James Bryce
A ROW has broken out over paid promotions of the Rock after a board member of a firm linked to Wikipedia was hired to promote Gibraltar on the site.
Concerns were raised after the territory featured a staggering 17 times during August on the free online encyclopedia’s ‘Did you know…’ section – with only the Olympics featuring more often.
It has now been revealed that Roger Bamkin, a board member with Wikimedia UK – which is closely linked to Wikipedia – signed a contract with the Gibraltar government to publicise the Rock on the website.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has stepped in to the row by stating that ‘of course’ he is ‘extremely unhappy’ about the ‘disgusting’ situation.
The government of Gibraltar seems a little desperate!! haha
Wikipedia doesn’t get any funding from advertising, so must rely on donations from readers and supporters… which (in my experience) are pretty flimsy.
Send them some money, then criticise.
Wikipedia has been corrupted virtually from it’s inception, only pure scientific info can be trusted anything historical/political should be taken with a ton of salt.
Which is why I laugh when it is quoted so often to back up an argument.
The Gibraltar placements on the English Wikipedia main page have resumed. Go to Wikipedia and enter the following:
Wikipedia:Recent_additions
Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Outstanding_Gibraltar_nominations
Just for reference, Wikimedia has $30m in unspent assets, according to its own public financial statements. Their revenue has snowballed; it has increased more than 12-fold over the past five years.
They are not strapped for cash. At all.
Today’s Gibraltar hook on the Wikipedia main page: Did you know that the HMS Victory, containing the remains of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, was towed into Rosia Bay, Gibraltar, after the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar?
So? Its only fitting since this Sunday at the Trafalgar Cemetery, where you can see the actual tombstones of those that were injured at Trafalgar and who died from their wounds in Gibraltar are buried, there will be a commemorative mass and ceremony which has taken place every year since the battle? Did you know that the Gibraltar Chronicle was the first newspaper to publish the victory at Trafalgar and the death of Admiral Nelson on the 21st October 1805, the London press publishing it a week later? Did you know that a replica of the ship that carried first news of the victory and the death of Nelson to Gibraltar is being sailed to Gibraltar to stand in its harbours just as the replica of the HMS Victory stands at Portmouth for the enjoyment of its visitors and its population alike? Gibraltr has a lot of history both military,naval and local which it has a right to share with the world if it wants to, whether it be in Wikipedia or wherever. A lot of countrie’ events, people, and places have appeared in Wiki under different headings and nobody has ever complained. What is the upheaval about?
The rest of the world has a history, too. Just because someone in the Gibraltar government paid someone at Wikimedia doesn’t mean that Gibraltar should have a daily appearance on the Wikipedia main page. I always thought that Wikipedia could not be bought.
Today’s Did you know … is: … that the historic Rosia Water Tanks, which provided water for Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson’s fleet in Gibraltar, were demolished in 2006?
As far as I know the Gibraltar government denied paying anyone from Wiki. They have a group of local people inputting and updating stuff from Gibraltar. But you might like to look at the Gibraltar Chronicle Archives and find out more about it before you accuse the Gib Govt of actually paying ro be featured in the front page. Might be they feature new articles, and as these people are inputting new stuff all the time, it might just be coincidential. Doesnt bother me whether they put Gib, Spain or Saigon every day for that matter.
And yes I did know the underground Water tanks were demolished, they built a block of flats atop it. First time I heard about the tanks was in 2006, so they may not have been that special.
The Gibraltar government are paying Bamkin, the consultant who is organising people to create new articles, and who involved himself in getting the articles on the main page. The same consultant had given presentations extolling the virtues of getting a city on the Wikipedia main page, and how it is an incredibly cheap way to “energise a city and put it on the map”. Look at the screenshot of him and his presentation here: “wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=19425#p19425”. In fact, watch the whole presentation, because it lays out the business model beautifully. That is the idea that Gibraltar was sold, including all the press coverage the project was supposed to generate. Bamkin has retired as a Wikimedia UK trustee now and other people involved with Gibraltarpedia do the leg work to get new articles onto the main page. But basically, the thing continues unabated. What you have, simply put, is a paid agenda skewing Wikipedia’s neutrality. This thing is good for Gibraltar perhaps, but not good for Wikipedia.
akb Gibraltar has been maligned and mis represented so much in certain circles, that the Government might have seen Bamkins exposee as a way of providing factual information about Gibraltar. Bamkin resigned from the wiki board or whatever he was with wiki I hear so the Gib Govt is not paying someone from wiki as such, they are just probably using his expertise. To question wiki’s neutrality you would have to question the people who input the data, after all isnt it the contributors who make up wiki?..and if the articles, where the input provided has no references, it states as much i.e. that citations are needed..you either take it as gospel or do further research and make up your own mind. I find it a source of relatively good and usually trustworthy information, and a first step to further research. I like Wiki, I think its a great site.