2. You should write your own biography, not delegate it to invisible masses on Wikipedia.

3. You should write other people’s biographies, from your point of view. Or at least tell true stories about them, which can be assembled by others into alternate views.

4. Sign your name to all your writing. Use your real name, the one on your driver’s license, tax returns, passport, draft card.

5. If you care about a subject, write a definitive piece on it that reflects your point of view,. Don’t settle for a compromise, group-think sanitized version in the form of a Wikipedia page.

Dave Winer, “Corporate media is the problem“, Jan 17th, 2010

In response to Wikiality, a friend sent me the above quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympics_on_television.

With the right context, the wikiality is likely true, but you only need the most basic knowledge of world history to believe that an earlier Olympics was the first televised. I’m no history buff, and I know that footage of the Olympics in Nazi controlled Germany was televised.

The reference for that wikiality 1960 Winter Games truth is “Olympics and Television” published by the Museum Broadcast Communications, an American organization. The article appears completely focused on American television. The article begins “Since their first telecast in 1960, the Olympic games have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with television.” That would seem to be the origin of the fact.

Olympic.org, “the official website of the Olympic Movement” makes no mention of television for the 1960 Winter games article. Articles on other sites, such as “Television Sports Milestones –– A Chronology Of An Industry” don’t include the 1960 Winter as a milestone.

There are numerous sources that dispute that fact:

• From an Olympic.org article, “The 1936 Olympics were also the first to be broadcast on a form of television.”
• From a TVHistory.tv article, “1936 German (Berlin) Olympics … This marked the first live television coverage of a sports event in world history.”
• Another article from Olympic.org includes, “The 1948 London Games were the first to be shown on home television, although very few people in Great Britain actually owned sets.”

It seems there is no strong support the “1960 Winter Games [...] marked the first time the Olympic Games were televised.”

"Wikipedia is Accurate" BustedTees Shirt

A friend asked me what was wikiality about “Six Apart, Ltd. the world’s largest blogging company”. Is it that a reference is needed? That the statement is vague? That the article appears to be wholly autobiographical?

Yes, probably all those things and maybe some others.

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia with open contribution. And it seems to be the reference of choice for bloggers. Around 100 of my articles link to Wikipedia.

Although, I continue to use Wikipedia as a reference. I use it for only for general orientation. Few articles I read there don’t have some problem with them. Wikiality represents “A reality where, if enough people agree with a notion, it becomes the truth.” and Stephen Colbert used it to triple the population of elephants.

You don’t need Steven Colbert to excite his viewers into changing articles about elephants to create wikiality and improve Wikipedia’s “truthiness”.

There is a huge Wikipedia frontier of articles. It includes almost 2.5 million articles, and although many meet encyclopedic standards, it’s safe to say most of its articles to do not.

After a few mediocre experiences with the Wikipedia Clergy, I’ve decided it would be fun and still possibly useful to document my encounters with wikiality here.

Do you have any wikiality experiences to share?

The article went through the correct deletion process and was deleted through a vote. It was then re-created three more times in two weeks, with no new content (ie. restoring the deleted version), and so there is still nothing to show that this article is different from the one which was deleted by a majority in a debate involving members of the Wikipedia community.Another debate could be undertaken at deletion review, but I see no reason to restore a previously deleted repository of links, clearly labelled in WP:NOT. Harro5 09:01, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Of course, the vote is by a self selecting group of Wikijudges, ready for the Wikipedia call to vote, as opposed to the people that occasionally come to WIkipedia because they find the content useful, or the 931 people, including myself, that took the time to link to it. The discussion page for this article is mostly voicing frustration that the page was deleted.

Would the voters time been better spent getting the page on the road to being wikiceptable.

Because the page is deleted entirely, I can’t see the history of the page. I can’t get a copy of the GFDL licensed content. Also, it is not in the Wayback Machine. Without the content, how does someone go about addressing the reason it was removed?!

I went to the #wikipedia-en channel, and WIkipedia Administrator Slowking_Man was generous with his time: he reviewed and then emailed me a copy of the page from prior to it being deleted. I know have a small piece for my own personal Internet.

I should probably make myself a copy of the following pages before they are also removed:

• List of web browsers
• Comparison of Web Browsers

And likely many more pages that do not fit into a traditional Encyclopedia. I may have a lot of work ahead of me. I have lost the game.

In the German system, any user will still be allowed to make edits to any article. Those edits won’t show up in the live version of the site, though, until a registered user with a certain level of time and experience approves the changes.

Can the Germans fix Wikipedia?