An intriguing part of the story about Wikipedia and John Seigenthaler, the maligned journalist who found his Wikipedia biography had him as a JFK assassination suspect, is that the savvy folk obsessively monitor their own Wikipedia biographies, including Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales himself who has edited it frequently, removing references to a credited “co-founder” of… Read More »
The Irish Developer Network reports on an Esquire editor who invited Wikipedia users to edit an article that will presumably appear in the magazine. Of which Wikipedia users reacted strongly to, with over 500 edits to WP:ITAAW before the article was frozen. I love Wikipedia but it sounds like hell. When I’m an editor I… Read More »
I don’t know whether this is the right response to the challenge of Wikipedia, but Encylopaedia Britannica seems to think so, according to The Boston Globe : To respond to competitive challenges from Google, Yahoo, and the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, Britannica today will announce it is returning to an old practice after a lapse… Read More »
Into this debate about the reliability of Wikipedia leaps the 12–year old figure of Lucian George from north London, who found five errors in the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. BBC reports that A schoolboy has uncovered several mistakes in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica – regarded by readers as an authority… Read More »
This week’s Loose Wire column is about Wikipedia: Wouldn’t it be great if there was a place on the Internet where educated folk pooled their knowledge for nothing, conscientiously building up a huge, orderly and free database on subjects as varied as wind gradients and the yellow-wattled lapwing? Actually, it’s already happened. It’s an on-line… Read More »