Wikipedia:Press coverage 2003

Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia has garnered substantial media attention. The following is a list of the project's press coverage received in 2003, sorted chronologically.

January

Glorioso, Joseph; Perens, Bruce; Robertson, Michael (January 17, 2003). "Gene Therapy / Open Source Software". Science Friday (Podcast). National Public Radio. Archived from the original on February 4, 2012. Bruce Perens mentioned Wikipedia as an open-source project.
Mayfield, Kendra (January 28, 2003). "Not Your Father's Encyclopedia". Wired. Archived from the original on November 6, 2018.
Hammersley, Ben (January 30, 2003). "Common knowledge". The Guardian. Archived from the original on September 10, 2014. Wikipedia is the web's encyclopaedia. You should be editing it yourself, says Ben Hammersley.

February

Andersen, Espen (February 2002). "Veni, Vidi, Wiki" (in Norwegian). Archived from the original on August 20, 2002. Mentions Wikipedia as a tool for communal writing.
Gilfillan, Ian (February 7, 2003). "Open source knowledge base". Tectonic. Archived from the original on April 24, 2003.
Sherman, Chris (February 10, 2003). "Wikipedia – A Collaborative, Multilingual Encyclopedia". SearchDay. No. 461. Jupitermedia Corporation. Archived from the original on February 11, 2003.
"Article". Nashua Telegraph. February 12, 2003.^{[dead link]} A first-person account of Wikipedia.
"Wikipedia". h2g2. February 13, 2003 [Updated November 2, 2013]. Archived from the original on October 8, 2014. Retrieved April 11, 2021.
Steel, Chris (February 19, 2003). "It's common knowledge". Webwatch. This is Local London. Archived from the original on March 22, 2003. Incorrectly states that Wikipedia uses camel case.
"Factual free-for-all takes on Britannica". Herald Sun. February 23, 2003. Archived from the original on December 5, 2003. Retrieved January 7, 2004.
Jeays, Mark (2002). Shewchuk, Murphy; Crump, Jennifer; Cormack, Paul G. (eds.). Wikipedia: An Online Collaborative Encyclopedia (13th ed.). Markham: Fitzhenry & Whiteside (published February 2003). ISBN 9781550417401. OCLC 1069447188. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

March

"Доброволна Енциклопедия" [Voluntary Encyclopedia] (in Bulgarian). ABC Design & Communication. March 4, 2003. Archived from the original on May 31, 2004. Mentions the 100,000-article milestone.
Ganssle, Jack (March 27, 2003). "On Language". Embedded.com. Archived from the original on December 5, 2020. Of 12 on-line dictionaries I searched only Wikipedia had anything to say about embedded systems. But of course Wikipedia is more encyclopedia than dictionary, one created and maintained by techies like us.
"March 2003 edition". Esperanto (in Esperanto). No. 1157. Universal Esperanto Association. ISSN 0014-0635. Archived from the original on July 18, 2020. Includes an article about Wikipedia.

April

Levack, Kinley (April 23, 2003). "If Two Heads Are Better than One, Try 7,000 with Wikipedia". EContent. Archived from the original on June 20, 2003. Incorrectly states that there is no way to email users.
Guest, David G. (April 26, 2003). "Four futures for scientific and medical publishing". The BMJ. 326 (7395): 932a–932. doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7395.932/a. PMC 1125837. PMID 12714483. Archived from the original on October 9, 2012.
Radio Polonia interviews Chuck Smith; broadcast 2002/04/28 (MP3, transcript) (in Esperanto)

May

Gibson, William (May 1, 2003). "Talk time: William Gibson". The Guardian (Interview). Interviewed by Mackintosh, Hamish. Archived from the original on September 11, 2014. Sites like Wiktionary track new usages and neologisms. The page on Google as a verb went back almost two years!.
Jessen, Carsten (May 8, 2003). "WikiPedia – et open source-leksikon" [Wikipedia – an open-source encyclopedia]. NETopNU (in Danish). Archived from the original on September 7, 2005.
Rupley, Sebastian (May 9, 2003). "What's a Wiki?". PC Magazine. Archived from the original on May 1, 2008. One of the more robust wikis is Wikipedia, which bills itself as "the free encyclopedia." It is a multilingual, open-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The English version contains approximately 120,000 entries.
Brooks, David (May 14, 2003). "Web site users add on to Old Man entry". Nashua Telegraph. p. 14. A couple of months ago, I mentioned the do-it-yourself online encyclopedia with the silly name Wikipedia, which lets anybody who has a Web browser create, write or edit articles. It's a weird idea and I'm still not sure whether it's viable, but it is fun. And sometimes it's eye-opening. ... All in all, it's a good example of how the Internet can create a community of knowledge to outdo the experts. The article also mentions the author's experience in writing the article for the Old Man of the Mountain.
Cortese, Amy (May 19, 2003). "New Economy; Businesses are starting to toy with the wiki, an off-beat technology for fostering Web interaction". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 13, 2010. The best-known example [of a wiki] may be the Wikipedia (wikipedia.com), a collaborative public effort to develop a free online encyclopedia.

June

Abram, Stephen (June 2003). Britten, Loretta Y. (ed.). "Communities: The Three R's: Roles, Relevance, and Respect" (PDF, 7.8 MB). Information Outlook. Vol. 7, no. 6. Washington, D.C.: Special Libraries Association. pp. 13–14. Archived from the original on April 12, 2021. On a different level, check out Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate open content encyclopedia.
"Site of the Week". PC Magazine. June 6, 2003.
Goldman, Ron (June 10, 2003). "The Javapedia Project". Java Today. Introduces Javapedia, citing Wikipedia as the inspiration.
Gettin' Wiki With It in Sarah's Blog Report (part of The Screen Savers).
"Expertise is key in Wiki world". The Daily Advertiser. June 30, 2003.

July

"It's a Wiki world out there for the Web's groupmind". USA Today. July 1, 2003. Archived from the original on January 16, 2014.
Bray, Hiawatha (July 4, 2003). "Website turns tables on government officials". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 23, 2003. The best known Wiki site, www.wikipedia.org, is an online encyclopedia created entirely by visitors who have voluntarily written nearly 140,000 articles, on subjects ranging from astronomy to Roman mythology. Any Wikipedia user who thinks he has spotted an error or wants to add information can modify the article. Unlike at a standard encyclopedia operation, there is no central authority to edit or reject articles.
"Shakeup coming on Bourbon Street: SITE FOR SORE EYES". Edmonton Sun. July 7, 2003. There's a very good online encyclopedia on the Internet called Wikipedia. Article uses Wikipedia as a source for "this day in history".
Weinberger, David (July 21, 2003). "Commentary: Wikis" (Podcast). National Public Radio. Archived from the original on February 28, 2004. Retrieved January 7, 2004. Wikipedia.org, for example, lets the public collaborate to build a surprisingly accurate encyclopedia. David Weinberger says wikis are one example of "social software," intended to allow people to work together with ease.
"What a wiki thing to do". The Age. July 22, 2003. Archived from the original on April 20, 2021. Wikipedia (wikipedia.org) is an online encyclopedia. Each page has an "edit" button that lets any web user change the text on the page, or create new pages. It wouldn't require any coding skills for a malicious user to ruin years of work - except that wikis also store past versions, so the keepers of Wikipedia can quickly erase any damage. Users' IP addresses are also logged.

August

Cedergren, Magnus (August 4, 2003). "Open content and value creation". First Monday. Vol. 8, no. 8. doi:10.5210/fm.v8i8.1071. Archived from the original on March 22, 2014. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is based on wiki, a simple but effective technology. In a wiki Web site, all users may edit much of the content on the site. Wikipedia's goal is to build a collectively created online encyclopedia, offered as open content. Like ODP, Wikipedia has an almost countless number of editors. The major difference from ODP is the organization. Wikipedia's organization could be described as anarchistic compared to the organization of ODP, which is very hierarchic. There is also another difference: the content of Wikipedia does not appear often outside of Wikipedia's own site. Some parts of the model are therefore marked with broken lines.
Stout, Kristie Lu (August 4, 2003). "Wikipedia: The know-it-all Web site". Tech Watch. CNN International. Archived from the original on October 3, 2003. Tech Watch aired a segment on the Wikipedia and the University of Hong Kong student project.
Tonstad, Hans Marius (August 5, 2003). "Folkets leksikon" [The People's Lexicon]. Aftenposten (in Norwegian). Archived from the original on August 18, 2003.
Hamilton, Anita (August 10, 2003). "The People's Encyclopedia". Time. Archived from the original on July 2, 2013.
Regan, Jim (August 14, 2003). "The People's War". The Christian Science Monitor. Halifax, Nova Scotia. Archived from the original on December 17, 2003. ...Wikipedia, the "free encyclopedia" written by its users and not academics.
"Article". Metro.hu (in Hungarian). August 27, 2003.
"Article". Datormagazin [sv] (in Swedish). August 2003.

September

Leslie, Mitch, ed. (September 5, 2003). "Resources: The People's Encyclopedia" (PDF). NetWatch. Science Magazine. Vol. 301, no. 5638. American Association for the Advancement of Science. p. 1299. doi:10.1126/science.301.5638.1299c. eISSN 1095-9203. ISSN 0036-8075. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 19, 2018.
"Encyclopedias a Click Away". The Washington Post. September 7, 2003. Archived from the original on October 26, 2012. Retrieved January 7, 2004. Mentions Wikipedia while discussing CD-ROM encyclopedias.
"Save cash on books, find them free on Net". The Press of Atlantic City. September 14, 2003.^{[dead link]} Advises using Wikipedia rather than paying for encyclopedias. Positive comments about the current events section.
Strozzi, David (September 5, 2003). "Votive Offering: How to Have Your Election Cake and Eat It Too". The Tech. Vol. 123, no. 44. Cambridge, Massachusetts. p. 5. Archived from the original on September 18, 2019. An excellent introduction to voting systems and voting reform is www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system.
Computer Weekly September 2003

October

"October 2003 issue". Glassine Surfer. The American Philatelist. American Philatelic Society. October 2003. Brief mention of Wikipedia, characterizing its stamp collecting material as "fairly good", and including a link to the "postage stamp" article.
Ngan Nguyen, Kim (October 8, 2003). "Write For An Encyclopedia". ABC 7 Denver. Archived from the original on September 27, 2011.
"Reference wwworks Six of the best..MINI CAMCORDERS The Computer World". Daily Mirror. October 17, 2003. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. A free encyclopaedia written collaboratively by its readers. The site is a wiki wiki, meaning anyone can edit any article by clicking on the 'edit this page' link that appears in every Wikipedia article. Just so you know, wiki wiki means fast in Hawaiian and is the speed of creating and updating pages that is a defining aspects of wiki technology.
"Debian Weekly News". Debian. October 21, 2003. Archived from the original on November 2, 2003. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, contains a long entry about the Debian project and its distribution. Among other topics it mentions developer recruitment, motivation, resignation and the package life cycle. Wikipedia is a community written and edited encyclopedia published using the GNU Free Documentation license. Over a dozen people have contributed to the article since its original version was written in December 2001.
Smolenski, Nikola (October 2003). "Potpuna sloboda" [Complete freedom]. Svet kompjutera (in Serbian). Archived from the original on May 29, 2009. The article has three sections: an introduction, "Wikipedia," and "Others."
Dutch computer magazine for the elderly, PC Plus Magazine, published a four-page tutorial on how to add and edit Wikipedia entries in their October 2003 issue.

November

Goetz, Thomas (November 1, 2003). "Open Source Everywhere". Wired. Archived from the original on November 5, 2015. Has a section on Wikipedia.
"Otak Berkolaborasi Lewat Internet" [Brain Collaboration Over the Internet] (in Indonesian). Detikinet. November 3, 2003. Archived from the original on February 17, 2004. Retrieved September 28, 2023.
MS-Mobiles article on the German Wikipedia available in MobiPocket Reader format. November 19, 2003
Steffen, Alex (November 19, 2003). "Tech Bloom in full flower". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Archived from the original on August 13, 2012. There's even the content. ... Wikipedia, compiling the world's first collaboratively built encyclopedia.
Interview of Jimmy Wales, FING - November 20, 2003 (in French)
Brenneman, Richard (November 28, 2003). "Famed Berkeley Home Hosts Kucinich E-campaign". Berkeley Daily Planet. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. [Henry Poole]'s particularly fascinated with Wikis (the word's an Hawaiian term meaning "quickie"), the increasingly popular user-built website, of which the best known is Wikipedia.com, an encyclopedia written entirely by website visitors. Poole is a boardmember of the Free Software Foundation.

December

"Join hands, Asian media urged". The Star. December 9, 2003. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved January 7, 2004. Mentions Wikipedia as an example of participatory journalism.
Moore, Carrie A. (December 20, 2003). "St. Nick not well known". Deseret News. Salt Lake City. Archived from the original on March 11, 2004. Retrieved March 5, 2004. Moore explains the history of Christmas celebrations with the assistance of "Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia".
"Elec-Cronicas / Wikipedia". El Norte (in Spanish). Monterrey. December 29, 2003. Una de las aventuras mas sorprendentes de la Red es probablemente la tentativa de escribir una enciclopedia en la redaccion de la cual cualquier internauta puede participar a su antojo. Basada en la tecnologia de los wikis de la cual hemos hablado hace poco, la Wikipedia festejara su tercer aniversario el 15 de enero con resultados impresionantes.