Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-07-04/In the news

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French court case

I think that the real news in the French case was that, in the end, it is the complainer which has to pay: "[...] les comptes entre les parties seront soldés par un unique paiement de 75 000 € à faire par la SAS RENTABILIWEB EUROPE à la SA HI-MEDIA". --Elitre (talk) 09:37, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree - from the Signpost's perspective, the newsworthy aspect is the Wikipedia part of the case, and the fact that there were also damages awarded in the other direction for blog postings and such is not relevant. But I have now mentioned the overall outcome of the case. Regards, HaeB (talk) 09:56, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to an error in either arithmetic or transcription in the Rentabiliweb brief. It says that €25,000 was related to Wikipedia, and the two other charges led to "€50,000 in damages each," which should result in a total of €125,000, not €75,000. I think you meant "€25,000 in damages each," which produces the correct result of €75,000. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:12, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rentabiliweb had to pay Hi Media €100,000 (two lots of €50,000) and Hi Media had to pay Rentabiliweb €25,000, making €75,000 in total. But I agree it is confusing: active clauses would be clearer than passive ones. -84user (talk) 18:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thenextweb.com has published a story about this based partly on this Signpost article (which is cited as a source).

As some have doubted the veracity of this news item (as reported on Slashdot and PCInpact.com), it seems worth pointing out that the existence of the case (including the names of the parties and the decision date) can be confirmed by entering the case number (2010075802) on the court's home page (in the "N° de Répertoire Général" field), which also offers the whole text of the decision for purchase.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 09:29, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pharma COI

OMG, the pharma story second from bottom is a worry. Does WikiProject Pharmacy have any strategies to combat this kind of thing? Tony (talk) 10:07, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Tony that it is worrying, but, on the other hand, COI editing is hardly new. Normal editing practices usually work quite well for the run of the mill stuff; we have to hope that this new initiative will be run of the mill, I guess. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 12:07, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's a discussion at WikiProject Pharmacology on whether a check-list of tell-tale signs of possible CoI in pharma articles would be desirable or feasible. We also appear not to have enough editors to watch all of the drug articles. Tony (talk) 16:28, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Editors interested in this will want to read WP:MEDCOI. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:10, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OOh boy. Alex's blog post says his agenda is to help "pharma in gaining more influence over" Wikipedia which I must reject up front. Thanks for the offer though. -SusanLesch (talk) 16:31, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The PHARMA industry got some bad press last time they tried to remove info that reflected badly upon them. It appears that they are now more careful. More help from fellow Wikipedians is always welcome though.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:51, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WikiLove

At the time this article was published, a substantial backlash to the WikiLove application was already present, much of it following the same line of criticism that The Atlantic made, with additional backlash to other aspects, like how gaudy the icon up top is. I have it turned off, and will continue to have it turned off. I don't need an app to help me give out barnstars, I've been doing that for quite a long time without the assistance. Hopefully after the initial wave of childishness ends, (the 'I have a new toy, so here's a star for breathing' that has been flooding talk pages in the past few days), barnstars will go back to being meaningful. Sven Manguard Wha?

My first reaction was, what the heck screwed up my talk page? Then I saw a new unasked-for wiki-love wiki-tab which altered the default page width. I can well believe there's a backlash (and agree with the "I have a new toy, so here's a star for breathing" characterization). A better way to show wiki-love to new contributors would be to patrol new articles to rescue pages which were not vandalism and were too hastily tagged with {{db-test}} or various varieties of {{db-a7}}. – Athaenara ✉ 01:18, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Manypedia

I was quite interested to see Manypedia in action but it completely hung up my Internet Explorer browser (in fact, the site loaded a warning about not working well with IE but nothing else). Just a word of warning. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 15:27, 6 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bachmann and Palin

I may be the only Wikipedian who doesn't know what Bachmann said (did she confuse Wayne and Gacy?) or what Palin said about Revere (I couldn't think of what that might have been). Somebody help me out here? – Athaenara ✉ 08:43, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Michele Bachmann presidential campaign, 2012#Public image, Public image of Sarah Palin#Paul Revere remarks -- Powers ^T 13:28, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks, clear on Bachman (after reading a paragraph which was removed a few hours ago) and clear on Palin (man, that's a long page). – Athaenara ✉ 01:03, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Listverse 'Bizarre Articles'

Whoever compiled that list didn't try very hard - there are way more bizarre articles (pick any April 1st FA for a start). Still I'm pleased that one of my creations made the list (Mondegreen).Manning (talk) 13:58, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]