Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-04-25/WikiProject report
WikiProject Newspapers (Not WP:NOTNEWS)
WikiProjects Newspapers and Magazines spun from WikiProject Journalism and like WikiProject Academic Journals, these projects focus primarily on the textual periodicals themselves rather the humans or organizational structures behind them.
News is what someone, somewhere, doesn't want reported: all the rest is advertisement.[1]
Behind the scenes in the wiki-lawyer trenches, hundreds of Wikipedia editors debate discuss with each at the Reliable sources/Noticeboard to which degree different sources are suitable for usage within Wikipedia articles. Is it news...or advertisements?
Wouldn't it be great if there existed a digital resource that readily made available the sum of human knowledge about various topics, something like an encyclopedia of different newspapers in order to help editors and readers alike ascertain the reliability of said sources?
Reading Skimming sources takes time, so Wikipedia users sometimes try to gloss over by checking whether there is a
Conversely, a red link does not mean popular newspapers like Die neue Fußballwoche are unsuitable for usage within English Wikipedia for an article's source.
Tracking source usage within Wikipedia is already done for magazines and journals. You can find an example at WP:Magazines cited by Wikipedia and read last year's Signpost coverage about it.
In addition to the venerable Signpost, there are 11,605 articles inside WikiProject Newspapers and 11,935 articles inside WikiProject Magazines. These two projects are distant cousins of the more broad (pun intended) WikiProject Journalism.
We Are Not a Newspaper (sorta)
You are probably reading this WikiProject report on English Wikipedia's internal newspaper,
Interview
How did you get involved in these WikiProjects?
- information ecosystem, and right now one of the biggest threats to that ecosystem is the polarization of news media and the public's resultant distrust in it. Wikipedia is one of the first places that someone may go to try to figure out what the deal is with a particular source, and if our article is written well, it may help them decide the extent to which they should — or shouldn't — trust it. (This of course includes sources first encountered as Wikipedia references.) That's a really valuable service.
- Shushugah: While creating my first article on Benjamin Feigenbaum I kept seeing references to newspapers that did not have Wikipedia articles, but seemed notable. So I created Der Poylisher Yidl. One thing led to the next and I became interested in Jewish newspapers including Yiddish, Ladino and other Jewish language newspapers. In addition, I created some social movement/labour related newspaper articles.
What are some of the challenges you encountered and how did you address them?
- protect articles in an area that benefits from systemic bias. Unfortunately, back in the day when SNGs were being defined, NMEDIA slipped through the cracks and was never properly classified (being instead labelled as an explanatory supplement), and when this came to lightin 2021 it was removed from the sidebar and reclassified as an essay. With some improvements, perhaps someday it'll be ready to go through the SNG approval process.
How do you find sources about a periodical that is widely cited in other publications but aren't about the periodical itself?
- Shushugah: When I created libcom.org I filtered Google search with "-site:libcom.org" to exclude website subpages and also excluded url links like http://libcom.org because a study of website itself would likely only refer to it by its website name or Domain name
- NiemanLab, Poynter, and the Columbia Journalism Review.
What is a publication related article you created or significantly expanded that you are proud of?
- DavidMCEddy: The Beacon (Kansas City). The Kansas City Defender.
- Sdkb: Unearthed (publication) was an interesting one to write.
Sources are biased, ergo Wikipedia is biased. How do you counter system bias and ensure representation of non-English and non-digitized periodicals?
- DavidMCEddy: (1) Countering system bias: I look for publications that might contradict my preconceptions. (2) Ensure representation in non-English periodicals: I have some fluency in Spanish, French, and German, and I occasionally find things worth citing in what I read in those other languages. Examples: (2a) I found a Spanish-language interview with with Manuela Carmena, former Mayor of Madrid, where she said, "We are infected with lies." I added that to the Wikiquote articles on her in both English and Spanish. (2b) In the French edition of Le Monde diplomatique, I read that Mao Zedong said in 1957 that ~"a nuclear war could kill a third of humanity, maybe half, BUT ALL THE IMPERIALISTS. A half-century or maybe a century later, the population would be destroyed, and everyone would live under socialism." I didn't feel that citation was sufficiently authoritative, but I felt a need to research that quote. So I posted a question about that to fr:Wikiquote:Discussion:Mao Zedong.
- reliable sources noticeboard. There are no easy answers there — our coverage of many areas of the world without a free press (e.g. China) undoubtedly suffers because we have deemed so many publications from those areas unreliable, but we also avoid unreliable sources for good reason. When choosing which source to cite for a fact that appears in multiple, my primary criterion will always be the source's quality, but if all else is equal, I'll favor an online/English/non-paywalled source just for ease of reader verification.
Anything else you would like to add?
- refer to them properly if so. Editors Note: Get with the times!
Previous Signpost coverage
Links
- ^ Source: media tycoon William Randolph Hearst
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