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Lawrence found the articles accurate but not very readable, and thought that "Wikipedia's lack of readability (to non-college readers) may reflect its varied origins and haphazard editing". | English |
[192] The Economist argued that better-written articles tend to be more reliable: "inelegant or ranting prose usually reflects muddled thoughts and incomplete information". | English |
[193] Wikipedia seeks to create a summary of all human knowledge in the form of an online encyclopedia, with each topic covered encyclopedically in one article. | English |
Since it has terabytes of disk space, it can have far more topics than can be covered by any printed encyclopedia. | English |
[194] The exact degree and manner of coverage on Wikipedia is under constant review by its editors, and disagreements are not uncommon (see deletionism and inclusionism). | English |
[195][196] Wikipedia contains materials that some people may find objectionable, offensive, or pornographic. | English |
The 'Wikipedia is not censored' policy has sometimes proved controversial: in 2008, Wikipedia rejected an online petition against the inclusion of images of Muhammad in the English edition of its Muhammad article, citing this policy. | English |
The presence of politically, religiously, and pornographically sensitive materials in Wikipedia has led to the censorship of Wikipedia by national authorities in China[197] and Pakistan,[198] amongst other countries. | English |
A 2008 study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Palo Alto Research Center gave a distribution of topics as well as growth (from July 2006 to January 2008) in each field:[199] These numbers refer only to the number of articles: it is possible for one topic to contain a large number of short articles and another to contain a small number of large ones. | English |
Through its "Wikipedia Loves Libraries" program, Wikipedia has partnered with major public libraries such as the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to expand its coverage of underrepresented subjects and articles. | English |
[200] A 2011 study conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota indicated that male and female editors focus on different coverage topics. | English |
There was a greater concentration of females in the People and Arts category, while males focus more on Geography and Science. | English |
[201] Research conducted by Mark Graham of the Oxford Internet Institute in 2009 indicated that the geographic distribution of article topics is highly uneven. | English |
Africa is the most underrepresented. | English |
[202] Across 30 language editions of Wikipedia, historical articles and sections are generally Eurocentric and focused on recent events. | English |
[203] An editorial in The Guardian in 2014 claimed that more effort went into providing references for a list of female porn actors than a list of women writers. | English |
[204] Data has also shown that Africa-related material often faces omission; a knowledge gap that a July 2018 Wikimedia conference in Cape Town sought to address. | English |
[126] When multiple editors contribute to one topic or set of topics, systemic bias may arise, due to the demographic backgrounds of the editors. | English |
In 2011, Wales claimed that the unevenness of coverage is a reflection of the demography of the editors, citing for example "biographies of famous women through history and issues surrounding early childcare". | English |
[42] The October 22, 2013, essay by Tom Simonite in MIT's Technology Review titled "The Decline of Wikipedia" discussed the effect of systemic bias and policy creep on the downward trend in the number of editors. | English |
[43] Systemic bias on Wikipedia may follow that of culture generally,[vague] for example favoring certain nationalities, ethnicities or majority religions. | English |
[205] It may more specifically follow the biases of Internet culture, inclining to be young, male, English-speaking, educated, technologically aware, and wealthy enough to spare time for editing. | English |
Biases, intrinsically, may include an overemphasis on topics such as pop culture, technology, and current events. | English |
[205] Taha Yasseri of the University of Oxford, in 2013, studied the statistical trends of systemic bias at Wikipedia introduced by editing conflicts and their resolution. | English |
[206][207] His research examined the counterproductive work behavior of edit warring. | English |
Yasseri contended that simple reverts or "undo" operations were not the most significant measure of counterproductive behavior at Wikipedia and relied instead on the statistical measurement of detecting "reverting/reverted pairs" or "mutually reverting edit pairs". | English |
Such a "mutually reverting edit pair" is defined where one editor reverts the edit of another editor who then, in sequence, returns to revert the first editor in the "mutually reverting edit pairs". | English |
The results were tabulated for several language versions of Wikipedia. | English |
The English Wikipedia's three largest conflict rates belonged to the articles George W. Bush, Anarchism, and Muhammad. | English |
[207] By comparison, for the German Wikipedia, the three largest conflict rates at the time of the Oxford study were for the articles covering Croatia, Scientology, and 9/11 conspiracy theories. | English |
[207] Researchers from Washington University developed a statistical model to measure systematic bias in the behavior of Wikipedia's users regarding controversial topics. | English |
The authors focused on behavioral changes of the encyclopedia's administrators after assuming the post, writing that systematic bias occurred after the fact. | English |
[208][209] Wikipedia has been criticized for allowing information about graphic content. | English |
Articles depicting what some critics have called objectionable content (such as feces, cadaver, human penis, vulva, and nudity) contain graphic pictures and detailed information easily available to anyone with access to the internet, including children. | English |
The site also includes sexual content such as images and videos of masturbation and ejaculation, illustrations of zoophilia, and photos from hardcore pornographic films in its articles. | English |
It also has non-sexual photographs of nude children. | English |
The Wikipedia article about Virgin Killer—a 1976 album from the German rock band Scorpions—features a picture of the album's original cover, which depicts a naked prepubescent girl. | English |
The original release cover caused controversy and was replaced in some countries. | English |
In December 2008, access to the Wikipedia article Virgin Killer was blocked for four days by most Internet service providers in the United Kingdom after the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) decided the album cover was a potentially illegal indecent image and added the article's URL to a "blacklist" it supplies to British internet service providers. | English |
[210] In April 2010, Sanger wrote a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, outlining his concerns that two categories of images on Wikimedia Commons contained child pornography, and were in violation of US federal obscenity law. | English |
[211][212] Sanger later clarified that the images, which were related to pedophilia and one about lolicon, were not of real children, but said that they constituted "obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children", under the PROTECT Act of 2003. | English |
[213] That law bans photographic child pornography and cartoon images and drawings of children that are obscene under American law. | English |
[213] Sanger also expressed concerns about access to the images on Wikipedia in schools. | English |
[214] Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Jay Walsh strongly rejected Sanger's accusation,[215] saying that Wikipedia did not have "material we would deem to be illegal. | English |
If we did, we would remove it. | English |
"[215] Following the complaint by Sanger, Wales deleted sexual images without consulting the community. | English |
After some editors who volunteer to maintain the site argued that the decision to delete had been made hastily, Wales voluntarily gave up some of the powers he had held up to that time as part of his co-founder status. | English |
He wrote in a message to the Wikimedia Foundation mailing-list that this action was "in the interest of encouraging this discussion to be about real philosophical/content issues, rather than be about me and how quickly I acted". | English |
[216] Critics, including Wikipediocracy, noticed that many of the pornographic images deleted from Wikipedia since 2010 have reappeared. | English |
[217] One privacy concern in the case of Wikipedia is the right of a private citizen to remain a "private citizen" rather than a "public figure" in the eyes of the law. | English |
[218][note 6] It is a battle between the right to be anonymous in cyberspace and the right to be anonymous in real life ("meatspace"). | English |
A particular problem occurs in the case of a relatively unimportant individual and for whom there exists a Wikipedia page against her or his wishes. | English |
In January 2006, a German court ordered the German Wikipedia shut down within Germany because it stated the full name of Boris Floricic, aka "Tron", a deceased hacker. | English |
On February 9, 2006, the injunction against Wikimedia Deutschland was overturned, with the court rejecting the notion that Tron's right to privacy or that of his parents was being violated. | English |
[219] Wikipedia has a "Volunteer Response Team" that uses the OTRS system to handle queries without having to reveal the identities of the involved parties. | English |
This is used, for example, in confirming the permission for using individual images and other media in the project. | English |
[220] Wikipedia has been described as harboring a battleground culture of sexism and harassment. | English |
[221][222] The perceived toxic attitudes and tolerance of violent and abusive language are also reasons put forth for the gender gap in Wikipedia editors. | English |
[223] In 2014, a female editor who requested a separate space on Wikipedia to discuss improving civility had her proposal referred to by a male editor using the words "the easiest way to avoid being called a cunt is not to act like one". | English |
[221] Wikipedia is hosted and funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization which also operates Wikipedia-related projects such as Wiktionary and Wikibooks. | English |
The foundation relies on public contributions and grants to fund its mission. | English |
[224] The foundation's 2013 IRS Form 990 shows revenue of $39.7 million and expenses of almost $29 million, with assets of $37.2 million and liabilities of about $2.3 million. | English |
[225] In May 2014, Wikimedia Foundation named Lila Tretikov as its second executive director, taking over for Sue Gardner. | English |
[226] The Wall Street Journal reported on May 1, 2014, that Tretikov's information technology background from her years at University of California offers Wikipedia an opportunity to develop in more concentrated directions guided by her often repeated position statement that, "Information, like air, wants to be free. | English |
"[227][228] The same Wall Street Journal article reported these directions of development according to an interview with spokesman Jay Walsh of Wikimedia, who "said Tretikov would address that issue (paid advocacy) as a priority. | English |
'We are really pushing toward more transparency ... We are reinforcing that paid advocacy is not welcome.' | English |
Initiatives to involve greater diversity of contributors, better mobile support of Wikipedia, new geo-location tools to find local content more easily, and more tools for users in the second and third world are also priorities," Walsh said. | English |
[227] Following the departure of Tretikov from Wikipedia due to issues concerning the use of the "superprotection" feature which some language versions of Wikipedia have adopted, Katherine Maher became the third executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation in June 2016. | English |
[229] Maher has stated that one of her priorities would be the issue of editor harassment endemic to Wikipedia as identified by the Wikipedia board in December. | English |
Maher stated regarding the harassment issue that: "It establishes a sense within the community that this is a priority ... (and that correction requires that) it has to be more than words. | English |
"[230] Wikipedia is also supported by many organizations and groups that are affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation but independently-run, called Wikimedia movement affiliates. | English |
These include Wikimedia chapters (which are national or sub-national organizations, such as Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimédia France), thematic organizations (such as Amical Wikimedia for the Catalan language community), and user groups. | English |
These affiliates participate in the promotion, development, and funding of Wikipedia. | English |
The operation of Wikipedia depends on MediaWiki, a custom-made, free and open source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MySQL database system. | English |
[231] The software incorporates programming features such as a macro language, variables, a transclusion system for templates, and URL redirection. | English |
MediaWiki is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and it is used by all Wikimedia projects, as well as many other wiki projects. | English |
Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the present double bracket style was incorporated later. | English |
Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske. | English |
The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. | English |
In July 2002 (Phase III), Wikipedia shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker. | English |
Several MediaWiki extensions are installed[232] to extend the functionality of the MediaWiki software. | English |
In April 2005, a Lucene extension[233][234] was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Wikipedia switched from MySQL to Lucene for searching. | English |
The site currently uses Lucene Search 2.1,[235][needs update] which is written in Java and based on Lucene library 2.3. | English |
[236] In July 2013, after extensive beta testing, a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) extension, VisualEditor, was opened to public use. | English |
[237][238][239][240] It was met with much rejection and criticism, and was described as "slow and buggy". | English |
[241] The feature was changed from opt-out to opt-in afterward. | English |
Computer programs called bots have often been used to perform simple and repetitive tasks, such as correcting common misspellings and stylistic issues, or to start articles such as geography entries in a standard format from statistical data. | English |
[242][243][244] One controversial contributor, Sverker Johansson [sv], creating articles with his bot was reported to create up to 10,000 articles on the Swedish Wikipedia on certain days. | English |
[245] Additionally, there are bots designed to automatically notify editors when they make common editing errors (such as unmatched quotes or unmatched parentheses). | English |
[246] Edits falsely identified by bots as the work of a banned editor can be restored by other editors. | English |
An anti-vandal bot is programmed to detect and revert vandalism quickly. | English |
[243] Bots are able to indicate edits from particular accounts or IP address ranges, as occurred at the time of the shooting down of the MH17 jet incident in July 2014 when it was reported edits were made via IPs controlled by the Russian government. | English |
[247] Bots on Wikipedia must be approved before activation. | English |
[248] According to Andrew Lih, the current expansion of Wikipedia to millions of articles would be difficult to envision without the use of such bots. | English |
[249] Wikipedia receives between 25,000 and 60,000-page requests per second, depending on the time of the day. | English |
[250][needs update] As of 2019[update], page requests are first passed to a front-end layer of Varnish caching servers. | English |
[251][needs update] Further statistics, based on a publicly available 3-month Wikipedia access trace, are available. | English |
[252] Requests that cannot be served from the Varnish cache are sent to load-balancing servers running the Linux Virtual Server software, which in turn pass them to one of the Apache web servers for page rendering from the database. | English |
The web servers deliver pages as requested, performing page rendering for all the language editions of Wikipedia. | English |
To increase speed further, rendered pages are cached in a distributed memory cache until invalidated, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses. | English |
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