| Wikipedia in the press |
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Oberlin College students in Elizabeth Colantoni's class on ancient Rome are not just encouraged, but required, to use the controversial online encyclopedia Wikipedia for their research this semester. That seems contrary to the backlash against the Web site, which uses entries written by users of the site regardless of the writer's expertise on the matter. And that's Colantoni's point.
Why one of the internet's most popular internet encyclopedias is also considered unreliable. We'll talk with NEIL WATERS a professor at Middlebury College, who discovered an obscure but incorrect fact on his students' exams. It turns out they all got it from the same source Wikipedia. Then we'll hear from VIBIANA BOWMAN a librarian at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey about how Wikipedia and the internet in general is changing how we get information and we must adopt new standards for vetting it. Bowman is also author of The Plagiarism Plague in which she argues that the internet has made plagiarism an even bigger problem.
First broadcast 26 February 2007 11:00 am UTC-5, Podcast
Wikipedia entry ranks higher than the election web presence of that particular candidate for 25% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans.
Is Wikipedia's ticket to "notability" the writing of one published article about … Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is viewed seven billion times a month and could've made a fortune through adverts. But that just wouldn't be right. Wikipedia is built on the hard work of a core of volunteers and contributions from, well, all of us - so the dynamic of the whole thing just wouldn't work if someone was buying Ferraris off the back of that.
Claburn, Thomas (March 22, 2007). "Wikipedia Becomes Intelligence Tool And Target For Jihadists". InformationWeek. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
Bucky Katt: Hey, scroll down to the bit about where I won Wimbledon.
Maybe the sort of people who contribute to online encyclopaedias are the sort of people who believe that reason always wins in the end.
The Wikipedia post for Juneau lays bare the town's culture and community, but can Anonymous be trusted?
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"Wikipedia may not exactly be a font of truth, but it does go against the current of what has happened to the notion of truth. The easy global dissemination of, well, everything has generated a D.I.Y. culture of proud subjectivity, a culture that has spread even to relatively traditional forms like television — as in the ascent of advocates like Lou Dobbs or Bill O’Reilly, whose appeal lies precisely in their subjectivity even as they name-check 'neutrality' to cover all sorts of journalistic sins. But the Wikipedians, most of them born in the information age, have tasked themselves with weeding that subjectivity not just out of one another’s discourse but also out of their own. They may not be able to do any actual reporting from their bedrooms or dorm rooms or hotel rooms, but they can police bias, and they do it with a passion that’s no less impressive for its occasional excess of piety. Who taught them this? It’s a mystery; but they are teaching it to one another."
| “ | A non-edited excerpt from the ‘Dalian’ entry from www.wikipedia.org
TCP Says: There are few moments when we’re left speechless but this incredible entry provided one of them. Remember, folks, Wikipedia’s tag is “The encyclopedia anyone can edit,” so don’t cite this source in your term paper. |
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Recently caught promoting themselves or their causes have been a handful of chief executives and political operatives, a critic for a major magazine, as well as dozens of lesser-known bloggers, authors and entrepreneurs who sneak changes onto their own entries on Wikipedia or the reviews of their books on Amazon.com.
"Ars Nova will present The Wikipedia Plays, a mini-marathon of short plays that surf the Wikipedia wave through seventeen related entries ... 'What is The Defenestration of Prague? And how is it seventeen steps removed from Castration Anxiety? Wikipedia knows. In this brave new world of instant gratification where the internet can live in your pocket, one group of writers has created a mini-marathon of short plays that surf the wikipedia wave through seventeen related entries,' as described in press materials."
The tribunal based its decision on information and material sourced from a Wikipedia website, www.armeniapedia.org.
The truth is that teenagers cannot do the referencing and research that are the prerequisite to serious scholarship - unless you stretch these words to an absurd limit.
| “ | At the next general election, Lib Dem frontbencher Sarah Teather will joust for the redrawn seat of Brent Central with Labour MP Dawn Butler. Already, the contest is starting to get catty. Butler has accused her opponent of launching a dirty tricks campaign by making several erroneous changes to her entry in the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. "It needs to stop, it's absolutely pathetic," she says. "My page was changed to say that I voted for the renewal of Trident, which is crazy - I voted against it. There were other things, like saying I'm against extra funding for more police officers. It's just rubbish and clearly came from Sarah Teather's office." Teather's office insists it's nought to do with them. They can't both be telling the truth. |
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ONLINE encyclopaedia Wikipedia feels that it is now so accurate it can pick holes in its rival, the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
About interview with both Ward Cunningham and Jimmy Wales
"Version 0.5 is the first offline release from the English-language Wikipedia, though founder Jimmy Wales suggested the idea in 2003. It resulted from a yearlong collaboration between the St. Petersburg, Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation and Linterweb, a French technology company handling production."
"it's terrific to see such a prominent player in the American technology industry that hasn't gotten so transfixed by the promise of 1.2 billion consumers that it has forgotten its morals. As China has morphed into a powerhouse on the world stage, it has made many American workers and consumers feel as if they're victims. But even with all of its flaws and failures, America is still a democracy, and Americans still enjoy certain basic freedoms that are unknown to the average Chinese. In our panic over economic questions, we've forgotten that many, if not most, Chinese citizens are still living in desperate conditions under a repressive government. Jimmy Wales hasn't forgotten that. May the founders and executives at Google, Yahoo and others learn from his example."
" Wikipedia may be the best thing that has happened in the encyclopedia business since Denis Diderot published the first Encyclopédie in the eighteenth century. ... They get something wrong, too, every now and then, but they are pretty good about corrections..."
Wikipedia needs to update both its contents and its way of working.
While outright factual errors and ease of vandalism are the main raps against Wikipedia, dumb errors of emphasis are incredibly common. Major historical figures get a paragraph or two, while ephemeral TV shows and video games are subject to lengthy treatises. (This is why Wikipedia has 1.9 million articles and the Encyclopedia Brittanica has but 120,000.)[dead link]
A row has broken out on the popular internet website Wikipedia over which flag should represent Northern Ireland.
It combines the free-market dogmatism of the libertarian Right with the anti-intellectualism of the populist Left
while a hoax such as Mr. Porpora's once took years to pull off, a contributor to Wikipedia can now manufacture a hagiography or a calumny with a few quick taps on the keyboard, at least until some other contributor restores the old material or imposes a different tone entirely.
An Air New Zealand computer was used to sanitise an online encyclopeadia to make the airline look less culpable for its part in New Zealand's worst peacetime disaster
A new Web site reveals the sneak attacks and ego-fluffing of your friends and co-workers.
On the surface, all is well in Wikiland... But underneath, there's trouble brewing.
Wikipedia is frequently touted as a marvel of collaboration, a model of peer production. But it may be more instructive as a laboratory of pathologies of social interaction. While perhaps - like sausages- it's better not to see the product being made, any familiarity with how Wikipedia operates should give rise to enormous scepticism about its alleged example of harmonious collective action.
SlimVirgin, naked short selling, and the end of Web 2.0
n an acknowledgement of the importance that the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia has in shaping opinion, the Foreign Ministry is bringing one of its leading editors, David Shankbone, to Israel next week.
Icelandic Boy, 16, 'Wanted to ... Have a Chat, Invite Him to Iceland and See What He'd Say'
It's every computer geek's dream come true -- definitely one of Wikipedia's breast, I mean best, assets
...By tracing unique identifying numbers found on Wikipedia computer logs, the sleuths found they were registered to Gitmo and the U.S. Southern Command. Military officials did not respond to requests for comment.
For more than six months, beginning in January of this year, Wikipedia's million-dollar check book was balanced by a convicted felon.
Whatever you think about the kooks at Wikipedia - the crazed Goths banning chunks of Utah, a COO prone to drunken rampages and embezzlement, and a Roi Soleil answering to himself - one thing is in no doubt. The project has saved Google's original business.
So exactly what kind of artifice did Traverse Mountain engage in to get on Wikipedia's naughty list?
Google wants in on the Wikipedia game.
A dispute over whether volunteer administrators have become too deletion-obsessed has produced two clashing factions within the ranks of "Wikipedians," sparking enthusiastic and sometimes ugly sparring on blogs and discussion groups.