationship that we had."
Soon he sent an 286 page report to the FBI. Washington was indicted in January 2023, later reaching a plea deal and confessing to reduced charges last summer. He was sentenced in April 2024.
The Wikipedia article's history, as checked by this reporter, is quite surprising. It was created in 2006 based on the 2004 Forbes story. It has remained quite critical of Washington since then and readers would have seen that Washington's honesty had been questioned. About 2008 the article explicitly included accusations that Washington forged M.C. Escher prints. Two deletion discussions (2006, 2008) made clear that Washington might be a scammer, but was he a notable scammer? Washington was accused several times in edit comments and on the talk page of editing or whitewashing the article himself. There were several clumsy attempts to remove negative details in the article, but none of them approached a complete whitewashing.
AI claim might cause a storm
[edit]R&D World says you can "Write a Wikipedia-style article draft in a few minutes for less than a penny using STORM" STORM stands for 'Synthesis of Topic Outlines through Retrieval and Multi-perspective Question Asking', and is "an open-source AI system that promises to generate Wikipedia-style articles on pretty much any topic using large language models and web search."
The R&D World author tested this promise, using the topic of "double descent." Did it work? On the plus side STORM quickly produced a Wikipedia-like article at a cost of about half a cent. To this non-expert on the topic, it appears to be at least o.k. On the negative side, STORM had the advantage that Wikipedia already had an article on double descent, which STORM used to create a new article. For its next trick, I suggest R&D World try to create an article about Bronx cheer, cheating, circular reasoning, or nincompoop.
Fortunately, STORM was written by a team from Stanford University, not from R&D World.
(@JPxG: maybe you should check out this article and software to see if there is a point to either of them. Maybe come up with a Wikipedia-like article for Bronx cheer to see if it performs better than ok. Or publish it under humour if it's not)
Dumping ground
[edit]- Tablet magazine says "Wikipedia's articles are now badly distorted, feeding billions of people—and large-language models that regularly train on the site, such as ChatGPT—with inaccurate research and dangerously skewed narratives about Jews, Jewish history, Israel, Zionism, and contemporary threats to Jewish lives."
- Jewish Journal thoughly examined the Requested move that resulted in the article titled "Gaza genocide" https://jewishjournal.com/news/united-states/373440/wikipedia-editors-title-article-gaza-genocide/
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13673835/Channel-10-presenter-Lachlan-Kennedy-hits-Wikipedia-change.html
- https://www.skynews.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity-life/channel-ten-star-lachlan-kennedy-in-damage-control-over-wikipedia-edits-made-by-mystery-author/news-story/465f97d3f885be6570534698d8f99499
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13665657/Channel-10-presenter-Lachlan-Kennedy-slams-horrendous-Wikipedia-edit-TV-world-talking-splits-wife-linked-Nine-personality.html
- https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/national-museum-of-women-in-the-arts-hosts-annual-wikipedia-edit-a-thon/3670553/
- https://www.golfdigest.com/story/the-wildest-wikipedia-major-grids-in-golf-history (probbo in brief)
In brief
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- Internet in a box:[1] Boing Boing says go buy Wikipedia in a box (See also Internet-in-a-Box) from WMF's store. The price is $58, but as of August 2 they are sold out, though the elves are working overtime to get them back in stock.
- Unexpected Source of Motivation: A story in MSN reports that Olympic gymnast Max Whitlock used Wikipedia for motivation after a mental health crisis following the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. He used the site to confirm that he could break a record at the 2024 Olympics by winning a medal in pommel horse. Unfortunately, he had two fourth place finishes.
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This page is a draft for the next issue of the Signpost. Below is some helpful code that will help you write and format a Signpost draft. If it's blank, you can fill out a template by copy-pasting this in and pressing 'publish changes': {{subst:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Story-preload}}
Images and Galleries
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To put an image in your article, use the following template (link): This will create the file on the right. Keep the 300px in most cases. If writing a 'full width' article, change
Placing (link) will instead create an inline image like below [[File:|300px|center|alt=Placeholder alt text]] CAPTION
To create a gallery, use the following to create |
Quotes
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To insert a framed quote like the one on the right, use this template (link): If writing a 'full width' article, change
To insert a pull quote like
use this template (link):
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use this template (link): |
Side frames
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Side frames help put content in sidebar vignettes. For instance, this one (link): gives the frame on the right. This is useful when you want to insert non-standard images, quotes, graphs, and the like.
A caption
For example, to insert the {{Graph:Chart}} generated by in a frame, simple put the graph code in to get the framed Graph:Chart on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change |
Two-column vs full width styles
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If you keep the 'normal' preloaded draft and work from there, you will be using the two-column style. This is perfectly fine in most cases and you don't need to do anything. However, every time you have a However, you can also fine-tune which style is used at which point in an article. To switch from two-column → full width style midway in an article, insert where you want the switch to happen. To switch from full width → two-column style midway in an article, insert where you want the switch to happen. |
Links and such
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By the way, the template that you're reading right now is {{Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue}} (edit). A list of the preload templates for Signpost articles can be found here. |
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