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Wikipedia has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Texus publicity firm Wiki-PR over its alleged practice of “sockpuppeting,” or posting articles for pay that make its clients look good. The open-source encyclopedia launched an investigation last month into the practice, which is a strong violation of its terms of service. That revealed over 300 phoney accounts stemming from the PR outfit, which it allegedly used to create articles for its clients that appear to be from unbiased sources. Wikipedia lawyers also accused Wiki-PR of “meatpuppetry,” or using false identities to advocate certain positions in its user discussion forums. The site has closed all the fake accounts, saying the practice harms its reputation, abuses the labor of volunteers and can actually hurt the reputation of Wiki-PR’s client firms — if they’re exposed by the press. Meanwhile, Wiki-PR told The Independent that “it’s working with the Wikimedia foundation and its counsel to sort this out.” Judging by its name alone, though, it might have to throw out its entire business model to do that.

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Via: The Verge

Source: Wikimedia.org

Have you ever wondered just how much homework in the world has cited Wikipedia as its source? It would be criminal to rely on Wikipedia for everything in terms of research, but hey, I am quite sure that it has not stopped anyone from doing so, either. Well, here we are with word that Wikipedia has started off piloting a service which will send articles via SMS, and this particular service will have users in Africa as its primary target “market”.

In order to make sure that this particular effort will bear fruit, Wikipedia has decided to work alongside mobile operator Airtel in order to offer the free initiative that is currently being tested out in Kenya. It is hoped that this particular service might be utilized to reach people who do not have internet access. This particular trial will be active for the next quarter, claims Dan Foy, technical partner manager for the Wikimedia Foundation. Dan wrote, “Throughout most of the developing world, data-enabled smartphones are the exception, not the rule. That means billions of people currently cannot see Wikipedia on their phones.” This service is known as Wikipedia Zero, and users will need to first dial *515#, from where which they will receive a text message that prompts them to search for articles.

Wikipedia Pilots Articles Via SMS Service, Targets Africa original content from Ubergizmo.

We’re sure many of you guys have come across Wikipedia entries which sound as though someone paid the author of the page to write something nice about a particular product, brand, or company. Given that Wikipedia is expected to be a neutral source of information, this is a little disturbing, and probably the reason why many schools discourage or disallow Wikipedia to be used as source material for reports. In any case it seems that the Wikimedia Foundation has had enough of these deceptive practices and have since announced that they will be cracking down on sockpuppeting, which is where Wikipedia users create fake identities to help companies or brands edit Wikipedia pages that will put them in a positive light.

According to Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, “Unlike a university professor editing Wikipedia articles in their area of expertise, paid editing for promotional purposes, or paid advocacy editing as we call it, is extremely problematic […] We consider it a ‘black hat’ practice. Paid advocacy editing violates the core principles that have made Wikipedia so valuable for so many people.” Given that creating new or fake accounts is pretty easy, we can only imagine that the Wikimedia Foundation’s efforts would be more reactionary as opposed to precautionary, since fake accounts and glorified Wikipedia entries are only noticed after they have been edited, but still kudos to their efforts nonetheless.

Wikimedia Foundation To Crackdown On “Sockpuppeting” On Wikipedia original content from Ubergizmo.

This article was written on August 20, 2008 by CyberNet.

Ever since Apple’s App Store launched, we have been waiting for a free app to view Wikipedia articles. Up until today, the only Wikipedia application for the iPhone that we knew of was called iWik, but you had to pay for it. Today Wikipanion launches, it’s nearly perfect, and it’s free.

Wikipanion auto completes as you type which means that you may not have to type out the full search term of what you are looking for. One of the things we like about Wikipedia is that there is a table of contents which makes finding the specific information you’re looking for a little easier. Wikipanion incorporates the table of contents and you’ll find it by tapping the bookmark button at the bottom of the screen (shown in the image below).

Another nice feature is that you can click the button with the arrow at the bottom of the screen, and you’ll be shown a list of the links that are found within the article. It also works in landscape mode, and you can navigate forward and back. The paid application doesn’t even offer this type of navigation.

One feature that we’re not too fond of is the super large text. It may be nice for some people because it’s easier to read, but there needs to be an option to scale the text down or zoom out. On the bright side, everything loads fast which makes viewing Wikipedia articles on the iPhone easy to do, and the photos are an appropriate size as well.

Just remember that you can tap at the top of the screen (by the time) if you want to quickly navigate to the beginning of an article. You may need this feature if you are viewing some of the longer articles.

Get Wikipanion here (iTunes link)

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After asking Google to censor Microsoft.com, Microsoft has given Google a copyright takedown request for a Microsoft Wikipedia page. Microsoft must want to scrub all mentions of itself on the Internet or something. It’s the only sensible explanation for its vigilance!

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