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12 November 2014

 

2014-11-12

Amazon Echo; EU freedom of panorama; Bluebeard's Castle

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By Gamaliel
"Alexa, Wikipedia Abraham Lincoln"

Amazon Echo provides Wikipedia access

Technology media outlets are abuzz after the November 6 unveiling of the Amazon Echo, an Internet-connected voice command device. Amazon.com's new device has numerous features: it plays music, news, and weather, keeps reminders and shopping lists, provides information like Wikipedia articles and answers to basic queries. These features are activated by speaking the "wake word", Alexa. It is not clear how exactly the Echo provides information from Wikipedia, such as whether or not it reads the whole article or just parts like the introduction, or how it will navigate disambiguation pages. The Wikipedia function is not demonstrated in Amazon's video about the Echo, though it is listed on its display of sample voice commands through the example "Wikipedia Abraham Lincoln". The Wall Street Journal quips "Guess that means Wikipedia is officially a verb now."


EU restrictions on freedom of panorama affect Wikipedia

The censored Atomium

The EUobserver talks (November 4) with Dimitar Dimitrov (User:Dimi z) about the lack of freedom of panorama in some European Union countries and its implications for Wikimedia projects. The copyright for photographs taken of the exteriors of buildings in some EU countries like Belgium, France, and Italy resides with the rights holders, such as the architect or the owner of the building. This means, for example, that there are no photographs of the Atomium in Brussels on Wikipedia. Wikipedia editors have resorted to using a model of the building in Austria or a censored version of a photograph of the Atomium. Photographs of the Eiffel Tower taken during the day are not restricted because the copyright of Gustave Eiffel, who died in 1923, has long since expired. The more recently installed lights on the Tower mean, however, that photographs taken at night fall under these copyright restrictions. Despite this, there are 328 images in the Wikimedia Commons category Eiffel Tower at night.


Storming Bluebeard's Castle

Bluebeard and Judith illustrated by Gustave Doré

Scott Cantrell, classical music critic for the Dallas Morning News, recounts (November 11) efforts to verify an uncited claim in the Wikipedia article for the Béla Bartók opera Bluebeard's Castle. According to the claim, first inserted into the article in 2009, "The opera was first performed in the United States in a student production at Southern Methodist University in 1946." SMU is a school in the Dallas, Texas, area. Pamela E. Pagels, music librarian at the Hamon Arts Library of Southern Methodist University, extensively researched this claim and writes:


Pagels discovered that the US premiere was actually three years later, on January 9, 1949, when it was performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The claim about SMU was removed from Wikipedia following the publication of Cantrell's article.


Blog complains about being considered an unreliable source on Wikipedia

The conservative blog TruthRevolt complained on November 8 about being labeled an unreliable source by a Wikipedia editor, User:Grayfell, on the talk page for the article about the actress, writer, and director Lena Dunham. Dunham threatened legal action against TruthRevolt after it labeled an instance of childhood genital play recounted in her recent book Not That Kind of Girl as sexual abuse. It is unlikely that TruthRevolt will meet the reliable source policy's requirement for having "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Its editor-in-chief, Ben Shapiro, wrote an article in Breitbart citing unattributed claims that United States Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel had received campaign contributions from a nonexistent group called "Friends of Hamas" which purportedly represented the Palestinian terrorist organization. Breitbart was recently in the news for attacking African-American Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch for her supposed involvement in the Whitewater controversy. The allegations were false and Breitbart had confused her with a white lawyer of the same name.


In brief


Note to readers

We want "In the Media" to be as comprehensive as possible, but we need your help. Even if you can only contribute one or two short items occasionally, that would help immensely. Editors familiar with languages other than English and Spanish are especially sought-after. Please contact Gamaliel if you wish to contribute.

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2014-11-12

Holidays, anyone?

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By Milowent

This was very much a week dominated by holidays and pop culture over current events, with new film Interstellar taking the top spot followed by holidays Day of the Dead (#2), Guy Fawkes and his Night (#4 and #5), and Halloween (#8, and its third week on the list). And a foursome of television shows, all return visitors, appear to setting up residence on the greater Top 25: The Walking Dead (#11), American Horror Story: Freak Show (#14), Gotham (#16), and The Flash (#18).

For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.

For the week of 2-8 November, 2014, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Interstellar (film) C-class 1,513,535
Up from #20 and 406,735 views last week, this science fiction film directed by Christopher Nolan was widely released on 7 November. It earned $52.1 million in its opening weekend in North America, but was edged out by Disney's animated Big Hero 6 (which comes in on the Top 25 at #24).
2 Day of the Dead B-class 851,429
Up from #13 and 465,760 views last week. With its joyful juxtaposition of the merry and the macabre, the Mexican Halloween is becoming ever more popular in its northern neighbour (the land that turned Halloween into a global phenomenon) no doubt aided by the increasing Latino presence there. (Last year the holiday topped out at #4).
3 Facebook B-class 690,133
A perennially popular article, as it is the second most popular website in the world, after Google.
4 Guy Fawkes Featured Article 677,205
In the week of his eponymous night, which came in at #5, interest usually also spikes in the man himself. Whereupon our readers can learn that the only reason he's been vilified as a master criminal for the last 400 years is because he was the only one of his terror cell who was stupid enough to get caught.
5 Guy Fawkes Night Featured Article 650,755
Falls annually on 5 November, see also #4.
6 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Start-class 600,523
This video game, primarily developed by Sledgehammer Games, was released on 4 November. It has received generally positive reviews from critics. The highest charting video game since Destiny hit #4 in September.
7 Wayne Static Start-class 588,353
48-year-old American musician Wayne Richard Wells, known as Wayne Static, was the lead vocalist for metal band Static-X as well as a solo performer. He died on 1 November. This was originally reported to be caused by a drug overdose, though his family later issued a statement that his death was not drug related and happened during sleep. He is survived by his wife Tera Wray.
8 Halloween B-class 519,940
Down from #1 last week, Halloween completes its annual visitation to our list.
9 Deaths in 2014 List 511,489
The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article. Deaths this week included British clarinetist Acker Bilk (November 2); American radio personality Tom Magliozzi (November 3); American ceramics inventor S. Donald Stookey (November 4); French flamenco guitarist Manitas de Plata, pictured at left (November 5); Nepali film director Alok Nembang (November 6); Telugu writer Dwivedula Visalakshi (November 7); and Mexican sports commentator Hugo Sánchez Portugal (November 8).
10 Happy New Year (2014 film) Start-class 490,472
Third week in the top 25. A Bollywood film starring Shahrukh Khan (pictured).

Notes:

2014-11-12

Wikipedia goes to church in Lithuania

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By Adam Cuerden, SchroCat and Pine
The gleaming white of St. Peter and St. Paul's Church, Vilnius, Lithuania, as photographed by the very talented architectural photographer David Iliff, is a new featured picture.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 26 October to 1 November 2014. Anything in quotation marks is taken from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

Nine featured articles were promoted this week.

Jack Crawford; at the time, he was the youngest player to accomplish the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in first-class cricket.
HMS Formidable on one of its less happy days, 4 May 1945, after a kamikaze attack.
A map of Highway 403 in Ontario, Canada

Articles that gained featured status

  • The Boat Race 1993 (nominated by The Rambling Man) Another part of The Rambling Man's drive to put as many articles about the Boat Race up to FA level, this covers the 1993 vintage, which RM says is a personal favourite. The race—held annually on the River Thames between crews from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge—was an interesting one. New technology was employed by Cambridge in the form of the cleaver blades they used, while Oxford favoured the more traditional macon oar. Also notable on the day was one of the Oxford rowers, Matthew Pinsent, who found himself on the losing side for once (although with five Olympic gold medals to console him, it probably doesn't cause him too much grief). Cambridge extended their lead in the competition to 70–68.
  • Carl Hans Lody (nominated by Prioryman) Lody was a reserve officer of the Imperial German Navy, who spent the opening months of the First World War spying on Britain. He'd received no training for the work, and was easily identified by the British counter-espionage agency MO5(g), the forerunner of MI5. They allowed him to carry on spying to gain information about German espionage techniques and spy networks. The work was relatively easy for MO5(g): Lody would send his reports un-coded to an address in Sweden known to be a postbox for German agents. By October 1914 MO5(g) had ordered his arrest; he travelled to Ireland in order to escape, but unwittingly left a trail so obvious that police tracked him down in less than a day. He stood trial, was convicted, sentenced to death and, on 6 November 1914, "shot at dawn by a firing squad at the Tower of London in the first execution there in 167 years". A hundred years after his death he appeared as TFA.
  • Chandralekha (1948 film) (nominated by Kailash29792) Chandralekha is "a 1948 Indian Tamil historical fiction film directed and produced by S. S. Vasan. Starring T. R. Rajakumari, M. K. Radha and Ranjan in the lead roles, the film follows two brothers named Veerasimhan and Sasankan, who fight with each other over ruling their father's kingdom and for marrying the village dancer Chandralekha", according to the article. The story is based on a chapter of George W. M. Reynolds's 1848 novel Robert Macaire: or, The French bandit in England. The film was in production for five years and became the most expensive film made in India at the time.
  • Endometrial cancer (nominated by Keilana) Something of a rarity: a health and medicine FA, (and a fantastic article it is too). The article concerns that cancer which "arises from the endometrium (the lining of the uterus or womb). It is the result of the abnormal growth of cells that have the ability to invade or spread to other parts of the body." While strongly related to obesity, the cancer is also "associated with excessive estrogen exposure, high blood pressure and diabetes." It is the third most common cause of death from female cancers and caused 76,000 deaths in 2012. The re-write and review process included an expert review from Cancer Research UK.
  • Jack Crawford (cricketer) (nominated by Jhall1 & Sarastro1) Crawford was "a rather arrogant but massively talented cricketer", according to Sarastro. Crawford played for Surrey and South Australia as an all-rounder. He could score quickly, with powerful shots, and bowled an accurate medium-paced off spin. He made his debut for England before he was 21 years old, but only played in 12 matches for England, "although critics believed he had a great future in the sport and was a potential future England captain".
  • HMS Formidable (67) (nominated by Sturmvogel 66) HMS Formidable was an aircraft carrier ordered for the Royal Navy before the onset of the Second World War, which was completed in late 1940. Sturmvogel 66 tells us that the ship had an extremely active role during the war, which included service in most major theatres of British involvement. The ship was "worn out by her wartime service and was scrapped as uneconomical to repair in 1953 after a brief period ferrying troops about shortly after the end of the war".
  • Acacia pycnantha (nominated by Melburnian & Cas Liber) This plant is also more commonly known as the golden wattle; it has "profuse fragrant, golden flowers [that] appear in late winter and spring, followed by long seed pods". The plant is native to southern Australia, and since 1988 it has been the official floral emblem of the country. Despite such high official note for the flower, it is considered a weed in a range of countries, including South Africa, Tanzania, Italy, Portugal, India, Indonesia and New Zealand.
  • Ontario Highway 403 (nominated by Floydian) This highway is a 125.2 km (77.8 mi) road that runs through Ontario, between Woodstock and Mississauga. The road was first proposed in the 1950s, its first section was opened in December 1963, and it was finally completed in August 1997.
  • No. 1 Squadron RAAF (nominated by Ian Rose) FAC delegate Ian Rose once again turns into FA writer Ian Rose, as he turns his attention to a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) squadron. Formed during the First World War, the squadron saw action in the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns; it was also active during the Second World War, in the Malayan and Dutch East Indies campaigns, where it suffered severe losses. It flew missions during the Malayan Emergency in the late 1950s, and had been quiet since, until being assigned to the military intervention against ISIS. Aircraft from the squadron conducted their first mission, and their first strike, over Iraq in October 2014.


"Histopathologic representation of endometrioid adenocarcinoma demonstrated in endometrial biopsy. Hematoxylin-eosin stain."

Two featured lists were promoted this week.

On top of numerous awards and nominations, Robert Downey, Jr. now has a shiny gold star for his filmography.

Lists that gained featured status

Fifty-five featured pictures were promoted this week.

The south side of the Taj Mahal is a new featured picture.
Bangles are common ornaments, primarily for women, in some Asian cultures. This photo is from Bangalore, India.
The red weaver ant
Sunrise, Inverness Copse by the symbolic World War I artist Paul Nash.
Timeline of the universe, in shot glass form. A delicious cocktail, but four dimensional and slow to make. Also, it's quite strong, containing all the alcohol that has ever existed.
The 1936 Cuban five peso note, showing Máximo Gómez.
The first Czechoslovakian banknote issue


Midsummer Eve bonfire on Skagen's beach by P. S. Krøyer.


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2014-11-12

Talking hospitals

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By Rcsprinter123

Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.

— Erma Bombeck

We return to our interview format this week, speaking with the participants of WikiProject Hospitals. This project, formed in 2010, has no Featured content and only three Good articles, yet aided by around 30 hard-working Wikipedians covers a topic that is essential to life. The only problem is that you tend to forget about hospitals until you or someone you know is put in one. The services they provide range from strapping broken fingers to life-saving surgery, plus long-term care for chronically or terminally ill patients. Certainly, they're quite important, but is enough time on Wikipedia being dedicated to them? From the creation of articles about small medical institutions around the world, to the giants of the hospital world including the Royal London Hospital and Clinical Dubrava, it's time to have a discussion and see what happens within this project with such a narrow scope, but so many articles. We spoke to Welsh, PCHS-NJROTC, Wpollard and Bluerasberry.

Kurmitola General Hospital, Bangladesh
A Botswanan hospital
Some Greek facilities

What motivated you to join WikiProject Hospitals? What aspects of hospitals interest you the most? Have you ever worked within a medical establishment?

  • Welsh: My first interest was stirred when I was at the bedside of my father in Cheltenham General Hospital, but found that the article did not exist, despite being a reasonably sizable establishment! Initially I was intrigued that hospitals are often local, regional or national institutions that are really important to their patients and staff, but often are unknown beyond that. There are also many historic hospitals that are now disused or converted into other uses. When I looked at the local coverage in Wales, I discovered a very patchy picture, and decided to improve the subject by revitalising the hospitals WikiProject.
  • PCHS-NJROTC: I was actually the one who spearheaded the idea as a proposed WikiProject, after creating a few hospital articles and noticing that, unlike schools which have long had WikiProject Schools (which I am also part of), hospitals did not have a WikiProject at the time and were under a more general WikiProject. Since then, while I've become a lot less active at Wikipedia than I once was, I still do participate a little here and there, and others have done a wonderful job maintaining and contributing to the project. I was a hospital volunteer for three years and I worked as a hospital food service worker for 9 months.
  • Wpollard: I originally was not very interested in this project, because I had at that point worked fifteen years in various health settings and really wanted to write about other topics. I drifted into this when on travel I visited hospitals in England, the Philippines and Jamaica. I found many hospitals, including important ones, had nothing written about them in Wikipedia. I like to create new articles and I wanted to explore all aspects of these undocumented hospitals and medical clinics. I have in twenty years time worked in nine hospitals and I think six clinics and old-age facilities. My occupation has been as a respiratory therapist, a care worker and as a sleep technologist.
  • Bluerasberry: I work for a nonprofit organization in the United States which rates the quality and value of hospitals by examining their safety records and the prices they charge, and I came to this WikiProject to see if there was some way I could share information here. I have hardly contributed so far, but I am sure that I am not the only person who has imagined large collections of hospital reviews becoming more accessible through Wikipedia as a way to improve public health and empower patients. Every hospital says their service is the best, but government safety reports say that the number of problems that hospitals have vary a lot even within small geographical areas. I wish Wikipedia could tap into this kind of information.

Have you contributed to any of the project's Good Articles?

  • PCHS-NJROTC: Only minor edits and vandalism reversions.
  • Wpollard: I have only done minor editing to a few of these articles.

Is it difficult to find images for hospital articles? Do you find that photographs are easily available or do they need taking especially?

  • Welsh: Hospitals are often the subject of local photographers, so images are readily available, for example on Geograph Britain and Ireland with the appropriate licenses. Historic photos are harder to track down, though a set of old images of asylums was uploaded a few years ago.
  • PCHS-NJROTC: For local ones, I'll usually try and take a picture myself.
  • Wpollard: I have not made an effort to locate images, but in one case I referenced two photographs of a hospital that had no photo in its article.

How is the notability of a hospital or clinic determined?

  • Welsh: I use a rule of thumb where the hospital is local and small (Low), regional and large (Mid), of National (High) or International (Top) importance. This seems to work well, and also means that hospitals in less represented countries have a way of levelling themselves with more popular nations. I usually look at the daily new article logs[1] and tag any of relevance from across the world.
  • Wpollard: WikiProject Hospitals has a rating scale, as outlined in the first answer to this question. Also, another part of the rating scale examines the quality of the article itself. Once the rating has been done, it is much easier to see exactly what is needed to improve a particular article.
The H, a widely-recognised symbol of a hospital

Does WikiProject Hospitals collaborate with any other projects? If so, how do you split the workload between these projects?

  • Welsh: There is a tacit agreement that hospitals are documented here rather than in WP:Medicine. There is a little-used project for the UK NHS for which there is plenty of scope for expansion.
  • Bluerasberry: I mostly participate in WikiProject Medicine and hospital information goes to this project. WikiProject National Institutes of Health is the lightly active WikiProject for the United States government division overseeing most government funded health research in the US, and I would like it to be related to this WikiProject because they have so many records on hospitals which I would like shared here. The WikiProjects for fictional hospitals portrayed in television shows have a lot of activity while the TV show is fresh, as in the cases of WikiProject Grey's Anatomy and the House task force.

What are the most urgent needs of WikiProject Hospitals? How can a new contributor help today?

  • Welsh: There are many hospitals around the world that could be added as a record of their importance to their communities.
  • PCHS-NJROTC: I concur with Welsh, there's still a lot of potential for new articles.
  • Wpollard: Yes, there is a need for new articles and new people to write them. Also, a number of hospitals and articles have not been rated by WikiProject Hospitals standards. This helps establish the importance of a hospital and the quality of an article. Many unrated hospitals need more information either written or documented about them. And large medical clinics should have articles about them, as they usually provide much needed medical care to the areas they serve.
  • Bluerasberry: This project will change radically as Wikidata becomes more developed and integrated into Wikipedia. In developed countries there are large databases of information available about hospitals. These datasets are difficult to access and interpret, but as organizations make them more available to the public, they also become more available for integration into Wikipedia. In my opinion, the most urgent need of WikiProject Hospitals is the development of Wikidata to serve as a back end for infoboxes to provide basic information about hospitals including their name, location, size, and other routine information. If that much were available, and if additionally a small amount of structured text could be designed so that all hospital articles could present a standard few sentences, then hundreds or thousands of hospital articles could be created quickly in the manner of the Rambot city creation articles. Almost every hospital is notable by Wikipedia's current inclusion criteria because all of them are independently reviewed by published third party sources, usually relating to reviews of their funding and safety practices. Right now, though, those reports are hard to access, tedious to compare one to another, and intended to be reviewed along with datasets which Wikipedia is not prepared to present without Wikidata.

Anything else you'd like to add?

  • Any and all contributions welcomed!

So, there you have it. If you ever find yourself contributing to a hospital article, remember that these guys are there doing the hard work for the medically interested public. We're going to stay within the town for next week, as we interview WikiProject Urban Studies & Planning.

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