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Update 8:05p.m. EST: The test was right. ItsNeil Gorsuch.

President Donald Trump is delivering his Supreme Court nomination in his typical showman fashion, summoning histop choices to Washington D.C. Tuesday night ahead of the scheduled announcement. While his team intends to keep the country standing by to see who gets the nod, Vocativ decided to do some digging.

A pretty good predictor of future news events, it turns out, is Wikipedia.As we found back in July when Hillary Clinton announced her running mate, Tim Kaine thanks to a little trick uncovered by theWashington Post found back in 2008 edit histories on the encyclopedia site can be a propitious tell.

The theory here is that Washington insiders working for sources in the know double down on any Wikipedia cleanup or additions necessary before a relatively unknown name splashed across the headlines sends the public looking for more information.

If that method proves to work once again in the case of the next SCOTUS nomination, it would seem that Neil Gorsuch, a 49-year-old judge out of Colorado, is your next nominee.

Of course,its tough to say just how reliable this approach in this case, especially considering that a great deal of the most recent edits made to Gorsuchs page came from thethe same IP addressediting the page for Thomas Hardiman, the other potential choice. Plus, its always possible that given Trumps penchant for erratic, last-minute decision making both judges pages are undergoing a lot of scrutiny, since both will be in the news after the announcement.

Edits to both candidates entriesmade within the past week were pretty major, delving into the two candidates personal lives, notable rulings, stances on issueslike immigration, abortion rights, free speech, and religious freedom, and providing a general cleanup.

Gorsuchs Wikipedia page, which now has 4.7 times as many words as it did Jan. 12, 2016, no longer features his book on euthanasia (which he does not support) as prominently. It now focuses much more on full scope of his professional accomplishments.

Gorsuch currently serves on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, where hemade his namesupporting an exception to the contraception mandate within the Affordable Care Act in the now-famous Hobby Lobby case. In many ways, his political viewpoints on other hot-button issuesand approach to interpreting the Constitution as it was understood when it was written are similar to that of the late Antonin Scalia, whose seat he could fill.

Hardiman, 51, who currently serves in Philadelphia on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (the same court where Trumps sister currently serves as a senior judge), is seen as more centrist than Gorsuch.

Still, his Wikipedia page now notes that throughout the course of his career, he has worked against Department of Housing and Urban Development to reduce the number of low income homes in a Pittsburgh suburb,fought against the separation of church and state in the form of a courthouse plaque bearing the Ten Commandments, and sided with an anti-abortion protestor who refused to leave his post while violating a permit. Earlier on in the month, a much shorter version of Hardimans Wikipedia page featured only brief descriptions of notable cases and included now-missing details of his biography, like his work in private practice and his involvement with Big Brother Big Sisters of Greater Pittsburgh.

Read more:
Wikipedia Test Works: Gorsuch Is Supreme Court Nominee - Vocativ

Fake news may have played a role in the 2016 US presidential election, experts say.

If open collaboration worked for Wikipedia, it could work for combating fake news.

This is the suggestion of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales in a guest column Friday in The Guardian. He suggests the human element is crucial to discerning false from factual stories -- enhanced formulas for social networks and other aggregator sites to weed out fake news aren't enough.

And the way to get there, said Wales, requires people committed to sharing facts in open dialog and in open online spaces.

Sound familiar? It should. It's a similar structure to Wikipedia's free online, open-source encyclopedia.

Google, Facebook, Twitter and other networks have been cracking down on fake news after coming under fire for helping spread it. Fake news became such a hot topic in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election that then-President Barack Obama warned of fake news' power to destroy democracy.

"Social media feeds, doctored videos and instant messaging" are the biggest culprits in spreading deliberately incorrect and misleading information, Wales wrote about the rash of stories posing as legitimate news that don't actually meet journalistic fact-checking standards.

"We need this visibility," Wales added, "Because it sheds light on the process and origins of information and creates a structure for accountability." You can find Wales' column here.

Read next: Here's how to avoid falling into the fake news trap

CNET Magazine: Check out a sample of the stories you'll find in CNET's newsstand edition.

Go here to see the original:
How do you beat fake news? Transparency, says Wikipedia co-founder - CNET

February 2, 2017 11:59 AM

Warren Mayor Jim Fouts (credit: City of Warren)

WARREN (CBS Detroit) What do controversial R&B artist R. Kelly and septuagenarian Warren Mayor Jim Fouts have in common?

Theyre on the same wikipedia page.

Information about Fouts has been added to a wikipedia page describing the Shaggy defense, which is a concept based on the classic reggae and R&B song hip It Wasnt Me.

The song captures a man caught red handed cheating on his girlfriend. Refresh your memory here.

The lyrics include she caught me on the counter (It wasnt me) Saw me bangin on the sofa (It wasnt me),Saw me kissin on the sofa (It wasnt me), I even had her in the shower (It wasnt me), She even caught me on camera (It wasnt me).

Following the popularity of the song, getting caught on tape in the act of something illegal or unethical, and then denying it was you, is known as the Shaggy defense.

And now its Wikipedia official. The Wikipedia page lists several Shaggy defense use cases, including R. Kelly, who was allegedly captured on video having sex with an underage girl and successfully denied in court that it was him.

The newest entry includes Fouts. Wikipedia says this about Fouts and the Shaggy defense:

The strategy was again used and cited in 2017 when James R. Fouts, the mayor of the Detroitsuburb of Warren, Michigan, faced controversy after multiple audio recordings alleged to be of him mocking African Americans, women, and the mentally challenged were released to the press. Fouts responded to the tapes release by repeatedly stating that the voice on the tapes is not his, earning him widespread mockery and calls to resign his office.

Despite the outcry, Fouts repeatedly denied it was his voice on the tapeheardmocking women, the mentally disabled, and black people. Council members have said they cant force him to resign, and he has said that he will not resign.

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Continued here:
Wikipedia Adds Jim Fouts To Description Of 'Shaggy Defense' Alongside R. Kelly. - CBS Local

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark: To ensure Wikipedias vitality, people of good will need to work together to prevent trolling, harassment and cyber-bullying from interfering with the common good

Craig Newmark of eponymous website Craigslist wants to eradicate trolling and other forms of toxic behaviour on Wikipedia.

With a donation of $500,000, Newmark is the initial seed funder for a new initiative by the Wikimedia Foundation to address harassment and uncivil conduct on the collaborative online encyclopaedia.

The non-profit organisation, Wikimedia Foundation, reports that harassment on Wikipedia has been shown to reduce participation with over 50 per cent of Wikipedia contributors who had been victims of such online abuse stating that they withdrew from the site as a result.

To ensure Wikipedias vitality, people of good will need to work together to prevent trolling, harassment and cyber-bullying from interfering with the common good, said Newmark.

The funding will drive what is being called a community health initiative to develop more and better tools for identifying, reporting and ridding the site of abusive content.

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/01/26/community-health-initiative-grant/

Link:
Craigslist founder fights for safer Wikipedia - Irish Times

Picture: Wikipedia/Mark Wilson/Getty Images

On Monday night President Donald Trump dismissed Sally Yates as acting attorney general, after she told justice department lawyers not to defend his executive order banning immigration from sevenMuslim countries.

He appointed Dana Boenta, the Unites States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to be acting attorney general.

Mr Boente has worked for the Justice Department since 1984 under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

In October 2015 he was nominated by President Barack Obama to be the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and was later confirmed by the Senate.

He told the Washington Post, when asked whether he would defend the president's executive order against a lawsuit:

I was enforcing it this afternoon.

Our career department employees were defending the action in court, and I expect thats what theyll do tomorrow, appropriately and properly.

All as it should be.

Dana James Boente (born February 7, 1954) is the newest sock puppet for the Trump administration.

Some mischievous anonymous editor had their way with the Wikipedia page.

The error was swiftly corrected, but you can see an old version of the article, here.

Thank goodness for speedy Wikipedia editors.

More: This is former acting attorney general Sally Yates and she just did something amazing

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Donald Trump's new attorney general has already had his Wikipedia page vandalised - The indy100