Wikipedia Gets State Funding in Germany 157
tmk writes "How can Wikipedia be improved? The German government started a project today to train experts to contribute to Wikipedia. The goal is to write or improve several hundred articles about renewable resources in the Internet encyclopedia. The project is funded by the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection. The German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Wikipedian to coordinate the efforts. 'The challenge will be to motivate experts who have done good work in other projects to get involved in the community lexicon. As project director Florian Gerlach told heise online, "Such expert reports are usually written, edited, and published in the normal newspapers or even on other websites. But Wikipedia is radically different: articles there continually grow with input from numerous authors, who often remain anonymous. The end product is constantly changing, and third parties can publish their own texts or even change yours." The future authors will therefore receive some training to help them work with Wikipedia.'"
Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Paying people to edit wikipedia does not count as donating money. Would we say wikipedia is 'receiving funding from Microsoft' if MS was paying employees to write about MS products?
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Interesting)
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There, I fixed it. Now you are correct.
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
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No bullshit.
The germans actually have found a way of organizing their society so that the people do not have to fear their government, but where the government has to fear the people.
This is called democracy.
Not democracy like they claimed to have in USSR, where you could either vote for the one party, or abstain from voting.
Not democracy like they claim to have in the US of A, where you have the choice between two parties that have almost the same politics, or you can abstain from voting or throw
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"the government is exclusively concerned with what is of benefit to the people of Germany."
That's bullshit; no one has achieved that. Are you claiming that Germany is the best democracy in the world, and not only that, they have no further to go?
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It is a highly subjective opinion if a democracy is the "best democracy", so if I had claimed that we would be discussing what makes a democracy good from now and until the end of time.
Instead I claim that Germany has a working democracy. A working democracy is IMHO a democracy where the voters are interested in what their elected representatives actually do; a democracy where the voters are prepared to change their vote if their elected representatives don't do what the voters think is in the best inter
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How is that different? Microsoft pays people to write things that Microsoft's management judges serve the interests of Microsoft's stockholders, the German government pays people to write things that the German government bureaucrats judge to serve the interest of the German government's con
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It is better than what Microsoft did, because they improve Wikipedia (at least that's what I expect, being neutral and respect WP:NPOV)
It is not the best they could have done, because it doesn't help to pay
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Re:Uh... (Score:5, Informative)
Out of curiosity, can anyone explain to me how the German government paying people to edit and to write wikipedia pages about a certain topic (in this case, renewable resources) does not constitute propaganda?
Unless you were working on a different definition, we'll define 'propaganda' as "The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view." (OED). It should be clear that the payment by the government to write stuff is not necessarily propaganda ... it very much depends on what they write. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the information they produce will be accurate (in that it reflects the best technical view of experts in the field), or where the subject matter allows for controversy, that it will be balanced. Furthermore it is possible that the contributions will not promote any particular political cause. For instance how is the statement "On Earth acceleration due to gravity is ca. 9.8m/s2" propaganda when written by a government funded writer (but apparently not when written by anyone else)?
In other words you'll have to see what is produced before you can judge it. The mere fact of government funding doesn't make communication propganda.
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Ofcourse their idea is to "influence" people by raising awareness about renewable energy, but I'm having a hard time thinking how this would be a somehow insidious activity, a connotation of the word "propaganda". Sheesh, this is the most transparent possible medium, and they are being open about the sponsorship. Their work is open for the public to scrutinize and any effort at manipul
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NPOV is an unreachable ideal. These German-trained contributor's POV will coincide with Germany's and will, no doubt, leach into their contributions.
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Defending Germany's POV (Score:1, Troll)
In other words, in your POV, Germany's POV makes sense. True or not, that is irrelevant.
What is discussed here, is that Germany has found a way to "pay the piper" — to further its POV. Perhaps less sloppily, but not entirely unlike the other astro-turfers. Again, whether that is a good or a bad POV is not, ac
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That is a nice way to muddy the waters of our very existence. Taking your approach leads down the road of questioning even the most basic and well established theories and facts about life, the universe and everything. Nothing in their funding stipulates the advancement of a certain POV, they are essentially funding scientists at large (within Germany anyway) to contribute whatever their professional views are to Wikipedia, which can
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The only problem I see with this idea is that not enough people who fund scientists are
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I wonder what these German editors will be like...
"Ja, und jedermann soll sofort eine Kompaktleuchtstofflampe [wikipedia.org] kaufen, oder
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Duh. (Score:2)
No, we'd call that "astroturfing."
Microsoft *is* paying people to edit Wikipedia. (Score:2)
As long as the people are paid to improve the quality per Wikipedia standards, rather than to promote a particular POV, I consider such "hired editors" for a contribution.
They don't pay for writing (Score:2)
Only two people are paid. They coordinate the efforts of the experts and organize Wikipedia trainings.
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Just don't (Score:5, Funny)
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Tea was served!
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Backlash (Score:1, Offtopic)
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there is only one problem w. that - its not how knowledge actually works.
looks like german government at least is taking a stand on the issue - unlike many other governments. to see it get lost in the noise of wiki seems like a huge waste.
they would be better off w. some sort of
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With that in mind, and given that Wikipedia is often being the first place people look online for information these days it seems like a very good way of tying
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Huh? If a UFO/JFK conspiracy mag publishes Einsteins papers on theory of relativity, then Einstein's papers and theories haven't lost their authority. Now, I might question the fact that someone said that Einstein's paper in this magazine said that E equals magic fairy dust and that Einstein hung out with little green men from mars, but that wouldn't degrade the authority of his original work
Authority works i
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Train experts? (Score:2)
Are there Wiki professionals out there that go around and train people on how to use a wiki? Outstanding! I knew my resume had a blank space that needed filling.
As for the US-based wiki, we may not be professionals but dammit we're a union. Now where did I put that union card anyway...
Accountability (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Accountability (Score:4, Insightful)
To have governments actively allocate funding for people to contribute to Wikipedia in no way prevents or invalidates the tireless work of the rest of the community. Both groups should be contributing, and both groups should be checking each other's facts. There is no need (nor any ability) for governments to "take over wikipedia from within".
What we are seeing is a consolidation of efforts, and I hope other governments follow this lead. Government workers (who are inherently being paid from public funds) should not waste effort generating duplicate material. Rather than creating their own factoid-websites, they can do more good by extending and improving the vast material on Wikipedia (which, of course, is freely available to all).
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Academia and government are going to take over wikipedia from within, by this model, and while this violates the fundamental ideal of wikipedia, it will improve the content vastly.
Wikipedia admin speaking here: No, it doesn't violate the fundamental ideas of Wikipedia, and that is a very common misconception. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit: Your congressman or the guy who is tapping your phone at the NSA are included in "anyone" as well. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but it is also the encyclopedia in which anyone can challenge your edits, per the Verifiability policy [wikipedia.org]. It is also the encyclopedia in which anyone can revert your edits if you
Poor academics..... (Score:1)
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Apart from the tendency of articles to get messy, Wikipedia only suffers from organized or semi-organized groups gaming the open system. The glaring examples of this are most of the Wikipedia articles to do with Israel and Palestine. The h
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Neither do I, other than introducing a paid "judiciary" of impartial non editors who periodically banned the worst offenders (if you use the site much, you probably know the people I am talkin about). But I can't see Wikipedians accepting that.
If there was a general, simple answer to the problem, the libertarians could have their society tomorrow.
In related news.. (Score:2)
Wiki is crazy, shouldn't work but does (Score:5, Interesting)
The best suggestion I've seen is that Wikipedia can go the way of Linux distributions. For those who are willing to do their own fact-checking, they can get the straight dope from Wiki, warts and edit wars and all. For academic distributions, editing boards can decide what to accept from the live articles. It naturally won't be all of Wikipedia, just what pertains to the topics that the editing team think are appropriate for the distro. MIT may pull in a ton of science articles and leave out the articles about countries, TV shows, music, etc. Harvard Business School may concentrate on business history, applicable case law, and other subjects encompassed in the curriculum but find the material MIT covers to be factually correct but outside the interest of the course. These distros can then filter edits through a peer review process to make sure they agree with what's entered. The reputation of the editing board is on the line in these distributions and factual inaccuracies here would incur as much shame as if the error occurred in a peer-reviewed journal.
To extend the comparison to open source, one could consider the academic distros to be the stable fork, straight wiki would be the beta version. The respect and prestige accorded to the various editing boards will be a matter of public opinion. Because the board members are not just anonymous yahoos on the net but people with careers and reputations, the overall quality of work should be higher. And, seeing as all of this knowledge is "open source," original research appearing in an academic distro can always be ported into the real wiki.
I do not think any of this is starry-eyed optimism or unrealistic hippie idealism, I think it is quite realistic and the hard parts have already been demonstrated for the skeptics.
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Which is arguably the most dangerous aspect of it. If it was blatantly false, it would not be used by so many as an authoritative source. Not everyone takes everything they read their as true, but too many do.
Imagine the call to war in Iraq 10years after wikipedia, with a consistent set of 'facts' about Iraq added. Colin Powell would never have needed to give his little UN speech.
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Which is arguably the most dangerous aspect of it. If it was blatantly false, it would not be used by so many as an authoritative source. Not everyone takes everything they read their as true, but too many do.
Imagine the call to war in Iraq 10years after wikipedia, with a consistent set of 'facts' about Iraq added. Colin Powell would never have needed to give his little UN speech.
Good point. Three things that should prevent this sort of thing from happening:
1. Edits are logged by user or IP so you can see who is making them.
2. If the community corrects the information and it keeps getting changed, the topic is locked.
3. All factual assertions are supposed to be backed up with links to other sites with hard evidence.
People can be some devious investigative bastards. Republican astroturfing attempts have been sniffed out thanks to smart people finding the holes in the efforts and doc
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Therein lies the source of wikipedia naysayers unshakeable conviction - logically, it can't work, and to see it working is an insult to their intelligence. So they vandalise a page to prove a point, and for 3 seconds the article on "butterscotch" or whatever it was that I answered their question with says "PatrickThomson is a faggot". Ok, I'll confess this was a specific incident, and I haven't bump
Citizendium (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, no. (Score:2)
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absolutely terrible development (Score:4, Insightful)
but by linking the government, any government, to wikipedia, now your cacophony has a louder strain of establishment rhetoric and bureaucratic agenda. instead of your bullshit meter going off here and there, now your bullshit meter is on orange alert all the time: those with an agenda aren't random riff raff, now they have dug themselves deeper into the lifeblood of the entire site
there is no such thing as a neutral unbiased source of information. but a site unhinged from corporate ownership or governmental oversight or funding accountability is pretty much as close as you are going to get. involving any outside entity with an agenda, no matter how innocuous the agenda nor how limited the scope of the involvement nor what the model of involvement is, it taints everything about how you must perceive the site if you have a healthy bullshit meter
a shame, just a bloody awful development because i love wikipedia, but now i love it a little less
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there is no such thing as a neutral unbiased source of information.
This saying always bugs me. Can you be completely 100% neutral and unbiased? Of course not. But if you're trying it's not that hard to get pretty damn close. The fact is we see so little of it because we don't want to, people want their opinions reinforced, they want some "flavour" with their information so the media gives us what we want. But I've always considered that quote
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But as long as the German government is completely transparent with this, it shouldn't worry you anyway. You can just find out who those editors ar
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If you don't like it, fix it. Don't bitch about it.
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WhoseStory if not History (Score:2)
Then again, maybe not...
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A slight cloud on the horizon (Score:2)
The last person to try recruiting people to edit Wikipedia for m
Should governments decide what Wikipedia says? (Score:2)
Simmer down. (Score:2)
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Does it really limit the scope of the problem? Many bi- or multilingual editors translate stuff to or from "the other Wikipedia".
But is all this really a problem? What's the difference between a government-founded expert, and any other random editor? Both are on exactly the same footing here. Whenever an article is edited by an expert, it will sooner than later be reedited by an expert with opposing views (and by hordes of non-experts as well). This is already happening all over the Wikipedia, and it does
The U.S. following in (Score:2, Funny)
Wikipedia useless for non-orthodox thinking. (Score:2, Flamebait)
Wikipedia seems to be run entirely by science geeks who never figured out that highschool and TV are brainwashing tactics. How sad for a bunch who supposedly take pride in using their brains that they should have been so easily tricked.
Thus, in Wikipedia, if it doesn't fit with conventional wisdom, it isn't in there.
This is fine if I need to look up how jet engines work or what the capit
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Wikipedia seems to be run entirely by science geeks who never figured out that highschool and TV are brainwashing tactics. [...] Thus, in Wikipedia, if it doesn't fit with conventional wisdom, it isn't in there.
The same goes for any kind of encyclopedia. They're not supposed to be springboards for new ideas, instead they collect those ideas deemed to be the current consensus.
Besides, as long as you don't name any specific articles and they deficiencies, it's hard to decide whether your argument has any merit or whether you're just a conspiracy theorist who's ticked off that his personal view of the world is not represented on Wikipedia.
(Please don't take that personally, I have no opinion on you one way or the ot
I don't like this idea. (Score:2)
The Essjay incident should have put the kibosh on credentialism; users should be evaluated by the work that
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I don't think that's good (Score:2)
If the German government wants to support Wikipedia, they should donate hardware and bandwidth.
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For this interlingual fishgift we grateful are (Score:2, Funny)
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*ducks*
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Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to (Score:5, Interesting)
The neo-Nazi party, the NPD - and others - are not banned. In parts of Germany they have elected members and considerable power and influence. They differ only slightly from the Nazi party - and that is only because aspects of what they believe in are censored by German Law (The censorship laws are actually part of the problem - they drive neo-Nazi's underground and mask their true numbers). In my experience, as one who is not German but has lived in Berlin for many years, the rise of the neo-Nazis is much greater than the average German in the street realises. There is a significant and growing problem with extreme right wing behavior modern Germany. The Nazi's seem to be smarter this time round. They are making legal changes much more slowly this time, but it is happening.
Seemingly small things, like the decision to mark the site of Hitler's bunker, or the decision to remove the Palast Der Republik in favour of a rebuilt Schloss, are all giving the extreme right more power and influence.
Modern Germans need to wake up to this before it is too late -- again.
Specifically to the Wikipedia thing though - yes, there is a real danger, nay likelihood, of neo-Nazis hijacking that. However, that is simply a function of the fundamental problem with Wikipedia -- cabals rule all. In this, Germany is no different to Microsoft, to Scientology, to the Ayn Rand lovers in the WikiFoundation itself, or indeed to any and all with an agenda and resources.
The fundamental problem with Wikipedia is its delusions of authority, and its designs on the same. If people stopped taking it seriously it would be one hell of a lot more useful and authoritative.
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I'm more or less familiar with the arguments about this decision and I think the decision's both wrong and wasteful, but how do you figure it empowers the extreme right?
Comparing Germany today to 1930 (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time I go to a public showing of the nazis (yes, the courts have to allow it unless there's a very good reason not to; right of public assembly is sacred after all) there are at least 10-50 times as many people demonstrating against them as there are nazis. That feels good. No actually it's terrible that there's even just ONE nazi standing there, shouting seriously stupid things. It breaks my heart that yound and old people are among them. The old one will die out naturally, but the young ones are just desperate, which really is a shame. At least the government has quite some money put into projects to show kids what happened in the 3rd Reich and to root out the cause of frustration. Not enough in my opinion, but they don't stop with it at least.
Germany has not forgotten. Not at all. Come over here and you will see. Ask Jews who live here now, even they will tell you that. We have many, many museums, pieces of art, historic sites and whatnot treating the 3rd Reich critically, none of which try to glorify anything that happened back then - it's the brutal truth.
As to Wikipedia: No, there's no danger of Nazis hijacking it. Firstly, it's not at all in their area of interest (why would they care about environmental issues?) and secondly there are about 83 million Germans who are no Nazis (out of 83.x million) who will report/fix any hijacked site.
And it's great that our government does this - others should do the same. Knowledge for the people for free in an accessible form. Great!
Please mod parent up! (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should remind yourself from time to time that there was more to the war than just who won it and who lost it.
Germany's past is not a fscking joke. It should be a lesson to everyone.
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I realize you are being flippant, but you may have hit on a fundamental problem currently lurking in society: most technological and political issues (and especially techno-political issues like copyright) are simply too complex to even describe in less than a page. To say nothing of sound-bites, headlines, and .signature screeds.
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Her ideas are complex (Score:2)
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1. Government intervention in the economy is bad
2. Work is man's highest calling.
3. Logic is man's greatest asset
4. Neither greed or ego are not evil
5. And finally, the most ape shit insane views on relationships that has ever been published.
While I'm at it I might as well:
6. ???
7. Profit!
But I should point
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What is it about Rand's philosophy that so emotionally stimulates proponents and opponents alike? Before Atlas Shrugged was published, at a sales conference at Random House a salesman asked Rand if she could summarize the essence of her philosophy, called Objectivism, while standing on one foot. She did so as follows (1962):
Pretty much what you just said. Ayn Rand complicates things because her target audience likes things complicated. Her target audience likes things complicated because it gives them the excuse of saying that the detractors are just too stupid to understand.
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I once attempted to read Atlas Shrugged at a local Barnes and Noble with the assistance of a B-vitamin injection and an intrepid Sherpa guide with a BA in English literature.
We got as far as the fiftieth page of the John Galt monologue, and then I had to abandon the effort after poor Lobsang went mad and hurled himself into the espresso maker at the Starbucks next door.
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Good answer. :)
When calling others stupid... (Score:2)
When calling other people stupid, it's best to use big words like "too" and "she" correctly.
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The obligatory Ayn Rand quote that I feel is applicable here:
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No real change here. (Score:2)
The late, great Anne is invoked:
You might have a point, if this were anything more than a efficiency motivated form change. The experts are already spending their time writing the same material over and over for newspapers. Contributing source material to Wikipedia instead does nothing but save time.
Re:Obligatory Rand quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Ayn Rand wrote:
Actually, I'm quite sane Ms. Rand; thanks.
I wrote (#19300097 [slashdot.org]):
You see: if government doesn't fund research, who will? Gone are the days of Bell Labs.
Also, Ms. Rand, you forget: The absence of civic government does not imply the existence of individual freedom. Quite the contrary: Civic government is a necessary check on corporate government.
You mention...
Ayn Rand wrote:
Anarcho-capitalist "libertarianism" is no recipe for freedom.
Ayn Rand wrote:
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We've had one US President for 6 years now. In 6 years, how many CEO's have been fired? How many companies have failed, or have lost revenue or value while their competitors have grown?
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