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English Wikipedia participation peaked ten years ago and is down about 20,000 active users a month from its high point. Three big factors often get cited: deletionism, poor mobile editing options, and a lost spirit of inclusiveness. Everipedia wants to address all three with the latest attempt at an encyclopedia of everything. I spoke with co-founder Sam Kazemian about the project, which often pops up as a top search result for college-related news and people. Can they crack the code of next-gen participation?

When I wrote about Wikipedias deletion of "Chickenhead," I opined that a component of bias led to its deletion. The song is a Dirty South anthem that features underground legend Project Pat and La Chat, a notable female rapper in that subgenre. Wikipedia editors meticulously detail locomotive engines and software programs, while topics like fashion and female scientists get short shrift. However, even a lot of young white nerdy guys who form Wikipedias base have been driven from the project by deletionists, who search and destroy anything too detailed or obscure, respectively labeled fancruft and non-notable in Wikipedia lingo.

Unlike Wikipedia, Everipedia has an extensive entry on Chickenhead, including gifs from the music video and links to many sources which confer its notability. In Wikipedia jargon, the opposite of deletionism is inclusionism, and theres an inclusionist spirit to Everipedia. I joined under the name DeletionistsKillWikis to give it a test run and found it to be much more user-friendly, especially on a mobile device.

When they say its OK to include everything, they mean it. Shortly after my article on the deletion of hemovanadin, Everipedia user DaveLiebowitz enhanced Everipedia's version of Wikipedias article on me (called a fork in Wikispeak) with some gifs and links. Dave also has an Everipedia entry and even created an article titled Dave's Sriracha Shirt, about his favorite shirt emblazoned with Huy Fong Foods' Sriracha bottle:

Sriracha is a curious obsession on Everipedia. Others have written about their Sriracha onesies:

While this would immediately be deemed unworthy on Wikipedia and deleted, these articles reflect the fun Everipedia is trying to inject back into collaborative editing.

Its been a few months since I last checked in. One aspect of the fun is the gamification of editing, where editors get IQ points for edits. I stopped at 73 IQ because I thought that was funny next to my name. Everipedia's Chickenhead page is still up, but it hasnt had much activity since I did a little test drive. Still, it's vastly better than Wikpedia's deleted page.

Hip-hop culture has a large presence on Everipedia, reflecting its college-age users and their interests. That is also reflected in the interest of their co-founder and guiding spirit Mahbod Moghadam, who got involved after leaving the Rap Genius project he co-founded, bringing in angel investors like Theodor Forselius. Moghadam told me in an email, "I think that just like Genius, Everipedia is transforming the Internet. Sam, our CEO, is the most talented person I've ever met - he is the next Zuck!!" So I reached out to Kazemian for some background on the site he co-founded in 2015.

Above: Kazemian, Forselius, Moghadam

BB: What are Everipedias five most-viewed pages?

BB: Thats interesting, because none of those women or people of color have their own articles on Wikipedia. How does Everipedia distinguish its content and approach from fan-powered sites like Rap Genius or Wikia, which has a Hip-Hop database?

BB: Wikipedias visual editor was released to poor reviews. Wikis live and die by their active user base. What are you doing to attract and retain users that's different from competitors?

BB: What can you tell me about your typical editor, and what trends have you seen in editing patterns?

BB: I first came across Everipedia because users were constructing articles about whatever internet drama or viral news item was blowing up that day, often about people or events Wikipedia would consider non-notable. In that sense, your site competes with Heavy.

BB: One article I read was a summary of a 4chan investigation on the identity of anti-Trump protester Eric Clanton. Some of the information was disputed, and the article stated he committed crimes before he had been charged. What steps are you taking to protect living people from defamation?

BB: It still seems that there's potential for misuse. How would you deal with an article about or referring to someone who doesn't want to be covered?

BB: Have you had to delete any articles yet? Is so, can you describe them?

BB: Have you had to ban any users, and if so, why?

BB: Is there a limit to what is worthy of a page?

Time will tell with Everipedia, but shaking up the status quo is what always leads to advances in knowledge. At the very least, let's hope it prompts Wikipedia to take a harder look at its ongoing issues of including more diversity in both its articles and editors. The two go hand in hand.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is inaccessible in Turkey, with officials saying it was blocked as an administrative measure thereby explaining why the courts werent involved. Turkish media says the government asked Wikipedia to take stuff down, but was ignored. After technical analysis and legal consideration based on the Law Nr. 5651 [governing the internet], an []

Wikitribune (strapline: Evidence-based journalism) is a newly launched project from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, conceived of as a crowd-edited, crowd-funded tonic against fake news.

In Even good bots fight, a paper written by Oxford Internet Institute researchers and published in PLOS One, the authors survey the edits and reverts made by Wikipedias diverse community of bots, uncovering some curious corners where bots rate-limited by Wikipedias rules for bots slowly and remorseless follow one another around, reverting each []

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More:
Can Everipedia remake collaborative encyclopedias to be inclusive and enjoyable? - Boing Boing

V for Wikipedia is a beautifully-designed reader for Wikipedia. The app, which has won awards for its design and was declared an Editors Choice by Apple, emphasizes typography and mapping to make exploring Wikipedia a delight.

V for Wikipedia features a four-tab interface with a search box that is always available at the top of the main interface. The first tab features the most popular Wikipedia articles in an attractive two column layout. There are also search history and bookmark tabs for easily finding recently browsed or saved articles.

But where V for Wikipedia really shines is its location tab. The app marks locations around you that have Wikipedia entries with colorful markers that have lines that gracefully curve to a row of articles that scrolls horizontally across the bottom of the screen. The design is attractive, but also functional, like an interactive travel guide or encyclopedia.

Another highlight of V for Wikipedia is its attention to each articles layout, imagery, and typography. From the signature map view, to the the careful design of the articles, V for Wikipedia transforms Wikipedia into a stylish reading experience that sets it apart from other Wikipedia readers. Chosen by Apple as one of the best apps of 2016, V for Wikipedia is the best choice for travelers, students, researchers, and anyone else who uses Wikipedia regularly.

V for Wikipedia is available on the App Store as a Universal app for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Learn more about V for Wikipedia here.

Our thanks to Raureif for sponsoring MacStories this week.

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V for Wikipedia: A Reading Interface To Discover The World [Sponsor] - MacStories

An unknown person operating from within Congress made edits to the Wikipedia entry on important cases relating to Obstruction of Justice, listing President Donald Trump among the notable examples.

Other notable examples already posted on the Wikipedia page include President Richard Nixon, Scooter Libby and baseball legend Barry Bonds.

Donald Trump was added to the list, along with a link back to his Wikipedia page, on Thursday afternoon, the same time former FBI Director James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

While its common for Wikipedia pages to be changed, what makes this instance particularly interesting is that it was made byan anonymous posterin a congressional building. Media were alerted to the change by a Twitter account, @Congressedits, which automatically posts a tweet whenever someone using a congressional IP address makes changes on Wikipedia.

Initially, it was believed the change came from Rep. Mike Coffmans (R-Colo.) office, but Gabriel Malor, a writer for the Federalist, said this claim was shot down by a House Security Specialist.

UPDATE: Via Rep. Coffmans office, a House Security Specialist has told them this is an IP address open to the public for wifi use, Malor wrote on Twitter.

Why does this matter? Because speculation has since been flying over whether the change was made as part of some larger media strategy by a congressional office preparing to go on the attack against Trump. This is precisely the theory right-leaning Mediaite promoted on Saturday evening.

Trumps name was mostly likely added to preempt the major news that was bound to come out of James Comeys testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ken Meyer wrote for Mediaite. The former FBI director spoke about his interactions with Trump, though the question of whether Trump tried to interfere with an active investigation is still being debated.

The change also raises additional questions about the trustworthiness of Wikipedia. If Wikipedia is being actively edited by politicians and their staffs, how reliable could it possibly be?

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Mysterious person in Congress made Wikipedia edits involving ... - TheBlaze.com

New York Times

Turks Click Away, but Wikipedia Is Gone New York Times Since late April the Turkish government has blocked one of the world's go-to sources of online information, Wikipedia. After Wikipedia refused to remove unflattering references to Turkey's relationship with Syrian militants and state-sponsored ...

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Turks Click Away, but Wikipedia Is Gone - New York Times

With more than 5 million articles in English and 30 million registered users, Wikipedia is the largest and most influential source of information in the world.

But the online community-based encyclopedia is not a self-generating mass of neutral and reliable knowledge. It is created by people writing collaboratively all over the world. As a result, it reflects not only what people know but also how they think about it, and what they think is important. Along with facts and figures, these implicit value judgements also get written into Wikipedia, determining what is represented and how.

However, fewer than 15 per cent of English-language Wikipedia editors are women. While there is nothing wrong with the male perspective, the fact that it is mostly men who decide what enters this hugely important repository of knowledge has real consequences. Pages on Star Wars spaceships, video gamesand porn stars are clear and comprehensive; paradigms of Wikipedia scholarship replete with authoritative, detailed information.

When it comes to women, Wikipedias gender bias really bites: only one in six of its 1.5 million biographies were of women. That slant is even more apparent when it comes to classical studies: an estimate in 2016 found that only 7 per cent of biographies of classicists were of women.

When women are included on Wikipedia, their lives and achievements are often articulated in relation to men. Miriam T. Griffin did not have a dedicated Wikipedia page and was only mentioned on the site as the wife of fellow classicist Jasper Griffin. Dr Griffin may have been a tutor in ancient history at the University of Oxford since 1967, the author of 10 books, and 61 entries in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, but she had no Wikipedia page.Leslie Brubaker, an expert on Byzantine art history at the University of Birmingham, is also mentioned only on herhusbandsWikipedia page.

If you are employed as a professor, you automatically meet the notability requirements on Wikipedia; and yet 59 per cent of UK female professors of Classics have no representation on Wikipedia.

Wikipedias gender bias seems like an intractable problem, but this does not need to be true: as in other areas where inequality seems irrevocable, its about willpower. Editing Wikipedia is pretty easy (and getting easier), pretty cheap (free) and pretty quick (instant). The Welsh-language Wikipedia (Cywiki) currently has more biographies of women than men. This has been achieved largely through editathonsthat bring people together to edit Wikipedia collectively, often with training provided.

While reversing Wikipedias gender skew may seem like an insurmountable task, breaking it down makes it much easier to achieve. The online activism of the Womens Classical Committee offers a good example of how real progress can be made by small groups or individuals without specialist knowledge or funds, just desire for change.

Founded two years ago with the purpose of supporting women who teach, research and study classical subjects, it held its first editathonin London in January 2017 to begin improving the visibility of female classical scholars on Wikipedia. Academics, Wikimedia volunteers, librarians, students and publishers participated, both in person and remotely via Skype. Nineteen articles were created or expanded, providing new information on significant female classicists such asDorothy Tarrant, the first female professor of Greek in the UK.

This event alone doubled the representation of female classical scholars on Wikipedia.

Through the WCCs initiative, 39 articles have been created or improved, swinging the pendulum so that roughly one in three biographies of classicists is of a woman. Five of the articles have appeared on Wikipedias front page, in the "Did You Know"section.The WCC now organises monthly remote editing sessions alongside training sessions.

Why is this important? Because accessibility is essential to inclusivity. Through free online tools, the WCC has established a large and informed community, mobilising activism and pooling knowledge and resources.

The WCC aims to continue reversing the gender skew online and mobilising change through digital tools, providing a positive example for others to follow.At least online, rewriting inclusive history has never been so easy and has never had so much potential for change.

Victoria Leonard is a research associate at the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of Londons School of Advanced Study

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How we doubled the representation of female classical scholars on Wikipedia - Times Higher Education (THE) (blog)