Directory:Examiner articles by Gregory Kohs

Gregory Kohs was Examiner.com's only citizen journalist assigned to exclusively cover Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. Kohs held this role from July 2010 until July 2016, when Examiner closed down due to financial insolvency. Over that span of time, he published 90 different articles which collectively received over 80,000 page views. Archived copies of these articles are kept here for posterity.

National Wiki Edits Examiner

2010

• Ting Chen is new chairman of Wikimedia Foundation - July 13, 2010

At its sixth annual "Wikimania" summit of devoted Wikipedia users and other guests, the Wikimedia Foundation announced the ascension of Ting Chen as the new chairperson of the Foundation's board of trustees. Mr. Chen, an information... (alternate link)

• Swingtips conquer Wikipedia - July 19, 2010

Wikipedia goes to great length to discourage in principle, if not prohibit in practice, the phenomenon of people or businesses writing about themselves on Wikipedia. In fact, Wikipedians have cobbled together a 5,490-word "behavioral guideline"...

• British Museum pays for Wikipedia page views - July 26, 2010

One of Wikipedia's biggest problems is the fact (or perhaps it's merely a perception) that experts who work in the time-honored knowledge professions -- college professors, librarians, museum curators -- are often made to feel unwelcome by the belligerent...

• Wikipedia criticism group purges three critics - July 27, 2010

An academic group dedicated to fostering a "critical point of view" as regards Wikipedia has decided to purge three noteworthy Wikipedia critics from its ranks. The crime? They were too critical of Wikipedia. The Critical Point...

• Wikijunior took the money, but no books printed - August 3, 2010

As a struggle persists about whether or not to welcome avowed pedophiles to edit Wikimedia Foundation projects like Wikipedia, and whether or not it's okay to allow a 15-year-old volunteer administrator on Wikimedia Commons to view, judge... (alternate link)

• Wikimedia Foundation's boss gives orders - August 4, 2010

Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner has issued a rallying call to the loyal minions of the free culture movement. In order to help Wikipedia, volunteers are supposed to: Work to create a favourable public image for the movement Support...

• Wikipedia is not the encyclopedia anyone can edit - August 9, 2010

Wikipedia may claim as a headline on its very own main page to be "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", but nothing could be further from the truth. While we've seen how some self-promotional...

• Ten new Wikipedia articles - 2009 - August 13, 2010

Over the Labor Day weekend of 2009, I conducted a short case study of 10 new articles created on Wikipedia. Using the "recent changes" feature and looking for that big capital "N" (for new articles)...

• Wikimedia Foundation rules on naughty bits - September 23, 2010

Sue Gardner is the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the non-profit corporation that manages Wikipedia. In May and June 2010, the WMF was beset with complaints about the various floods of pornographic images, videos, and text... (alternate link)

• Wikipedia co-founder assists another damsel in distress - September 25, 2010

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is no stranger to assisting and even dating attractive brunettes through the focal point of their Wikipedia biographies. This week, he turned his editorial attention to perhaps the most attractive female government minister in...

• Jimmy Wales contradicts the rest of the Internet - September 29, 2010

The much maligned co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has once again stumbled into saying something that simply doesn't appear to be true, if judged against the evidence that the rest of the world sees on the Internet...

• Wikia takes down "Squirtage" wiki - October 2, 2010

Wikia, Inc. is often known as the "commercial spinoff" of Wikipedia, as it was co-founded by the co-founder of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia's non-profit board of trustees was once 60% stocked with Wikia, Inc... (alternate link)

• Wikipedia wonders if halibut are highly regarded - October 4, 2010

If you take a look at how Wikipedia's article about halibut appears today, you'll find in the article's lede section:Halibut live in both the North Pacific and the North Atlantic oceans and are...

• Jimmy Wales rattles the tin cup - October 8, 2010

In what has become an annual tradition in the latter part of the year, the folks who run Wikipedia have launched their fundraising appeal. Typically, they beg for money from site visitors for about a month, then they pull...

• Wikimedia Foundation wires biased study of donors - October 9, 2010

The Wikimedia Foundation that governs Wikipedia has released the results of a survey directed at past donors (of less than $1,000) to the non-profit organization. The report draws the usual conclusions:Three-quarters of respondents are male...

• Wikipedia doesn't follow baseball - October 16, 2010

Over the past week, the national news media -- including National Public Radio, MLB.com, FOX Sports, Chicago Sun-Times, United Press International, and ESPN -- have focused stories on former Chicago Cubs pitcher Mike Remlinger. While you may not have...

• Wikimedia Foundation director admits to sweetheart contract - October 18, 2010

As reported about a week ago, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) that runs the Wikipedia encyclopedia has been embroiled in controversy about how it handles contracts with outside vendors. In the most recent case, a market research study of nearly... (alternate link)

• Wikipedia's top attorney says goodbye - October 19, 2010

In a startling move today, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that Mike Godwin, the organization's General Counsel and Legal Coordinator, would no longer be in their employ after Friday of this week. As is typical for the Foundation...

• Racist undertones on Wikipedia - October 20, 2010

It's another uncomfortable day for the Wikimedia Foundation that runs Wikipedia and its cohort projects like Wikimedia Commons, a photo file repository of freely-licensed images. You may recall from September that the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) paid...

• Wikimedia Foundation hires Christine Moellenberndt - October 25, 2010

Faced with too much work heading up both "Reader Relations" and the 2010 fundraising drive for theWikimedia Foundation, Philippe Beaudette announced today that another new employee will be working for the San Francisco non-profit to help ease the work load. Beaudette's new "Community Associate" is Christine Moellenberndt...

• Google Apps infiltrates Wikimedia Foundation - October 27, 2010

If you go to the Google Apps sales site, you'll learn that more than 3 million businesses run the Google office suite for their e-mail, calendar, word processing, and spreadsheet services, and "thousands more sign up...

• Kent Police (UK) get three months free Wikipedia marketing - October 28, 2010

For about the past three months, the Kent Police (Kent County, England) have enjoyed an advertising pitch in the Wikipedia article about the Kent Police. On August 3, an IP editor added direct links from Wikipedia to the Kent...

• Wikimedia Commons cannot control teen pornography - October 30, 2010

As reported last month, the Wikimedia Foundation which operates Wikipedia and sister projects like photo repository Wikimedia Commons knows that it has some significant problems with pornography. A flood of pornography, actually, and as noted last week, even potentially...

• Wikipedia Arbitration Committee member resigns under plagiarism cloud - November 1, 2010

The highest volunteer tier of administrators on the English-language Wikipedia is the Arbitration Committee, a body selected by popular vote among the Wikipedia community and formally installed to the post by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. No stranger...

• Wikimedia Commons bans logos, CD covers, and more - November 6, 2010

The Wikimedia Commons website is the photo album, so to speak, of Wikipedia and all of the other projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco. If the world needs a freely-licensed photo of an apple, or...

• Leading Wikipedian explains why blacks don't volunteer - November 17, 2010

A highly-visible and leading Wikipedia administrator, Fred Bauder, recently answered a somewhat spurious question about why virtually all of the English Wikipedia's contributors are white people. While even here at the Examiner, it's been...

• Original copy of Wikipedia discovered - December 14, 2010

As the Wikipedia encyclopedia project nears its tenth anniversary, a surprising discovery was made today. Original copies of the earliest edits on the now globally popular resource -- edits long thought to be forever lost -- have been unearthed and restored...

2011

• Wikipedia biographies favor men - January 12, 2011

On Wikipedia, there is a handy category called "Living people", which is convenient for looking up articles that are likely to be vandalized and cause harm to a real person. There is also a policy regarding biographies... (alternative link)

• Wikimedia Foundation finds new attorney - February 7, 2011

Owing to Mike Godwin's mysterious departure in October 2010, Wikipedia's parent organization has been operating without lead counsel for months. This week, however, that legal vacuum has been filled by Geoff Brigham, the new...

• Jimmy Wales shows favoritism on Wikipedia - March 4, 2011

According to his e-mail auto-reply, Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales is on a “semi-holiday”, most likely to play the supporting role for Kate Garvey, the new mother of his second child. Garvey...

• Wikipedia co-founder trailing in polls - April 1, 2011

Potential Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Jimmy Wales, is trailing incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson by a huge margin in preliminary polling of Florida voters. While Nelson obtains 47% of the eligible voters' preference, Wales garnered a paltry...

• Secret Wikimedia Foundation donor list revealed - April 24, 2011

As many users of Wikipedia know, the Wikimedia Foundation recently raised over $16 million of tax-exempt money to help operate the popular encyclopedia and its sister reference projects. This in spite of the concern that donations to the...

• Wikipedia's foundation closes board to 99.5% of community - May 20, 2011

For the past few weeks, users of Wikipedia have noticed a banner at the top of the page, inviting candidates for the upcoming Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) board of trustees election. Every year or two (depending on the availability of...

• Wikipedia rejects name for South Beach neighborhood - May 25, 2011

On the afternoon of May 18, a Miami-based executive specializing in hotel real estate wanted to give a name to the famously ritzy section of South Beach along Collins Avenue, between 24th and 15th Streets. We know this...

• Wikimedia Foundation and its CTO no longer fit - June 6, 2011

The Wikimedia Foundation which owns and operates the mighty servers that host Wikipedia and the related sister projects that make it a Top Five global website took almost 5 months to find a Chief Technical Officer in Danese Cooper. ...

• Number of women going down on Wikipedia - June 15, 2011

Nearly five months ago, Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner bemoaned the fact that only 13 percent of Wikipedia's contributing editors were women. She blogged about it, she chimed in on discussions on the Foundation's... (alternate link)

• Wikimedia Foundation board does not change - June 22, 2011

The non-profit foundation that is responsible for Wikipedia and multitudes of smaller sister projects announced the results last week of its board of trustees election. As reported earlier here at Examiner, the foundation determined that its best interests...

• Wikipedia reveals Top 10 most contentious people - July 11, 2011

What do Barack Obama, Queen Elizabeth II, and Miley Cyrus have in common? They, along with other famous and not-so-famous personalities help round out the Top 10 Most Contentious people list, as calculated from underlying Wikipedia data... (alternate link)

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