It’s the fourth most popular website in the world, but our new study shows toxic commentary can still thrive on Wikipedia. There’s a lot at stake if too many editors are driven away.
Content moderators like these workers make decisions about online communities based on company dictates.
Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Washington Post via Getty Images
In the days of online bulletin board systems, community members decided what was acceptable. Reviving that approach to content moderation offers Big Tech a path to legitimacy as public spaces.
Feeling generous?
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How are Wikipedia pages about contentious events put together? Heather Ford discovered a hotbed of passion, a rotating pack of editors and a struggle for power behind its mirage of neutrality.
Clinical guidelines can change when new research provides contradictory findings.
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How doctors care for their patients is highly influenced by clinical guidelines. Recommendations based on anecdotal experience or poor data can harm patients.
At a time when it’s increasingly difficult to separate truth from falsehood, Wikipedia is an accessible tool for fact-checking and fighting misinformation.
In a 14th-century illustration, Dante reaches out to Sapia, whose eyes have been sewn shut.
Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
While most Wikipedia editors are volunteers, some are employed by Wikipedia. The Science History Institute’s Mary Mark Ockerbloom offers insight into the “Wikipedian in residence” program.
Olivia Colman has a funny story to tell on Wikipedia about the age displayed in her biography in the online encyclopedia. The opportunity for a Wikipedia fact-checking.
Erik Olin Wright, 1947-2019.
Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung
The late sociologist looked at existing ‘utopias’ that could herald a world after capitalism.
Many people are turned away by abusive language on online news sites but new research reveals that only 15 per cent of comments are “nasty.”
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The technology behind blockchain remains a mystery to many, but the it shares many common features with the popular online encyclopedia with which most web users are very familiar.
Less than a third of biographical entries on Wikipedia are about women.
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