Posts Tagged ‘wikipedia’
In 2010 Labour wooed the DUP and lost
Let’s have another look at Labour Party links to those “crackpots” at the pro-British DUP, the Northern Irish party that articulates a sense of discontent and dissatisfaction with Westminster and the Peace Protest. The DUP is the only mainstream party to oppose the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
The Boston Globe told its readers in 2003 that the Good Friday Agreement was “one of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy triumphs”. The DUP were ‘on the wrong side of histoy’.
Which bring us to WikiLeaks – yes, I know – which has published a cable it claims was sent to Hillary Clinton on May 7 2010. In it Sydney Blumenthal, an unofficial adviser to Ms Clinton, reportedly headlined the email to the then US Secretary of State “H: HERE IT IS! WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON. SID.” The sub-head added: “The Downing Street meeting today.”
Gordon [PM Gordon Brown] is doing whatever he can to hold on to power. Shaun [Northern Ireland secretary Shaun Woodward], for his part, is working on an economic package for Northern Ireland to win support from the DUP and other parties for Labour—a package to be proposed in the Queen’s Speech.
The DUP, those crackpots – albeit ones voted for in a free and legal election – were in the near past Labour’s great hope.
Spotter: Paul Gallagher
Posted: 13th, June 2017 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Hillsborough Joins The War On Free Speech And Bicholim: Chelsea Fan Sacked For Abusing Liverpool On Wikipedia
THE War on Free Speech looks at the story of the man who posted a message on Wikipedia. In “Revealed: How The Telegraph found the Hillsborough Wikipedia vandal”, the paper reports:
A civil servant in Liverpool has been fired for using government computers to post abuse about the Hillsborough disaster on the Wikipedia website following an investigation by The Telegraph. The Whitehall official used the government intranet to mock the 1989 tragedy in which 96 Liverpool fans died at Sheffield Wednesday’s football ground.
The 24-year-old idiot changed the message “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to “You’ll Never Walk Again”.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 17th, June 2014 | In: Liverpool, Reviews, Sports, Technology | Comment
Jimmy Wales sets the lawyers on meat-puppets
Marketing meatpuppets must desist from editing Wikipedia or face legal action, lawyers acting for the parent company of Wikipedia said last night, banning anyone in the Wikipedia editing company Wiki-PR from editing Wikipedia in any way.
Read the rest of this entry »
Toby Young, Wikipedia and the 583 entry edits
ONE of the tiresome chores of life is maintaining the polish on one’s public profile. Don’t I know it, poppets! If anyone doubts this, check out Toby Young’s impressively anal attention to detail in his Wikipedia entry. Since January 2012 to the present (alone), he has made about 60 corrections, amendments and emendations.
Some are perfectly understandable. On 28 August 2013, for instance, he added an apostrophe to Earl’s Court. And on 27 April 2012, he deleted the word “stint” to avoid repetition. I like this. Editing is a much neglected art. Other edits suggest a dynamic growth in minor celebrity selfie-dom. On 2 August of this year he writes: “I deleted the ref to my father cos it implies I was the beneficiary of nepotism which I wasn’t. The admissions tutor later told me that Brasenose were legally obliged to honour the mistaken offer. Nowt to do with my dad.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 9th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Technology | Comment
Bradley Manning: Nobody likes a grass and other views on the celebrity leaker
BRADLEY Manning has been found guilty of betraying his colleagues in the US Army and the people they fight for by leaking thousands of classified documents. He has been convicted of espionage and 20 charges of all but not of aiding the enemy.
Some, views:
…if our secrets are entrusted to the likes of Bradley Manning, best we not keep too many of them…
The “aiding the enemy” charge was always weak, since Obama doesn’t seem to think we’re at war with anybody. Manning isn’t really a “whistleblower,” though, since he didn’t even know what was in a lot of the stuff he turned over to Wikileaks, and when he did know, it was often stuff like troops’ personal information.
The most damning piece of news he got out was that we entrust secrets to idiots like him. I’m sure they’ll do better with your healthcare information. . . .
Read the rest of this entry »
Is Wikipedia anti-women? No. But the OED and Encyclopædia Britannica might be…
WHO writes the stuff on Wikipedia? Men mostly? Is that good or bad? Is Wikipedia a place where women are held back? Is is sexist?
Jim Giles says its Westerners:
The most active editors live in the US and Europe … and this means the supposedly global project is skewed towards Western interests. According to a 2011 study by Mark Graham at the University of Oxford and colleagues, the snowy wastes of Antarctica have more articles dedicated to them than all but one of the countries in Africa. In fact, many African nations have fewer articles than the fictional realm of Middle Earth. These regions, notes Graham, are “virtual terra incognita”.
Then there is the gender issue. Around 90 per cent of Wikipedia editors are men, and it shows. In 2011, Shyong Lam of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and colleagues measured the length of around 6000 Wikipedia articles about movies. This is a good proxy for quality, since longer articles tend to be more thorough. Lam found that movies aimed at a more female audience tended to get short shrift. Relatively threadbare coverage of When Harry Met Sally is not a big issue, but Lam believes the problem is a wider one. Female editors tend to work on topics like the arts and philosophy, but their lower participation may be making these articles shorter than others….
Wikipedia was the place where the radical rethinking of the encyclopedia began. Yet its future may now be threatened by a strain of conservatism and parochialism that its early supporters frowned on in traditional publishing.
In 2011, the New York Times said 13% of Wikipedia editors and contributors are women.
Maya made her point:
The Times article generally suggests that the problem when it comes to Wikipedia is the same one that plagues the real world: women often aren’t as assertive about putting forth their views. On the other hand, Kevin Drum at Mother Jones argues that men are simply more likely to have the obsessive personalities required to spend hours writing and editing a Wikipedia post and Anna North at Jezebel thinks that a male-dominated “nerd culture” may provide a “web-specific reason” for the disparity. Meanwhile, the anti-feminist blogosphere offers the simplest explanation yet: women just don’t care and are too busy “chatting with [their] friends about all the various boyfriends drifting in and out of their lives.”
Of course, is any of it important? The chief editors of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1837 to know are:
James Murray
Henry Bradley
William Craigie
C. T. Onions (Mr)
Robert Burchfield
Edmund Weiner
John Simpson
Do we trust the OED less because men are in control of the contents?
The Encyclopædia Britannica’s current board is made up of:
Wendy Doniger
Richard Fishman
Benjamin M. Friedman
Leslie H. Gelb (Mr)
David Gelernter
Murray Gell-Mann
Vartan Gregorian
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
Lord Weidenfeld of Chelsea
Wikipedia isn’t holding women back. It’s bucking the trend. It’s a veritable feminist fest…
Photo: Mallory Whitt works at her desk at the offices of the Wikipedia Foundation in San Francisco, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012.
Posted: 27th, April 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
When Jason Manford met a stripper called Stacey she updated his Wikipedia entry
JASON Manford, married former presenter of BBC TV’s The One Show – resigned when he was spotted ‘flirting’ with fans online – <em >”paid £60 for web sex”. The Sun reports:
TELLY’S Jason Manford exposed himself on a webcam as he paid £60 for cybersex with a stripper.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 28th, February 2013 | In: Celebrities | Comments (2)
Wikipedia rejects expert and keeps the untruth
HOW does Wikipedia work? Timothy Messer-Kruse had a got at updating the Wiki page on the 1886 Haymarket riot. He’s written two books on the Riot. You might say he’s an expert. Messer-Kruse wanted to make a correction. Only, he’s not a Wikipedia expert. So. His update was erased. The error stays.
I had cited the documents that proved my point, including verbatim testimony from the trial published online by the Library of Congress. I also noted one of my own peer-reviewed articles. One of the people who had assumed the role of keeper of this bit of history for Wikipedia quoted the Web site’s “undue weight” policy, which states that “articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views.” He then scolded me. “You should not delete information supported by the majority of sources to replace it with a minority view.”
The “undue weight” policy posed a problem. Scholars have been publishing the same ideas about the Haymarket case for more than a century. The last published bibliography of titles on the subject has 1,530 entries. “Explain to me, then, how a ‘minority’ source with facts on its side would ever appear against a wrong ‘majority’ one?” I asked the Wiki-gatekeeper. … Another editor cheerfully tutored me in what this means: “Wikipedia is not ‘truth,’ Wikipedia is ‘verifiability’ of reliable sources. Hence, if most secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen to repeat a flawed account or description of something, Wikipedia will echo that.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 20th, February 2012 | In: Technology | Comment (1)
How to read Wikipedia during the SOPA live blog blackout
WANT to read Wikipedia during the 24-hour online protest against the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)?
The BBC advises accessing non-English Wikipedia pages and using Google Translate to make your work easier to fake.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 18th, January 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
When Cat Burning Was Fun In Gay Paris
HAVE you seen Wikipedia’s entry on cat-burning:
Cat burning was a form of zoosadistic entertainment in 17th century Paris, France. In this form of entertainment, people would gather dozens of cats in a net and hoist them high into the air from a special bundle onto a bonfire. According to Norman Davies[1], the assembled people “shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized.”[2]
“It was the custom to burn a basket, barrel, or sack full of live cats, which was hung from a tall mast in the midst of the bonfire; sometimes a fox was burned. The people collected the embers and ashes of the fire and took them home, believing that they brought good luck. The French kings often witnessed these spectacles and even lit the bonfire with their own hands. In 1648 Louis XIV, crowned with a wreath of roses and carrying a bunch of roses in his hand, kindled the fire, danced at it and partook of the banquet afterwards in the town hall. But this was the last occasion when a monarch presided at the midsummer bonfire in Paris. At Metz midsummer fires were lighted with great pomp on the esplanade, and a dozen cats, enclosed in wicker cages, were burned alive in them, to the amusement of the people. Similarly at Gap, in the department of the Hautes-Alpes, cats used to be roasted over the midsummer bonfire.”[3]
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 24th, September 2011 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Jimmy Wales Is Ready To Ejaculate For Wikipedia (Photo)
LIKE you, we’ve been looking at and wondering about those photos of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales that hang over his site.
Someone took a screen grab.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 2nd, June 2011 | In: Technology | Comment
The Big Chill, Wanky Balls And Other Wikipedia News In The Indepedent
THE Big Chill Festival began life as the Wanky Balls festival in North London, possibly in a teenager’s draughty bedroom. Kat Arney spots this gem of news in the Independent on Saturday and notes that the story is rooted in bit of bollocks on Wikipedia.
The Top 20 Children On Album Covers, A Wikipedia Special
Looks like someone’s been having a bit of childish fun editing the page – and also that someone at the Independent should check their facts a bit better.
Well, so it says on the web…
Click the image lots to make it bigger
via: NTTWA
Posted: 11th, August 2010 | In: Music | Comments (6)
Mainstream Media Exposes Its Bigotry With Rush Limbaugh Racism Fakes
Rush Limbaugh, the US radio host, is said to have made racist comments. They are fakes. Journalists on newspapers an in the mainstream media seize on them as fact. Now read on…
US radio host Rush Limbaugh will not be buying the St Louis Rams, American football team. The group buying the club have reacted to objections by players, civil rights leaders and team owners that he was too racist and divisive.
The Guardian’s golf expert Lawrence Donegan says: “NFL’s resistance to Rush Limbaugh puts English football to shame”
Rightwing lonely hearts in middle America, whose only friends in the world are their gun and their sense of exclusory patriotism, love him too because he speaks directly to their twisted souls.
Want to know what Limbaugh said? St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bryan Burwell knows:
“Look, let me put it to you this way: The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
Those are Limbaugh’s words. So are these:
“I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 15th, October 2009 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
Wikipedia Bans Scientology Sock Puppets
THE Wikipedia “supreme court” has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates – as it bans…
“Use of the encyclopedia to advance personal agendas – such as advocacy or propaganda and philosophical, ideological or religious dispute – or to publish or promote original research is prohibited.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Wikipedia Horror Printed On Toilet Paper
TO a Wikipedia toilet cubicle in Japan, where a reader is studying Koji Suzuki’s latest, er, slasher book “Drop,” a story on toilet paper. It’s a follow up to his book “Ring”.
Mr Suzuki is working on a theme.
His latest story is of an evil spirit that inhabits a toilet bowl.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 25th, May 2009 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Journalists Caught In Wikipedia Hoax
ON the Wikipedia page of French composer Maurice Jarre, who died at the end of March, is a quote – one made up by Shane Fitzgerald, a final-year undergraduate student studying sociology and economics at University College Dublin.
Read the rest of this entry »
Pupils To Study Twitter, MySpace And Wikipedia
TODAY at school we will studying Twitter and blogs.
Says the Guardian:
Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.
The Victoria Beckhams..?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 25th, March 2009 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Internet Watch Foundation Backtracks On Scopions Virgin
YOU can view the Scorpions Virgin album cover and not become a paedo. Official!
Britain’s internet censor has backtracked on its decision to ban a Wikipedia page for containing a “potentially illegal” image of a naked child.
Over the weekend it emerged that the Internet Watch Foundation, which operates a blacklist to screen out images of child abuse that is used by the majority of British internet providers, had had banned the image of a 32-year-old album cover by German rock group The Scorpions.
Spotter: Sam
UK Bans Naked Girls And Talk Of Naked Girls From Wikipedia
“BUT, yer honour. I was researching Scorpion album covers on Wikipedia for a book on The Who’s influence on Germanic soft-rock. I am not a peado had have never been a paedo”.
So comes the defence. But it does not wash, at least not with a number of UK internet providers which have now blocked a Wikipedia page showing an image of a naked girl.
Visitors to the page are now met with the words “Sex case, sex case, hang him, ‘ang ‘im, ‘ang ‘im” and a knock on the door.
A shadowy “online watchdog” called the Internet Watch Foundation has warned one and all that the picture may be illegal.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 8th, December 2008 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)
Shoes For Hats: Daily Mirror Hack’s Zany Wikiepdia Cheat
THE Mirror’s David Anderson writes from Nicosia of Manchester City’s UEFA Cup match with Omonia Nicosia.
Despite City’s raised profile, they must make do with the UEFA Cup this season and Hughes will not tolerate any slip-ups against the Cypriot side, whose fans are known as the ‘Zany Ones’ and wear hats made from shoes.
Well, that’s what is says on the Wikipedia page for Omonia Nicosia, as updated by “godspants”, a web wag, and slavishly borrowed by Anderson as he does his, er, research…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 2nd, October 2008 | In: Back pages, Tabloids | Comments (3)
Celebrity News Of The Day: Vernon Kaye Is Not Dead:
GORDON Smart, the celebrity hack styled to look like a suburban estate agent – thus combining two despised professions in one body – brings news that Vernon Kaye is not dead.
Smart says a “sad act with nothing better to do” wrote on tall TV presenter Kaye’s Wikipedia page of a tragic accident. Ah, Wikiepdia, where celebrity journalits look to for news.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 15th, September 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (2)
