The WMF's commercial arm has rolled out a new tool for beta testing to allow the rich and powerful priority users of Wikipedia a means to detect content that might be relating to breaking news events.
https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_ ... aking_news
There seems to be some confusion on Wikipediocracy about what this is actually for, who asked for it and why.....
https://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewto ... 43&t=13257
To me it appears blindingly obvious what this is for and why Wikipedia has done it. But that's just me, a regular genius.
It is surely about helping Google deal with the problem of vandalism attacks on breaking news content making it into Google knowledge panels etc, where it often stays long after it has been removed from the poisoned well from which Google drinks.
If Google has the ability to know what specific tiny and possibly rapidly mutating fragments of Wikipedia content in their giant sea of turds is breaking news nearly as quickly as the Wikipedians find out, they have a fighting chance of breaking this toxic relationship. By doing exactly as Wikipedia suggests, and either putting a temporary hold on indexing that shit, or more likely indexing it way more frequently.
The why is even easier.
We are now living in an era where the supposedly non-profit Wikipedia has a for profit revenue stream, and Wikipedia has noticed that its small donors are drying up because Wikipedia content is famously biased and tastes way too much of sausage, requiring a pivot toward larger corporate donors. So Wikipedia now has not one but two very large monetary reasons for wanting to do things that make Google's life easier.
Breaking News Dashboard
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