Re: [Wikimedia-l] A Stealth PR Campaign on Behalf of Gibraltar Provokes Existential Crisis for Wikipedia

Dear Toby,

The Future Tense blog is just that - a blog without any credibility as a source. Take a look at Laura Hale's article if you want to see the truth in terms of facts and figures.

There were several DYKs all happening in a short period of time because training produces new editors in batches. If you'd ever tried to train new editors yourself, you'd realise that is exactly what happens.

You're simply confusing ORIGINAL RESEARCH with COMMON SENSE. Engage with the argument if you've got anything useful to say, rather than believing any piece of spin because it fits your preconceptions.

You know nothing about editathons, while I've run dozens, so I don't need you to tell me about what works well and what doesn't. When you've trained as many new editors as I have, you'll be entitled to have your opinion taken seriously, but that's never going to happen because you have to actually get out and do something to train others, rather than sitting in your mom's basement sniping at those who actually do the work.

-- 

Rexx

On 11 January 2015 at 17:04, Lilburne <lilburne@tygers-of-wrath.net> wrote:

What are you still doing in my email?

On 11/01/2015 16:37, Toby Dollmann wrote:

Dear Rexx

The "Future Tense" Slate.com blog piece is a published researched
article, with directly relevant inline cites, a named author and a
collaboration between 3 credible organizations. The facts in that
article, ie. the sheer number of DYKs in a short span from a tiny
handkerchief bit of land are undenied. The article still stands with 2
minor corrections as a RELIABLE SOURCE in the face of your ORIGINAL
RESEARCH.

This kind of event based editing is what had also been highlighted in
the case of WMF's disastrous "Wikipedia India Education Program" in
2011 and 2013.

https://avamindia.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/wikipedia-india-education-program/
To which a follow up was sent
https://avamindia.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/wikipedia-child-pornography-scandal-india-education-program-2013/

Is it not shocking that WMF retains and hosts high resolution photos
of clearly identifiable minors taken inside their school under a
Creative Commons licence which permits derivations and commercial use
?

It is also very well known that these edit-a-thons are used by PAID
editors like "Fae" to write
articles on non-notables like "Veena Kumari" now
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veena_Kumari
trimmed from this
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Veena_Kumari&oldid=604720490
But guess who gets blocked just so Fae, or some other paid editor can
reinsert it when nobody is looking ?

Toby

On 1/11/15, rexx <rexx@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Here's another correction for you:

Anybody who bothered to ask - rather than spilling bile-filled speculation
about - would have soon found out that Roger Bamkin was working in
Gibraltar to encourage new editors to edit Wikipedia. Roger's expertise is
in education, not PR, and he is a qualified teacher.

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.

--
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.

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