Category: Wikipedia
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My new book is launched in paperback: Here are some quotes
I am now announcing that my new book is now available on Amazon in paperback. Please show your appreciation for this blog (and my other attempts to enlighten the world) by buying it!
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New book: Essays on Free Knowledge
Update: Available in paperback on Amazon – as an audiobook read by the author I published my first book this morning. The current cost is $9.95. It is a 270-page ebook, first published on Gumroad, where I’ll get a higher percentage. Buy via the embedded ad below, and after that, I’ll have a few notes…
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Wikipedia Is Badly Biased
Wikipedia’s “NPOV” is dead. The original policy long since forgotten, Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy. There is a rewritten policy, but it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid what they call “false balance.”
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EU copyright reform could threaten wiki encyclopedias
If we are to believe its critics, under the pending EU copyright reform legislation, the EU would implement a “link tax” across all of Europe. So if you link to a news article, for example, including a text snippet, then you’d have to pay a fee. When Spain tried this, Google News simply discontinued service…
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Some thoughts, 15 years after Wikipedia’s launch
It’s been 15 years since I announced the opening of the new Wikipedia.com site, with a little message that said: http://www.wikipedia.com/ Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes. –Larry I am still sometimes called “Wikipedia’s sharpest critic,” but if you actually look at the panoply of…
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Let’s try out “Golden Filter Premium” on Wikipedia, shall we?
I encountered a journalist-activist on Twitter, a writer for (among others) Al Jazeera in English, who is nevertheless a free speech activist. We discussed the recent FoxNews.com article that reported, among other things, that the Wikimedia Foundation entirely failed to respond to a “more or less free” offer of filtering software. They need such software, of…
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On the moral bankruptcy of Wikipedia’s anonymous administration
I announced, named, and launched Wikipedia way back in January of 2001. My originating role in the project was acknowledged by Jimmy Wales later on in 2001, when he wrote, “Larry had the idea to use wiki software…” Virtually all of the news articles about the project before 2005 identified me as one of the two founders of…
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The Saga of Wikimedia UK and its Chair
The following story is very instructive about the sort of people in the Wikipedia universe, and what sort of people actually run things on the sixth most popular website online. In case you didn’t know, there is an organization, Wikimedia UK, that is legally independent of the Wikimedia Foundation headquartered in San Francisco. Wikimedia UK has a separate…
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Wikimedia Foundation Board Officially Rejects Porn Filter
Last Wednesday, the Wikimedia Foundation board quietly voted, in person, 10-0 in favor of repealing the “personal image hiding feature”–in other words, a very weak, opt-in porn filter. “Quietly,” I say, because the resolution was not posted publicly until the middle of the weekend. Note that the page mistakenly states that Jimmy Wales voted against…
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Dad & Junior find porn via a Wikipedia “Schools Gateway”
I thought I’d illustrate one of the “what could possibly go wrong?” scenarios, for people who (1) don’t want to click on the nasty links and/or (2) lack imagination. Script: Opening shot: article about unfiltered porn on Wikipedia Voiceover: The adult imagery is blurred in this video. Still, don’t watch it with your kids. Man…