

Roger Ebert's Wikipedia - robbiet480
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/roger-eberts-wikipedia/381239/

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danso
A. I really like that Ebert stories occasionally pop up on HN, before and
after his death. I don't think there is a newspaper writer whose words I've
paid more attention to, and I still reflexively visit rogerbert.com on Fridays
to see the latest reviews (some of his replacements are pretty good, but they
aren't Roger yet).

B. I've always thought it'd be a great thing for university classes to have,
as a weekly assignment or final project, for each student to choose a Wiki
page and actively edit it, whether it's to add actual content, improve the
writing quality, or to restructure and reorganize the page and its priorities.

Hopefully, in practice, once a student starts putting work into a page, they
will face resistance from the page's traditional editors. And that's when the
fun begins: the students would learn from the give-and-take of the
collaborative editing process, as well as getting a great deal of editing
experience, period...and if the student is halfway-apt, the debates over
significance/sourcing/structure would compel the student to do even more
research on the topic...in fact, that's why I stay away from Wikipedia
editing, because I end up spending hours doing research and fact-finding, even
for trivial things...it's character building, but bad for the work schedule
:).

The whole thing is also a lesson about the Internet community and
dynamic...which, sure, you could learn by spending a semester on Reddit...on
the other hand, at the end of the Wikipedia assignment, both the student and
the world more directly benefits from the product of the student's labor: a
better Wikipedia page.

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CJefferson
What happens when the existing editors decide to block the student's changes,
even when they are well referenced and fix existing errors?

Would be hard in practice to mark. Perhaps the student could submit what they
would like the page to look like, and the lecturer could just mark that.
Putting even part of a student's mark in the hands of often irrational
Wikipedia editors seems unreasonable.

~~~
dspillett
Unless they _really_ take exception to the changes and properly expunge them,
the student's updated version will still be visible in the history (with a
diff between it and the previous versions easy to view) - so overly
territorial editors wouldn't be that much of a problem unless they were
completely fruit-loop.

And as a precautionary measure, there is always "File, Save Page As".

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x1798DE
Just to add to this, getting in touch with a Wikipedian who deals with this
sort of thing a lot - preferably before starting the assignment, but if
necessary after some sort of drama has occurred - probably goes a long way.
There are a lot of under-watched corners of Wikipedia where territorial fruit
loops sit on guard, but experienced editors usually know how to navigate those
rough waters when they come upon them.

Generally when people start these courses they just notify everyone ahead of
time, get advice from wikipedians, make sure the students are adequately
sourcing and documenting their process, etc. You tend to have these conflict
issues when a student goes into an article and dumps a whole bunch of changes
of varying quality in there at once, then doesn't know where to go to find
sympathetic editors who can sort out relevant quality and policy concerns from
basic territorial behavior.

~~~
dspillett
Also as the suggestion was for a learning/experience exercise, running into
someone like that is a useful life lesson especially if things turn out well
in the end.

Being able to work around such problems (often it is a matter of carefully
controlling your tone & presentation, including being aware that the person on
the other end knows nothing about you and has no body language cues to gauge
your behaviour from so you have to be more careful to be very clear in your
intent than you would in real life) and find the common ground needed to
cooperate is a very useful life skill.

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morgante
This led me down a rabbit hole of various Wikipedia pages, including obscure
discussions of Ebert's edits & uploads (like this:
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:O%27TooleEbertPatric_by_Roger_Ebert.jpg)).
Reading through these, I was yet again impressed with how much Wikipedia
manages to maintain decorum and sanity on the internet despite millions of
users.

~~~
_delirium
That linked discussion is a pretty common copyright pitfall, and not only on
Wikipedia: people often assume that they own the copyright on photographs they
paid a photographer to take of themselves, but this is often _not_ the case.
It depends on the jurisdiction and the agreed to license (if any), but often
they aren't automatically considered a work-for-hire.

A very common arrangement is that the photographer retains copyright, and the
subject gets only a right to use the photographs, not copyright ownership.
Therefore the subject can't release the photograph under a CC license, because
they aren't the copyright holder. In some cases the subject/purchaser has
bought only noncommercial rights, not commercial-use rights (as in this case,
where the photographer retained commercial-use rights, which he subsequently
sold to Getty Images). In _very_ traditional arrangements the subject doesn't
even have reproduction rights: they have to order more prints from the
photographer if they want more copies. All they own in that case is the
physical copies they've bought from the photographer!

The short of it is: if you want to own the copyright on photos you pay someone
to take, make sure you get a copyright assignment in writing. It is getting
more common for photographers to agree to do that. Incidentally this is good
practice for software contract work as well: the contract should clearly
specify who owns the copyright on any software produced.

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dobbsbob
Ebert after he lost his voice wondered if there was a way to use his own voice
for speech software. He offered a bounty for this on his blog if I remember.

~~~
MBCook
A company actually took all the recordings that have been made of Ebert
speaking over the years thanks to his TV shows and other appearances and
synthesized a copy of his voice that he could use for his text-to-speech
software. It actually sounded a fair bit like him (this was shown in a TV
show) but in the end I believe he chose not to use it.

~~~
jkhulme
[https://www.cereproc.com/](https://www.cereproc.com/) was the company. Their
text to speech capability is pretty awesome

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ribs
I still miss Ebert and his work.

