Wikipedia:Press coverage 2004

Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia has garnered substantial media attention. The following is a list of the project's press coverage received in 2004, sorted chronologically.

English-language

January

Emerging Technology: Internet-Era Democracy: Can the World Wide Web give ordinary people a shot at true populism? Discover Magazine cites Wikipedia as an example of how the public can be harnessed. Jan 2004.
Image Conscious Fast Company Magazine discusses a study of "collaboratively written or edited document"s, History Flow, headed by a member of IBM's research division, Martin Wattenberg. Written by Scott Kirsner, January 2004 issue (#78), page 38.
The Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2004, The Journal Report, Technology; Business Solutions by Michael Totty. "There is even a wiki encyclopedia (wikipedia.org) where anyone can add or amend entries."
Popular Science, February 2004 mentions wikipedia.org among a few sites on the web as "Where to turn on the net for scientific bolstering" on page 65 in the print version, and here in the online version.
Today Linux, Tomorrow the World? Tech Central Station very briefly mentions Wikipedia saying, "Just as the open source movement can point to valuable software, it is also producing some interesting things in other areas, such as the popular encyclopedia Wikipedia...," in an article about open source titled Today Linux, Tomorrow the World?. January 22, 2004.
Online reference to reach milestone from The Mercury News talks about Wikipedia and its impending 200,000 article milestone. January 25, 2004. Reprinted in Siliconvalley.com, Bradenton Herald, FL, Biloxi Sun Herald, MS, The Kansas City Star, MO, Miami Herald
Microsoft Notebook: Wiki pioneer planted the seed and watched it grow from Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Todd Bishop is an article on Ward Cunningham, the creator of the wiki concept. Wikipedia is mentioned as the largest wiki on the web. The article also has quotes from Wikipedia's co-founder, Jimmy Wales. January 26, 2004.
Dan Gillmor, "Wikipedia emerges as credible resource", San Jose Mercury News (Jan. 29, 2004). About 200,000 article mark: "Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), an encyclopedia created and operated by volunteers, is one of the most fascinating developments of the Digital Age. In just over three years of existence, it has become a valuable resource and an example of how the grass roots in today's interconnected world can do extraordinary things."

February

Information Outlook (Feb 2004). eBooks: rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated..

Prospect, "The Microsoft Killers", pp. 54-58, Feburary 2004 edition; uses Wikipedia as an example of an open content project. "Open source software has come of age, and open source working methods are spreading beyond computers."
Far Eastern Economic Review issue dated February 19, 2004: Wikipedia:It's Wicked (registration required). Enthusiastic reportage, notes the 200,000th English article and the Asian languages Wikipedia is available in. (Also posted to Usenet at ) A pdf of the article can be found at which is the copy that was carried by the Wall Street Journal.
The Internet Column: WIKI REMARKS from Scotsman.com (Also printed in the (Liverpool) Daily Post) has an article on Wikis in general. Quote: "The best known [Wiki] is Wikipedia, an encyclopaedia written entirely using the wiki system. Anyone browsing through Wikipedia can edit any page; so if you know a lot about a specific subject, you can add your knowledge to that subject's page easily." February 16, 2004.
British comedian Bill Bailey being interviewed by The Times (UK). Quote: "8:00PM SURFING AND BLOGGING If I'm writing a show I spend a lot of time researching it on the net. I use Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) a lot. It's a brilliant online encyclopaedia, invaluable for historical stuff, and probably the most accurate of all those sites." February 21, 2004.
The Guardian, from an article about changing the world. Quote: "EBay does something no other network has done: it treats the social network as the supply-chain and by building systems of communications and reputation management into the network, turns a group of individuals into an organised, structured and wildly economically viable marketplace. The same can be said at an emergent level about open-source knowledge projects such as the Wikipedia encyclopedia." February 23, 2004.
An English translation of the transcript of Wikipedia as a news item in Germany, includes a screenshot. See below for more details. February 25, 2004.
Kuro5hin is apparently the first news site to publish Wikipedia's 500,000 article press release.
February 29 - computerworld.co.nz in an article about wikis (about how cool they are) ("Wicked (good) Wikis") mentions Wikipedia as "the largest, and perhaps most ambitious, Wiki in the world ? attempting to capture encyclopedia entries on everything". Also printed in Darwin Magazine .

March

New Yahoo! Search Planned To Go Deeper, an Associated Press report, based on this Yahoo Press Release "... pay for placement, the company is working with groups like National Public Radio, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and Wikipedia to make ..."
- Posted, published, or aired on Local6.com, FL, WSOCtv.com, NC, Hawaii Channel.com, HI, Carolina Channel.com, SC, Click 2 Houston.com, TX, SanDiego Channel.com, CA, NewsNet5.com, OH, NBC4 Columbus.com, OH, KSBW Channel.com, CA, WMUR Channel.com, NH, WBAL Channel.com, MD, News4Jax.com, FL, WPBF Channel.com, FL, ClickonSA.com, TX, Kansas City Channel.com, MO, KMGH, CO, WHIOtv.com, Ohio, WRAL.com, NC, INDYchannel.com, IN, WSBtv.com, GA, Omaha Channel.com, NE, WESH.com, FL, Champlain Channel.com, NY, Bakersfield Channel.com, CA, Jackson Channel.com, MS, Click10.com, FL, Milwaukee Channel.com, WI, WTOV9.com, OH, WJACtv.com, PA, KTVU.com, CA, WDIV, MI, Pittsburgh Channel.com, PA, WISC, WI, Channel Oklahoma.com, OK, New Orleans Channel.com, LA Local6.com, FL - 15 hours ago

Wikipedia for Journalists, Trusting a free resource, Poynter Online, article by Sree Sreenivasan, and Andrew Lih, Mar. 8, 2004. Explaining Wikipedia as a form of participatory journalism. "Wikipedia is an Internet-based, volunteer-contributed encyclopedia that in just three years has become a popular and highly regarded reference. It has thousands of international contributors and is the largest example of an open content wiki."

The contenders for Google's throne, BBC Dot.life, March 22, 2004, talking about Yahoo's search engine, "It has set up a program to index many of the databases held at places such as the US Library of Congress, US National Public Radio, the National Science Digital Library and the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia."

Wikipedia and the rise of Participatory Journalism, RTHK Media Digest, March 2004, by Andrew Lih. Article about origins of Wikipedia and Chinese Wikipedia.

A turn up for the books, The Independent, p. 11, Danny Bradbury, March 24, 2004, "Weighty volumes are on their way out. Even CD-Roms are old hat. So why has the biggest online encyclopedia decided to produce a paper version?" Story about Jimbo Wales and Wikipedia.

Open-source software offers alternative to off-the-shelf products, USA Today.com, Andrew Kantor, March 26, 2004. A story on source products mentions Wikipedia: "To see an incredible example of open-source intellectual collaboration, check out Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia with more than 230,000 articles contributed by anyone who wants to add to it. You might expect it to be a hodgepodge of garbage and rhetoric, but it's not. It's not. It's actually one of the best reference resources on the Web."

David Sidwell, "The Web As It Was Meant To Be", The Age (Mar. 18, 2004). "But the idea of web-based creation and updating never really went away. Indeed, it is very much alive in a concept known as a Wiki."

April

Beyond Google, PCWorld, April 2004, "Or try Wikipedia, a volunteer encyclopedia with a global flavor, for data on topics from math to mythology to the arts."

Q. What does the term "wiki" mean with regard to the Web?, J. Biersdorfer tech column, April 1, 2004, The New York Times "The Wikipedia (wikipedia.org) is an ambitious online encyclopedia in several languages that also invites participation."

Weave a wiki web, The Guardian, April 1, 2004. "Wiki sites that work include the impressive Wikipedia, a collaborative encyclopaedia covering every topic imaginable. It puts the wiki concept to practical use, drawing on the combined knowledge and experience of all its contributors to create something informative and authoritative." Reprinted in The Hindu (India), April 2, 2004.

Tomorrow's work forecast, USA TODAY, April 12, 2004. "Loose hierarchies. The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org ) is mostly a volunteer operation, but it employs a few guidelines, such as writing articles from a neutral point of view..."

The power of search, The Age, April 13, 2004. "By far the best of the free services is Wikipedia, constructed by volunteers. It works on the premise that everyone is an expert in at least one topic and can write an encyclopedic entry that is vetted and corrected by others with enough knowledge to make it authoritative. This peer-to-peer nature has seen Wikipedia grow to one of the biggest resources. However, its open nature means that some controversial materials should be double-checked against other sources for accuracy and objectivity. Wikipedia is available in 73 languages including Catalan, Vietnamese and Greek."

2004 100 Top Websites You Didn't Know You Couldn't Live Without, PC Magazine, April 20, 2004. Under Information category: "Wikipedia is a collaborative, community-built, open-content encyclopedia; anyone can edit any page, augment an existing entry, or add a new one. Sure, there's a lot of questionable and incomplete content, but you'll also find many fascinating, detailed, well-written articles. Go ahead and make your contribution to the sum of human knowledge."

Google bomb of Wikipedia's Jew article:
- Anti-Semitic site bumped off Google's top spot (Jerusalem Post, Internet, April 15, 2004) "Utilizing a cyber-petition and some clever HTML programming, a diverse group of Jewish activists, academics and even a US senator managed to replace the top spot with Wikipedia's encyclopedia, which two weeks ago held no rank."
- Googlebombing Of Jew Keyword Continues, WebProNews, April 15, 2004, " Daniel Sieradski, editor of Jew School, a Web site dedicated to Jewish fringe culture, has spearheaded a Googlebomb designed to knock JewWatch.com out of the first place. Yesterday, the top listing for the keyword was Wikipedia.org, a reference page devoted to the definition of the word "Jew"." It was reported later in the article that JewWatch.com was back to the number one spot.
- Googling for a better tomorrow, Jerusalem Post, Internet, April 22, 2004, "The Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew ) is a lot more user-friendly, and discusses Judaism from an objective, factual point of view – just the thing for our friends in Wyoming and China."
- Google: Watch Out for 'Watch', Steven Levy, Newsweek, April 26, 2004, "Soon people may see a different top choice for "Jew": a hate-free entry in the participatory reference work called Wikipedia."
- Who can define 'Jew?' Internet flap shows challenge of the digital age, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 27, 2004, "The Jewschool-led offensive pointed to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Within weeks, Wikipedia’s definition of the word 'Jew' became the first result for that search term."

Targeted ads are the route to online profits, Journalism.co.uk, April 22, 2004. "Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia project, invites readers to add or amend information on the site. The site is an interesting example of a project with participatory journalism at its core, said speaker Andrew Lih, assistant professor at Hong Kong University."

Yahoo Search Shortcuts, WebProNews, April, 22 2004). "Now, Yahoo does offer a built-in encyclopedia search. If you type in 'caterpillar facts' then your top result links to an encyclopedia entry. Now, does this beat wikipedia's caterpillar entry? No, but it does beat Google's encyclopedia entry."

Brisbane council Web site nominated for Web Oscar, ZDNet, April 23, 2004). "Receiving multiple [Webby Awards] nominations include iTunes Music Store, Meetup.com, Google, Noggin, Wikipedia and Live 365."

A question of trust online, BBC News, April 23, 2004. "And there is the wikipedia, a community-written encyclopedia that has evolved over the years from a largely technical bunch of articles into one of the most reliably useful sources of information around, on or off-line."

Everyone is an Editor, Salon.com, April 27, 2004. "Launched in January 2001 with barely a dozen articles, Wikipedia crossed the 500,000 articles mark in February, with posters contributing content in more than 30 languages and, by last measure, at a rate of 300,000 articles per year."

May

Grass-roots guide to everything, Newsweek and Newsweek Society, May 3, 2004. "Here's an encyclopedia that evokes a variation on the famous Groucho line: would you get your information from a reference work that accepts you as an author?"

Build an Encyclopedia: Everybody is Invited, YaleGlobal Online, May 5, 2004. "Wikipedia - the largest example of these collaborative efforts - is a functioning, user-contributed online encyclopedia that has become a popular and highly regarded reference in just three years of existence."
- Anyone may contribute to E-encyclopedia, Jakarta Post (Indonesia), May 8, 2004. Syndicated version of above Yale Global article.
- Wikipedia builds 'free market of knowledge' , The Standard (Hong Kong), May 10, 2004. Syndicated version of above Yale Global article.

Participatory Journalism: The Essence of Wikipedia, International Symposium on Online Journalism (from the University of Texas), May, 2004. "Wiki wiki -- Hawaiian for "quick" -- is at the root of Wikipedia, a encyclopedia website where any page can be edited by users with the simple click of an "edit this page" button." There is also a PDF of a paper from that Symposium by Andrew Lih, of Hong Kong University: Archived February 9, 2005, at the Wayback Machine

Wikipedia has won a Webby award in the "Community" category. Related coverage links: Slashdot, BBC, Macworld UK, Investors.com PC Pro

FrankenArt: The mix and mash future, The Globe and Mail, May 15, 2004. "Wikipedia is a so-called "open content" on-line encyclopedia where visitors can contribute content to the articles, albeit at the discretion of editors."

The Australian technology magazine Australian Personal Computer have listed Wikipedia.com [sic] as their chosen site of the month in their Workship section (page 119, June 2004 edition - released in May)

Chinese Internet users work to make knowledge free, IDG News Service, May 17, 2004. "Chinese Wikipedia (http://zh.wikipedia.org) is a Chinese-language offshoot of Wikipedia, an online English-language encyclopedia that is also available in a host of other languages."

'Janitors' help keep Wikipedia reliable. The News Journal, May 18, 2004. "If the concept is idealistic, then it also is a bit mad: a bottomless, evolving database of human knowledge, with articles mundane and profound, which anyone with an Internet connection has access to create and edit. That's the notion behind Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org)..."

"Hit the web as you hit the books: A roundup of reference sites for swamped students" (St. John's Telegram (Newfoundland), May 21, 2004 - article not online) recommends "www.wikipedia.com" (sic): "Wikipedia -- which I hope to write about in detail in an upcoming column -- is an open-ended encyclopedia that is constantly being revised and amended by readers, but which is addictive for surfers."

Out-Googling The Top Search Engine: Online encyclopedias yield more specialized results. BusinessWeek Online, May 31, 2004. "WIKIPEDIA IS ONE of the more remarkable projects on the Web. The online encyclopedia (www.wikipedia.com) is the work of 6,000-odd volunteers covering a huge range of subjects, even though it does better on science and technology than on arts and culture." Even though it incorrectly states, "If you find an error, you are welcome to suggest a correction. And if you find a topic that isn't covered, you are welcome to create a new article. (An editorial group decides which corrections and contributions merit posting.)"

Daily Kos, one of the largest political blogs, cites us favorably, saying:

"Ahh, this is a cool day in dKos history -- a team of Kosmopolitans has put together the dKosopedia -- a Daily Kos wiki.

I can almost hear you all thinking, "what the heck is a wiki?" It's a collaborative website that will allow this community to build a political encyclopedia (from a liberal standpoint, of course). In short, anyone will be able to contribute encyclopedia entries on a variety of political subjects.

The best example of a wiki is the Wikipedia, which is an open source, collaborative encyclopedia with over 274,000 entries, all of them community submitted.

We hope the dKosopedia will become the progressive-political version of the Wikipedia."

June

Untitled review ic Wales, June 1, 2004. Wikipedia is "the web's most stunning and exciting site."

Veni, Vidi ...Wiki? Forbes.com, June 3, 2004. "Wikipedia, a Web encyclopedia run by a nonprofit, boasts 274,000 articles written by 'experts' in its English edition."

Wikis' Winning Ways. BusinessWeek Online, June 7, 2004. "With etiquette out of the way, there's no better place to start a wiki tour than the big kahuna of wikis: Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia with 280,000 articles in English and more than 380,000 more in 49 other languages."

Something Wiki This Way Comes. BusinessWeek Online, June 7, 2004. "On the site, a free online encyclopedia called Wikipedia, thousands of volunteers had written a breathtaking 500,000 articles in 50 languages since 2001 -- all thanks to the defining feature of wikis."

Wiki Back Link Spam Tactic. Webpronews.com, June 2004. "Of course wikis emerged not as an SEO tool but as a means of collaborating on content. The Wikipedia is one example of how this can work. For their entry on 'wiki' you simply click edit and see a page similar to a forum posting page where you can alter the text."

Need To Do Research? Go Further Than Google Investors.com, June 7, 2004. "One increasingly popular online tool is wikipedia.org, a collaborative encyclopedia that lets any user edit an entry."

Open source -- Beyond capitalism? Economist, June 10, 2004 (Subscription only). "The surprisingly good open-source encyclopedia (see Wikipedia.org) is another example [of open source]. Like software, it is modular, which allows different people to work on different bits."

Reporter's nose for news discovers foul play, Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA), June 11, 2004 (story not online). Wikipedia is the victim of a cruel hoax: "The online encyclopedia "Wikipedia" created a version of Chesapeake's history that was literally a bunch of bull." The edit in question was put in on May 2 and not removed until June 3.

WordIQ's use of Wikipedia content crosses licence line Archived October 10, 2004, at the Wayback Machine the Inquirer, June 13, 2004. "Take for instance a search for the 'Iran-Contra affair', a subject the mass media appears to have forgotten in recent times. The results page from Wikipedia.org for such a search is here, and the one from wordIQ.com is here. Notice any similarities?" UPDATE: Archived October 19, 2004, at the Wayback Machine

Wikipedia blocked in China, related news stories below:
- Wikipedia Inaccessible In China ChinaTechNews.com, June 14, 2004. "According to several Internet reports both the Chinese and English-language versions of Wikipedia have now been blocked and are inaccessible from the Chinese mainland."
- Chinese censors block access to Wikipedia ITworld.com, June 14, 2004. "Chinese censors have blocked access to an online encyclopedia called Chinese Wikipedia that was created as a free and open source of information for Chinese Internet users, according to several contributors to the site."
- China blocks Wikipedia arstechnica.com, June 14, 2004. "Ten days ago the Chinese government blocked Internet access to the Chinese version of the Wikipedia, a community-built encyclopedia that polices itself with a policy of political neutrality."
- China Blocks Wikipedia Slashdot.org, June 14, 2004. "China government is, again, restraining the access to internet. Ars Technica says they are now blocking the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. How much time will it take for to Slashdot be blocked?"

Wikipedia has won a Golden Nicas award 2004 in the "Digital Communities" category.

Everyone's an expert Time Asia, June 14, 2004. "Called Wikipedia.org (wiki means 'superfast' in Hawaiian and is also the name of the collaborative software upon which the site is built), the encyclopedia features more than 700,000 hypertexted articles on everything from 'Anthrax (band)' to 'Zeppelin.'"

"COOL WEB SITE OF THE WEEK" - Albuquerque Journal (New Mexico), June 17, 2004: "Sometimes when you read an online encyclopedia, you know the information is wrong. With that in mind, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger started Wikipedia in 2001. Three years later, more than 6,000 contributors have written about 600,000 articles."

Everyone's an Expert Time Europe, June 20, 2004. Same as the above article for Time Asia, but with a different picture.

The jury is still out on open source The Guardian, June 27, 2004, p. 11 (available online with subscriber access, link is to a reprint by The Taipei Times). Mentions Wikipedia as an example of volunteer efforts in contrast with open source business models.

Even mentioned in a small, central Wisconsin newspaper. Digital or print? Marshfield News Herald, June 28, 2004: "And a mass assembly of expert Uncle Joe's can actually forge an informative, albeit imperfect bond, such as found on wikipedia.com, a free encyclopedia that allows anyone to contribute."

July

Wikipedia Hits 300,000 Articles slashdot.org, July 7, 2004. "The English Wikipedia has 90.1 million words across 300,000 articles, compared to Britannica's 55 million words across 85,000 articles."
- Note - I submitted this. →Raul654 18:39, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

One great source -- if you can trust it Boston Globe, July 12, 2004 (Boston.com). "The world's biggest encyclopedia resides on the Internet, and anyone can use it for free. It's called Wikipedia."

Microsoft Notebook: Encyclopedia editor finds his 'Holy Grail' with Encarta seattlepi.com, July 12, 2004. "The Web itself is another source of competition. With free online information sources becoming more pervasive and comprehensive, Encarta could face an increasingly tougher task in appealing to consumers. One competitor is Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia with articles and information compiled by volunteer contributors."

'Open-Content' Web Encyclopedia Encourages User Interactivity Voice of America, July 15, 2004. "Encyclopedias have been around in one form or another for thousands of years. But in recent years competitors have emerged to challenge the traditional printed encyclopedia. First there were versions on compact disks and now they're online. While there may be lots of encyclopedias on the Internet, perhaps one of the most unusual is Wikipedia."

How the South African revolution destroyed its children The Sunday Times Culture magazine (London), July 18, 2004. Footer: "Read on..." websites: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid Good entry on interactive encyclopedia.

Web encyclopedia lets readers cut through to basics Archived September 4, 2005, at the Wayback Machine Chicago Sun-Times, July 20, 2004. "Fortunately, the same community (i.e., humans) that ruined the Web is revolutionizing the encyclopedia, with the development of a free, community-based, ever-evolving reference work called the Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org)." Specifically mentions the Lee Harvey Oswald article and how the writer contributed to it.

Wikipedia The Times (London), July 20, 2004. "If you still have any old Britannicas clogging your bookshelves, it is time finally to haul them off to Oxfam. Wikipedia, the world's fastest-growing English-language encyclopedia, has just published its 300,000th lucid entry, eclipsing Britannica by a factor of three. It is a scholarly, thorough work of reference that costs nothing to consult apart from an internet connection. Best of all, entries are endlessly updated to keep them relevant, errors are gladly corrected within minutes, and - unlike its stuffier predecessors - it respects the specialist knowledge of you, its user."

Art Mobs: Can an online crowd create a poem, a novel, or a painting? Slate.com, July 22, 2004. "Mobs have been getting unusually good press these days. . . Now there's evidence they may even be creative. A few weeks ago, Wikipedia—an "open content" encyclopedia where anybody can write or edit an entry—produced its 300,000th article. At 90.1 million words, Wikipedia is larger than any other English-language encyclopedia, including the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which has only 85,000 articles and 55 million words."

Wiki watch. Pi day. Revolution rock. Houston Chronicle, July 22, 2004. "Protest is in the air today, but why not ease into it? Life's too short, and so am I. Besides, I just, very belatedly, encountered the concept of wiki. As opposed to tiki, there are no palms or torches associated with wiki. Wiki involves open, free-form, anarchistic editing of Web sites etc. And here I've used online Wikipedia dozens of times without thinking about what the name might mean. Here's an insanely wonderful story about creation by "mobs." "

A blogger's tale: The Stainless Steel Mouse Archived September 23, 2004, at the Wayback Machine Asia Times Online, July 22, 2004. Article about blogging in China also mentions Wikipedia ("The Internet is also supporting an informal group of Chinese volunteers at work building an impressive online encyclopedia called Chinese Wikipedia to create a free source of information for Chinese Internet users.") and discusses the blocking of Wikipedia in China in June.

Surfing the Net with kids Boston Globe, July 23, 2004 (not online). Recommends Wikipedia's Ronald Reagan article, citing it as a good educational resource: "I like this detailed, illustrated Reagan biography from Wikipedia because the hyperlinks to other Wikipedia articles make it easy to learn more about Reaganomics, the Cold War, the Strategic Defense Initiative (dubbed "Star Wars" by opponents), and other related topics. Wikipedia is an open-content project with encyclopedia articles contributed and edited by anyone who wants to. As part of this group editorial process, at least one reader disputed the neutrality of this Reagan biography. What do you think? Does this Wikipedia article show an obvious bias?"

Wiki-fiddlers defend Clever Big Book The Register, July 23, 2004. "Wiki-fiddlers* may be accused of many things, but having a robust sense of humor is not one of them. In the week that colleague Ashlee Vance pointed out a few failings in the archive that isn't an archive, we took a pop at the encyclopedia that isn't an encyclopedia. Our jibe that the Wikipedia is the world's most useless encyclopedia drew precisely two angry responses. But both illustrate the condition perfectly." -- features two angry letters from Wikipedians.

Web of words challenges traditional encyclopedias^{[permanent dead link]} Financial Times, July 28, 2004. "If you thought open source was only about software, think again. The English-language version of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia produced by a worldwide community of volunteers, has reached 300,000 articles - three times as many as the Encyclopedia Britannica."

Slashdot interview with Jimbo, July 28, 2004.

Wiki May Alter How Employees Work Together The Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2004, p. B1. (available online with subscriber access). "The prospects of moving wikis into the office are good, especially since they are already working well in nonwork situations such as the well-known Wikipedia. This free online encyclopedia, compiled since early 2001 by volunteer writers, now has hundreds of thousands of entries, making it bigger than any other encyclopedia." WSJ, p. B2, Column 6.

July 28, 2004 Small article about the existence of the Thai wikipedia in the database section of the Bangkok post

August

Learning the AB-PCs San Diego Union-Tribune, August 3, 2004. In article about student computer use, educational technology professor says of his 16-year-old, "If he wants to know something, he just goes to Dictionary.com or Wikipedia.org."

How to gain power at work in the future: Give it away The Globe and Mail, August 4, 2004. Review of Thomas Malone's book The Future of Work. "The Wikipedia on-line encyclopedia allows anybody to contribute to it, with no centralized quality control. 'Its success so far shows that amazingly loose hierarchies can create impressively large and complex results,' Prof. Malone says."

The world's largest encyclopedia August 6, 2004. Wikipedia was discussed on Chip Talk, a one-minute Dave Ross radio feature about technology which is aired several times during the day on news stations across the United States. The URL was given on air and posted on the Chip Talk website.

The thinker's new best friend ; As the internet overtakes the encyclopedia, the editor of a new dictionary asks if this is the end for the multi-volume reference book London Evening Standard, August 9, 2004 (not online). Jonathon Green, author of the Cassell Dictionary of Slang, reviews Wikipedia's content: "I checked out "slang" and was impressed. A solid overview, with references to cant (underworld slang), rhyming slang, Polari (camp and theatrical), and even French butcher's slang Louchebem (of which I was ignorant). All these topics are covered, some with a specimen vocabulary-and every article offers links within Wikipedia and elsewhere on the net."

Doc corrects record on Apple vs. Microsoft Syracuse Post-Standard, August 10, 2004. "A good source for unbiased information on the case is the Wikipedia encyclopedia at http://en.wikipedia.org. Use the Wikipedia search form and look for Apple vs. Microsoft."

Howard Rheingold's Latest Connection BusinessWeek Online, August 11, 2004. Q&A with Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. "There's also Wikipedia [the online encyclopedia written by volunteers]. It has 500,000 articles in 50 languages at virtually no cost, vs. Encyclopedia Britannica spending millions of dollars and they have 50,000 articles." At the end of the session, he says, "Here's where Wikipedia fits in. It used to be if you were a kid in a village in India or a village in northern Canada in the winter, maybe you could get to a place where they have a few books once in a while. Now, if you have a telephone, you can get a free encyclopedia. You have access to the world's knowledge. Knowing how to use that is a barrier. The divide increasingly is not so much between those who have and those who don't, but those who know how to use what they have and those who don't."
- Wikipedia is mentioned again in a summary of the interview on Slashdot.

Linus Torvalds' Benevolent Dictatorship BusinessWeek Online, August 18, 2004. Q&A with Linux creator Linus Torvalds. In discussing the application of open-source methods outside of software, he mentions, "There are encyclopedias -- a collection of a lot of information that's neutral. One project on the Web is Wikipedia."

Grass-roots Encyclopedia (reg. required) Dallas Morning News, August 18, 2004. Overview article about Wikipedia in personal technology section including quotes from Jimbo Wales and Ben Dyer. (For a free version, use this reprint from the Springfield (MO) News-Leader.)

It's All About Change: An annotated interview on the future of design featuring Bruce Mau at CBC Radio 1, August 20 and 22, 2004 mentions Wikipedia as an example of open-source ideas used outside software development.

Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as a source Syracuse Post-Standard, August 25, 2004. (Users outside the US may bypass the annoying form by clicking on the Outside The US? Click Here link.) Questions the reliability of Wikipedia based on the fact that anyone can edit a page: "Anyone can change the content of an article in the Wikipedia, and there is no editorial review of the content. I use this Web site as a learning experience for my students. Many of them have used it in the past for research and were very surprised when we investigated the authority of the site."

First Interview: Dan Gillmor Tech Nation, August 24, 2004. Gillmor, technology columnist for San Jose Mercury News and author of We the Media ISBN 0596007337, mentioned wikis as an "experiment that works," and Wikipedia specifically as an "encyclopedia written by its users" with 300000 articles and various language editions. He discussed how wikis defeat vandalism. The Wikipedia part is about 20 minutes into the program.

A cyber-utopia is at our fingertips Daily Trojan (University of Southern California student newspaper), August 29, 2004. Article about open source movement. "One of my favorite open source projects is called Wikipedia, from the Hawaiian term "wiki wiki," meaning "quick" or "super fast." And it's just that: an encyclopedia with super fast navigation and development."

Free Online Encyclopedia May Be the World's Best August 29, 2004 Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, one of the most widely distributed, includes the above in its paid version, with but a teaser in the free. He takes heat for that in the feedback, but does enough Britannica bashing to make even the free version worth a read.

September

Collaborative projects galore, The Hindu, September 5, 2004, Compare Wikipedia to Javapedia: "The project, which has been created along the lines of the famous free on-line encyclopedia project Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/), hosts lots of materials on Java."

From Aaan to ZZ Top BBC online news pages, September 6, 2004. BBC News Dot.Life article entitled : "From Aaan to ZZ Top: An online enclyopaedia which can be edited by all and sundry aims to make finding information on the web easier, and more fun". By Jo Twist and BBC News Online science and technology staff. The BBC headlined this article on their main News page and on their Science/nature and Technology pages.

Scouring the Web for political facts, The Journal Times (Racine, WI), September 7, 2004. "Up until last Saturday, a search for "fascism" on Wikipedia, a widely used and otherwise reputable online encyclopedia, resulted in a page about George W. Bush (a comment about which you can read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fascism)." (Actually a vandal had redirected the article to George W. Bush on Friday 3 September. It was reverted after 57 minutes.)

Wikipedia 'to make universities obsolete', The Register, September 7, 2004. Taking its cue from blog comments about Wikipedia, the author describes Wikipedia as "the Khmer Rouge in diapers" and gives a tongue-in-cheek look at Wikipedia replacing traditional universities.

Wiki meeting of minds The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) online news pages, September 8, 2004. An article by Paul Gilster, on the front page of the "Connect" section, introduces readers to the Wiki concept, and Wikipedia in particular, with a balanced synopsis. "The Wikipedia reminds us that comparing sources and double-checking facts with other references is sound policy no matter how the text was put together. Taken with caution, it can be a useful and surprisingly resilient tool."

Collaborative Conundrum: Do Wikis Have a Place in the Newsroom?, USC Online Journalism Review, September 8, 2004. Article abstract: "Wikipedia has more than 340,000 articles, written by a sprawling online community. Researchers are testing its veracity, while plans proceed for fact-checking it formally. Can journalists trust Wikipedia, and can collaboration software such as wikis improve newsgathering?"

Spreading Knowledge, The Wiki Way, Washington Post, September 9, 2004, by Leslie Walker. Compares and contrasts Wikipedia with Encyclopedia Britannica. "The free Wikipedia also features a publicly authored current-events page recapping the day's top news, and it is rapidly expanding into other languages -- more than 10,000 articles have been created in each of roughly a dozen languages besides English." Reprinted in The Straits Times, Singapore , The Austin-American Statesman, Austin, Texas

Internet prods Asia to open up, Christian Science Monitor, September 9, 2004. "China's massive firewall is already showing cracks under the weight of the Internet's expansion. The pressure has come from innumerable sources, including an onslaught of weblogs, open-source directories, and projects like Wikipedia, an "open-content" encyclopedia."

Recognizing art in virtual worlds, International Herald Tribune, September 11, 2004. Article about the upcoming Ars Electronica festival focusing on the new Digital Communities award won by Wikipedia, but incorrectly identifies Howard Rheingold as Wikipedia's founder. "As for Wikipedia, its community aspect lies both above and below its surface. A quick visit to Wikipedia reveals only its encyclopedia articles. But alongside each of them lie discussions that help shape the content while bringing together both the readers and the writers of the articles, a distinction that is obviated by the project's design in the first place."

Wiki's wacky, but it really does work , Observer, September 12, 2004. Very enthusiastic with comparisons with Britannica and CIA Factbook. "Yet here is something that is entirely malleable - whose entries can be changed by any Tom, Dick or Harry. How could it possibly be any good? Yet it is. I use Wikipedia regularly, and it's often very good indeed. I've just compared its entry on Iraq with that in the CIA Factbook (possibly the only unambiguously useful service ever provided by that agency). The entries are comparable in their scope and coverage: the CIA publication is better on statistics; Wikipedia is better on history and culture. The other day I looked up 'TCP/IP' (the core protocols of the internet) on Wikipedia and Britannica Online. The Wikipedia entry was much more comprehensive."
Wikipedian's note: The Wikipedia's country articles have used the CIA world factbook as a source. Some have now been improved beyond recognition, others are little changed. --Robert Merkel 08:42, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It should also be noted that The Observer makes a serious error by stating that all of Wikipedia's content is in the public domain. Most of Wikipedia's content is under the GFDL; portions are distributed under various other licenses and circumstances, including the public domain.

Wikipedia's Emergent People fail to impress readers, The Register, September 15, 2004. Comments on letters from readers reacting to The Register's earlier articles about Wikipedia.

Meet Mr Rights, The Guardian, 20 September 2004. "Lawrence Lessig first became interested in the public value of the internet when he noticed that, by letting anybody plug a computer into the ends of the network and instantly serve up their own opinions and media tools to the world, the net was fostering a new and expansive intellectual commons. This commons was producing rapid innovations, grassroots tools such as faxyourmp.com, ambitious collaborative endeavours such as wikipedia.org, Alexandrian archive projects like archive.org and the many blogs which are starting to change our ideas about the independent press."

When the printed page beats the Internet, Wakefield (MA) Observer, 23 September 2004. Editorial written by librarian recommends that people keep printed reference works at home (almanacs, atlases, dictionaries, etc.) except for encyclopedias, for which CD-ROM or online versions are preferable. "Also online are several free encyclopedias, including Britannica, which offers free access to their concise version, and Wikipedia, an open-content encyclopedia that's been getting a lot of attention lately for its open, contributor-based approach."

Trivia: It's 'who we are', Toronto Star, 26 September 2004. Quotes a pop-culture critic on sources for information about trivia: "But if (your information) is coming from Wikipedia (an Internet encyclopedia where people post their own articles), where everything is evolving, some of that information is good and some of that is misinformation."

Vandals at the wiki, ADT Magazine, 28 September 2004. Article about anti-Microsoft vandalism at the newly announced FlexWiki. Starts with a brief overview of the wiki concept: "Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia, has over 350,000 pages as I write this."

Journalism Third Most Dangerous Career in China, OneWorld.net, 29 September 2004. "On September 23, the authorities blocked access to the Chinese version of the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia that relies on contributions from Internet-users and carries a number of articles about human rights abuses in China. The site has been blocked on several previous occasions too."

Free info for London visitors, The Register, 30 September 2004. "So the most useful thing the Wikipedia project could do is not write another adoring 20,000 word article on our good friend Joi Ito (the spiritual leader), or 'memes', but nail down a simple lightweight framework that librarians, schools, churches and small businesses could use as an annotation and broadcast channel."

Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving a Semantic Web, Digital Divide Network, 30 September 2004. Quote from Tim Berners-Lee giving the keynote address at an MIT conference: "The tricky thing is that when you try to put down things like encyclopedia articles, like Wikipedia" (which he earlier referred to as "The Font of All Knowledge").

Vivisimo receives another makeover, San Jose Mercury News, 30 September 2004. Article about Vivisimo's metasearch site Clusty.com. "Clusty is also one of the first search sites to index and display results from the sometimes controversial Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia being compiled from contributions by Internet users." Not sure what the basis for this statement is, as Wikipedia has been available through Google and Yahoo! searches for a long time.

1,000,000 Articles

Coverage resulting from Wikipedia's 1,000,000-article press release:

Wikipedia reaches one million articles Archived October 9, 2004, at the Wayback Machine, The Inquirer, September 20, 2004. "We happen to like it because it saves us time and it mentions us, and our glorious leader Mike Mageek with latest [cough] picture."
Wikipedia hits one million, Web User, September 20, 2004. "Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia, now has more than a million articles in its database, which web users can access for free."
Online encyclopedia Wikipedia reaches milestone: 1 million articles, DV Hardware, Netherlands, September 20, 2004. "Wikipedia's rate of growth has continued to increase in recent months, and at its current pace Wikipedia will double in size again by next spring."
Wikipedia Hits Million-Entry Mark, Slashdot, September 21, 2004. "The Wikimedia Foundation announced today the creation of the one millionth article in Wikipedia."
The Little Website that Couldn't, Kuro5hin.org, September 21, 2004. Notes million-article milestone and discusses how Wikipedia defies conventional wisdom. "According to the canon of academic orthodoxy, Wikipedia has no right to be as well written, professional, and accurate as it is. Not to say it is perfect, it isn't, but the vast majority of the articles are well written and many are comparable or better than their encyclopedia Britannica equivalents. This from a website where any person can write or change any article at any time, with no one paid to do quality control and no real punishments to those who vandalize the system other than being banned from the site itself."
Wikipedia's millionth article, p2pnet.net, September 21, 2004. "'Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. And we need your help.' No chance, not with Corporate Greed in full bloom. But it's a noble ambition and it's expressed by the Wiki Foundation which yesterday announced the creation of the one millionth article in Wikipedia, its free, open-content, online encyclopedia project."
At Your Service Pack, The Village Voice, 23 September 2004. Note at the end of the TechLove With Mr. Roboto column: "Congrats to Wikipedia (wikipedia.org), the world's largest encyclopedia, for garnering its millionth entry. It's an all-volunteer affair, you realize, and they don't accept ads, either. Won't you be a saint and kick them over a few bucks during their pledge drive? Visit wikimediafoundation.org for the details; pledge enforcement vans are standing by to shake you by the ankles."
'Wikis' Offer Knowledge-Sharing Online, Associated Press, 26 September 2004. "Wikipedia is unique for an encyclopedia because anybody can add, edit and even erase. And the Wikipedia is just one — albeit the best known — of a growing breed of Internet knowledge-sharing communities called Wikis"; "Try finding that in the Britannica"; "This month, it surpassed 1 million articles, including 350,000 in English — three times that of the online Encyclopedia Britannica. More than 25,000 people have written or edited at least 10 articles each."
- This wire story was reprinted in The New York Times and many other news sites.
Wikipedia gets a million entries, Mail & Guardian, 30 September 2004. "Regardless of whether you think it is a credible source or not, the Wikipedia, and other projects like it, give a voice to many people who would not have been able to contribute their own knowledge to the creation of an encyclopedia."
No more paper: Wikipedia, evolving open-source online encyclopedia, reaches one million hits, The Triangle (Drexel University student newspaper), 1 October 2004. "Wikipedia is the modern day encyclopedia, updated almost as quickly and as often as news happens. Gone are the days of sifting through massive volumes of encyclopedias to find the one piece of information you need. Now it's all on the web in one accurate, constantly expanding database."

October

"Internet encyclopedia has stamp-collecting links" is the "Stamps on the Internet" column by William F. Sharpe in Linn's Stamp News for October 4, 2004. "Did you know that Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers, advertised stamps for sale in Linn's classified section at age 12? That's one of the unusual facts you can discover by browsing the Wikipedia site at http://en.wikipedia.org. [...] The stamp collecting page is relatively short, but the links it provides take you to other areas. The page called Philatelic Investment, for example, goes into great detail on how to invest in stamps. [...] I find Wikipedia fascinating, not only from the stamp-collecting aspect but also for the overall approach of providing free knowledge in many areas as a collaborative effort. As far as I'm concerned, this is what the Internet was intended for. [...]" He also discusses some of the community pages, and has a screenshot of the main page and what was supposed to be a image of the stamp collecting article, but a production snafu seems to have resulted in an Excel chart or something. Reading between the lines of his experience, it looks as though he didn't click deep enough to see the bulk of WP's philatelic info, and probably only saw unillustrated articles. So the takeaway is to improve the appearance and appeal of the top-level articles on a subject, and make sure to highlight routes into the depth of the content.

LaRouche PAC group sings, shouts, argues with Bush supporters, The Lantern (Ohio State University student newspaper), 4 October 2004. Article makes bizarre claim that LaRouche "started Wikipedia.com, a Web site functioning as both a free encyclopedia and a wiki community, which allows users to add information to posted articles." Howard Rheingold is one thing, but Lyndon LaRouche? Where do they get this stuff?

Hiking, boating, and powerline maps, Sacramento Bee, 4 October 2004. Mentioned in an internet and computer shopping column: "A collection of articles written and edited by anyone. Despite the chaos this might bring to mind, the articles tend to be learned, though unchecked unless through subsequent editing."

The WIPO adopts a development agenda that recognizes collaborative projects to create public goods, in response to the Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization:
- UN body promises greater recognition for open source licencing, PC Pro, 5 October 2004. Quoting the Geneva Declaration: "We are witnessing ... hundreds of innovative collaborative efforts to create public goods, including the Internet, the World Wide Web, Wikipedia, the Creative Commons, GNU Linux and other free and open software projects".
- Putting the brakes on intellectual property rights Archived October 16, 2004, at the Wayback Machine, Asia Times, 15 October 2004. Mentions Wikipedia in a paraphrase of the Geneva Declaration.
- The fight for your right to share, BBC News 18 October 2004. "The net's open source movement, which revolves around Linux, and its collaborative encyclopaedia, the Wikipedia, also shows how well alternative creative systems can work when rights and access are almost unlimited."

Wild about wiki, Red Herring, 7 October 2004. "One of the best-known wikis is wikipedia.com, a free encyclopedia where the information is uploaded by users. Though generally known to contain an enormous amount of information on an endless variety of topics, the listed facts are edited by readers, and may not be as reliable as those in more official and less-pliable sources of information."

Always connect, The Guardian, (UK), 7 October 2004, in a supplement called The Spark. Good paragraph on Wikipedia, in the context of a longer article on open source.

Yelp! A viral recommendation system you can't resist?, The Register, 13 October 2004. "As we've seen with Google and the Wikipedia, there's an incentive to rig any system".

Wiki wars: Think this year's presidential debates have been rough? Check out Wikipedia. Red Herring, 14 October 2004. "Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry have created even more debate than entries for sex and religion. As of October 8, Wikipedia’s President Bush entry had been tweaked 3,953 times. Its entry for Senator Kerry had been modified 3,230 times. By contrast, Wikipedia’s article on Jesus has only been edited 1,855 times since the site’s inception in 2001."

Megabits & Pieces, North Adams (MA) Transcript, 16 October 2004. Article about the wiki concept. "There is a movement about to use Wikis to transform research and Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), an open source encyclopedia available in numerous languages, including Esperanto, is certainly the leader." Also discusses several other wikis, including Wiktionary and Wikibooks.

Public domain, The Guardian Online section, (UK), 21 October 2004, in a article on the UK's Digital Divide. Uses Wikipedia as an example to suggest the UK's Digital Inclusion Panel is sighting a war long ago won: "My bet is that quite soon, we will notice that the web has been taken over by oldies. Wikipedia isn't being compiled by teenagers".

Human rights at risk, group tells Ottawa, The Globe and Mail, 25 October 2004. "Reporters Without Borders says that in September the authorities blocked access to the Chinese version of the Wikipedia on-line encyclopedia, which relies on contributions and carries articles about human-rights abuses in China."

Where's the Movable Type of the Wiki World? Archived October 27, 2004, at the Wayback Machine, Scot Hacker, 25 October 2004, discussing the end-user experience of setting up and customizing a wiki. Hacker chose MediaWiki as the best available option to run a course project wiki, noting that Wikipedia had inspired the course to begin with. Still he found the software's documentation "scattered and obtuse", its customizations difficult, and its attempts at a user manual lacking, and suggests the time is ripe for someone to provide a coherent, actively-developed, well-supported wiki solution.

Tap in, get smart, Swarat Chaudhury, The Statesman, 25 October 2004 - A passionate article in one of India's oldest papers disscusses the dictionaries and encyclopedias the author uses.

"Wikipedia has spawned a sister project called Wiktionary (http://www.wiktionary.org), a collaborative multilingual dictionary with pronunciations, etymology and quotations. The grand ambition of these projects is nothing short of letting the demos beat the experts at their own game..."

"Personally, I still rely on the OED most of the time, but I also look forward to a day when Wiktionary beats it hands down."

Who knows?, The Guardian, October 26, 2004, lead article in "G2" supplement about the 4-year-wonder that is Wikipedia. Broad article, that includes details about Wikipedia policies, an interview with Jimmy Wales, comments from librarians and from the executive staff of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "The truth is that Wikipedia reveals what is normally hidden in an encyclopedia: the countless decisions that lie behind each entry. The only difference is that in Wikipedia, the decision-making never stops and the debates are often robust to say the least. " (Shot of G2 cover, shot of article itself)
- Reprinted in The success of Wikipedia , Mail & Guardian of South Africa, October 26, 2004.

Get set for the wiki revolution, Lem Bingley, IT Week, October 26, 2004. Bingley suggests wikis will be important for business in the near future. "[I]t's tempting to say that wikis have no relevance for business. But I fully expect that view to be invalidated." Article mentions Zuckerman's September analysis of WP (and the then-lacking Congo civil war coverage).

Internet site of the week, Bangkok Post, October 27, 2004 (in English) encourages Thais to contribute to the Thai Wikipedia: "Everyone here agrees that more web content in the Thai language is needed to encourage more young Thais to access the Internet and to benefit from it. So, if you feel you can contribute some knowledge in your domain of expertise in Thai, please pitch in, or you could visit just to read the free content about Thailand."

When No Fact Goes Unchecked, New York Times, 31 October 2004. "The current presidential race has even roiled forums built on cooperation and fairness. At Wikipedia, a sprawling, online encyclopedia written and researched by its users, the Bush-Kerry conflict has spilled over into the wording of the candidates' biographies, with each set of partisans editing the other's facts thousands of times in an escalating tit-for-tat."

November

It's Like a Blog, But It's a Wiki, Newsweek, 1 November 2004. "Wales has registered the Wikipedia Foundation as a nonprofit in Florida. He has no full-time employees and no formal funding like venture capital, but this year he's raised $100,000 in small donations from Wikipedia's fans that will pay for the servers that host the site. He's also expanding into projects like the Wiktionary (a dictionary and thesaurus), Wikibooks (textbooks and manuals) and Wikiquote (quotations). The goal: to give "every single person free access to the sum of all human knowledge." To achieve that, he doesn't even have to send out stickers."

Marxist-Lessigism, Legal Affairs, 1 November 2004. "Another example is the Wikipedia, an open source, online encyclopedia that is entirely written, edited, and rewritten by anyone who cares to contribute to it. Even though there is no control structure—there are no editors, nor is there a publisher—it rivals commercial encyclopedias in scope and quality of coverage."

Today's best encyclopedia might surprise you, USA Today, 5 November 2004. "Few parents today would settle for something like that Compton's. They might look to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the World Book Encyclopedia, or Encarta – either in print on or on CD. But they're all posers compared to the Big Gun of the encyclopedia world – the one that boasts the titles of largest, fastest growing, and most up-to-date. That would be the Wikipedia."

A Sneak Peek at Trillian 3.0, PCWorld, 5 November 2004. A preview of a new Trillian instant messaging application mentions that it will feature "integration with the Wikipedia online encyclopedia".

All the news that's fit to blog, The Guardian, 6 November 2004. Book review of Dan Gillmor's We the Media. "He tells us ... of wikipedia, the online encyclopedia where anyone can write or edit an article, which now has more than one million articles in more than 100 languages."

There's no end to it, St Petersburg Times, 8 November 2004. Interview with local resident Jimmy Wales, history of Wikipedia, range of articles, editing culture, reliability.

Hunting with Firefox, The Guardian, November 9, 2004. A leader congratulating the whole open source movement on Mozilla Firefox's 1.0 release, it states that "Firefox deserves to succeed, but even if it does not it will have highlighted the astonishing success of open source, well known inside the web community but not outside. Among other services, it has its own operating system (Linux), an acclaimed alternative to Microsoft Office (OpenOffice.org), and its own encyclopedia (Wikipedia) with a million entries. The open source movement has become one of globalisation's unexpected treasures."

I Must Take Issue With the Wikipedia Entry for "Weird Al" Yankovic, The Onion, November 10, 2004. A parodic op-ed piece by a fictional "banned Wikipedia editor" (for being overzealous on Talk:Admiral Ackbar), in which he complains about the inadequate length of "Weird Al" Yankovic.

Mudslinging Weasels Into Online History, The New York Times, November 10, 2004. (Also picked up by CNet News.com and the International Herald Tribune.) Takes a detailed look at the (still ongoing) shenanigans over Wikipedia's articles on George W. Bush and John Kerry and Wikipedians' attempts to keep the articles in compliance with the Neutral point-of-view policy.

Disambiguating George Romney, Christian Science Monitor, 12 November 2004. Essay wondering whether the English painter is related to the former Michigan governor notes finding Wikipedia's disambiguation page through a Google search. "The point of the Wikipedia page was to separate out Web pages referring to the painterly Romney from those referring to the political Romneys - the assumption being that one would be interested in one or the other, not both."

OCLC and Yahoo! Offer Joint Toolbar, Information Today, 15 November 2004. Mentions Wikipedia as one of the partners in Yahoo!'s content acquisition program.

Farther-reaching, faster ignorance thanks to Web, Fairbanks (AK) Daily News-Miner, 15 November 2004. Director of Fairbanks library system writes: "Librarians abhor using reference sources that don't have established credibility editorial rigor, and while Wikipedia is an interesting social experiment and "includes information more often associated with almanacs, gazetteers and specialist magazines," it's too untrustworthy to be used as a secondary source."

The Faith-Based Encyclopedia, Tech Central Station, 15 November 2004. Article critical about the quality of Wikipedia. The reviewer (a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica) illustrates his point with the article on Alexander Hamilton. "The user who visits Wikipedia [...] is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him." (Linked to from Slashdot)
- A response: Digital Democratization: The Digital World and Its Rulers Are Undergoing Some Growing Pains, ABC News Silicon Insider, 18 November 2004. "Could the Wikipedia do with more oversight on matters of accuracy? Absolutely; and it will only survive the test of the marketplace over time if it does so. But let's not forget, as McHenry seemed to, that the Wikipedia is also only three years old. It and the Web are only now groping their way toward new models of collaboration and valuation — models that I suspect will include greater peer review, Olympics-type grading systems that eliminate the highs and lows, and even, perhaps something like the King James Bible translators, small teams that police themselves for the highest levels of accuracy and quality."

How to Integrate Citizen Journalism Into Mainstream News Sites, Editor & Publisher, 19 November 2004. Journalism professor refers to the premise of having the audience determine site content as "the Wikipedia argument".

Would You Trust Joe Isuzu's Blog?, EContentMag.com, 23 November 2004 (the time stamp is the 1 December! I've emailed them about this problem). Talks about how journalists should deal with websites and Wikipedia content and how the author believes that new ways of referencing information need to be developed due to sites like Wikipedia.

Wikipedia Creators Move Into News, Wired.com, 29 November 2004. Describes Wikinews project and compares it to the existing Wikipedia. "After doing much in recent years to revolutionize the way an encyclopedia can be built and maintained, the team behind Wikipedia is attempting to apply its collaborative information-gathering model to journalism."

The open source wiki behind Wikipedia, NewsForge, November 30, 2004. Article on how to install MediaWiki.

The Wikipedia Wars, School Librarian Journal, November 2004. subtitle: School librarian sparks fight over free online resource. "The ensuing conflict between techies and librarians and open content versus traditional resources underscores the challenges facing information specialists in the Digital Age, particularly those who work with young people."

December

Arrr!, The Cornell Daily Sun, Jim Shliferstein, December 2, 2004. Details deliberate vandalism on Wikipedia by the author of the piece (Jim Shliferstein) and his mate. "I never fully understood the sheer awfulness of the human condition until last Tuesday. In the course of a debate about mammalian intelligence, my friend Harlan and I discovered an online encyclopedia called Wikipedia.org, a depressingly successful effort to harness the elusive Power of Loser."
Her So-Called Digital Life, Wired News, December 2, 2004. A new usage of the word Wikipedia: "She isn't an aberration. On the contrary, she's a trend. Most of her friends -- many of them geeks and übergeeks -- live this way, the internet at the center of their relationships. Hodder is one of a growing number of technophiles whose lives are one big Wikipedia (a web-based encyclopedia that anyone can edit). And the life she leads may foreshadow yours."
With information access so easy, truth can be elusive, Associated Press, 6 December 2004. "The credentials of the people authoring grassroots Web journals and a committee-written encyclopedia called Wikipedia are often unclear. Nevertheless, some Internet users believe that such resources can collectively portray events more accurately than any single gatekeeper." (widely reprinted, link is to USA Today)
Everyone's Encyclopedia, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 December 2004. Detailed article recounting the story of Wikipedia's origins and subsequent developments.
My Reference Desk, Express Computer, 13 December 2004. "In that case you'd definitely be turning to resources like the Wikipedia, free of any charge since it has been written collaboratively by contributors from all over the world. Why not then throw in the Wiktionary, Wikiquote and Wikibooks as well."
The Internet Column: Looking back at 2004, The Scotsman, 13 December 2004. "Interest in wiki has soared in the last year and sites like Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) and Wikitravel (wwww.wikitravel.org) have captured headlines around the world. Watch out for more wiki; this is one idea that has only just started to show its potential."
Extreme Blogging, Forbes, 13 December 2004. Article about wikis as "the next big thing" has a detailed discussion of Wikipedia. "We asked Frederick Allen, Managing Editor of American Heritage [published by Forbes], to compare entries from Britannica Online and the Wikipedia. He was skeptical about the Wikipedia, but after throwing several queries at the two encyclopedias (Haydn, Millard Fillmore, warblers), he admitted, "it looks as if Wikipedia's gotten a lot better, more thorough and more accurate." Even the Wikipedia's James II of Britain article beat Britannica in size, reach and outside references. But Allen cautioned that there's "still the underlying problem that you can't be sure of the accuracy of what it presents, because of the fact that it's open to contributions from the public.""
Davis, at your fingertips, Davis (CA) Enterprise, 14 December 2004. Mentions "wikipedia" in an article about a local community wiki.
Collins launches online dictionary to debate new words, The Guardian, 16 December 2004. In launching its new Living Dictionary, Collins cites Wikipedia as a model.
Spam filters search for patterns in words, Syracuse Post-Standard, 22 December 2004. From Dr. Gizmo's Q&A: "Q. I am happy that I could find one person who has had the guts to criticize Wikipedia. - T.H., freenet.de (Germany) A. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that allows anyone, regardless of qualifications, to write an entry or revise what someone else wrote. The doctor finds this ridiculous. That's not an encyclopedia; it's graffiti. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is easily accessed on the Internet, which makes it an easy source of misinformation for kids doing homework."
Wikis at work, PC Magazine, 22 December 2004. Overview article about wikis mentions Wikipedia as "one of the more robust wikis".
Larry Sanger's Knowledge Free-for-All Archived September 30, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, Wade Roush, MIT Technology Review. "There’s a second complaint against Wikipedia that bothers Sanger more deeply—the fractiousness among Wikipedians themselves. Sanger says participants often become embroiled in “revert wars” in which overprotective authors undo the changes others try to make to their articles. He says he’s afraid that this kind of behavior drives away academics and other experts whose contributions would otherwise raise Wikipedia’s quality." Referenced on slashdot 24 December 2004 ()
'04 crunk with clear and cream, Arizona Republic, 26 December 2004. Article about "words that rose to prominence in 2004" includes wiki and mentions Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikinews as examples.
Gettin' wiki with it, Express Computer, 27 December 2004. " If you're dabbling with the Wikipedia for the first time, it comes as quite a shock that you have the power to edit any of the existing content, deleting or modifying what others have written and adding in your own two-bit wisdom."
Favorite Web sites for 2004, Yomiuri Shimbun, 27 December 2004. "The Wikipedia, still in its relative infancy, is also a really fun resource for random learning. Each day, a different article is featured on the main page, and you can use the random page feature to take you directly to unexpected topics."
Coverage of Wikipedia's article on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake:
- Information wave, Red Herring, 27 December 2004. Discusses the spread of information on the internet about earthquake and tsunami, and mentions Wikipedia articles as examples.
- The Future of News Right Now, Will Richardson, eSchool News, 28 December 2004. "And when I do want a more complete picture of the story, I still don't go to the (NY) Times. Instead, I go to Wikipedia. Now I know there is some debate about the veracity of the information there. But take a minute to check out the Wikipedia entry on the tsunami event and tell me you aren't amazed. I know I am."
- Lazy guide to net culture: Tsunami, The Scotsman, 29 December 2004. "An invaluable source of information on the disaster"
- Tsunami weblinks guide, The Times, 29 December 2004. "The tsunami already has its own exhaustive entry on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, including an animation from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, casualty updates and details on the relief operation."
- MSNBC television ran a live segment called "Cyberspace Collaboration". Guest Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com mentioned Wikipedia as a starting point for background information and links to collaborative and blog-based information on the earthquake and tsunami. (Reference) (2:30PM EST on December 31, 2004)
Why the web is often woeful, BBC News, 29 December 2004. Commenting on the state of search engine technology: "I am making a lot more use of specific searches on places like Wikipedia and subscription database services."
Bazeley, Michael. "Blogs, message boards draw world closer after (tsunami) tragedy." The Mercury News. December 31, 2004.

"You can get a really good consensus picture of what's going on that's stronger than any one news organization could offer," said Jimmy Wales, founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. "So many people are on the ground in different places. And people pick up very quickly which are the bloggers to read, and they bring that information to the forefront and amplify it."

"Volunteers at Wikipedia, a collaborative site that can be edited by virtually anyone, quickly created a Web page dedicated to the earthquake and tsunamis. Users have posted photos, graphics and a robust list of links to other sources of information. As of Thursday, the page had been edited 1,500 times, Wales said."

"It's a place for people to synthesize all of the information and sort through it," Wales said.

Foreign-language