User:Worldtraveller/Quarto:In the news
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[edit] In the media
[edit] Positive
Wikipedia's coverage of the Indian Ocean tsunami generated a great deal of interest in the project early in the year, with The Financial Times on 9 January describing Wikipedia as "The only instant reference work" [1]. In The Observer on the same day, a column compared Wikipedia to the bee that defies the laws of aerodynamics by flying, stating that though Wikipedia "ought to be a disaster", it was in fact "an exceedingly useful online reference work" [2].
Press coverage of Wikimedia projects in the first quarter of 2005 has varied, as always, from adoring to acidic. On the positive side, Wikipedia was described by The Guardian on February 27 as "The best example yet of the capacity of the internet to coalesce into self-regulating networks" [3].
In March, Wired Magazine took an in-depth look at some of the most active Wikipedians, and described Wikipedia as "the self-organising library of the future [4]. Meanwhile, CNN and many other news outlets reported comments made by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World-Wide Web, who said at a conference that wiki software embodied many of his original visions for the internet as a tool for collaboration, and that Wikipedia was "a great example of how people want to be creative and not just suck in information" [5].
Meanwhile, the widely circulated views of Robert McHenry, formerly of Encyclopædia Britannica editor, discussed below, triggered an article in the Free Software Magazine, outlining the advantages of a freely-editable encyclopaedia over traditional works [6], and accusing Britannica of adopting underhand techniques to try and discredit a serious threat to its reputation.
The BBC, while advising readers that Wikipedia is not perfect, nonetheless decided that that the project offered some advantages over the broadcaster's own extensive web pages [7]. "If you go to the BBC home page and search the web for 'avian flu' you get 41,100 results and have to figure out which one is most useful", said internet commentator Bill Thompson. "Try it on wikipedia and you get one entry, with lots of links you can follow. And if you know something about the subject that isn't in the article, you can add it yourself. That's what I call a useful reference!"
[edit] Not so positive
In an article posted on New Year's Eve on Kuro5hin [8], Larry Sanger inveighed against the project he had been a leading part of until 2002. Sanger complained that experts were not treated with sufficient respect, that lack of deference to expertise would be fatal to the long term credibility of the project, and that the project had a "certain poisonous social atmosphere" because of problem users. His stance was reported by Wired Magazine [9] and many others.
His comments were much discussed. Danah Boyd, writing on the Many-to-Many weblog [10], said she was 'often embarrassed by what appears at Wikipedia'. In an ongoing debate with fellow columnist Clay Shirkey, Boyd also complained about the lack of known authorship [11].
Shirky took a more positive view than Boyd, but Larry Sanger, commenting on one of his entries, accused him of having a 'religious faith in the superiority of Wikipedia's system' [12]. Following on from Sanger's article, Wired Magazine also took a look at some of the problems faced by Wikipedia in terms of becoming a respected reference source [13].
Robert McHenry, former editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica, penned further criticism of Wikipedia, following his scathing attack last year in an article entitled 'The faith-based encyclopædia'. Writing in the Chicago Tribune, he described the project as "...a small and self-selected group convincing itself...that it is in some ineffable way superior" [14]. McHenry later also turned his sights on Wikinews, saying of the project "The naïveté is stunning" [15].
An article in the Washington Post caused controversy when it was found to contain misinformation originating in a Wikipedia article on the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake [16]. The article alleged that priests had 'roamed the streets, hanging those they believed had incurred God's wrath' after the quake, but investigations by a Catholic radio presenter found that the line could be traced back to a Wikipedia article on the quake [17]. One blogger described it as having "originated in an unsourced, wholly imaginary Wikipedia entry" [18].
[edit] Unusual
Perhaps testament to the growing influence of Wikipedia in the public conscience, news outlets often assume that Wikitravel is an offshoot of Wikipedia [19]. Another frequent error has been for reporters to refer to the predecessor of Wikipedia as 'Newpedia', with culprits including The Guardian [20] and Nature [21].
Brazilian magazine Veja noted how easy it can be to vandalise Wikipedia in an article on January 26, when it added false information to the English Wikipedia's article on Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Romanian magazine Evenimentul Zilei seemed surprised to discover that anyone could edit Wikipedia, announcing to a shocked nation that this editable encyclopaedia "isn't a joke, it really exists" [22].
German newspaper Der Spiegel, one of the country's top-selling news sources, was found in February to have plagiarised an article on the German Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article on the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was copied verbatim by the paper, including grammatical errors, but later retracted and replaced with an apology [23] when the plagiarism was uncovered [24].
And despite Wikipedia's insistence that it is not a social experiment, Wikipedian comrades may be amused to learn that The Guardian touted the project on January 13 as an example of "the resurgence of communism - in its primeval form - on the internet" [25].
