In the news

In the news

Jimmy Wales edits own Wikipedia biography

Wikipedia user, Rogers Cadenhead reported on his blog that the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, edits his own biography on Wikipedia, contrary to Wikipedia's own guidelines against autobiographies. His actions have been seen as especially controversial because it is widely believed that some of his edits, such as this one, have not been NPOV. Various media outlets then picked up the story:

Follow-ups on Seigenthaler and Nature

Multiple mainstream news outlets continued to pickup the story and offered their own editorial comments:

Many other media simply carried the AP story:

Follow-ups on semi-protection policy

Media continue to report on last week's implementation of a semi-protection policy in Wikipedia. See related article.

New York Times notes coverage of Transit Strike

Year-end summaries

Wikipedia was mentioned in the Discover (the year-in-science Special Issue) article "Beyond Google" (p. 16). The article opens with a quick discussion of Wikipedia as one of the most news-making websites of 2005. There are some pros and cons, and then the article moves on to discussing other website models. The opening paragraphs are available in the Emerging Technology section of the Discover website; the full article is available to subscribers.

Wikipedia appeared as both a WINNER ("Heavily linked, authoritative, and constantly updated, the world's largest interactive encyclopedia came into its own this year.") and a LOSER ("Popular, yes. Accurate? Not necessarily.") on PC World's "Best & Worst of 2005" list.

It also appeared twice on Google's year-end summary: at number 4 on the list of "Top Gainers of 2005" on the Google Zeitgeist home page, and then in a section of its own on the "Phenomena" page, as "The Year of the Wiki", with an accompanying chart illustrating the growing popularity of "wikipedia" as a search term.

Digital Universe

Joe Firmage and Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger announced Digital Universe, meant to be an alternative to Wikipedia with expert review [23]. It is funded by US$10,000,000 in angel investors and will pay experts to review entries. They compare it to "the PBS of the web". Commentators have already questioned the business model of such a venture[24].

Other coverage of Wikipedia

Citations in the news

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


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I'm just recording media that has a wikipedia article. Media that pick up the Seigenthaler/Nature story but don't have a Wikipedia article aren't notable enough to be mentioned.  :-) Samw 02:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

















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