COVID-19 Wikipedia pageview spikes, 2019-2022
Back in 2019 at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, Wikipedia saw large spikes in page views on COVID-19 related topics while people here hunting for information. I briefly looked at some of the spikes in March 2020 using the easy-to-use pageview tool for Wikimedia sites. But the problem with viewing the spikes through this…
Wikimedia Enterprise: A first look
Wikimedia Enterprise is a new (now 1-year-old) service and offered by the Wikimedia Foundation, via Wikimedia, LLC. This is a wholly-owned LLC that provides opt-in services for third-party content reuse, delivered via API services. In essence, this means that Wikimedia Enterprise is an optional product that third parties can choose to use that repackages data from within…
A first look at WikiCrowd
I have quite enjoyed the odd contribution to an app by Google called Crowdsource. You can find it either on the web, or also as an app. Crowdsource allows people to throw data at Google in controlled ways to add to the massive pile of data that Google uses to improve its services and at…
Reflection on filling a new Wikidata item
A few days ago I watched a Twitch stream by Molly / GorillaWarfare where they created the Louis W. Roberts English Wikipedia page. I decided to follow along and populate the matching Wikidata item (Q109662645) with as much information as I could from the same references that were being found for the Wikipedia article. Along…
Covid-19 Wikipedia pageviews, a first look
World events often have a dramatic impact on online services. A past example would be the death of Michael Jackson which brought down Twitter and Wikipedia and made Google believe that they were under attack according to the BBC. Events like the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic have less instantaneous affect but trends can still be seen…
Hacking vs Editing, Wikipedia & Declan Donnelly
On the 18th of November 2018 the Wikipedia article for Declan Donnelly was edited and vandalised. Vandalism isn’t new on Wikipedia, it happens to all sorts of articles throughout every day. A few minutes after the vandalism the change made its way to Twitter and from there on to some media outlets such as thesun.co.uk…
Spike in Adam Conover Wikipedia page views | WikiWhat Epsiode 4
This post relates to the WikiWhat Youtube video entitled “Adam Conover Does Not Like Fact Checking | WikiWhat Epsiode 4” by channel Cntrl+Alt+Delete. It would appear that the video went slightly viral over the past few days, so let’s take a quick look at the impact that had on the Wikipedia page view for Adam’s article.
Google Assistant & Wikipedia
The Google Assistant is essentially a chat bot that you can talk too within the new Allo chat app. The assistant is also baked into some new Google hardware, such as the pixel phones. During a quick test of the assistant, I noticed that if you ask it to “tell me an interesting fact” sometimes…