Gamecollecting and having a passion for something. Retrogamepapa talks about it with first time guest Bigkingbadger!

De Super Famicom is de Japanse SNES, kun je wel zeggen. Retrogamepapa en Calvin leggen uit waarom zij zo'n fan zijn van deze Japanse console.

How bad (or good) is Wikipedia?: And how do we know? ← Back to Contents View Latest Issue 18 July 2025 File:Good_or_bad_(cropped).jpg Retrogamepapa CC BY-SA 4.0 0 0 300 In the media ## How bad (or good) is Wikipedia? Contribute — Share this * PDF download * E-mail * Mastodon * LinkedIn * Facebook * X (Twitter) * Reddit By Smallbones and Andreas Kolbe ### _Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung_ tests German Wikipedia The _Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)_ is one of Germany's newspapers of record. Its weekend edition, which goes on sale on Saturdays, is the _Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS)_. On 5 July 2025, the weekend edition of Germany's _Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung_ published the article "Wikipedia weiß immer weniger" ("Wikipedia knows less and less", archive (not paywalled)). The newspaper examined a random sample of over 1,000 German-language Wikipedia articles for potential errors and found problems on more than a third of the pages in their sample – in particular, outdated articles. The number of Levi Strauss & Co. shops, for example, dated from 2009, the paper said, and was badly out of date, as the number had since grown to "more than 1,000, according to the latest annual report" (or more than 3,400, if you believe the English Wikipedia article's infobox). Even Sweden's tallest mountain had changed, as ice on the southern peak of Kebnekaise had melted, meaning it was now lower than the northern peak (English Wikipedia had the correct information, noting the melt). The _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ team provided a description of their methodology and the full list of articles they examined, complete with indications of any issues found: "So haben wir Wikipedia geprüft" ("This is how we checked Wikipedia", archive). The team used a methodical approach, starting with Wikipedia's "random article" function; an English-language write-up by heise online summarised the subsequent process as follows: > According to the report, the team of reporters first checked the texts for anomalies using AI. Subsequently, internal archive documenters are said to have scrutinized the findings once again. The report goes on to say that only when two of the human reviewers were convinced that a piece of information was incorrect did the corresponding article end up on the list of defects. The analysis revealed that more than every third page was problematic. At least 20 percent of the entries contained information that was "no longer up to date". Only half of these were immediately apparent to users. In addition, there are "almost as many pages with information that has never been correct". Wikipedia itself displays a notice on around 8,000 pages that a page is not up-to-date. However, the random sample suggests that this warning should be displayed on more than 600,000 articles. The _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ article noted that studies referred to by Wikimedia as evidence that Wikipedia was equal or better than commercial encyclopedias or textbooks are by now quite long in the tooth, mostly dating back to the early 2000s. The 2005 _Nature_ study is still often cited as evidence that the English-language Wikipedia is comparable in quality to the online _Britannica_ even though it is almost 20 years old, included only 42 articles in the study, and found that there were only 123 errors in the _Britannica_ articles compared to 162 in the Wikipedia articles (see _The Signpost's_ 2005 coverage). _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ readily admitted that "AI is often wrong, too" and that AI is not yet ready to replace Wikipedia. The paper quoted an external commentator, Leonhard Dobusch (User:Leonidobusch, a professor of organizational science at the University of Innsbruck), who suggested that the WMF could easily pay around 50 editors to keep articles up to date, given that updating the stock of articles across the board does not seem to work. However, Dobusch also pointed out that articles which suddenly attract wide interest are usually improved quickly. Then again, _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ found that almost 90 per cent of all page views were accounted for by the 99 per cent of articles that are not currently in the public spotlight – precisely because every user is interested in something else. The _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ study led to voluminous discussions on the talk page of the German Wikipedia's _Signpost_ equivalent, the _Kurier_ , with the thread close to 65,000 words at the time of writing. Topics discussed include the role of Wikidata, whether or not articles have become too long, and the basic quandary of fewer volunteers – about half as many as in 2008 – having to look after an ever increasing number of articles – now in excess of three million, about four times as many as in 2008. Dobusch himself participated briefly, explaining his maths as being based on an annual budget of €5 million. A Wikimedia Germany representative clarified that paying editors for article maintenance work was not a realistic proposition and was not being considered. German Wikipedia contributors generally welcomed the provision of the complete article list, which was copied to a user page. Progress on checking and where necessary fixing the issues is ongoing and being tracked. At the time of writing, around a quarter of the issues have been addressed; community members assert that most of the major issues have been checked, and where appropriate fixed. An article in Netzpolitik by Dobusch commented positively on the clean-up effort and the public discussion. Another English-language write-up of the study appeared on Axel Springer SE-owned _TECHBOOK_ (also syndicated on Yahoo News), arguing that the issue of outdated or incorrect articles – > gains additional urgency in the age of AI-powered chatbots. Many of these systems use Wikipedia as a basis to generate answers to user questions. This is a valid concern, though it should be noted that the importance of Wikimedia wikis in training large language models is often overstated (see last week's _Signpost_ issue). Lastly, not all the issues raised by the _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ team were found to be valid; a community member pointed out, for example, that notwithstanding the newspaper's claim, the A99 road in Scotland really does continue past the point where it meets the A836 and leads all the way to the place where the ferry to Burwick departs in the summer months. In another intriguing case, a discrepancy in the birth year of Angelica Balabanoff turned out to be based on the fact that a biography published in 2016 asserted that Balabanoff had given multiple different birth dates over the years and had made herself younger, possibly to cover up an early failed marriage in Russia; the German biography now contains a paragraph on the claim, along with the more widely cited birth year. A number of other outlets picked up on the study: German- and English-language media coverage of the _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ study --- * Exklusive Wikipedia-Recherche: Die schleichende Erosion des Online-Wissens. FAZ podcast, 4 July 2025 * Wie Wikipedia Helfer findet, faz.net, 4 July 2025 (Archiv) * Wikipedia weiß immer weniger, faz.net, 5 July 2025 (Archiv) * So haben wir Wikipedia geprüft, faz.net, 5 July 2025 (Archiv) * Wikipedia wegen vieler Fehler und veralteter Informationen in der Kritik, heise online, 5 July 2025 * Wikipedia criticized for many errors and outdated information, heise online, 5 July 2025 * Wie hunderte entdeckte Fehler in der Wikipedia ihre Glaubwürdigkeit stärken, Netzpolitik.org, 7 July 2025 * KI-Tools nur bedingt hilfreich bei Fehlersuche, Golem, 7 July 2025 * Viele Wikipedia-Texte enthalten Fehler, Deutschlandfunk Nova, 7 July 2025 (podcast) * Many Wikipedia Articles Are Outdated or Incorrect, _TECHBOOK_ , auch bei Yahoo News, 8 July 2025 * 40 Prozent der Wikipedia-Artikel sind nicht zuverlässig, itmagazine.ch, 8 July 2025 * “Spiegel” über Syrien, “Red” ist russisch, Wikipedia-Glaubwürdigkeit, BILDblog, 8 July 2025 * Viele Fehler und veraltete Daten im Wissen-Netzwerk. Wikipedia-Community begrüßt Fehler-Studie der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung, swr.de, 8. Juli 2025 (radio interview with former Wikimedia Deutschland head Pavel Richter) The _Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung_ itself revisited the topic the following weekend, in an article titled "Wikipedia korrigiert sich" ("Wikipedia is correcting itself", paywalled), noting volunteers' prompt efforts. They reiterated that Wikimedia is in good financial health, with Germans donating 18 million euros last year, while the number of regular contributors has dropped to 6,000. They added that some of their readers had been in touch, saying past attempts to implement corrections in Wikipedia had been rebuffed, sometimes rudely. And they admitted they were wrong about the A99 road. – AK, S ### Wikipedians in Central Asian states Wikipedia was clearly on _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ editors' minds. On 10 July the paper published an article on "Wikipedia in autoritären Staaten: Aktivisten des Wissens" ("Wikipedia in authoritarian states: Knowledge activists"), discussing aspects such as the availability of sources in Central Asian languages and political difficulties, with the level of freedom differing from country to country as well as changing over time: > The Kazakh-language Wikipedia also contains critical content such as references to human rights violations under the current President Kassym-Shomart Tokayev and to his family's offshore assets, including a link to a report by Human Rights Watch. For the Uzbek-language edition, Wikipedian Nataev says that there have been no conflicts with the current regime since the change of power in 2016. Under the previous president Karimov, however, the free encyclopaedia was repeatedly blocked in Uzbekistan for years. "However, I do believe that there is a certain degree of self-censorship here," says Nataev. Articles on sensitive topics in particular, such as child labour in the country or the Andijan massacre of 2005, in which government troops opened fire on a demonstrating crowd, would not go into much depth. > > Daria Cybulska from Wikimedia UK has analysed how civil society actors in Central Asia deal with authoritarian conditions in the digital space. Freedoms vary from country to country and are subject to change, says Cybulska. In Uzbekistan, for example, it is relatively unproblematic to deal with ecological issues and publish a manual for green activism, but this should be avoided in Tajikistan. Wikipedia articles about the national cuisine, customs or natural monuments on the other hand don't arouse suspicion. [...] > > Wikipedian Kazy from the Kyrgyz city of Osh once recorded a podcast that aimed to educate people about topics such as sex, gender and queerness in the local language. However, since the current President Sadyr Japarov came to power in 2020, the legal situation in Kyrgyzstan has deteriorated significantly. There are now laws on "foreign agents" and "LGBT propaganda" that are based on the Russian model. The Kyrgyz encyclopaedia is rather small in comparison, but information in Russian is omnipresent in the country. "Many people don't understand how Wikipedia works," says Kazy. "They think that anyone can write whatever they want there. And they prefer to trust what ChatGPT tells them." – AK ### 25th birthday is coming! Wikipedia experts are starting their commentary January 15, 2026 will mark Wikipedia's 25th birthday and the outside Wikipedia experts are starting to remind the world of how remarkable our encyclopedia really is (and perhaps plug their forthcoming books while they are at it). In _An encyclopedia like no other: How Wikipedia became one of the greatest achievements of the modern age_ Simon Garfield, the author of the book _All the Knowledge in the World: The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopedia_ , explains (archive) in the _Globe and Mail_ that > Every living person who merits an entry on Wikipedia is unhappy with what’s written about them. It’s not the facts, necessarily, but the blandness of it all, the way everyone appears to have lived their life within a template. "That’s what my life amounts to? That’s how I’ll be remembered? But they didn’t get my hilarious side, or my love of striped tropical fish." Otherwise, he is very complimentary, except he doesn't like the photo in the article about himself. He likes Wikipedia's humor as exemplified by Annie Rauwerda's _Depths of Wikipedia_ and by the article Number 16 (spider). He quotes the standard joke from the early Wikipedia on the Standard Poodle, "A dog by which all others are measured." He appreciates the work of users Ser Amantio di Nicolao and Tom.Reding. He looks back on printed encyclopedias and notes that they were sometimes poorly written, always outdated – from the day they were first printed. He notes how they were affected by the times they were written in. "The homophobia and racism that exists in the early editions of Britannica is stomach-turning, as is its begrudging support of Hitler in the 1930s." He worries about the effect of AI on Wikipedia and quotes his generative knowledge assistant "Claude" > Wikipedia is genuinely one of the most remarkable achievements of the internet age – a massive, collaborative effort to make human knowledge freely accessible to everyone. It would be a real loss if that were to disappear. _The history of Wikipedia_ from ABC radio (Australia) (53 minutes) is a grandiosely titled call-in radio show in the _Nightlife_ series. Journalist Richard Cooke, who wrote a popular article in _Wired_ in 2020, _Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet_, is the featured guest. But it's the fairly random group of callers that actually gives the show a claim to its title. Keith Potger, a member of the 1960s folk-pop group The Seekers, wants to remove a former wife from the article about himself and has apparently included "'mynonym' to be an autological synonym for the word palindrome", in the article itself. Cooke mentions the Gävle Goat. Other topics include "the disinformation age", Polish history revisionism, a spat between volunteer editors and WMF employees, the debate whether the WMF raises too much money, edit wars, e.g. over the name of the country Macedonia, and, a _Signpost_ favorite, the Alan MacMasters toaster hoax. And furthermore, is Wikipedia outsider art? Is AI self-cannibalizing, and when was Wikipedia first edited from Antarctica? The unnamed radio host – perhaps it's Philip Clark – claims to be gobsmacked. Cooke has a book forthcoming next year. _The Signpost_ reminds Garfield that if he doesn't like his photo, he can upload a selfie to Commons whenever he'd like to, or arrange for a professional photographer to take and upload a photo as long as the photographer licenses the photo freely (e.g. CC-BY-SA) or assigns the copyright to Cooke. Subjects who would like to influence the content in the article about themselves might contact a journalist to write a newspaper article or interview them, but they should realize that we don't allow article subjects to write their own autobiographies. – S ### The AI revolution and Wikipedia's AI revolts AI-generated summary of the Dopamine article, including its many MOS:OUR violations _Fast Company_ (July 1, 2025) saw Inside Wikipedia's AI revolt—and what it means for the media: The fight over AI summaries is part of a larger struggle playing out in newsrooms figuring out where human editors still fit in. As reported in the last _Signpost_ issue, the Wikimedia Foundation's idea to have an AI deliver brief article summaries to readers, above the introduction written by Wikipedians, went down like a lead balloon with volunteers. On the same day, the _Washington Post_ reported How AI bots are threatening your favorite websites: More websites, including Wikipedia and academic archives, are grousing about AI freeloaders that siphon their information. They're fighting back. The article linked to a blog post the Wikimedia Foundation published three months ago: How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects. In a way these discussions today echo those of 25 years ago – Wikipedia is no longer the new kid on the block, but part of the establishment. – AK ### In brief * **"Marginally reliable" not good enough** : The Jewish News Syndicate published a piece by Aaron Bandler, formerly of _The Daily Wire_ , featuring complaints that the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor is deemed "marginally reliable" (rather than completely unreliable) by Wikipedia and cited 95 times in it – about as often as Aaron Bandler himself. * Top domains in the new AI Mode, SISTRIX SEO Blog 2025-07-02 * I love Wikipedia so much, I hardly even minded when it killed me off Mark O'Connell, _The Irish Times_ 2025-06-29; archived. * **Hollywood actor calls "Wikipedia bullshit" on casting decision** : _Hollywood Reporter_ quotes Wyatt Russell saying that the Wikipedia article _The Falcon and the Winter Soldier_ mixes up the casting of him as an actor with the in-universe casting of a character in the story. The sourcing cited in the article – a YouTube video – would seem to bear him out. _Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit the next issue in theNewsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page._ ← Previous "In the media" In this issue 18 July 2025 (all comments) * News and notes * **In the media** * WikiProject report * In focus * Recent research * News from the WMF * Discussion report * Comix * Opinion * Community view * Obituary * Traffic report * Humour + Add a comment ## Discuss this story These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache. * Nice coverage of an apparently well-done piece of Wikipedia journalism in German media. I'd be interested to see the experiment repeated on the English-language encyclopedia. It's certainly true that we have a long tail of little-edited, rarely updated articles on more obscure subjects which may nevertheless get a few thousand views a year and shape perception of the subject. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:13, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply] * The _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ work is a great demonstration of a workflow for identifying errors; keeping articles updated is a major challenge for the encyclopedia. This is the kind of work the WMF could usefully support, using AI in a helpful way along with human confirmation, and then notifying the editor community of things that need work without taking a stand on what the updated content should say. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 14:15, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply] * We could certainly use more input on where we can improve the quality of articles. Support from the WMF would be helpful, but in a biased limiting method. Of course the weakness in the FAZ method is that there is no comparison, who is giving better quality, multi-millions of encyclopedic articles. Not FAZ as far as I can tell. Almost anybody can identify articles that _they think_ are low quality, but how to get a system that produces better articles? I don't think the Britannica model does this, certainly not for multi-millions of articles. It has to be an economically viable model as well. The one thing we can't do is just consult the absolute truth, instantaneously updated book "Truth". That book doesn't exist and never will. So we can get reasonable descriptions of where our articles may be weak and then take some steps, using things like the FAZ review. If we spend, maybe, $1-$5 million we could do much of it ourselves, but that might cover 1% of our articles per year. It's not a direct solution. Use it as an indication where we need to improve. That's likely the best we can do by ourselves. Quality control can be made job #1, but we need to understand our limits and those of the critics. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:39, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply] _The Signpost_ is looking for new talent. Home About Archives Newsroom Subscribe Suggestions

How bad (or good) is Wikipedia?: And how do we know? ← Back to Contents View Latest Issue 18 July 2025 File:Good_or_bad_(cropped).jpg Retrogamepapa CC BY-SA 4.0 0 0 300 In the media ## How bad (or good) is Wikipedia? Contribute — Share this * PDF download * E-mail * Mastodon * LinkedIn * Facebook * X (Twitter) * Reddit By Smallbones and Andreas Kolbe ### _Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung_ tests German Wikipedia The _Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)_ is one of Germany's newspapers of record. Its weekend edition, which goes on sale on Saturdays, is the _Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS)_. On 5 July 2025, the weekend edition of Germany's _Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung_ published the article "Wikipedia weiß immer weniger" ("Wikipedia knows less and less", archive (not paywalled)). The newspaper examined a random sample of over 1,000 German-language Wikipedia articles for potential errors and found problems on more than a third of the pages in their sample – in particular, outdated articles. The number of Levi Strauss & Co. shops, for example, dated from 2009, the paper said, and was badly out of date, as the number had since grown to "more than 1,000, according to the latest annual report" (or more than 3,400, if you believe the English Wikipedia article's infobox). Even Sweden's tallest mountain had changed, as ice on the southern peak of Kebnekaise had melted, meaning it was now lower than the northern peak (English Wikipedia had the correct information, noting the melt). The _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ team provided a description of their methodology and the full list of articles they examined, complete with indications of any issues found: "So haben wir Wikipedia geprüft" ("This is how we checked Wikipedia", archive). The team used a methodical approach, starting with Wikipedia's "random article" function; an English-language write-up by heise online summarised the subsequent process as follows: > According to the report, the team of reporters first checked the texts for anomalies using AI. Subsequently, internal archive documenters are said to have scrutinized the findings once again. The report goes on to say that only when two of the human reviewers were convinced that a piece of information was incorrect did the corresponding article end up on the list of defects. The analysis revealed that more than every third page was problematic. At least 20 percent of the entries contained information that was "no longer up to date". Only half of these were immediately apparent to users. In addition, there are "almost as many pages with information that has never been correct". Wikipedia itself displays a notice on around 8,000 pages that a page is not up-to-date. However, the random sample suggests that this warning should be displayed on more than 600,000 articles. The _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ article noted that studies referred to by Wikimedia as evidence that Wikipedia was equal or better than commercial encyclopedias or textbooks are by now quite long in the tooth, mostly dating back to the early 2000s. The 2005 _Nature_ study is still often cited as evidence that the English-language Wikipedia is comparable in quality to the online _Britannica_ even though it is almost 20 years old, included only 42 articles in the study, and found that there were only 123 errors in the _Britannica_ articles compared to 162 in the Wikipedia articles (see _The Signpost's_ 2005 coverage). _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ readily admitted that "AI is often wrong, too" and that AI is not yet ready to replace Wikipedia. The paper quoted an external commentator, Leonhard Dobusch (User:Leonidobusch, a professor of organizational science at the University of Innsbruck), who suggested that the WMF could easily pay around 50 editors to keep articles up to date, given that updating the stock of articles across the board does not seem to work. However, Dobusch also pointed out that articles which suddenly attract wide interest are usually improved quickly. Then again, _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ found that almost 90 per cent of all page views were accounted for by the 99 per cent of articles that are not currently in the public spotlight – precisely because every user is interested in something else. The _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ study led to voluminous discussions on the talk page of the German Wikipedia's _Signpost_ equivalent, the _Kurier_ , with the thread close to 65,000 words at the time of writing. Topics discussed include the role of Wikidata, whether or not articles have become too long, and the basic quandary of fewer volunteers – about half as many as in 2008 – having to look after an ever increasing number of articles – now in excess of three million, about four times as many as in 2008. Dobusch himself participated briefly, explaining his maths as being based on an annual budget of €5 million. A Wikimedia Germany representative clarified that paying editors for article maintenance work was not a realistic proposition and was not being considered. German Wikipedia contributors generally welcomed the provision of the complete article list, which was copied to a user page. Progress on checking and where necessary fixing the issues is ongoing and being tracked. At the time of writing, around a quarter of the issues have been addressed; community members assert that most of the major issues have been checked, and where appropriate fixed. An article in Netzpolitik by Dobusch commented positively on the clean-up effort and the public discussion. Another English-language write-up of the study appeared on Axel Springer SE-owned _TECHBOOK_ (also syndicated on Yahoo News), arguing that the issue of outdated or incorrect articles – > gains additional urgency in the age of AI-powered chatbots. Many of these systems use Wikipedia as a basis to generate answers to user questions. This is a valid concern, though it should be noted that the importance of Wikimedia wikis in training large language models is often overstated (see last week's _Signpost_ issue). Lastly, not all the issues raised by the _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ team were found to be valid; a community member pointed out, for example, that notwithstanding the newspaper's claim, the A99 road in Scotland really does continue past the point where it meets the A836 and leads all the way to the place where the ferry to Burwick departs in the summer months. In another intriguing case, a discrepancy in the birth year of Angelica Balabanoff turned out to be based on the fact that a biography published in 2016 asserted that Balabanoff had given multiple different birth dates over the years and had made herself younger, possibly to cover up an early failed marriage in Russia; the German biography now contains a paragraph on the claim, along with the more widely cited birth year. A number of other outlets picked up on the study: German- and English-language media coverage of the _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ study --- * Exklusive Wikipedia-Recherche: Die schleichende Erosion des Online-Wissens. FAZ podcast, 4 July 2025 * Wie Wikipedia Helfer findet, faz.net, 4 July 2025 (Archiv) * Wikipedia weiß immer weniger, faz.net, 5 July 2025 (Archiv) * So haben wir Wikipedia geprüft, faz.net, 5 July 2025 (Archiv) * Wikipedia wegen vieler Fehler und veralteter Informationen in der Kritik, heise online, 5 July 2025 * Wikipedia criticized for many errors and outdated information, heise online, 5 July 2025 * Wie hunderte entdeckte Fehler in der Wikipedia ihre Glaubwürdigkeit stärken, Netzpolitik.org, 7 July 2025 * KI-Tools nur bedingt hilfreich bei Fehlersuche, Golem, 7 July 2025 * Viele Wikipedia-Texte enthalten Fehler, Deutschlandfunk Nova, 7 July 2025 (podcast) * Many Wikipedia Articles Are Outdated or Incorrect, _TECHBOOK_ , auch bei Yahoo News, 8 July 2025 * 40 Prozent der Wikipedia-Artikel sind nicht zuverlässig, itmagazine.ch, 8 July 2025 * “Spiegel” über Syrien, “Red” ist russisch, Wikipedia-Glaubwürdigkeit, BILDblog, 8 July 2025 * Viele Fehler und veraltete Daten im Wissen-Netzwerk. Wikipedia-Community begrüßt Fehler-Studie der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung, swr.de, 8. Juli 2025 (radio interview with former Wikimedia Deutschland head Pavel Richter) The _Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung_ itself revisited the topic the following weekend, in an article titled "Wikipedia korrigiert sich" ("Wikipedia is correcting itself", paywalled), noting volunteers' prompt efforts. They reiterated that Wikimedia is in good financial health, with Germans donating 18 million euros last year, while the number of regular contributors has dropped to 6,000. They added that some of their readers had been in touch, saying past attempts to implement corrections in Wikipedia had been rebuffed, sometimes rudely. And they admitted they were wrong about the A99 road. – AK, S ### Wikipedians in Central Asian states Wikipedia was clearly on _Frankfurter Allgemeine_ editors' minds. On 10 July the paper published an article on "Wikipedia in autoritären Staaten: Aktivisten des Wissens" ("Wikipedia in authoritarian states: Knowledge activists"), discussing aspects such as the availability of sources in Central Asian languages and political difficulties, with the level of freedom differing from country to country as well as changing over time: > The Kazakh-language Wikipedia also contains critical content such as references to human rights violations under the current President Kassym-Shomart Tokayev and to his family's offshore assets, including a link to a report by Human Rights Watch. For the Uzbek-language edition, Wikipedian Nataev says that there have been no conflicts with the current regime since the change of power in 2016. Under the previous president Karimov, however, the free encyclopaedia was repeatedly blocked in Uzbekistan for years. "However, I do believe that there is a certain degree of self-censorship here," says Nataev. Articles on sensitive topics in particular, such as child labour in the country or the Andijan massacre of 2005, in which government troops opened fire on a demonstrating crowd, would not go into much depth. > > Daria Cybulska from Wikimedia UK has analysed how civil society actors in Central Asia deal with authoritarian conditions in the digital space. Freedoms vary from country to country and are subject to change, says Cybulska. In Uzbekistan, for example, it is relatively unproblematic to deal with ecological issues and publish a manual for green activism, but this should be avoided in Tajikistan. Wikipedia articles about the national cuisine, customs or natural monuments on the other hand don't arouse suspicion. [...] > > Wikipedian Kazy from the Kyrgyz city of Osh once recorded a podcast that aimed to educate people about topics such as sex, gender and queerness in the local language. However, since the current President Sadyr Japarov came to power in 2020, the legal situation in Kyrgyzstan has deteriorated significantly. There are now laws on "foreign agents" and "LGBT propaganda" that are based on the Russian model. The Kyrgyz encyclopaedia is rather small in comparison, but information in Russian is omnipresent in the country. "Many people don't understand how Wikipedia works," says Kazy. "They think that anyone can write whatever they want there. And they prefer to trust what ChatGPT tells them." – AK ### 25th birthday is coming! Wikipedia experts are starting their commentary January 15, 2026 will mark Wikipedia's 25th birthday and the outside Wikipedia experts are starting to remind the world of how remarkable our encyclopedia really is (and perhaps plug their forthcoming books while they are at it). In _An encyclopedia like no other: How Wikipedia became one of the greatest achievements of the modern age_ Simon Garfield, the author of the book _All the Knowledge in the World: The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopedia_ , explains (archive) in the _Globe and Mail_ that > Every living person who merits an entry on Wikipedia is unhappy with what’s written about them. It’s not the facts, necessarily, but the blandness of it all, the way everyone appears to have lived their life within a template. "That’s what my life amounts to? That’s how I’ll be remembered? But they didn’t get my hilarious side, or my love of striped tropical fish." Otherwise, he is very complimentary, except he doesn't like the photo in the article about himself. He likes Wikipedia's humor as exemplified by Annie Rauwerda's _Depths of Wikipedia_ and by the article Number 16 (spider). He quotes the standard joke from the early Wikipedia on the Standard Poodle, "A dog by which all others are measured." He appreciates the work of users Ser Amantio di Nicolao and Tom.Reding. He looks back on printed encyclopedias and notes that they were sometimes poorly written, always outdated – from the day they were first printed. He notes how they were affected by the times they were written in. "The homophobia and racism that exists in the early editions of Britannica is stomach-turning, as is its begrudging support of Hitler in the 1930s." He worries about the effect of AI on Wikipedia and quotes his generative knowledge assistant "Claude" > Wikipedia is genuinely one of the most remarkable achievements of the internet age – a massive, collaborative effort to make human knowledge freely accessible to everyone. It would be a real loss if that were to disappear. _The history of Wikipedia_ from ABC radio (Australia) (53 minutes) is a grandiosely titled call-in radio show in the _Nightlife_ series. Journalist Richard Cooke, who wrote a popular article in _Wired_ in 2020, _Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet_, is the featured guest. But it's the fairly random group of callers that actually gives the show a claim to its title. Keith Potger, a member of the 1960s folk-pop group The Seekers, wants to remove a former wife from the article about himself and has apparently included "'mynonym' to be an autological synonym for the word palindrome", in the article itself. Cooke mentions the Gävle Goat. Other topics include "the disinformation age", Polish history revisionism, a spat between volunteer editors and WMF employees, the debate whether the WMF raises too much money, edit wars, e.g. over the name of the country Macedonia, and, a _Signpost_ favorite, the Alan MacMasters toaster hoax. And furthermore, is Wikipedia outsider art? Is AI self-cannibalizing, and when was Wikipedia first edited from Antarctica? The unnamed radio host – perhaps it's Philip Clark – claims to be gobsmacked. Cooke has a book forthcoming next year. _The Signpost_ reminds Garfield that if he doesn't like his photo, he can upload a selfie to Commons whenever he'd like to, or arrange for a professional photographer to take and upload a photo as long as the photographer licenses the photo freely (e.g. CC-BY-SA) or assigns the copyright to Cooke. Subjects who would like to influence the content in the article about themselves might contact a journalist to write a newspaper article or interview them, but they should realize that we don't allow article subjects to write their own autobiographies. – S ### The AI revolution and Wikipedia's AI revolts AI-generated summary of the Dopamine article _Fast Company_ (July 1, 2025) saw Inside Wikipedia's AI revolt—and what it means for the media: The fight over AI summaries is part of a larger struggle playing out in newsrooms figuring out where human editors still fit in. As reported in the last _Signpost_ issue, the Wikimedia Foundation's idea to have an AI deliver brief article summaries to readers, above the introduction written by Wikipedians, went down like a lead balloon with volunteers. On the same day, the _Washington Post_ reported How AI bots are threatening your favorite websites: More websites, including Wikipedia and academic archives, are grousing about AI freeloaders that siphon their information. They're fighting back. The article linked to a blog post the Wikimedia Foundation published three months ago: How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects. In a way these discussions today echo those of 25 years ago – Wikipedia is no longer the new kid on the block, but part of the establishment. – AK ### In brief * **"Marginally reliable" not good enough** : The Jewish News Syndicate published a piece by Aaron Bandler, formerly of _The Daily Wire_ , featuring complaints that the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor is deemed "marginally reliable" (rather than completely unreliable) by Wikipedia and cited 95 times in it – about as often as Aaron Bandler himself. * Top domains in the new AI Mode, SISTRIX SEO Blog 2025-07-02 * I love Wikipedia so much, I hardly even minded when it killed me off Mark O'Connell, _The Irish Times_ 2025-06-29; archived. * **Hollywood actor calls "Wikipedia bullshit" on casting decision** : _Hollywood Reporter_ quotes Wyatt Russell saying that the Wikipedia article _The Falcon and the Winter Soldier_ mixes up the casting of him as an actor with the in-universe casting of a character in the story. The sourcing cited in the article – a YouTube video – would seem to bear him out. _Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit the next issue in theNewsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page._ ← Previous "In the media" In this issue 18 July 2025 (all comments) * News and notes * **In the media** * WikiProject report * In focus * Recent research * News from the WMF * Discussion report * Comix * Opinion * Community view * Obituary * Traffic report * Humour + Add a comment ## Discuss this story To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache. No comments yet. Yours could be the first! + Add a comment The _Signpost_ : doing it for free since 2005. Home About Archives Newsroom Subscribe Suggestions

Samen met Calvin Foe van Plaion kijkt Retrogamepapa naar games verzamelen: waarom doen ze het, en wat zijn Calvin's favoriete games?