Modi Govt Issues Notice to Wikipedia Over Alleged Bias and Inaccuracies

The Narendra Modi-led central government of India has issued a notice to Wikipedia, raising concerns about alleged bias and inaccuracies in its content. The notice questions Wikipedia's editorial control and whether it should be classified as a publisher rather than an intermediary. This move follows complaints from Indian users and a Delhi High Court ruling that criticized Wikipedia's open editing feature as "dangerous".

The government highlighted that a small group of editors appears to have significant control over the content, which could lead to skewed narratives on sensitive topics. The notice is part of a broader effort to regulate online platforms in India and ensure the accuracy and neutrality of Information.

It's a significant development in the ongoing debate about the responsibilities of online platforms in managing user-generated content.

Wikipedia has not yet issued an official statement in response to the Indian government's notice. However, in previous instances, Wikipedia's legal representatives have assured that the platform has established policies to govern user contributions and ensure compliance with legal guidelines. They emphasized that users must adhere to these guidelines when creating or updating content.

In July 2024, news agency ANI filed a defamation lawsuit against Wikipedia in the Delhi High Court. ANI alleged that the Wikipedia page about it contained defamatory content, describing the news agency as a "propaganda tool for the incumbent central government" and accusing it of distributing materials from fake news websites and misreporting events.

The Delhi High Court has ordered Wikipedia to disclose information about the users who made the edits on ANI's page. This case has raised concerns about online free speech in India and the responsibilities of online platforms in managing user-generated content.

Notably, there is an existing research, including the analysis of Wikipedia’s co-founder Larry Sengar, which has detailed how Wikipedia is not neutral.

The research cites three prior researches to bolster its case. Research by the Manhattan Institute published in June 2024 by David Rozado concluded that Wikipedia heavily leans towards the Left.

Beside these development, a very recent dossier published by media outlet, OpIndia, on Wikipedia highlights several concerns regarding the platform's content and editorial practices.

OpIndia alleges that Wikipedia exhibits significant bias against India and Hindus, often blocking corrections perceived as biased against India.

The dossier claims that Wikipedia censors content that does not align with certain ideological perspectives, leading to skewed narratives. It points out that a small group of editors wields significant control over the content, which can lead to biased information.

Moreover, OpIndia raises concerns about the sources of funding for Wikipedia, suggesting potential conflicts of interest. OpIndia also argues that Wikipedia's open editing model lacks accountability, making it difficult to ensure the accuracy and neutrality of content.

These points have contributed to the Indian government's decision to issue a notice to Wikipedia, questioning its status as an intermediary and raising concerns about its editorial practices.

It's a complex situation that highlights the challenges of balancing free speech and accountability on the internet.

Founded on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, Wikipedia is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was established in 2003 to support Wikipedia and its sister projects, such as Wiktionary and Wikibooks. 

Wikipedia Co-Founder launches Anti-Facebook & Ad-Free Social Network

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has just launched a new social network that -- unlike Facebook or Twitter -- promises not to run advertisements or sell user data.

Called as WikiTribune Social or WT:Social, the new social media platform will be supported by donations from a group of users.

WT:Social, which is aiming to operate only on donations, is free to join, but new users are put on a wait-list, which can be instantly cleared if one donates money. The platform, which nowhere near as many users as Facebook, it told The Independent that it had managed to register over 200,000 members within days of its launch this month.

This was 2 days ago. 48 hours ago. I'm happy to announce we just passed 160,000 members! And it isn't slowing down yet.

On Monday we're going to ramp up the speed of admission on the waiting list, but you can skip ahead by inviting more people. https://t.co/WUU33sTS2m

— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) November 17, 2019

"Instead of optimizing our algorithm to addict you and keep you clicking, we will only make money if you voluntarily choose to support us — which means that our goal is not clicks but actually being meaningful to your life," Wales said in a post about WT:Social.

[caption id="attachment_138754" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Jimmy Wales (Image - twitter.com/jimmy_wales)[/caption]

Wales said advertising is the key problem of platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

"I've come to the conclusion that the biggest problem driving low quality media is that it has been purely advertising supported, and that the social networks which provide so much distribution are also purely advertising supported," he wrote in a blog post. "Facebook, Twitter and other social networks make revenue based on how long you stay on their site looking at and clicking on advertising. Engagement is prioritized over quality."

A video published Monday by the WT:Social team says Wales was inspired to create the platform because of "the superficiality of Facebook and Twitter," and that he hopes his new platform will "conquer Facebook," which he considers to be "full of clickbait and misleading news."

Govt to Create AI-powered 'Gandhipedia' Implemented by IIT-Kgpr and IIT-Gandhinagar

During her Budget 2019-2020 speech on Friday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced the creation of a 'Gandhipedia', an online encyclopedia, which will be developed by National Council for Science Museums and will be jointly implemented by IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Gandhinagar.''

Notably, 2019 marks the 150th birth anniversary of father of nation, Mahatma Gandhi.

With an aim to propagate "positive Gandhian values", Gandhipedia will be a repository of knowledge on Mahatama Gandhi and will function on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The portal will contain original photographs, visuals, speeches and the 100 collected works of Gandhiji. Books by Gandhiji will also be available on the portal apart from books that have been written on him.

According to a senior official of the Culture Ministry, the Gandhi Heritage Portal (www.gandhiheritageportal.org) which is also a repository of knowledge on Mahatma Gandhi are not in a searchable format, so in order to make these available in searchable format these are being uploaded on the Gandhipedia through optical character recognition plus technology.=

Currently, the Gandhi Heritage Portal contains Gandhian works in PDF format. The Heritage portal will continue to run simultaneously along with Gandhipedia.

Source - India New England, The Hindu

Wibe: Surf Wikipedia with the power of YouTube

Akshit and Ankit, students of Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Ghaziabad, like all of us faced problem while studying from Wikipedia and found it easier to learn from YouTube videos. They decided to solve the problem for all of us by developing Wibe. "Wibe is a combination of Wikipedia and YouTube so that we can save the time in switching over to YouTube and searching for videos relevant to the topic we were exploring on Wikipedia," says Akshit Agarwal, a python lover.

Wibe has been recently funded for INR 1.2 million by TLabs Accelerator.

Wibe is a product that increases the "Interest Quotient" of Wikipedia and YouTube content by combining the power of both at a single place. You can leverage this combined power of both just by installing the Wibe's chrome extension after which you can watch out the relevant Videos corresponding to the Wikipedia Page.

Wibe provides videos from YouTube corresponding to every heading and subheading of Wikipedia article, so that you can get a better insight about every part of the Wiki Article. Wibe also gives you "Stick Tabs" feature by which you can stick a video tab on top of page while scrolling through Wikipedia content.

Explanatory Video -

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98uDPo7ZjVI?rel=0]

"Wibe started in April 2014 while we were still in college," says Ankit Agrawal. He was the Research Intern at IIT Delhi under Prof. K.K. Biswas in the field of ML/AI also he likes to work on different techs, he had made a project named AutoEmo which inserts emoticons in the text messages according to actual emotions by detecting brain wave pattern. Akshit on the other hand was the Student Developer in Google Summer of Code 2013 and developed a small tool named Mp3fm. One of his projects was presented at the DerbyCon Conference.

Wibe allows its user to watch videos corresponding to summary and every heading and sub-heading of Wiki article. The current version of Wibe has been made using Javascript and Jquery. They developed an algorithm through which the Wiki article is processed and relevant videos are fetched from YouTube.

This very talented 2 member team is located out of Delhi NCR with 3 more team members, Harsh Bhatia, Priyank Jain & Shivam Khandelwal. “We started as a group of more than 10 people initially, but as time passed, a lot of them left,” says Ankit. “We got good investment offers from some of the organization but for now we have not partnered with any as we are looking for a good mentorship rather than investment,” adds Akshit. They are currently bootstrapped. Their team has been mentored by Mr. Manish Kr. Thakur and H.O.D. Prof. Sanjay Goel from college. "The founders of Scrablabs, Mr. Saurabh Aswani and Mr. Akshay Agarawal have helped us in every possible aspect," says Akshit.

[caption id="attachment_94691" align="alignleft" width="376"] Co-Founder, Wibe - Akshit & Ankit Agarwal[/caption]

We learnt a little about how they are working without investment and they shared a little story with us. “Currently we both live together in a flat, far away from our parents and teach robotics in schools to earn some money for our monthly expenses. We both don't want to take money from home to carry on our passion,” says Ankit. “Ankit is the cook of the house and I try to learn from him once in a while,” adds Akshit. “At the end of the day, we go for a walk and discuss ideas and realize that we are the happiest people on earth because we get to pursue our passion,” he adds.

They plan to make a generic plugin which can be used by any website and they look to extend their product to other content rich websites which will give them a lead over their competitors. "Using our plugin in E-commerce, blogs, How To's websites will make their content more powerful," says Ankit. "For e.g. E-commerce website can include product videos as well as product review videos so that their customers may get all the necessary information at one place," adds Akshit.

As an advice for future entrepreneurs, Ankit says, "You are allowed to make mistakes, but be sure to learn from them as well." To this Akshit adds, "Never run behind money in life because it can give you temporary satisfaction and happiness. Do what you love to do. You should be so passionate about your work that you even dream about it."

Meet the revamped Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the World’s most renowned online encyclopedia has revamped its navigation, search and editing features in order to perk up the user understanding. The refurbishment of Wikipedia was completed on May 13^th 2010 after a hard-core testing by a beta group of 635,000 people.





The Wikipedia search now includes the search suggestions, the ideology of which, is certainly taken after seeing the Google`s success on it.  Moreover, the search bar can now be seen on the top right corner of the page.

With the improved editing tool bar, the article editors of the Wikipedia will definitely be at much ease. Wikipedia has also come up with two new wizards namely table and link wizards. Table wizards are there to make creating tables easier and link wizard allows its users to link to other pages on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has also undergone some natty little changes. Its globe logo has been redesigned in three dimensions, featuring letters of more than 250 languages from all over the world.

Till now there has been a mixed response by the users regarding the Wikipedia`s new look. Some like it and some want the previous one. To solve this problem, Wikipedia has followed the Google`s way. Just like Google`s take it or leave it position with its new interface, it allows users to go back to classic MonoBook interface by clicking on the ‘take me back ‘link top of the page.