Wikipedia:Press coverage 2007 (January-June)

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[edit] January 2007

January 2 2007
  • Columnist Jacqueline Gonzalez resigned after an investigation "found information, taken from Wikipedia, a free Internet encyclopedia, was published in the Watchdog column on Page 2B of the Metro section Dec. 25. The information that was not attributed concerned the origin of Dec. 25 as the birth date of Jesus Christ."
  • Knight, Will. "Wikipedia links used to build smart reading lists", New Scientist magazine, 2 January 2007. Retrieved on 2007-01-04. 
    Reports on software developed by Alexander Wissner-Gross, a physics student at Harvard University, which builds reading lists based on the information held in the way Wikipedia articles interlink. Quote "Increasingly, a net user who wants to learn more about a subject will read its Wikipedia page," .... "However, for further depth in the subject, there has been no system for advising the user which other Wikipedia articles to read, and in which order."
January 3 2007
  • Krane, Jim. "Ooops: Wikipedia Blocks Posts From Qatar", Associated Press, 3 January 2007. 
    "Our apologies to the people of Qatar," Gerard said on Wednesday. "It was a mistake. We won't do it again - unless somebody slips up, in which case it will be remedied quickly."
January 4 2007
  • Bambenek, John. "Wikipedia: Garbage in, Garbage out", MercatorNet, 4 January 2007. Retrieved on 2007-01-04. 
    General attack from a long list of what the author sees as Wikipedia's shortcomings. e.g. over 58% of Wikipedia articles are unsourced, stubs with no content, lists of other articles or simply garbage. 226 pages are dedicated to Pokemon.
January 6 2007
  • "Using Wikipedia, Technion researchers have developed a way to give computers knowledge of the world to help them “think smarter,” making common sense and broad-based connections between topics just as the human mind does. The new method will help computers filter e-mail spam, perform Web searches and even conduct intelligence gathering at more sophisticated levels than current programs."
January 7 2007
  • Summarizes some views on Wikipedia by physicists/scientists, including Nobel Laureate Philip Anderson ("I wouldn't dream of reading Wikipedia for physics. Nor would I trust it if I did.") Paper version (Physicsworld, Volume 20, Number 1, page 27) states "75% of respondents use Wikipedia for physics information. However, only 5% regularly contribute to the online encyclopedia." Mike Peel 11:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
January 10 2007
  • "My Wikipedia article was deleted. I am not delusional. Even though the online reference tool bills itself as "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit," there must be some control over Wikipedia content or some jamoke with nothing better to do in Altoona, Pennsylvania would get his jollies by adding his very own special thoughts to pages referencing orgasm (you know what it is) or cleft of Venus (look it up for yourself)." O'Brien also notes claims in the articles John O'Brien (novelist) and Leaving Las Vegas which she calls false (these statements are also contained in the corresponding IMDb entries) and says "I tried to edit out the erroneous statements on both sites, but some Kiss-the-Hem-of-my-Purple-Robe Wikipedian Lord apparently usurped my efforts." However, the edit histories of both articles show no such edits.
January 11 2007
January 14 2007
January 15 2007
  • "We trace the genesis and progression of this repository of knowledge wealth, popularly known as Wikipedia."
  • This piece of citizen journalism is subtitled "Online encyclopedia riddled with bias in matters of the heart." The author finds the marriage article "offensive" because "as I clicked on the links ... I was never taken to love" and "I had to type [the word 'love'] into Wikipedia's search engine to find it" (in fact there is a prominent link to love in the "close relationships" sidebar of the marriage article). She then comes across a series of articles which she finds "eye-opening and jaw-dropping" including men's movement, allegations of domestic violence, blame, emotional abuse, hysterics, penis envy, annulment, divorce, and so on.
  • Profiles Jimmy Wales and discusses rumors that he may move from Florida to Silicon Valley.
January 21 2007
"... the Wikipedia Issues with SPAM and the discussions about the use of NOFOLLOW for ALL external Links from Wikipedia. It was done, finally. As of now are all outbound links from the english Wikipedia Site using the NOFOLLOW attribute, no exceptions."
January 22 2007
  • Article about students' difficulties in adequately assessing information found on the Internet when doing research mentions, in passing, "the widely publicized errors found on Wikipedia.com." Not only is the wrong domain used, a commenter notes the article itself inaccurately describes a state computer initiative.
  • Reports on Wikipedia's decision to readopt the Google "NoFollow" attribute to deter people from posting spam links on it.
January 24 2007
  • In this widely reprinted Associated Press report, Microsoft is accused of offering payment to blogger and "technical standards aficianado" Rick Jelliffe in order to "correct" Wikipedia entries, revealed in Jelliffe's original blog posting (but not this report) to be ODF and OOXML. "Microsoft acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an open-source document standard and a rival format put forward by Microsoft." Microsoft and Jelliffe "had not determined a price and no money had changed hands — but they had agreed that the company would not be allowed to review his writing before submission". Jimbo Wales is quoted as being "very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach".
January 25 2007
  • This article focuses on the interaction between Wales and Gregory Kohs, founder of MyWikiBiz with emphasis on the Wikipedia:Reward board: "When a blogger revealed this week that Microsoft Corp. wanted to pay him to fix purported inaccuracies in technical articles on Wikipedia, the software company endured online slams and a rebuke from the Web encyclopedia's founder for behaving unethically."
January 26 2007
  • Article on restrictions by the Middlebury College history department on students citing Wikipedia. Many comments by educators on the uses and reliability of the site.
  • The 'No Follow' issue and the use of Wikipedia articles as a footnote "to avoid a digression from their discourse" is discussed. Is "Wikipedia now in the same league" as Google as a web source?
  • More detailed account of NIDA edit war.
  • Reports on the dispute over Microsoft's editing, containing some details from the Associated Press and some additional reporting. It is angled as a debate raging on the internet: "Some are calling it "Wikigate 07". Others see it as a storm on a mouse mat." The piece observes "The software giant has been accused of breaching the spirit of Wikipedia" and recants previous examples of deliberate conflict of interest editing.
  • In an annual survey of "3,625 branding professionals and students", brandchannel.com asked "Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006?". Wikipedia came fourth, behind Google, Apple and YouTube. Starbucks was fifth.
January 27 2007
  • Discusses efforts by National Institute on Drug Abuse employees to edit the article to make it favorable to the agency and ensuing edit war. Jokingly encourages readers to get back at NIDA by vandalizing and adding made-up negative information about NIDA.
January 28 2007
  • Focuses on the multilingual nature of Wikipedia. Articles "are available in languages from Esperanto to Hawaiian to Navajo, gaining considerable ground on English, German, French, Polish, and Japanese, which remain the most prevalent languages on Wikipedia. 'It started in an organic, ad hoc way,' says Samuel Klein, one of hundreds of administrators who monitor multilingual content for Wiki sites. 'New people who are multilingual see the community exists, they find the existing pages, and they join in,' Klein adds."
January 29 2007
  • "A simple search of published court decisions shows that Wikipedia is frequently cited by judges around the country, involving serious issues and the bizarre". The writer doesn't appear to know that one can create links to specific page versions in the history to make a stable reference.
January 31 2007
  • "comScore Networks, a leader in measuring the digital age, today reported the top worldwide Web properties for December, ranked by unique visitors." Number six on the list with 164,675,000 "unique visitors" is "Wikipedia sites", behind "Microsoft sites", "Google sites", "Yahoo! sites", "Time Warner network" and "eBay". Only "unique visitors" over 15 years of age were counted, and the list "[e]xcludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes and access from mobile phones or PDAs". These numbers presumably come from comScore's "massive, global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behaviour". How the "Web properties" were defined (for example, whether YouTube counts as a "Google site") is not explained.

[edit] February 2007

February 1 2007
  • Getz, Arlene. "In Search of an Online Utopia", Newsweek, 1 February 2007. Retrieved on 2007-02-02. 
    Interview with Jimbo Wales after Davos. Jimbo is reported as stating, "I talked to Bill Gates there—the first time I’ve met him. Lately there’ve been reports in the media about Microsoft versus Wikipedia, which we think is really silly because we’re not battling Microsoft. It was a very brief chat—he said he liked Wikipedia."
February 3 2007
  • Marks, Paul. "Interview:Knowledge to the people", New Scientist, 3 February 2007. (English) 
    He's inundated with offers, people turn out to see him, and journalists dog his every move: Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales has all the hallmarks of a rock star. Except he isn't one. He's the man who founded Wikipedia, the vast online encyclopedia used by millions every day. Wikipedia employs just five full-timers, yet it already has 1.5 million articles written by users in a growing number of the world's languages. A diehard core of 400 online volunteers help to keep vendettas, vandals and crazies at bay. So what gave Wales his big idea? Can the open Wikipedia ethic survive in a world dominated by corporations? Paul Marks caught up with him recently after he gave a lecture to a packed hall at the London School of Economics.
February 7 2007
  • Torbati, June. "Profs question students' Wikipedia dependency", Yale Daily News, 7 February 2007. (English) 
    "A few Yale professors are adamantly opposed to the use of Wikipedia for academic work, though many of their peers said it has not caused problems at Yale and students said they continue to rely on the encyclopedia for help with their schoolwork." Also mentions a fake entry for emysphilia created by a Yale student.
February 9 2007
February 11 2007
February 14 2007
  • Gralla, Preston. "U.S. senator: It's time to ban Wikipedia in schools, libraries", Computerworld, 2007-2-14. Retrieved on 2007-02-16. 
    "Here's the newest from Sen. Ted Stevens, the man who described the Internet as a series of tubes: It's time for the federal government to ban access to Wikipedia, MySpace, and social networking sites from schools and libraries." Stevens is sponsoring legislation to require schools to ban students from using interactive web sites. It is not clear whether the proposed law would actually ban Wikipedia.
February 15 2007
  • Cohen, Patricia. "Supercharged With All The Answers", New York Times, 15 February 2007. (English) 
    "It’s like the classic scene in Woody Allen’s 1977 film Annie Hall, when Alvy Singer imagines how he would like to reply to the know-it-all standing behind him in line for a movie and pontificating about Marshall McLuhan. Now, instead of pulling McLuhan out from behind a poster to scold, 'You know nothing of my work,' Alvy could just pull out his BlackBerry and shove the Wikipedia entry in the guy’s face." Relates how an HBO executive used Wikipedia's article on the immaculate conception to settle a dispute in a restaurant.
  • Fox, Justin. "Getting Rich off Those Who Work for Free", TIME magazine, TIME Inc., February 15, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-02-20. 
    That I even know of Kropotkin comes courtesy of the Wikipedia entry for the "gift economy," the current term of art for this altruistic approach. Wikipedia is, of course, a prime example of the gift economy at work. Argue about its inaccuracies all you want, but the volunteer-authored online encyclopedia is on its way to becoming (if it isn't already) the world's dominant reference resource.
February 16 2007
  • Raivio, Jarmo. "Wikipedia juhlii", Suomen Kuvalehti, 16 February 2007. (Finnish) 
    The Finnish edition of Wikipedia reached one hundred thousand articles on Sunday, 11 February.
February 20 2007
"And SEO's wonder why a lot of wikipedians don't think too nicely of SEO's and are sometimes even hostile. Here is why. Things like this happen every minute at Wikipedia. Whole teams, tools and bots were created to fight it. It's not 100% bulletproof, but the best option there is at the moment. The other option would be to disallow edits by the public, but that is against the basic idea and foundation Wikipedia is build on."
February 21 2007
February 22 2007
  • Danner, Patrick. "Golfer Zoeller sues law firm for Wikipedia posting", Miami Herald, 22 February 2007. Retrieved on 2007-02-22. 
    "Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is teed off over what he calls defamatory statements about him on Wikipedia.
    "But instead of suing the popular online reference site, Zoeller is taking a swing at a Miami company. In a lawsuit filed last week in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, Zoeller -- suing under the name John Doe -- alleged the statements were posted from a computer belonging to Josef Silny & Associates."
  • Morris, Maggie. "Expert: Wikipedia won't go away, so learn how to use it", Physorg.com, 22 February 2007. Retrieved on 2007-02-23. 
    Comments by Sorin A. Matei, assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Purdue University."Matei recommends Wikipedia be used as a search engine that acts as a springboard to other resources and that it never be cited as a primary source of information."
February 24 2007

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.[1]

February 25 2007
  • Kirkpatrick, David. "Wikipedia's next steps", CNNMoney.com, 23 February 2007. Retrieved on 2007-02-25. 
    Jimmy Wales is interviewed by Fortune's David Kirkpatrick about Wikipedia and his commercial project Wikia, and why the world needs an open source search engine.
February 26 2007

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

  • Compares google ranks wor the following websites for each 2008 election candidates: main site, election site, and wikipedia article
February 27 2007
Also Washington Post 2007-02-25 and The China Post,2007-03-04.
  • Timothy Noah makes several criticisms of Wikipedia's Notability policy after his own entry was nominated for deletion. "Wikipedia's stubborn enforcement of its notability standard suggests that Veblen was right. We limit entry to the club not because we need to, but because we want to."

Is Wikipedia's ticket to "notability" the writing of one published article about … Wikipedia?

February 28 2007

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.

[edit] March 2007

[edit] Essjay controversy

See also Essjay controversy
  • "EDITORS’ NOTE", New Yorker, nd. Retrieved on 2007-03-01. 
    "The July 31, 2006, piece on Wikipedia, “Know It All,” by Stacy Schiff, contained an interview with a Wikipedia site administrator and contributor called Essjay [...] He was described in the piece as “a tenured professor of religion at a private university” with “a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law.” [...] Essjay now says that his real name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught."
February 28 2007
March 1 2007
March 2 2007
March 5 2007
March 6 2007
March 7 2007
  • EDITORIAL. "The net's limits", The Daily Telegraph, 2007-03-07. Retrieved on 2007-03-07. 
    "...As a non-profit-making organisation the parent company, Wikimedia, trusts its contributors and editors. But a mischievous 24-year-old student has abused that trust by claiming to be a professor and arbitrated disputes about the validity of information on the website. It may be depressing that such abuse has occurred, but it is hardly surprising."
March 9 2007
March 12 2007

[edit] Other March news

  • Ball, Philip. "The more, the Wikier", nature.com, 2007-02-27. Retrieved on 2007-03-02. 
    "Three groups of researchers claim to have untangled the process by which many Wikipedia entries achieve their impressive accuracy. They say that the best articles are those that are highly edited by many different contributors." and
"In effect, the Wiki community has mutated since 2001 from an oligarchy to a democracy. The percentage of edits made by the Wikipedia 'élite' of administrators increased steadily up to 2004, when it reached around 50%. But since then it has steadily declined, and is now just 10% (and falling)."
March 2 2007
  • Kleeman, Jenny. "You couldn’t make it up", TimesOnline, 2007-03-02. Retrieved on 2007-03-02. 
    Interviews with three Wikipedia editors, Charles Matthews a 52-year-old former Cambridge academic, Sarah a 17-year-old student and Angela Beesley of the Wikimedia Foundation. "But who are we actually relying on when we use Wikipedia? Little is known about the small army of regular volunteers who dedicate themselves to editing the site. I am here because I want to find out who they are — and why they do it. "
The Kleeman article is followed by a note entitled "The fact it, it's rubbish" signed by Richard Dixon, "Chief Revise Editor" of The Times. It includes these thoughts: "My default position is that every article on Wikipedia is rubbish. When, for example, I need medical information, I go to a reputable medical site, such as the British Medical Journal or The New England Journal of Medicine."
March 5 2007
March 6 2007
  • "Students assessed with Wikipedia", BBC News, BBC, 2007-03-06. Retrieved on 2007-03-06. 
    Reports on postgrad students editing Wikipedia as part of a University of East Anglia course. Politics lecturer, Nicola Pratt, says using Wikipedia can develop students' research skills. "The Wikipedia-based Middle East course counts for an eighth of the students' MA assessment." .. "They're assessed on their ability to improve the quality and balance of the article and they demonstrate they have done that through additional reading around the topic for that week.
March 7 2007
March 10 2007
  • "Online encyclopedias - Fact or fiction?", The Economist, 2007-03-10. Retrieved on 2007-03-12. 
    "So how useful is Wikipedia? Entries on uncontentious issues—logarithms, for example—are often admirable. The quality of writing is often a good guide to an entry’s usefulness: inelegant or ranting prose usually reflects muddled thoughts and incomplete information. A regular user soon gets a feel for what to trust.
    Those on contentious issues are useful in a different way. The information may be only roughly balanced. But the furiously contested entries on, say, Armenian genocide or Scientology, and their attached discussion pages, do give the reader an useful idea about the contours of the arguments, and the conflicting sources and approaches."
March 11 2007
  • Kamiya, Setsuko. "Power to the Wikipeople", The Japan Times Online, The Japan Times Inc.. Retrieved on 2007-03-11. (English) 
    An interview with Jimmy Wales, "Why do you think the rate of growth has slowed on the Japanese Wikipedia compared to other languages?
I don't really know. That's what I'm here to find out. Maybe it needs more promotion. But it's very difficult to say. Some of it is the Japanese Wikipedia used to be larger than the French, and there were twice as many editors working in the French Wikipedia. So we used to joke that "there's more French but the Japanese work harder." (Laughs):
Asks four celebrities to assess the accuracy of their own Wikipedia articles. Peter Hitchens - " But in the end, I'm in favour of Wikipedia. It seems to me that most users and contributors are trying to reach the truth in a reasonable manner. And that can never be a bad thing." Edwina Currie - "So don't take this 'encyclopedia' seriously. It's less accurate than most gossip columns." Craig Murray - "But the result is fair and authoritative - I am proud of my entry." Peter Tatchell - "My advice? Use Wikipedia as a resource, but check controversial claims with other sources. As my entry shows, Wikipedia is open to abuse." The Standard states the incorrect information about Essjay was publicized "when a magazine published an article on Wikipedia two weeks ago" -- Stacy Schiff's New Yorker article was actually published in July 2006. The article in Evening Standard is also mirrored here.
March 12 2007
Uses Wikipedia as an example of how new media are transforming public discourse: "What is so exciting about Wikipedia isn’t just the generation of new information, but the creation of active publics around the creation of knowledge for publics. People who have certain entries on their watch lists are part of a public in which there can be vigorous disagreement but shared interest in addressing an issue."
March 13 2007
Letter to Editor: McClellan, Joel. "Open source approach", International Herald Tribune, March 16, 2007. 
  • Journalist Alex Beam on how he got his Wikipedia entry improved. "...a friend slipped me a magic phone number that rang in the office of Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig, the Learned Hand of the Internet bar. His helpful assistant relayed my complaint to Wales, who sits on a board with Lessig. Soon afterward, the offending paragraphs were removed."
March 15 2007
  • ""Wiki" wins place in dictionary", Yahoo/Reuters, March 15, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-15. 
    Wiki gains a place in the OED.- "If you think "wiki" doesn't sound like English, you are right. But it's English now. This word born on the Pacific Island of Hawaii finally got an entry into the latest edition of the online Oxford English Dictionary along with 287 other new words." ... "The most famous example is the popular Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia."
March 16 2007
March 20 2007
  • Willinsky, John. "What open access research can do for Wikipedia", First Monday, March 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-20. 
    "This study examines the degree to which Wikipedia entries cite or reference research and scholarship, and whether that research and scholarship is generally available to readers. Working on the assumption that where Wikipedia provides links to research and scholarship that readers can readily consult, it increases the authority, reliability, and educational quality of this popular encyclopedia, this study examines Wikipedia’s use of open access research and scholarship, that is, peer-reviewed journal articles that have been made freely available online. "
March 21 2007
  • Rauchway, Eric. "Wikipedia is good for academia", The New Republic, March 21 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-25. 
    'People with money, reputation, and control over public information have historically used their power to retain control over the means of producing knowledge[...] Professors can no more undo the public sphere of the Internet than the embattled experts of the early modern era could undo the coffee houses[...] Articles need to cite "reliable sources," which are those that use "process and approval between document creation and publication." In other words, academic work: Wikipedia is on our side..'
March 22 2007

Claburn, Thomas. "Wikipedia Becomes Intelligence Tool And Target For Jihadists", InformationWeek, March 22 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-26. 

  • On how both state and other interests might want to influence the slant of articles on Wikipedia. "Wikipedia, like Switzerland, wants to be neutral. But the new bankers of the Net's knowledge face foes invested in partisan points of view. "
March 23 2007
  • Scott, Mike. "The day I downloaded myself", The Guardian, March 23, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-23. 
    "When Mike Scott of the Waterboys looked at the Wikipedia entry on himself, he got quite a shock". A very favorable piece, after being reverted Mike engaged in dialogue with other editors, provided citations which led to some factural corrections. Mike thought his article was better than most other bios he had read.
  • Davidson, Cathy. "We Can't Ignore the Influence of Digital Technologies", The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 2007, pp. Volume 53, Issue 29, Page B20. 
    "When I read the othe day that the history department at Middlebury College had "banned Wikipedia," I immediately wrote to the college's president, Ronald D. Liebowitz, to express my concern that such a decision would lead to a national trend, one that would not be good for higher education. "Banning" has connotations of evil or heresy. Is Wikipedia really that bad?" ...."Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia. It is a knowledge community, uniting anonymous readers all over the world who edit and correct grammar, style, interpretations, and facts. It is a community devoted to a common good — the life of the intellect. Isn't that what we educators want to model for our students?"


March 25 2007
  • Kleeman, Jenny. "Wiki wars", The Observer, 25 March 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-25. 
    A piece that concentrates on efforts to stop vandalism. "Theresa Knott is one such devoted Wikipedian. A member since 2001, she visits the site daily, often editing at 5.30am before she leaves for work as a London primary school teacher. Her efforts have been rewarded with regular abuse from vandals and kudos from her Wikipedia peers, who elected her to the position of administrator in 2003."
March 26 2007
March 27 2007
  • Associated Press. "Citizendium Head's Role in Founding Wikipedia Unclear", Fox News, 2007-03-27. Retrieved on 2007-03-27. 
    Reports on the continuing dispute between Wales and Sanger over the significance of Sangers part in the founding of Wikipedia. "The Wikipedia entry on Wales also holds that Sanger played a sizable role, even giving Wikipedia its name. Without a doubt, Sanger was an early community leader on Wikipedia. But Wales insists that Sanger was a subordinate employee of his, and by that measure, 20 other people would deserve co-founder status."
  • Moses, Asher. "Founder defends evolving Wikipedia", The Sydney Morning Herald, 2007-03-27. Retrieved on 2007-03-27. 
    One of many to fall victim to false Wikipedia entries is the former governor-general of Australia, Peter Hollingworth. Mr Hollingworth called in to the ABC radio program Australia Talks last week, as it was interviewing Mr Wales.
March 28 2007

[edit] April 2007

April 1 2007
  • Youngwood, Susan. "Wikipedia: What do they know; when do they know it, and when can we trust it?", Vermont Sunday Magazine, Rutland Herald, April 1, 2007, pp. 8-12. Retrieved on 2007-04-03. (English) 
    "The great lesson of Wikipedia in my mind is that there is always more to know, every bit of knowledge is up for debate," explains Jason Mittell, a professor at Middlebury College. "Wikipedia contains the most current thinking on any topic. As the world changes, Wikipedia will change faster than any other press out there." Mittell, who teaches film and media culture, describes it as "potentially transformative."
April 6 2007
  • "Wikipedia a Pariah? Not Really, Say Campus Interviewees", Library Journal, April 6, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-06. (English) 
    "If you can't beat Wikipedia, join it. Jill McKinstry, of the University of Washington, commented that her colleagues have begun to populate Wikipedia entries with links to the university library's previously underused collections of digitized photographs. "Needless to say, our usage skyrocketed," she commented. A search on Wikipedia shows that 235 entries include images from the University of Washington"
April 10 2007
  • Levine, Barry. "Internet Pioneers Propose Blogger Code of Conduct", Sci-Tech Today, April 10, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-10. 
    Reports on Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales and Tim O'Reilly's proposal for a civility code of conduct for blogs. "Some of the suggested rules include banning anonymous comments, taking responsibility for abusive postings, pointing out when visitors are acting badly, trying to move tension-filled dialogue offline, and not saying anything online that you wouldn't say in person."
April 11 2007
  • Frean, Alexandra. "Wikipedia a force for good? Nonsense, says a co-founder", The Times, April 11, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-11. 
    A report on a speech by the UK Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, to the National Association of Schoolteachers and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Johnson described the internet as "an incredible force for good in education" for teachers and pupils, and singled out Wikipedia for praise saying "Wikipedia enables anybody to access information which was once the preserve only of those who could afford the subscription to Encyclopaedia Britannica and could spend the time necessary to navigate its maze of indexes and content pages". The article however goes on to focus on a critical response to this view by Larry Sanger who is quoted as saying "While Wikipedia is still quite useful and an amazing phenomenon, I have come to the view that it is also broken beyond repair."
  • staff and agencies. "Johnson slapped on wrist for recommending Wikipedia", The Guardian, April 11, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-11. 
    Another article on Alan Johnson's speech offering a positive view of Wikipedia. The article reports comments from the NASUWT general secretary, Chris Keates that the Wikipedia article on the union has had scurilous content in the past and that she would not herself recommend this website to pupils as their only source. The article, on the Guardian website, misprints the NASUWT acronym, and spells "students" as "studnets". Larry Sanger is also quoted, but in less detail than in The Times article. The Guardian (dated 10 April) reprints the full text of Johnson's speech here (scroll to about the mid point of the article to see what was said).
  • Cellan-Jones, Rory. "Warning about Wiki accuracy" (Streaming video), BBC, April 11, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-15. 
    Following Alan Johnson's speech endorsing Wikipedia BBC TV news ran a video report on Wikipedia's accuracy with clip from Ian Grant of Britannica and Wikipedia editor David Gerard .
April 12 2007
  • Andrea-Marie Vassou. "School leaders stick up for Wikipedia", Computeract!ve, VNU Business Publications Ltd, 2007-04-12. 
    Martin Ward, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, disagrees with Larry Sanger, recommending Wikipedia as a "valuable resource" where children can learn "how to be critical and sceptical of what they read just like they would be with any other medium, be it newspapers or even school text books".
April 13 2007
  • "Wiki Witch", Private Eye, April 13, 2007, p. 13. 
    Discusses public relations company Verve Communications spamming Wikipedia with articles about Non-Notable subjects such as Verve Communications, Lorraine Langham, Rockpools and Hamish Davidson (all related to Verve). Interestingly, Private Eye makes the case that Lorraine Langham herself may be notable, but only to comment about her past actions.
April 14 2007
April 17 2007
  • Williams, Stephen. "Consider the source As a matter of fact, Wikipedia isn't always right on LI", Newsday, Tribune Company, April 17, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-18. 
    Article by Williams and six contributors about errors in Wikipedia on coverage of Long Island. The article mentions the rise of Citizendium. The sidebar discusses specific problems with Wikipedia articles on Long Island. Among the mistakes cited was Montauk Point Lighthouse which the article says Wikipedia lists "having been completed in 1792, which Newsday stories show was finished in 1796." A review of the The Montauk Point Lighthouse Wikipedia history shows that the Wikipedia article has always correctly reported the 1796 date and that Newsday is incorrect in the assertion.
April 20 2007
  • Roelf, Wendell. "Wikipedia founder mulls revenue options", Reuters, April 20, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-23. 
    Report of an interview with Jimmy Wales at a digital freedom conference in Cape Town, South Africa, looks at future funding options for Wikipedia given that it will continue to eschew advertising. It mentions paid for trivia games and quiz programs as possible acceptable revenue raisers.
April 21 2007
  • Fisk, Robert. "Caught in the deadly web of the internet", The Independent, 21 April 2007. Retrieved on 2007-05-01. 
    The Turkish scholar Taner Akçam has been a victim of wholly false claims that he is a terrorist in his Wikipedia biography article, which is reported as being frequently vandalised. This resulted on February 16 2007 in Akçam being detained at Montreal Airport on the basis of this claim and US Homeland Security operatives at the airport recommending that he does not travel for the time being. Fisk referred to Akçam's experiences in the wider context of the internet being a vehicle for the transmission of hate.
  • "More than just a war of words", The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 April 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-21. 
    Largely a promotional article covering recent current controversies surrounding Wikipedia, and promoting upcoming appearances by Jimmy Wales in Sydney and throughout Australia.
April 23 2007
April 24 2007
April 26 2007
April 30 2007

[edit] May 2007

  • Carr, Nicholas. "The net is being carved up into information plantations", The Guardian, London, May 17, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-05-17. (English) 
    On how fewer and fewer big sites are dominating the internet. "In fact, if you Google any person, place or thing today, you're almost guaranteed to find Wikipedia at or near the top of the list of recommended pages. Despite its flaws, the amateur-written encyclopedia has become the world's all-purpose information source. It's our new Delphic oracle."
  • anon. "Inventor of the wiki moves to new job in Portland", KTVZ.com, Associated Press, 2007-05-19. Retrieved on 2007-05-20. 
    "The inventor of the wiki is moving to a new job in Portland. Ward Cunningham will be chief technology officer of AboutUs, a 2-year-old company that specializes in using wikis to encourage collaboration on the Web." ... "The 57-year-old Cunningham wasn't directly involved with the development of Wikipedia. But he's been described as an intellectual godfather to those who advocate the power of collaboration."
  • "Power struggle", New Scientist, 2007-05-19. Retrieved on 2007-05-22. 
    "How do you keep track of the bubbling mass of information that is Wikipedia? This chaotic-looking mosaic is one attempt to show which topics are contained in the online encyclopedia, and those most hotly contested. It's a mind-boggling task. About 4 million "Wikipedians" have made over 130 million edits, and the English-language version alone contains 1.7 million articles. Every second a new edit is made, and every day 2000 new articles spring up." The image referred to can be seen here:- [3].
  • "Wikipedia whispers", Private Eye, 2007-05, p. 7. Retrieved on 2007-05-24. 
    "without warning, Wikipedia founder and director Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales personally deleted the entire page. Soon afterwards a new, cleaned-up version of the di Stefano entry was created - minus all the awkward facts."


[edit] June 2007

  • Utter, David. "Anime, Sex Popular At Wikipedia", webpronews, 31 May 2007. Retrieved on 2007-06-02. 
    Reports on research by Adam Torres of Compete [4] into what people look up on Wikipedia "It appears many people are learning about what sex is and how to have it by referencing Wikipedia," said Torres.
  • Flintoff, John-Paul. "Thinking is so over", The Sunday Times, June 3, 2007, pp. 3 (News Review). Retrieved on 2007-06-05. (English) 
    An interview with "net entrepreneur Andrew Keen" previewing his new book The Cult of the Amateur. Keen criticises web 2.0 ideas and discusses "the disastrous effect" of traditional media disappearing. (Hard copy image shows some famous statue with a thought bubble saying "According to Wikipedia I'm the Mona Lisa")
  • Bennett, Joe. "Surprised by a heretic's epitaph", The Press, 2007-06-06. Retrieved on 2007-06-06. (English) "Maybe the sort of people who contribute to online encyclopaedias are the sort of people who believe that reason always wins in the end." 
    Joe Bennett, a weekly humour columnist, finds Wikipedia to be trustworthy even though it is able to be freely edited.
  • Keeker, Korry. "Our own slice of the World Wide Web", Juneau Empire, 2007-06-07. Retrieved on 2007-06-07. (English) "The Wikipedia post for Juneau lays bare the town's culture and community, but can Anonymous be trusted?" 
    Korry Keeker talks to two local users about their experiences and thoughts on Wikipedia, and takes a look at some noteworthy contributions of local interest.
  • Pappas, Nicholas. "In Wikipedia we trust." (U-WIRE), DailyIllini, 2007-06-08. Retrieved on 2007-06-09. 
    In the end, whom should we trust for information? Newsweek, TIME, or a non-profit organization called the Wikimedia? If I had to choose, it would be the one website where a few geeks can take on a God.
Website favourites?
Wikipedia [the user-generated online encyclopedia]. I love the way it aggregates information from different people.
  • "The quick-start guide to editing Wikipedia", Pc Pro magazine, 12th June 2007. Retrieved on 2007-06-14. 
    Encourages its readers to take an active part in editing Wikipedia and gives simple 'How to' guidance. Concludes: "Flawed it may be, but Wikipedia has the potential to be an information cathedral of our age. Wouldn't you like to be able to say that you have had a hand in building it?"
  • Andrew Brown. "No amount of collaboration will make the sun orbit the Earth", The Guardian, June 14, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-06-14. 
    Discusses the author's fears that NPOV will lead to false views being given undue prominence. "..the General Social Survey poll data last week which revealed that 28% of American adults believe it is "definitely false" that humans evolved from other animals - and only 18% think it is "definitely true". The latter is also the proportion of Americans who believe that the sun goes around the Earth." ... "So here we have a society in which adults are just as likely to believe that the sun goes around the Earth as that evolution is true, which has also built an encyclopaedia based on the idea that the truth will emerge from cooperative debate."
  • Khalid Mir. "Lost in cyberspace", The Guardian, June 14, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-06-14. 
    Considers whether access to vast amounts of information will actually make us better able to communicate. "One example of the internet's reach on our understanding of ourselves and other people is Wikipedia. The fundamental issue at stake is not one of its factual accuracy or its efficacy, nor is it one of political constraints on accessibility to information. It is, rather, whether how we think about something is radically altered when information is available at the click of a button." ... "It is also possible that this desire to catalogue everything, build a universal library or archive is actually a defensive strategy that speaks of our fears, of the precariousness of our lives."
  • "So Wikipedia has become something of a running joke: the ultimate resource on things that don't matter. The bottom of reliability's totem pole. 'I saw it on Wikipedia,' the saying goes, 'so it must be true.' That saying, to reiterate, is usually meant to be humorous."
  • "Sources in China have reported that the English language version of Wikipedia is no longer blocked for internet users inside the country, after being unavailable for most of the past 18 months. However, the Chinese language edition of Wikipedia remains inaccessible in China."
  • "In postings on internal mailing groups, users of Wikipedia have described obvious mistakes in the design, a globelike jigsaw puzzle with characters from various languages on the pieces. Two of the characters — one in Japanese and one in Devanagari, the script used in Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages — are meaningless because of minor slips"
  • "For the first time, the German edition of the open Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia will be receiving state funding. Germany will be setting aside part of its budget to improve information about renewable resources in Wikipedia. Over the next few years, several hundred articles will be written on this issue."
  • Bowman, Jessica (director of SEO of Business.com). "What To Do When Your Company Wikipedia Page Goes Bad", Search Engine Land, June 27, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-06-27. 
    • This article gives five tips to companies who find that factually true but embarrassing things are appearing on their Wikipedia article:-
      • Push negative content down the page.
      • Reduce the numbers to text equivalents so they dont catch the eye
      • Bury the bad stuff in noise. Put positive content at the beginning and end of a paragraph, and placing the negative comments in the middle.
      • Fill the entire page with content. People do not like to read a mountain of information...
      • Include pictures.. .. if you place the right photos at the right place on the page, you can divert eyes from negativity.
    • Wikipedia discussion here:[5]
  • "Wikipedia posting is eerie twist in Benoit case", MSN, Associated Press. Retrieved on 2007-06-29. 
  • Coverage of anon editor's apparent confession that it was just a lucky guess.
  • Chris Benoit's Wikipedia page was altered to say that his wife was dead before the police discover the bodies of Benoit, his wife and son. The Independent's article reported that "An anonymous user confessed to making the entry, saying that he had based it on rumours".