[WikiEN-l] New York Times article

Sun Jun 18 14:38:58 UTC 2006

Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 6/17/06, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>Folks,
>>
>>The New York Times has an article on Wikipedia called "
>> Growing Wikipedia Revises Its 'Anyone Can Edit' Policy
> 
> 
> This is remarkably poor journalism. It shows that the media are
> clutching at straws to write about us. I hope the recently created
> Communications Committee is building personal connections to some of
> the journalists involved, and will occasionally feed them interesting
> "exclusive" stories in addition to regular press releases. We can't
> prevent the press from screwing up, but perhaps at least we can give
> them a better idea about things which are actually happening, e.g:
> - ongoing reorganization of Wikimedia, heated debates about the
> non-profit's future
> - 1,000 featured articles, ongoing experiments towards Wikipedia 0.5/1.0
> - Wikimedia Commons becoming a gigantic archive of functional free
> content (643,000 files, ~250 GB)
> etc.
> 
> Erik

What is embarassing even more is that these stories spread all over the 
world. Journalists call locals (such as me) to say

"did you read the last NYT article ? Can you tell me more about the last 
decisions ?"

Me : "there are no new decisions"

Journalist : "but it is written on the NYT !"

Me : "so what ?"

Journalist : "Ah...well... still, it is no more open to everyone - I 
would like to explain french readers that new articles can not be 
created by anonymous any more"

Me : "well, I recommand you do not, because on the french speaking 
wikipedia, anonymous can still create articles"

Journalist : "but Jimmy Wales said that..."

Me : "Okay. But things are not so simple. Maybe I could explain to you 
how decision making is done in the different language versions and maybe 
introduce you to our governance system. This is a fascinating topic you 
know ?"

Which reminds me... did we get press coverage for the hiring of the CEO ?

Aside from Wikipedia being open or not being open to editing, I think 
hiring a CEO should be food for thought and speculation from at least 
some of the magazines. Did any magazine questionned whether it would 
change the governance of the organisation ? Did anyone wonder if it 
would somehow impact the international dimension (such as would it 
impact latin america or india engagement ? would it impact china block 
?). Could it change our relationship with service providers or potential 
partners ? Did someone wonder if that would change something in terms of 
staff ? What would be the related main benefits and threats ?

No ?