• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Articles
  • News
  • Events
  • Advertize
  • Jobs
  • Courses
  • Contact
  • (0)
  • LoginRegister
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS
      Articles
      News
      Events
      Job Posts
    • Twitter
Datafloq

Datafloq

Data and Technology Insights

  • Categories
    • Big Data
    • Blockchain
    • Cloud
    • Internet Of Things
    • Metaverse
    • Robotics
    • Cybersecurity
    • Startups
    • Strategy
    • Technical
  • Big Data
  • Blockchain
  • Cloud
  • Metaverse
  • Internet Of Things
  • Robotics
  • Cybersecurity
  • Startups
  • Strategy
  • Technical

Wikipedia buttons up key pages ahead of U.S. election

Reuters / 2 min read.
October 30, 2020
floq.to/BS7JS

By Elizabeth Culliford

(Reuters) – Wikipedia has locked down its main election page ahead of the U.S. presidential election so that only certain editors can make changes, part of preparations to combat potential disinformation and abuses related to Tuesday’s vote.

The online encyclopedia’s articles, written primarily by unpaid volunteers, are relied on by platforms from Alphabet Inc’s Google to Amazon Inc’s voice assistant Alexa to give their users information and context.

“We’re not worried about vandals who want to just mess up an article in order to cause a little trouble. The Wikipedia community deals with those issues for breakfast,” Ryan Merkley, chief of staff at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which hosts Wikipedia, said in a phone interview.

“We’re really worried about coordinated actors … trying to find a way to disseminate information … in a way that could cause people, for example, to choose not to vote or to influence the outcome of the election based on something that was not true.”

Internet researchers say Wikipedia, which says it is committed to neutrality, has emerged as a relatively trusted site, while major social platforms like Facebook and Twitter have struggled to curb viral misinformation.

This year, Merkley said, the Wikimedia Foundation for the first time put together a disinformation task-force to run election exercises with staff and community members.

Last week, community members moved to add extra protections to the ‘2020 United States presidential election’ article so only users who have had a registered account for more than 30 days and have made 500 edits on the site can alter the page.

Merkley said Wikipedia has seen the creation of fake accounts, people making false edits to screenshot and share on social media and attempts to use content from unreliable sources or skew articles to a bias.

He said the Wikimedia Foundation had been meeting with industry partners and U.S. government officials, including from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security, but that it had not yet seen any state actors flagged by government officials operating on Wikipedia.

A Wikimedia spokeswoman said there are currently 72 English-Wikipedia articles related to the U.S. election and that there are about 2,600 editors ‘watching’ those pages who get alerts for any edits.

Merkley said staff rarely make interventions but there could be instances around the election, such as direct calls for violence, where they would remove content or take action against a user.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford; Editing by Greg Mitchell and Nick Zieminski)

Categories: News
Tags: Amazon, BI, research, security, share

About Reuters

Primary Sidebar

E-mail Newsletter

Sign up to receive email updates daily and to hear what's going on with us!

Publish
AN Article
Submit
a press release
List
AN Event
Create
A Job Post

Jobs

  • Software Engineer | South Yorkshire, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Software Engineer with C# .net Investment House | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Senior Java Developer | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Software Engineer – Growing Digital Media Company | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • LBG Returners – Senior Data Analyst | Chester Moor, GB - February 07, 2023
More Jobs
Host your website with Managed WordPress for $1.00/mo with GoDaddy!

Tags

AI Amazon analysis analytics app application Artificial Intelligence BI Big Data business China Cloud Companies company costs crypto customers Data design development digital environment experience future Google+ government industry information learning machine learning market mobile Musk news Other public research security services share social social media software strategy technology

News

  • Robinhood sees $100 million costs tied to regulatory issues in third quarter
  • Elon Musk’s X Corp in another legal fight over unpaid rent, this time as plaintiff
  • EU examines Nvidia-dominated AI chip market’s abuses – Bloomberg News
  • Valkyrie Funds halts ethereum purchases for exchange-traded fund
  • China’s Huawei sets up commodities hedging team in Singapore, Hong Kong
More News

Related Online Courses

  • Oracle Cloud Data Management Foundations Workshop
  • Data Science at Scale
  • Statistics with Python
More courses

Footer


Datafloq is the one-stop source for big data, blockchain and artificial intelligence. We offer information, insights and opportunities to drive innovation with emerging technologies.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent

  • 5 Reasons Why Modern Data Integration Gives You a Competitive Advantage
  • 5 Most Common Database Structures for Small Businesses
  • 6 Ways to Reduce IT Costs Through Observability
  • How is Big Data Analytics Used in Business? These 5 Use Cases Share Valuable Insights
  • How Realistic Are Self-Driving Cars?

Search

Tags

AI Amazon analysis analytics app application Artificial Intelligence BI Big Data business China Cloud Companies company costs crypto customers Data design development digital environment experience future Google+ government industry information learning machine learning market mobile Musk news Other public research security services share social social media software strategy technology

Copyright © 2023 Datafloq
HTML Sitemap| Privacy| Terms| Cookies

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • WhatsApp

In order to optimize the website and to continuously improve Datafloq, we use cookies. For more information click here.

Dear visitor,
Thank you for visiting Datafloq. If you find our content interesting, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter:

Did you know that you can publish job posts for free on Datafloq? You can start immediately and find the best candidates for free! Click here to get started.

Not Now Subscribe

Thanks for visiting Datafloq
If you enjoyed our content on emerging technologies, why not subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive the latest news straight into your mailbox?

Subscribe

No thanks

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Marketing cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!