Masters of Media

Dear Wikipedia editors, did you notice that you choose a subject to edit on Wikipedia that lies in your line of interest? Because the list of Requested Articles is structured into categories, you automatically pick the subject you feel sort of attached to. I saw examples of gamers writing about their favourite video game, fresh residents of Amsterdam writing about…

Before getting started with creating a Wikipedia entry I went through all of the tutorials, read the comments, watched the youtube videos, scratched my head and said "pff this can't be that hard." So I decided to dive in and immediately realized why said tutorials exist.

The Chronicle of a Wikipedia Entry

Three attempts to find a topic. Four days of research. One plain article that is still online on the greek Wikipedia. And one Greek lady never eating moussaka again.

Let me explain myself: in the beginning, as we were introduced to the “Wiki Workshop”…

In 1945 Vannevar Bush already predicted an innovative new way of structuring information, a new library. Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and was indeed a new initiative to structure data online. On the Wikipedia-page on Wikipedia itself is stated that New or occasional editors have significantly higher rates of their edits reverted (removed) than an elite group of regular editors, colloquially known as the "cabal". This could make it more difficult for the project to recruit and retain new contributors, over the long term resulting in stagnation in article creation.

Renowned South African photographer Pieter Hugo's latest work Permanent Error features a haunting documentary of an e-waste(land) in Ghana.

When contributing to Wikipedia it is always best to stick to what you know. The concept behind the world’s largest online encyclopedia is that everyone has valuable accumulated knowledge that should be shared, on what is essentially a global knowledge base with a fancy title. Writing about what you are unfamiliar with, or something that requires you to conduct research…

I am a passive Wikipediaist, and as of this weekend, I will stick with that role. I use Wikipedia mainly as a source of quick, (semi)reliable information; yet I do not share stronger bonds with this particular cyber institution. I believe that the notion of Wikipedia as a space of open, democratic and participatory knowledge-sharing is exaggerated.

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 When I heard the assignment for next week was to write a wikipedia entry, I thought that it would be fun and very easy for me. I was so wrong.

 I have written Wiki entries before, so I already new it is harder then you think. It is deffinitely not as easy as a wordpress blog, you really have to…

Last friday 1st of October I published my very first Wikipedia entry ‘Howard Menger’ on the Dutch Wikipedia. The choosen topic actualy was based on a couple of simple Wikipedia-facts: First, when you want your Wiki-entry to have some reasonable lifespan you should go for a topic that’s missing in an already existing root entry. In my case,…

A couple of weeks ago, during my routine deletion of facebook notices and invitations ("fpam"?), I fortunately bothered to open one headlined, "The Groundbreaking Last Movie from Eugene Kotlyarenko." Okay, I thought, a movie-release by an acquaintance is special enough to warrant more than a cursory look, so although I'm in Amsterdam, quite far away from Los Angeles or New York (where most of the events I'm still invited to take place), it wouldn't hurt to be in the know. Fortunately (again), it turned out that the movie was being released on the internet, and not as a full-length feature, but in ten easy-to-digest-in-our-attention-deficit-internet-culture episodes -- perfectly matching my spacetime needs.

Geert: "Yes, you can write your Wikipedia post in your own language"Me (not saying that aloud of course): "Finally! This is going to be a piece of cake"Well... it wasn't. Instead I could describe it like a nerve-breaking, patience-challenging and surprisingly disappointing experience. And think that I haven't even published my Wikipedia entry yet. But as Konstantinos Kavafis describes in his poem "Ithaca", it's the journey that counts not the destination.

My adventures in kaassouffle’ing have officially begun and the beloved Dutch streetfood snack has now triumphed to English Wikipedia status. Thus far, the bots have not attacked my entry and only a reviewer from the Czech Republic stepped in to align my photos to the right side of the page. Thank you, Vejvančický.

Though my first time in the…

There are 3,431,688 articles in the English Wikipedia on a dizzying range of topics. Surely there must be one on data driven journalism, right? Well, the answer is no; an article on database journalism focuses on computer-assisted reporting, the digital journalism entry is an unreadable, sourceless and unstructured block of text on journalism originating from the…

After long thinking about what subject to write a Wikipedia page on I decided to keep it close to home, well not literally, but if you read my last name you’ll know what I mean. Since the Wikipedia entry didn’t had to involve a new media topic I choose my favorite dish from the tasty Chinese cuisine;

I am a student and this means that I love Wikipedia by default. When you hear about something you know nothing about, you just go to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is like a friendly Labrador, always there when you need it. And the good thing is, you don’t have to take it for a walk on a rainy day. Other people will…

The main criticism on Wikipedia is the lack of transparancy in the background of the users. How can we know whether a certain user is a professional with an academic background (which would confirm the reliability of the article) or just a noob trying to contribute 'something'. Now if we would be able to introduce this level of acadamic reliability into Wikipedia, would it be peculiar to state that Wikipedia on a certain level could replace the universities library? Or become the online library/encyclopedia for the Global University.

Tuesday morning 10 o’clock: Workday as usual. I’m working on some notification plug-in for the forum on the website I manage for VOS/ABB – an organisation looking after the interest of people working in and managing public primary- and high schools in the Netherlands – and all of a sudden the entire team for market and communication barges through…

Call someone an idiot. Expect trouble. Say to someone; ‘You eediot!’ and they just might respond in hysterical laughter, and then call you a purist. You just showed off that you’re into cult cartoons and you found an ally. The phrase comes from Ren Höek, almost twenty years ago together with his fat friend Stimpy some of the biggest troublemakers…

Integration of wiki knowledge into mirror worlds would possibly satisfy our desire to capture and understand the world to a large extend.

Mirror Wolds; Yes, I would like to contribute.

The 80s ‘neutral’ knowledge-gathering tour took me from reading massive encyclopedias in the dusty corners of the primary school library, via browsing categories on Microsoft cd-rom Encarta, to final station:…

Searching the definition of  ‘community’ on Wikipedia (yes it is ironic) I found the most common one of ‘ a group of interacting people living in a common location. The word is often used to refer to a group that is organized around common values and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social…