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In the media

Kanye West rebranded; Wikipedia in court; editors for hire

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By Gamaliel and Andreas Kolbe

In brief

Kanye West
  • So why don't you kill me?: Numerous news outlets are reporting that the domain loser.com now redirects to the Wikipedia article for rapper Kanye West. Page views on West's Wikipedia article skyrocketed to almost 250,000 views on March 2, up from less than 19 thousand the previous day. At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards on February 8, West leaped on stage to interrupt Album of the Year winner Beck, but a moment later left the stage without saying anything. Beck first achieved fame with the 1993 single "Loser"; the song's chorus is referenced in our headline. CBC News reports (March 2) that a Twitter user claims responsibility and said that she has owned the domain for 20 years. G
  • I'll be there for Kim Jong-un: Wired published a long article (March 1) about activists who smuggle cultural products, including Western films and television shows like Friends, into North Korea on USB flash drives in an effort to destabilize the totalitarian military regime. It reports that one of the activist groups, the North Korea Strategy Center, "is working with the Wikimedia Foundation to put a North Korean-dialect version of Wikipedia on every flash drive it smuggles over." G
  • Hong Kong government slammed for citing Wikipedia: The South China Morning Post reports (March 1) that Hong Kong's government "has been accused of using standards of sourcing that would shame an undergraduate student after citing information from Wikipedia in Legislative Council papers." A.K.
  • Editors-for-hire on Wikipedia: The print edition of the Financial Times (February 27) featured an article on paid editing, with comments by the WMF's Katherine Maher, Michael Wood of Legalmorning, Dariusz Jemielniak and others. (The online version of the article is only available to FT subscribers.) A.K.
  • Arrested for Wikipedia edit: The Toronto Sun reports (February 26) that a member of the Canadian Armed Forces has been arrested for an inappropriate edit to the article Suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons and other online comments related to the case, according to Parsons' father. The case is also covered by Vice (February 26) and CBC News (February 27), which reports that "No charges have been laid, the man was released on several conditions and the investigation continues". A.K.
  • Building Wikipedia: ArchDaily reports (February 25) on the #wikiD event created by ArchiteXX, an organization of female architects , to coincide with International Women's Day on March 8. Inspired by the 2013 essay "Unforgetting Women Architects: From the Pritzker to Wikipedia" by Professor Despina Stratigakos, it seeks to "write into wikipedia women designers, architects and all those involved in the creation of our built environment." G
  • Online threats: The Irish Times reports (February 25) that an Irish former medical student was given a three-year suspended sentence for sending threatening letters to instructors at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland after he was refused readmission. The letters threatened to reveal confidential medical information about 1,300 patients by posting it on Wikipedia. G
  • Wikipedia as sculpture: In an interview (February 25) with the Charleston City Paper, comedian Kyle Kinane was asked about the accuracy of some information about his family that appeared in his Wikipedia article. He said "Hey, man, what do you want to do, pull the curtain back on Wikipedia? I will say that Wikipedia, I never put that page up there, and I don't know how you access Wikipedia pages, but as long as it's nothing offensive or cruel to me or my family, I look at it like a living art project. I look at it like a literary sculpture that the public can access and augment at any time. So yeah, maybe my dad did sell beer at those events...When people are like, 'So, your grandfather was Lon Chaney Jr.'s stunt man?' I just go, 'Sure was, guy. Sure was.'" G
  • How Wikipedia reminds me: In an interview (February 25) with Music Times, Nickelback guitarist Ryan Peake expressed surprise that he had no Wikipedia article. Peake said " The less I'm on the internet, the better! I truly do appreciate any kind of privacy I can get living in the spotlight. It doesn't bother me. It's kind of nice that nobody's paying attention. I don't feel slighted whatsoever." A Wikipedia article on Peake was created in December 2002 but it was edited to redirect to his band in April 2011. Attempts to re-create the article in December 2013 and May 2014 were reverted. On the day of the interview's publication, another editor turned the redirect into an article. G
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A HTTP request to loser.com returns the following: 

 HTTP/1.1 302 Found
 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
 Connection: close
 Status: 302
 X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) 2.2.5
 Cache-Control: no-cache
 Location: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West
 X-Runtime: 4
 Content-Length: 106
 Server: nginx/0.7.65 + Phusion Passenger 2.2.5 (mod_rails/mod_rack)
 P3P: CP="IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT"

 <html><body>You are being <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West">redirected</a>.</body></html>
...which is a standard 302 redirect. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:11, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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