Here's another correction for you:
And what would a group of new editors living in Gibraltar write about as they learn how to edit? The place where they live, perhaps?
Roger knows very well how much encouragement new editors get from having their efforts featured at DYK - it's the main purpose of DYK, of course. So why would it be surprising that so many new DYKs appeared from a new batch of editors who all lived in Gibraltar - which with its history was an obvious rich source of articles that nobody had bothered to tap before?
If you don't believe me, do the research yourself: look at those DYKs - who wrote the articles? and how long had they been editing? They were trained together and wrote new articles that were good enough to be featured as DYKs. We should be celebrating that, not spinning it into yet another attack on Wikipedia from the haters.
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Rexx
On 11 January 2015 at 06:33, Toby Dollmann <toby.dollmann@gmail.com> wrote:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/09/20/roger_bamkin_gibraltor_s_repeated_appearance_on_did_you_know_provkes_existential_crisis_for_wikipedia_.html
A Stealth PR Campaign on Behalf of Gibraltar Provokes Existential
Crisis for Wikipedia
By Mark Joseph Stern
Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers science, the law,
and LGBTQ issues.
How much do you know about Gibraltar?
If you've been reading been reading Wikipedia's "Did You Know?" page
recently, you probably know a great deal about the tiny British
territory at the mouth of the Mediterranean. In fact, in the month of
August alone, Gibraltar was featured on "Did You Know?" a jaw-dropping
17 times, according to the technology website CNET. (One example: "Did
you know that in Gibraltar, a mole's elbow is a site of control for
the harbour?") That, for the record, is more times than any subject
other than the Olympics—a tidal wave of information for a country with
only 2.6 square miles of land mass.
Wikipedia editor and administrator Panyd first noticed the profusion
of Gibraltar-centric articles on Sept. 13. The next day, she
discovered that they were promoted by Roger Bamkin, a board member of
Wikimedia U.K. (which is heavily involved with Wikipedia platforms in
Britain*) and a Wikipedian in Residence. Then the floodgates burst
open: Bamkin, it turns out, had signed a contract with the government
of Gibraltar to publicize the territory on Wikipedia—making him a de
facto PR consultant. Yet Bamkin was only promoting articles, not
editing them, and while the latter is entirely verboten for
Wikipedians in Residence, the former is a gray area.
Thus began a small war among Wikipedia editors, with some proclaiming
that Bamkin committed "no abuse at all" while others labeled the
situation a "full-on shitstorm of epic proportions." The debate first
centered around whether Bamkin had received money for his promotion of
the minuscule peninsula*, or if he had just volunteered his services
because he had an intense fascination with an arcane subject—not a
rare occurrence in the Wikipedia community. But even after the editors
agreed that Bamkin's contract with Gibraltar heavily suggested
remuneration, some question still remained as to whether promoting
articles for pay was proscribed.
"Why should we care?" asked one editor. "So long as the articles are
properly made" and not in violation of copyrights, "it's largely none
of our business."
That is the philosophical question at the center of the debate: Is
promotion of information unique from direct manipulation of it? Can
Wikipedia allow editors to be paid for their publicizing of a story,
but not for actually writing it? Or would that, as Panyd suggested,
turn Wikipedia into a "billboard"? On Sept. 16, Wikipedia co-founder
Jimmy Wales himself stepped in, proclaiming that "of course I'm
extremely unhappy about" the "disgusting" situation.
You can see why Wales would put his foot down so firmly: Once
Wikipedia becomes a pay-to-play platform in any sense, it's no longer
a balanced, universal wellspring of information. It's just another
commercial website, with a particularly insidious brand of camouflaged
advertising. Any company with a sly enough PR person could promote
ostensibly fascinating facts about its products. If the "Did You
Know?" page was suddenly dominated by trivia about Gap or Mars Bars,
many readers would quickly smell a rat, but there are numerous PR
professionals who represent subtler brands and causes.
To set a precedent, then, Bamkin will certainly be sanctioned and
probably banned, but that won't entirely put the controversy over paid
promotion to rest. A number of editors disagreed with Panyd and Wales,
arguing that more articles—and more visible articles—about any subject
were "in Wikipedia's interests." That, of course, is the same logic
the Supreme Court used in Citizens United: Isn't more speech better
speech, no matter where it comes from, no matter who is paying to say
it? It might seem the avowedly libertarian Wales would be on board
with such a proposition. Yet in the light of the Gibraltar
controversy, the Wikipedia mastermind is clearly shying away from
every form of paid editorial involvement.
Meanwhile, Gibraltar isn't quite through with its grand Wikipedia
experiment: The government recently attached QR codes to its landmarks
so tourists can quickly read up on the island's history. Those codes
link directly to relevant Wikipedia entries. If the territory's
government can't bring Gibraltar to Wikipedia, it can at least bring
Wikipedia to Gibraltar.
Correction, Sept. 20, 2012: This article originally and incorrectly
referred to Gibraltar as an island. It is a peninsula.
Correction, Sept. 26, 2012: This article incorrectly described
Wikimedia U.K. as controlling Wikipedia platforms in Britain.
Wikimedia U.K. is heavily involved, but the British Wikipedia is
operated by the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco.
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State
University.
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