Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-11-28/In the news

The December print issue of Esquire magazine includes "Wikiworld: The Experiment", the article that seventy five Wikipedians collaborated on for Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs. (see archived story) The article compares before and after versions of Wikipedia:Improve this article about Wikipedia, noting the deliberate errors in the original (including one that Wikipedians failed to correct: the number of articles in Britannica), and making various comments about the experiment. Also in the article is a sidebar profiling Jimmy and giving more context about the project itself.

The first few paragraphs can be read at KeepMedia; the rest is available online only to subscribers of the print magazine.

Semi-weekly Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published "Зрители снимаются с мест" on November 21. The article discusses the tendency of modern people to want to control the information they receive. The examples include TiVo and LiveJournal as well as Wikipedia, which it describes as "the most popular free-of-charge online encyclopedia, one of the 50 most visited websites in the world."

On November 21, "Wikipedia: the dawn of democratic media?" was published by I&DeA Knowledge, the online journal for the Improvement and Development Agency which is targeted at United Kingdom local government professionals. The interview with Jimbo Wales is an introduction to Wikipedia. Wales says, "We are deeply committed to being a fully global project, and so I have thought to myself that I will feel that my life work is complete when we have at least 250,000 reasonably high quality articles in enough different languages that 99 per cent of all people on the planet can use them."

During a trip to Australia for the X|Media|Lab international digital media conference, Wikimedia Foundation member Angela Beesley gave an interview to The Age which appeared on November 22 under the headline "Quest for the universal Wiki". Angela describes Wikipedia: "You need to find a balance between discussing every little change and just getting on with it. There's not really a concept of leaders within Wikipedia. It's very much a bottom-up process with the community deciding. Currently there's a split in the community about whether voting is really useful. We end up with what we call a rough consensus where most people at least agree enough that they're going to stop arguing about it." Angela also met with other Wikipedians at a meetup in Sydney.

Author Peter Morville, mentioned two weeks ago for his discussion of Wikipedia in Business Weekly, is again touting Wikipedia in interviews promoting his book. On November 1, Boxes and Arrows published "Ambient Findability: Talking with Peter Morville". Journalist Liz Danzico asks "If [Encyclopaedia Britannica's] findability were greater, would Wikipedia have a viable competitor on its hands?" Morville replies: "I did a great deal of research for my book. And I made extensive use of licensed bibliographic and full-text databases. But the Wikipedia was the single most useful source. Findability is only part of its success. It’s also strong in quality, currency and breadth of coverage. As the world’s largest, most popular encyclopedia, the Wikipedia illustrates the efficacy of open source content creation and the power of collective intelligence. So, in short, the answer is no. Wikipedia has nothing to fear from EB."

The long article "Wikipedia: A Techno-Cult of Ignorance" bills itself as a manifesto against Wikipedia, and appears to be written by the editors and subjects of aetherometry, "the experimental and theoretical study of massfree energy".

The irregularly updated webcomic Kernel Panic published a strip on November 23 titled "Wiki is the new black", about deletionism.

Wikipedia was cited in the last week in the following publications:

• Times of India (India), on The finger [1]
• ARRL, on CONELRAD [2]
• Norwich Bulletin (Connecticut, USA), on Black Friday [3]
• Minnesota Daily (Minnesota, USA), on Congress of the United States [4]
• Kathmandu Post (Nepal), on Sun Myung Moon [5]
• Manila Standard (Philippines), on dyslexia [6]
• Green Bay Press Gazette (Wisconsin, USA), on Art Fiala [7]
• Hattiesburg American (Mississippi, USA), on turducken [8]
• OnMilwaukee.com (Wisconsin, USA), on Black Friday [9]
• Hopewell Valley News (New Jersey, USA), on Sarah Josepha Hale [10]
• American Thinker (Arizona, USA), on Human Rights Watch [11]
• Knoxville News Sentinel (Tennessee, USA), on dog [12]