Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-02-11/In the media

Edina

In response to the Edina article being in the news, I am proposing an edit-a-thon at the public library there. Details are on Wikipedia:Meetup/Minnesota. Feel free to ask me for more information. Jonathunder (talk) 22:25, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Australian report

"He says that if Education ­Minister Christopher Pyne wants Australians universities to have real impact, the best way would be to force professors to spend a week editing Wikipedia pages in their areas of expertise.

“In terms of making a real contribution to public knowledge, what better thing could we do? ...

Selwyn says Wikipedia editing is “an incredibly closed shop”, with hundreds of millions of viewers but active editors numbering only in their thousands. “They tend to be white, North American, of a certain age, (and) male. Which is why, when you look at things like comic books or computer games, the information on Wikipedia is brilliant. And when you look at my own area of educational sociology, it’s shocking."[1]

--Surturz (talk) 01:56, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

The above quote is from Ross, John (11 February 2015). "Wikipedia not destroying life as we know it". The Australian: Higher Education. which reports on Monash University professor Neil Selwyn's research. (Just adding this, and section heading, for clarification) PamD 13:39, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Irony is delicious, especially with coffee

Did anyone else gain the same level of amusement during their morning coffee as I did, when discovering that the second article on this page contains a perfect refutation of the claims in the first? Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:21, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

• It's no surprise that academics largely dislike Wikipedia; they used to be the sole arbiters of knowledge on many topics, to which they could add their own biases and inflections. Now, they are faced with the prospect of complete objectivity on a generally reliable website (as opposed to some random blog or the pop-up laden Geocities pages of the past), which threatens their hegemony. In very controversial articles, it is almost impossible for any strong POV to emerge, because there a thousand eyes of all motivations looking at it, ready to remove it. I don't usually get involved with such contentious topics, because they are outside of my field, but I have the greatest respect for those who genuinely seek objectivity in those minefields. As for forcing professors to edit, maybe they would be more comfortable over on Citizendium.-RHM22 (talk) 13:57, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
• By the way, credit goes to the Canadians for the most creative slander.-RHM22 (talk) 14:00, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Attkisson

That she considers vaccines to cause autism is not surprising given the rest of the inaccuracies in her talk. It is obvious that she either never read the article looking at the accuracy of Wikipedia's medical content in JAOA or simply does not understand science. I wonder if she realizes that the Andrew Wakefield paper from the Lancet has been withdrawn? It is an interesting read as one is left wonder "how did the Lancet ever agree to publish this". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:46, 12 February 2015 (UTC)