Wikipedia Launching ‘Love Button’: Users Will Be Able To Thank Editors

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Wikilove - Wikipedia Love Button

Next week users of information site Wikipedia will be able to click on a “Love” button and send messages to other users in the form of beer, cats, other cute and cuddly animals and more.

Called “WikiLove” and debuting on the sites English based channels on June 29 the goal of the project is to encourage more users to edit posts and engage with articles through positive reinforcement.

According to the Wikimedia Foundation blog:

“The drive for quality and reliability has led to the development of sophisticated automation mechanisms that aid in socializing new users to Wikipedia’s norms, policies and conventions,” the company explained in its announcement. “The act of expressing appreciation for other users, by contrast, is a largely manual effort. Whether it’s welcoming new users, inviting users to participate in specific topics or discussions, recognizing effort using barnstars and trophies, or just sending a whimsical note, expressing appreciation is not an activity that is facilitated by the software — in spite of its known importance for people’s likelihood to want to edit.” [Read more…]

3 Sites to Get Free News-Related Images

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The social impact of Bin Laden’s recent death has been incredible and it also became an incredible force across blogs and other Web sites. Countless bloggers, even those who usually don’t cover news-related topics, felt the need to peak out on the breaking story and, along the way, dip their toes into news and political blogging.

But with so much attention being focused on how blogging and social media is changing journalism, there are still scant few resources that give bloggers and other webmasters access to the media used by mainstream outlets.

The problem is that, while there are countless great sites on the Web for stock photos and other images, they are more targeted at providing attractive, but generic images for a blog post. If you need a photo to indicate friendship or represent something being locked down, these sites are great. However, if you need a photo of a recent rally in Washington D.C. or of a particular celebrity, they are virtually useless as most of the photos they have are not timely and not related to current events.

However, there are a few sites that offer news-related images for free on your site. All you have to know is where to look and how to search them correctly.

Here are some of the options to consider. [Read more…]

Wikipedia protects people pages as “flagged revisions” rolls out

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wikipedia-logoWikipedia moderation isn’t that new, with the German version of the site having had it since July of last year, but now a “flagged revisions” system is to be introduced on the main English language version of the online encyclopaedia in a bid to protect entries about living people.

The number of issues of deliberate vandalism or simply ill-informed updates to information pages about people is too long to list here, but has often involved derogatory and biased prose, factual errors and incorrect reporting of deaths.

“Flagged revisions” would create an additional editorial layer, whereby experienced volunteers review any changes made to people pages before they go live.

Such a move is due to the increased popularity of the site. [Read more…]

Chris Anderson on the Wikipedia Controversy

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Controversy? Yes, I think we should call it that since it certainly has made the news. In fact, I read about how Chris Anderson copies Wikipedia in my morning paper. So there you go.

If you’ve been following this story, you might be interested in reading Anderson’s response, in a blog post. Nothing new really, he was open about it from the start, but he does explain how this could happen.

Chris Anderson’s Free! Borrows From Wikipedia

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Wired editor Chris Anderson is soon to launch his latest book/theory, following up on The Long Tail, titled Free!. There’s definitely nothing wrong with his ideas if you ask me, and you can read them for yourself on Wired, but the book seems a bit, well rushed perhaps?

First there was the WordPress incident, where Anderson probably was making the famous wordpress.org/wordpress.com mixup. He should know better, and a technical reviewer should have caught that.

Now there’s copy-pasting from Wikipedia.

Fast Company found the Virginia Quarterly Review blog post detailing how Anderson copy-pasted an entry from the Free lunch entry on Wikipedia, and illustrates it with side by side comparisons. Just look at all that yellow text marking the similarities! [Read more…]