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Archive for the 'Foreign Policy' Category

All the Rage #16: More Changes Stay the Same

Published by William Beutler on July 13, 2008 in Entertainment, Foreign Policy, Fox News, Sports, Television, WikiRage, Wikipedia and William Beutler. 0 Comments

Simplified Wikipedia logoOur periodic look at the top ten most-edited articles on the English language Wikipedia, made possible Craig Wood’s Wikirage monitoring tool, is back this week. It’s been two weeks since our last installment, the previous week’s edition being canceled on account of travel.

However, it also marks the beginning of a new direction for this recurring feature, or at least a new frequency for its recurrence. When July ends in two more weeks, All the Rage will start appearing on a monthly basis. I think we’ve pretty well established a week-by-week pattern, and here is a brief outline of the kinds of articles that usually make the list:

  • Weekly installments of popular television shows in the U.S. and UK are frequently represented.
  • The highest-grossing film in North America each week almost always makes the list.
  • Pay-per-view professional wrestling events are not unheard of.
  • Other entertainment genres popping up from time to time: Nickelodeon sitcoms aimed at tweenagers, televised elimination-style competitions produced by Simon Cowell, sports playoffs and championship series.
  • Deaths in 2008 is the list-based article most likely to appear in the top ten articles, and prominent passing figures sometimes earn a spot of their own.
  • Those who write the breaking/current news articles — on terrorist attacks, natural disasters and many things government-related — are among the most sophisticated and motivated Wikipedians of all.
  • If an article attains the status of Featured Article, thereby giving it 24 hours on the front page of Wikipedia, the resulting vandalism and reversions thereof can push it into the most-edited articles of the week.

Now that we’re going monthly (and between these three installments, bi-monthly) I wonder what different patterns will emerge. What’s likely is that some or all of the above article types will remain, but they won’t all and their relative chart positions may prove to be different as well. Or maybe the trends will look no different on a month-by-month than week-by-week basis. Stay tuned and we’ll find out.

Also, this is not to say that Wikipedia commentary on Blog P.I. itself will be reduced, and this may also be a good place to announce that I will introduce, in the next few days, a new recurring feature also focused on evaluating Wikipedia articles. The angle will be different and the frequency will be a little more when-I-feel-like-it-and-have-the-time, and I’ll have much more to say about that very soon.

And in the meantime, how about that list for the past week:

  1. Article: Rafael Nadal
    Why: Spanish tennis player Nadal, long the #2 in the world, won Wimbledon 2008 over Roger Federer, long the #1 in the world.
    Detail: This article is very long and well-developed, and was so going into the final two days of the tournament. And while new information has been added to the 2008 section, making it a few paragraphs longer, it is now recognized as being of lower quality. Specifically, the “Playing style” section has been slapped with a warning that says it “may contain original research or unverified claims.” This despite the fact that it’s a paragraph or two shorter and already cited several sources. Among the claims disputed enough to be removed entirely is his being known for “ultra-precise drink bottle positioning on changeovers.”

  2. Roger Federer serves, via Graham Hodgson on Flickr.Article: Roger Federer
    Why: Despite losing to Nadal last week, Swiss tennis player Federer is still the #1 ranking player in the world, for a record consecutive 232nd week.
    Detail: As with the Nadal article, it is very much the same article as it was just a week ago, and the differences are not always apparent on first glance. On second glance, however, we see that the old section “Personal life” — listed above the “Tennis career” section — has been broken up into two constituent parts and reordered. The article now begins with a section called “Early life” containing a basic biographical sketch. Information about his dating life and charitable works has been relocated to the end of the article and is still titled “Personal life.” Meanwhile, context has been given to the “Tennis career” section, which is itself broken into “Junior tennis” and “Career on the ATP.”

  3. Article: WALL-E
    Why: Pixar + robots × space = intense fan interest.
    Detail: Seriously, this is the third week in a row WALL-E is on the list, after consecutive weeks in the number one position. I could be wrong, but that might make it the single most-edited article in the three-plus months I’ve been writing this feature. Based on the discussion page, it looks like much of the recent editing has focused on dealing with the extraneous info added by some editors — an Apple references section existed at one time — and debates over how much a critique of consumerism it represents. In its current form, the “Commentary” section largely focuses on disagreements among conservatives about whether the film is “leftist” or reinforcing of “traditional conservatism,” and whether the culprit is big business or too close a tie of business to big government.

  4. Article: List of characters from Total Drama Island
    Why: Let’s see if I’ve got this right: it’s a Canadian television show modeled on Survivor and Drawn Together, now being shown on Adult Swim.
    Detail: Why not the main article itself? Why the list? Well, the show seems to have a lot of characters, and the show has apparently struck enough of a nerve that fans are compelled to fill out as much information as possible about them. And the place for that has been designated this page, not the main article.

  5. Article: I Love Money: Challenge Show
    Why: This one is about a reality game show, rather than the above article, which is a parody of a reality game show.
    Detail: I must say, this is a terrible article — written by fans and for fans but not giving outsiders any idea what the show is like or why it is interesting or how it works different from other shows. Most edits, so far as I can tell, have gone into meticulous updates of the chart showing contestant and episode progress, with detailed but impenetrable episode summaries. Too much detail. Not enough background. Just goes to show that even highly active articles are not necessarily good articles.

  6. Not quite To Kill a Mockingbird via agentjon on Flickr.Article: Journey’s End (Doctor Who)
    Why: Marking its second week on the list, this is the final episode of the “fourth series” of Doctor Who — after 26 “seasons” that is.
    Detail: To be fair to the fans of I Love Money, I am sure it is much easier to write an “encyclopedic” article about Doctor Who. The show has been around since the 1970s, continuity and the TARDIS-associated universe has a detailed history to explain and even summarize when it gets too long. While there is very little discussion on the I Love Money series talk page, the talk page for this individual episode of Doctor Who is already very long, and fairly sophisticated. And it surely can’t hurt that there is a WikiProject Doctor Who.

  7. Article: To Kill a Mockingbird
    Why: It was the Featured Article (FA) on July 11.
    Detail: Featured Articles are frequently vandalized (sometimes amusingly but more often not), articles with racial components are especially vulnerable, literary disputes can get very contentious, and damage done by these edits will bring people to the talk page complaining about how this terrible article was made, FA by editors who may or may not have a bone to pick with other editors or WikiProjects. That more or less describes what’s happened here.

  8. Article: Atom
    Why: The Featured Article on July 9.
    Detail: More FA vandalism. After watching this list for some time, I would probably be willing to vote for temporary semi-protection of Featured Articles. Wikipedia prides itself on openness and in its site policies prefers not to create barriers for new editor participation (in its behind the scenes clique-ishness, it can be a bit different). However, policing vandalism on these articles seems like a real drain for editors on “Recent changes (RC) patrol”, aka vandal watch. A semi-protect would only apply to unregistered users and very new accounts, and would only last the period on which the FA was front-paged. I am sure this has been proposed before and shot down in a vote or debate, but if I ever become aware of a discussion to implement this, I would certainly weigh in on its behalf.

  9. Article: Deaths in 2008
    Why: The hardiest perennial makes another showing.
    Detail: Passing this week: former White House press secretary and Fox News anchor Tony Snow, medical pioneer Michael DeBakey, the founder of Benihana, a producer of Woody Allen films, and an Indonesian serial killer.

  10. Tony Snow via davidsilver on Flickr.Article: 34th G8 summit
    Why: As mentioned above, the government and news-focused Wikipedians do a damn good job of creating detailed articles about recent events in record time. Editors of, say, I Love Money expended many edits on not that much result. Editors of this article added a great deal of information in fewer edits.
    Detail: It seems strange to me that President Bush’s joking conclusion, “goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter,” didn’t make the article. I could understand, though, that it may be a little too U.S.-centric given the global scope of the article, although with equal treatment of similar news coverage of leaders’ statements in other countries, it would not be out of place. But then it seems even more curious that the statement was not raised at all on the discussion page. These people mean business.

    11. Holdovers this week: WALL-E and Deaths in 2008.

    Falling off the list: Everything else from two weeks ago.

    Recurring themes: Doctor Who episodes, reality TV, Featured Article vandalism.

    Honorable mention: Tony Snow, the 50th most-edited article for the concluding week. More and more this section reads like an obituary, which I really don’t need to be doing on a weekly basis. But on Saturday morning, as I learned of Snow’s passing from the morning television news, I did what came natural and checked out the Wikipedia page. While the article obviously reflected current events, as a Wikipedia article it was only mediocre at that point. I made a few edits of my own, removing extraneous information. Did his “pay cut” comment upon leaving the White House need to be mentioned in the second paragraph? Did Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan need to be mentioned in the first paragraph? I said no, and on both counts, other editors have since agreed.

Images courtesy Graham Hodgson, agentjon and davidsilver on Flickr.

Krauthammer’s Forgotten Column

Published by William Beutler on June 4, 2008 in Bloggingheads.tv, Blogs vs. MSM, Foreign Policy, National Review, National Security and Newspaper Columnists. 2 Comments

Charles Krauthammer is one of the country’s most influential conservative thinkers, indeed one of the country’s most influential newspaper columnists. Right?

When I was on Bloggingheads a few weeks ago, I briefly mentioned a then-recent Krauthammer column that caught my attention and made me think hard about current U.S. (and European) policy toward Iran vis-à-vis its nuclear (weapons) program. I thiink it’s important enough to quote at length. Here’s how it began:

The era of nonproliferation is over. During the first half-century of the nuclear age, safety lay in restricting the weaponry to major powers and keeping it out of the hands of rogue states. This strategy was inevitably going to break down. The inevitable has arrived. …

The EU-3 negotiations (Britain, France and Germany) [with Iran] went nowhere. Each U.N. Security Council resolution enacting what passed for sanctions was more useless than the last. Uranium enrichment continues.

When Iran’s latest announcement that it was tripling its number of centrifuges to 9,000 elicited no discernible response from the Bush administration, the game was over. Everyone says Iran must be prevented from going nuclear. No one will bell the cat.

Krauthammer acknowledges, remarkably but rationally, that Iran will get its nuclear weapons whether we try to bribe them to do otherwise or not. And thanks in part to the pyrrhic invasion of Iraq and as well to North Korea’s development of WMD, preemption “is spent.” This is a huge concession from one of the standard-bearers of the political philosophy popularly, if somewhat erroneously, termed neoconservatism. So what to do?

Begin by making the retaliatory threat in response to Iranian nuclear aggression so unmistakable and so overwhelming that the non-millenarians in leadership would stay the hand or even remove those taking their country to the point of extinction. …

For the sake of argument, imagine a two-layered anti-missile system in which each layer is imperfect, with, say, a 90 percent shoot-down accuracy. That means one in 100 missiles gets through both layers. That infinitely strengthens deterrence by radically degrading the possibility of a successful first strike. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might refrain from launching an arsenal of, say, 20 nukes if his scientific advisers showed him that there was only an 18.2 percent chance of any getting through — and a 100 percent chance that a retaliatory counterattack of hundreds of Israeli (and/or American) nukes would reduce the world’s first Islamic republic to a cinder.

Of course, one can get around missile defense by using terrorists. But anything short of a hermetically secret, perfectly executed, multiple-site attack would cause terrible, but not existential, destruction. The retaliatory destruction, on the other hand, would be existential.

This is hardly dovish, promising Iran that nuclear devastation of Israel (or any other ally) would mean the destruction of Iran — in effect, we would tell Iran that Israel’s safety is now very much in its interest.

But it’s also not quite what you’d expect from one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq war. My left-leaning roommate called it “uncharacteristically sharp and honest for him.” Maybe, just maybe, that’s part of the problem.

Because the column sank like a stone.

Krauthammer’s column regularly appears on more than one website, and when I searched then and again tonight, I found very little pickup. At WashingtonPost.com, the highest-profile of all, it received just 21 linkbacks from the blogosphere. At the high-traffic NRO.com, there were only 4 linkbacks. And at the lesser-read Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (at least some subset of Blog P.I. readers will probably find this association ironic) it was a whopping zero. (Of course, this post will bump each up by one.) Compare to his most recent column, taking a familiar position against cap-and-trade, which picked up 59 linkbacks just from its appearance on WashingtonPost.com.

No major blog, liberal or conservative, gave his Iran column any serious thought. The only sustained discussion of the column was at the mid-level left-leaning blog Foreign Policy Watch, which simply disagreed with his premise:

Of course, one of the larger concerns surrounding the prospect of North Korea’s failure to disarm and the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran is that they could inspire balancing, follow-on nuclear programs elsewhere in their immediate regions. But it’s not inevitable that this will happen. Nor is it inevitable, for that matter, that North Korea won’t see its disarmament obligations through to the very end, or that Iran is racing toward nuclear weapons acquisition and there is nothing capable of preventing this outcome. Such fatalism is misguided, to say the least, and would lead to very poor policy if taken seriously. …

That is not to say there aren’t potent concerns for the future of antiproliferation efforts; there are. But to translate this into such sweeping pessimism, going so far as to say “the era of nonproliferation is over,” is intellectually lazy and politically dangerous, particularly if it means adopting purely defensive responses as opposed to vigorous preventive diplomacy designed to blunt such outcomes in the first place.

Maybe they’re right and Krauthammer is wrong. But considering the perceived admission against interest, one would think this column would spark more debate.

Conceding that Iran will succeed in developing nuclear weapons is clearly an unpopular position to take, no matter which political party you belong to. The national consensus, international consensus even, is that Iran must be dissuaded from developing a nuclear arsenal. There are disagreements about how to do it, but the argument that “the era of nonproliferation is over” is clearly something that no one wants to hear.

All the Rage #8: Cycle of the Series

Published by William Beutler on May 18, 2008 in Entertainment, Foreign Policy, Television, Twitter, WikiRage, Wikipedia and William Beutler. 1 Comment

Another week, another look at the most-edited articles on the English-language Wikipedia for the past seven days. Big thanks to statistical tool WikiRage and creator Craig Wood for making this even possible. The tenor of my round-up is decidedly American, but as any frequent Wikipedia reader knows, we Yankees have no monopoly on Wikipedia, despite our great numbers. This week belongs to the Brits:

  1. Article: The Unicorn and the Wasp
    Why: The what? The seventh episode of the current season (they say “series”) of Doctor Who, which aired this weekend.
    Detail: The second episode made the list a few weeks back, and as we saw during South Park’s recent half-season run, popular TV shows often show up in the most-edited articles.

  2. Sichuan earthquake, courtesy Divine Rapier on Flickr.Article: 2008 Sichuan earthquake
    Why: Only this week’s worst natural disaster.
    Detail: Did I call it or what? Last week, when the most recent natural disaster was Cyclone Nargis in Burma and the earthquake in China was moving across the news wires (and Twitter feeds), I predicted the resulting page would be on this list. Like the Nargis page, the Sichuan earthquake page is thousands of words long and meticulously sourced — which is relatively easy to do when an event gets this much coverage. And it’s the second major event in China to make this list since we started a couple months back; the first of course was the unrest in and around Tibet. On the other hand… this article was less active than the one about the latest episode of Doctor Who?

  3. Article: Portsmouth F.C.
    Why: Congratulations to our friends across the pond for taking both the first and third slots this week.
    Detail: It’s football season (and by that I mean “soccer”) in England, and Portsmouth is the big winner in the FA Cup after a 0-1 victory (that’s what it says) over Cardiff City at Wembley Stadium. Close readers of this feature may woner if “FA” refers to “Featured Article,” the reason so many obscure articles make this most-edited list. Thanks for paying attention, but I must report it is actually the Football Association Challenge Cup. Why not FAC Cup? I’d like to know that myself.

  4. Avenue of the Giants, courtesy pete4ducks on Flickr.Article: Ted Kennedy
    Why: The so-called liberal lion of the Senate was admitted to a Boston hospital on Saturday after reportedly suffering a seizure.
    Detail: Although the story dominated cable news this weekend, there ultimately were not many details released, and the incident appears to be less serious than it first seemed. To some extent that’s it — many people came through with unverified information which had to be removed — but it also spurred a closer look at the page, including updates to the section on Chappaquiddick.

  5. Article: Redwood National and State Parks
    Why: The Featured Article for May 17.
    Detail: From the discussion page: “[P]lease refrain from tree-hugging, which this article drips of tree resin. Happy highways, everyone, thanks for putting it up on the front page. Off to gold panning American River, kudos”

  6. Article: Walter Gropius
    Why: Founder of Bauhaus — the German school of design, not the English rock band.
    Detail: A Featured Article? One might think, but in fact the page was linked by Google on May 18, what would have been his 125th birthday. And you know what? Though this may not be surprising, the visitors from Google are worse vandals than the Wikipedia regulars. This article was locked down briefly to keep new and unregistered contributors from weighing in; other editors had applied for the same protection to the Kennedy page, but that protection was not granted, and this one was. Sorry, Googlers.

  7. Article: Coeliac disease
    Why: An an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine that occurs in genetically predisposed people of all ages from middle infancy.
    Detail: Did you really want to know that? Wikipedia thinks you might, because it was the Featured Article on May 18.

  8. Article: America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 10
    Why: Tyra Banks’ reality TV show enters its fourth season and… tenth cycle?
    Detail: I guess it’s not so different from South Park, which airs in two separate half seasons. I assume that both are meant to distribute programming throughout the year in order to increase viewership. This also probably increases editorship of such articles.

  9. Article: Deaths in 2008
    Why: Except for the unusual week when this page was not listed in the top ten at all, this is the lowest appearance on the list for this article yet.
    Detail: An American winemaker, the 1955 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, the oldest Swede ever, some guy who was in Barbarella, the Polish female Oskar Schindler and an American pop artist.

  10. Pro wrestling in Portland, Oregon, courtesy static on Flickr.Article: List of current World Wrestling Entertainment employees
    Why: I’m not really sure, but I suspect vandalism.
    Detail: I don’t necessarily want to reinforce stereotypes about pro wrestling fans, but I can’t resist quoting this comment from the Talk page: “austin hasent made a apperiance in iver 6 months it should just say public relations cuz be fair its missleading someone reads this page and think oh ausin is gonna make a guest apperance but he dont and its been like that for 6 months if he makes another apperance then put it back down but we could put rock there as makeing apperances cuz he made one last year and this year around wrestlmania so either add rock or take apperance bit off of steve austin” The response? “yea good point ill do it”

    11. Holdovers this week: Deaths in 2008

    Falling off the list: Everything from last week.

    Recurring themes: Natural disasters, and reality shows reaching the end of their current season — maybe I should say “unnatural disasters”?

    Honorable mention: Last week Burma was the second-most edited article, in part because it was the focus of a heated debate over whether the main article about the country should instead be Myanmar, the chosen name of the ruling military junta. Good news for fans of freedom — although this is not always the same thing as being a fan of Wikipedia site policies — no consensus emerged from the debate, and for now, Burma it will remain.

Images courtesy Divine Rapier, pete4ducks and static on Flickr.

All the Rage #3: Fools Rush In

Published by William Beutler on April 6, 2008 in Entertainment, Environment, Foreign Policy, Television, WikiRage and Wikipedia. 0 Comments

Wikipedia vandalism has long been a subject of interest here at Blog P.I. It’s more of a nuisance than a real problem, and it will never go away. No, the better question is, when is it likely to be more common? Do you remember what Tuesday was?

  1. Article: April 1, 2008
    Why: This page is the repository for lists of April Fools Day jokes and pranks, and it goes into the hundreds.
    Detail: April Fool’s Day is in no danger of falling into obscurity: the page was only created on March 31 and subequently edited 1023 times, more than double and nearly triple the number of edits on last week’s most-edited page.

    2. An actual Rick roll, courtesy Rakka on Flickr.
  2. Article: Ima Hogg
    Why: With a name like that, how could it not be vandalism?
    Detail: Well, there’s more to it than that. Wikipedia itself made this the Featured Article on the main page of the English Wikipedia on April 1, with a skewed blurb visible on this user page. Just skewed, not contra-factual. But then the real article itself was indeed beset by April Fool’s jokesters, especially after being mentioned on the Houston Chronicle’s website.

  3. Article: Celine Dion
    Why: This was the Featured Article on April 3rd.
    Detail: A complaint from the talk page: “A few days ago when the FA was a pro wrestling show, there were many complaints, but no one has complained about this? Interesting.”

  4. Article: April Fools’ Day
    Why: This is the article where the greatest hits are collected, under the phrase “Well-Known Pranks.”
    Detail:A disproportionate number of recent additions concern themselves with video game companies.

  5. Article: Canada on Strike
    Why: Not only is this the latest South Park episode, it even made extensive reference to viral videos and Internet celebrities, from Star Wars Kid to Tay Zonday.
    Detail: Unsurprisingly, commentary on Internet phenomena can inspire and inform new ones. From the article: “In the days following the airing of the episode in the U.S., many of the featured videos as linked above hosted on Youtube have received thousands of comments parodying the episode in return, notably the ‘I’m not your…’ sequence, forming a meme of its own.”

    6. Charlton Heston at the Lincoln Monument, courtesy Discover Black Heritage on Flickr.
  6. Article: Deaths in 2008
    Why: As of week three, still the only page to appear on all three lists.
    Detail: Kind of a down week for the Grim Reaper. Until Charlton Heston passed away last night, just barely making this roundup, we lost… an American-born mad bomber in Bolivia, the last Turkish veteran of WWI, minor hip hop figure Frosty Freeze, a British race horse, and someone who was, until Saturday, Japan’s oldest living woman.

  7. Article: Earth Hour
    Why: A one-hour holiday in which businesses, governments, monuments and websites worldwide turned off the lights to save a bit of energy to demonstrate their nominal concern with the depletion of Earth’s precious resources. A whole hour!
    Detail: Obviously I’m cynical, but I’m far from the only one. Someone in Australia is primarily responsible for the “Criticisms” section, which is no less than a fourth of the entry. All from an Australian perspective. Not mentioned, but I’m thinking of adding: Google drew some flak for turning its home screen black for the hour, even though on many common monitors it actually requires more energy.

  8. Article: NATO
    Why: The Cold War institution was in the news this week, as Croatia and Albania have been invited to start talking about future membership. Putin can’t be happy about that.
    Detail: Many of the edits concern recent developments, but it seems this has also brought attention to other aspects of the article which needed work.

    9. Earth Hour balloon over Sydney, Australia, courtesy Earth Hour on Flickr.
  9. Article: Google’s hoaxes
    Why: Nobody does April Fool’s Day like Google does April Fool’s Day.
    Detail: Google has been known for pulling one big prank in an announcement for every April 1st going back to 2000, but this year they outdid themselves, pranking visitors on many of their sites and services across the world. It seems like just about every division got a chance to dupe its public users. This year was the first for YouTube, which Rickrolled anyone who clicked on the featured videos.

  10. Article: Bette Davis
    Why: Friday was the actress’ 100th birthday, and Wikipedia made her article the Featured Article for the day. Thereby inviting vandals.
    Detail: On the talk page, one person complained: “Why are there tanks at the top of the page?” Some time later, another complained: “Where did the tanks go?”

    11. Holdovers this week: Deaths in 2008

    Falling off the list: Major Boobage, Fitna (film), 2008 Tibetan unrest, American Idol (season 7), Sea otter, iCarly, 2008 unrest in Tibet, Stephen Curry (basketball), American Idol

    Recurring themes: The most recent episode of South Park, a vandalized front page article

    Honorable mention: Rickroll came in at #15.

Images courtesy Rakka, Discover Black Heritage and Earth Hour on Flickr.

All the Rage #2: All the Truthiness that’s Fitna to Vandalize

Published by William Beutler on March 30, 2008 in Entertainment, Foreign Policy, Seriously, Sports, Stephen Colbert, WikiRage, Wikipedia and William Beutler. 3 Comments

Stephen Colbert once said of Wikipedia, “any site that’s got a longer entry on ‘truthiness’ than on Lutherans has its priorities straight.” I remember checking on this at the time, and he was correct about the length of the respective articles. And I tend to share his actual point, that people are too interested in entertainment — such as Colbert himself. But that isn’t the end of the story: the spotlight Colbert shone on Wikipedia surely led to the current status quo: the articles for Truthiness and Lutheranism are currently about the same length.

Which is a good jumping off point for the second installment of our look at the top-edited articles on Wikipedia.

  1. Article: Major Boobage
    Why: It’s third episode of South Park’s twelfth season.
    Detail: Last week, the entry for the previous episode was number four on this list. Because a new article will be created for each new episode over the next few weeks, expect weird titles like the above to wind up somewhere on this list each week. And how many edits, total? 433 by noon Sunday EDT.

  2. Article: Fitna (film)
    Why: A 15-minute documentary film criticizing Islam and the Koran, written, directed and produced by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, released on the Internet this week.
    Egg McMuffin, courtesy iiraa on Flickr.Detail: The movie credits actually lists the official website as being at wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitna on both the Dutch (.nl) and English (.en) editions. Problem is, in each case this is a disambiguation page, because it’s an Arabic word with a few related entries already. Was this a simple mistake, or an attempt to supersede the other Wikipedia articles? Either way, whether to move the article for the movie into the space occupied by the disambiguation page has been the most controversial issue surrounding this article, and remains unresolved.

  3. Article: Deaths in 2008
    Why: Passing on this week: actor Richard Widmark, Beatles music executive Neil Aspinall, pioneering radio talker Wally Phillips, NFL draft prospect Heath Benedict, Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran and my favorite: Herb Peterson, inventor of the Egg McMuffin.
    Detail: This was number three last week as well, although last week’s deaths were more publicized. Also resolved since last week: Abigail Taylor, the Minnesota girl who died following injuries sustained from a public swimming pool, passed muster for notability and has an article again.

  4. Article: 2008 Tibetan unrest
    Why: Violence has subsided but not ended entirely, and governments around the world are weighing whether to boycott the Olympic Games.
    Detail: Last week, this article was on the list as 2008 unrest in Tibet (see below). The article was suggested to be renamed when it became apparent the protests were no longer confined to Tibet. However, the move didn’t actually occur until more than a week later.

  5. Protest of Chinese involvement in Tibet, courtesy Taekwonweirdo on Flickr.Article: American Idol (season 7)
    Why: It’s the current season, and contestants are being eliminated every week.
    Detail: A high number of edits from IP addresses suggest that people unlikely to edit Wikipedia articles otherwise are contributing heavily to this one. My favorite edit summary: “Chikezie’s name has been revealed and known throughout the season, you incompetent twatwaffle. He goes solely by his first name on the show.”

  6. Article: Sea otter
    Why: It was on the Wikipedia Main Page as a Featured Article on Monday, bringing renewed attention to this otherwise uncontroversial subject.
    Detail: Well, not entirely uncontroversial. It was also the target of vandalism in November 6 because of… South Park. Comedy Central is so far out ahead of Wikipedia it’s not even worth keeping count.

  7. Article: ICarly
    Why: The Nickelodeon show just finished its first season, is being released on the Internet and seems to be getting plenty of coverage lately. Aside from that, I’m stumped.
    Detail: That’s really iCarly, but for some reason, the software powering Wikipedia changes lowercase first letters to uppercase. See also: IPod and IPhone.

  8. Article: 2008 unrest in Tibet
    Why: See number four.
    Detail: Had the name not changed mid-week, it would have been the top-edited article of the week.

  9. Davidson star Stephen Curry, courtesy Sail Whitestone on Flickr.Article: Stephen Curry (basketball)
    Why: The son of former Charlotte Hornets star player and current Charlotte Bobcats assistant Del Curry, the younger Curry leads this year’s NCAA playoffs Cinderella team, the Charlotte-area Davidson Wildcats. Later today he’ll lead the Wildcats against Kansas as both vie to crack the Final Four.
    Detail: Curry’s rivals must be turning out, because a high percentage of these edits are vandalism and then the reversion of said vandalism. And I’ll admit, some of it is funny.

  10. Article: American Idol
    Why: See number five.
    Detail: I’m really not the best person to be writing this. After all, I get most of my American Idol news from Tony Kornheiser.

    11. Holdovers this week: 2008 unrest in Tibet, Deaths in 2008.

    Falling off the list: Arthur C. Clarke, Britney’s New Look, Bear Sterns, David Paterson, 2008 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament, Horton Hears a Who! (film), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Brian Posehn

Images courtesy iiraa, Taekwonweirdo and Sail Whitestone.

Exclusiva! Debe Acreditar El Perez Hilton!

Published by William Beutler on August 24, 2007 in Breaking News, Entertainment, Foreign Policy, Journalist Bloggers, National Security and Newspapers. 0 Comments

I don’t know whether Fidel Castro es muerte and neither do you. James Taranto thinks he’s been dead since last year, and there is a pretty decent case to be made there. But this evening the Internet is buzzing about his putative demise, as Memeorandum goes to show.

What I do know is that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s news blog is admirably honest about admitting where they first heard the (possibly) big international news story:

Seattle Post-Intelligencer gets its international news from Perez Hilton

Yes, in fact Perez Hilton is even linked on Memeorandum, instead of just the sister site WeSmirch. Nevertheless, it most certainly is not a “big scoop” of Perez Hilton’s. If it’s anybody’s, it belongs to Babalu Blog. And if it turns out that Castro still está vivo, I guess the scoop goes to South Florida’s NBC 6.

P.S. If my Spanish is off, I trust that someone will tell me in the comments.

Bolton Resigns, Bloggers Resigned

Published by William Beutler on December 4, 2006 in Foreign Policy, George W. Bush, Iran, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Middle East and National Security. 0 Comments

The big news this morning is that President Bush has accepted U.N. Ambassador John Bolton’s letter of resignation. As many have pointed out, this development is no great surprise — as Martini Republic put it, “This time it’s not to spend more time with the family. It’s for want of votes.”

In one sense, the reaction from the blogosphere is predictable — many a conservative blogger is calling this a “sad day” for the U.S., while the left is saying “good riddance” — Firedoglake has even posted a YouTube video of the Peanuts kids dancing.

United Nations building at Turtle BayWhat exactly Bolton has done wrong while serving as ambassador is not terribly clear; the knock against him seems to remain his brusque manner and outspoken disdain for the institution, as it was before his recess appointment, which is an issue itself. But nor is it clear what Bolton might get done that another U.N. Ambassador could not — and I think anyone would be hard-pressed to single out anything meaningful he has accomplished. One pro-Bolton blogger tried to do just that, but if the list doesn’t put you to sleep, you may find some irony in a conservative citing U.N. resolutions as “accomplishments.”

The theme of futility can be found in on both sides of the political divide. Here’s American Footprints, arguing that this is why Bolton was the wrong pick in the first place:

Bolton has been consistently ineffective in terms of achieving desired objectives, and most parties (including his cohorts in the Bush administration) prefer to circumvent his involvement rather than invite to the table. From forging beneficial arrangements with Libya, to advancing the non-proliferation regime, it has proven easier to get things done without him around.

At A Blog For All, Lawhawk recognizes the fact that Bolton has changed little, but gives him credit just for trying:

The ambassador position is not meant to advance the UN position in the US, but vice versa. Bolton understood this, and this meant tackling the issues of rampant corruption in the Secretariat and pushing for action on Darfur and other human rights crises. It meant standing up for the rights of our allies, including Israel that came under constant attack from Islamic terrorist groups, and the UN General Assembly instead sought to limit Israel’s response. Bolton tried to deal with Darfur, and ran into roadblocks in the form of China and Russia. The same thing happened on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, which continues to proceed at full speed.

As the headline of this post indicates, the general atmosphere, at least on the right, is one of disappointed acceptance. Perhaps the most succinct is Allahpundit at Hot Air:

Not a surprise, really. Bad things happen when you lose your majority.

But there are a few on both sides who badly overstate the importance of this development. On the left, we have Middle Earth Journal calling Bolton a “national disaster for the country.” But the clear winner of this dubious contest is Macsmind, on the right, who writes:

Expected, but simply a foretaste of what danger the Democratic Party will be putting the country in in the next two years. … As for that ass-clown Rino Lincoln Chafee, if there were a death penalty for being a moral coward I would happily throw the switch.

Wow. If there was a death penalty for being a moral coward, the first order of business would have to be be removing cowardice from the list of capital crimes. Also, I’m not sure that “cowardice” best describes Chafee’s opposition to Bolton — is “obstinacy” not enough?

But back to the point — what danger does he refer to? I assume he means the Iranian nuclear program, and a nuclear Iran would indeed be a dangerous development. But there’s a lot more to it than John Bolton. Other than the fact that he currently occupies the ambassador position, why is he our last hope? Assuming Iran can be stopped at the United Nations, that is — isn’t the problem with the U.N. supposed to be that it’s ineffective?

It is possible that Bolton’s known dislike for the U.N. hampered his ability to work with other ambassadors and effect change, though the list of resolutions linked above indicates they can at least stand to be in the same room together. It’s also possible that U.N. incompetence and corruption simply cannot be overcome, or at least couldn’t in the last two years. As we try to advance our interests in the organization, so do fairweather friends such as China, Russia, France and non-friends such as Venezuela and, of course, Iran. Shouldn’t we expect a stalemate?

Whether Bolton was good for the country or bad for the country I don’t know enough to say. But one ambassador — let alone the Walrus himself — is not the difference between success (however that’s defined) and failure (which the U.N. seems quite good at).

Photo credit: This site.

Opportunity Knocks

Published by William Beutler on July 31, 2006 in Foreign Policy, George W. Bush, Middle East and Washington Post. 0 Comments

Over the weekend, the Washington Post’s Peter Baker sought out Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass’s response to Bush’s “public optimism” re: the Two Weeks and Counting War on the eastern end of the Meditteranean. Apparently Bush used the word “opportunity”; Haass retorts as only a former State Dept. official can:

“An opportunity? Lord, spare me. I don’t laugh a lot. That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time. If this is an opportunity, what’s Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?”
Haas literally wrote the opportunity book on U.S. foreign policy. His title? “The Opportunity.”