Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a press source 2008

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Wikipedia as a press source
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Wikipedia in the media
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Wikipedia as a topic:
In the press
In academic studies
In blogs
In books
In cartoons
In press releases
In webcomics
In comics
On TV and radio
Heaps of praise
Wikipedia as a source:
In academic studies
In books
In conference
In court cases
In the press
In webcomics
On TV and radio
Elsewhere
This page is not Wikipedia:Reliable sources or Wikipedia:Citing sources.

Wikipedia is increasingly being used as a source in the world press.

Articles citing Wikipedia have been published in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

IF THERE ARE ERRORS IN AN ARTICLE, please post the matter to the Wikimedia Communications Committee's talk page. This way, the Wikimedia Foundation can send an official letter to the editor, or request for a correction.

Note: This is not a complete list.

Contents

[edit] News searches

Note that mentions of common mirror sites may not refer to actual mirrored Wikipedia articles.

[edit] Multiple Tags

The "This article has been cited as a source" tag should be adapted as shown here to fit multiple citations, instead of it being displayed multiple times.

[edit] Page guidelines

  • If the article is about Wikipedia itself, please add it to Wikipedia:Press coverage, rather than here.
  • If the citation is in a book, rather than a periodical, please add it to Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a book source.
  • If the citation is in an academic publication, such as a peer-reviewed journals, please add it to Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies.
  • Also, please check to make sure this is the first publication of the article—newspapers often reprint things other papers published days and even weeks before.
  • Place a notice on the article's talk page about the press reference. See below for instructions.
  • To link to this page from the articles concerned, use Template:Onlinesource.

[edit] Formatting

  • Lastname, Firstname. "Name of article."(If necessary, brief context here) Name of Source. [Month] [Day], 2008. link
    "Relevant/representative quotation here." (Please wikify the articles that were referenced)

[edit] Articles

[edit] January 2008

[edit] February 2008

  • Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo was cited in an Op-Ed piece by Andrew Swerlik of The Emory Wheel - "For those of you curious about just how the above is actually proper English, the best place to go would be Wikipedia, which actually has an article on the sentence that includes diagrams, pictures of buffalo and an mp3 file of somebody reading the entire article out loud, “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo”’s and all." [2]
  • Odell, Michael "This much I know" The Observer Magazine February 3, 2008
    "I looked myself up on Wikipedia once and I was interested to learn that I had once dated Viv Albertine of The Slits. This is fascinating but untrue. I've never met her. I wish I had."
  • Wignall, Mark, Another Jamaican shining - in the South Pacific] The Jamaica Observer, 10 February 2008[[3]
    • "There are few places which invoke the word 'exotic' quite like the Kingdom of Tonga. It is the only archipelago (Archipelago) in the Pacific Ocean (Pacific_Ocean) never to have been formally colonised. It lies south of Samoa (Samoa) and east of Fiji (Fiji) and is about a third of the way between New Zealand (New Zealand) and Hawaii (Hawaii)...According to Wikipedia, 'Women and men have equal access to education and health care, and are fairly equal in employment, but women are discriminated against in land holding, electoral politics, and government ministries. However, in Tongan tradition, women enjoy a higher social status than men, a cultural trait that is unique among the insular societies of the Pacific."
  • Alexander Ovechkin was cited by Zinser, Lynn. "From Russia With Verve: It’s Ovechkin." The New York Times. 13 February 2008. [4]
    "[Ovechkin's] falling-down-and-shooting backward goal as a rookie is an endless loop on his Wikipedia entry."
  • The parody newspaper The Onion discussed Heath Ledger's wikipedia page in "Area Man Honored To Be One Who Added Death Date To Heath Ledger's Wikipedia Page." [5]
- "Blake Yardley, 34, told reporters Monday that he felt extremely humbled to have been the individual who, amidst the chaos and sadness of actor Heath Ledger's recent untimely passing, had the foresight and due reverence to add the death date to the star's Wikipedia page."
In fact, visit Steve's Wikipedia page and there is an entire section entitled "Backlash against stingrays". "In the weeks following Irwin's death," this states, "at least 10 stingrays were found dead and mutilated, with their tails cut off, on the beaches of Queensland, prompting speculation that they had been killed by fans of Irwin as an act of revenge."
  • Dick, Thom. "EMS Dirty Secret" EMS Magazine. February 2008. [7]
    "An addiction is a recurring complusion to engage in some specific activity, despire harmful consequences to an individual's health, mental state or social life."

[edit] March 2008

  • Howley, Kerry. "Artifact: The World Needs Citations." Reason Magazine. March 2008. [8]
    "Nothing conveys Wikipedia’s openness to revision quite like “[citation needed],” the bracketed phrase sprinkled throughout its pixellated scrolls."
  • Showtime Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode "Breast Hysteria" references article Topfreedom, displaying the Wikipedia page.[9]

[edit] April 2008

  • Gonzales, J.R. "The joke's on Miss Ima." Houston Chronicle. April 1, 2008[10]
    Seems the folks at Wikipedia are having a little fun at Ima Hogg's expense this April Fools' Day.
  • Soria, Chester. "Wikipedia remembers Ima Hogg". Houstonist.com. April 1, 2008 . [11]
    Anybody who is worth their salt about Houston history knows Ima Hogg. You don't even need to be a Bayou City scholar in order to know of Ms. Hogg. Case in point, Wikipedia is shining a spotlight on the notoriously named philanthropist as its featured article of the day.
  • McCarthy, Caroline. "Wikipedia fudges the truth for April Fools' Day". News.com. April 1, 2008. [12]
    Whoever wrote the fake Ima Hogg bio might want to think about pursuing a career in screenwriting. It sounds more amusing than any of the movies I've seen recently...
  • Walsh, Scott "Teen swim star in bully claims" Herald Sun. April 6, 2008 [13]
    The bullying allegations against Seebohm - daughter of Glenelg 300-game Hall of Fame SANFL player John Seebohm - came to light after an entry appeared on information-sharing website Wikipedia
  • As it happens, a Google search for “Heritage Foundation” produces millions of links. The first two go directly to the think tank’s own website. The third, however, leads to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia. This winter, Wagner was surfing around Wikipedia to see what it said about her employer. Soon she found herself reading the entry for Heritage president Edwin Feulner. “It was full of errors,” she says...“The author was obviously hostile to us,” she says. “It wasn’t even remotely neutral.”
  • Anybody who searches the Internet for information about candidates can’t avoid bumping into Wikipedia. On a Google search for “John McCain,” the Wikipedia entry comes in second — just below McCain’s presidential-campaign website and just above his Senate-office website.
  • McCain’s entry is locked, which means that ordinary users of Wikipedia can’t change its content. The same is true for a handful of other entries, including those on President Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
  • In the current issue of Education Next, Michael Petrelli of the Fordham Foundation complains that Wikipedia’s entry on school vouchers contains an abundance of negative commentary...Shortly after Petrelli published this observation, a Wikipedian added it to the school-voucher entry... “I guess it means that Wikipedia seems to be self-correcting,” says Petrelli.
  • If Wikipedia’s openness is its primary strength, it’s also the website’s greatest vulnerability. In 2005, John Seigenthaler, a former journalist and Department of Justice official, learned just how far the mischief can go.
  • In 2006, the Lowell (Mass.) Sun revealed that the staff of former Democratic representative Marty Meehan had removed a reference to the congressman’s broken term-limit pledge. Other members of Congress have had their entries whitewashed by their employees, including Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein of California (a mention of a campaign-finance fine was expunged) and Republican senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota (who apparently didn’t want anybody to know he was a “liberal Democrat” in college).
  • The burnishing was bipartisan. Yet loads of entries carry an ideological slant. Leslie Graves of the Wisconsin-based Lucy Burns Institute tracks Wikipedia coverage. “Negative information about liberals is buried, but with conservatives it’s featured prominently,” she says. “Just look at the entry for Eliot Spitzer.”...By contrast, the entry for Republican senator David Vitter of Louisiana points out in its first paragraph that he was identified last year as the client of a Washington, D.C., escort service. Sex scandals involving Republicans Larry Craig and Mark Foley also receive much more emphasis than Spitzer’s fall from grace. (Because Wikipedia entries are constantly updated, they may change over time; the descriptions provided here are accurate as of late March.)
  • “On Wikipedia, we got our brains beat out.” Whereas the entry on George Allen came to read like a compendium of opposition research, the one on Allen’s Democratic opponent, Jim Webb, didn’t suffer the same kind of treatment. “His profile was glowing,” says Henke.
  • On the web, a different story could be unfolding — and if conservatives don’t catch up, the Wikipedia entry for “United States general elections, 2008” may include results that no amount of clever editing will rub away.
  • Note: Wikipedia editor Pete (talk), who was interviewed for this story, blogged about it.
  • McCarthy, Noelle. "Is Bard of New Lynn ready to seize the day". New Zealand Herald. April 12, 2008 [14]
    A quick Wikipedia reveals one Alfred Domett, 4th Premier of NZ (1811-1887) and proud author of not one but three volumes of poetry....

[edit] May 2008

  • Lost' Dueling Analysis: Cabin Fever
    " I zeroed in "The Book of Laws." Found it this morning on Wikipedia. It's a text of the Baha'i faith -- and I could swear Baha'i has surfaced on "Lost" before, though I can't recall where just now. But here's a little more about Baha'i..."