[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia is featured by on the front page of Asahi Shimbun, the leading newspaper in Japan

Sat Jul 29 11:34:39 UTC 2006

Hello all,
originally this mail was sent to other mailinglist, but someonw urged
me strongly to share it with a broader audience ;)

Asahi Shimbun http://www.asahi.com, one of leading newspaper in Japan
focused on Wikipedia (mainly Japanese edition) on its front page and
the second. The whole space this article taken was equivalent to a
half of page.

Most of space was used to describe how it worked, with three Japanese
Wikipedians' comments (two
anonymous, supposedly sysops, one by Suisui under his real
identification). The general atmosphere seemed very positive to me.
Fact checking seemed to be done properly, and no apparent criticism
was shown.  I daresay it is one of the best articles on Wikipedia as
for fact correctness view, and would like to make my applause to the
editors.

Japanese newspapers carry a column ("series" they call) on the front
page (1/4 of pages except advertisements) and Wikipedia was chosen as
the first theme of their new series on net activities. Usually it is
placed on the first
page, but this special version continued to the second page, and there
took 1/4 page too, so 1/2 of first two pages were dedicated to
Wikipedia.

The first part mentioned almost only to the Wikipedia and was signed
by Mr. Yasuda Tomooki, one of their journalist based on Tokyo. The
second part was credited by two journalists including Mr. Yasuda, and
referred to other net communities in the Japanese speaking world, with
comments of authorities, one of them are interesting a researcher and
Wikipedia editor with her real name and her involvement to the
project. "Not job, but as specialist
[I contribute to the Wikipedia] said she ... she found some
remarkable mistakes on articles of her field, and many thought
Wikipedia credible. "As professional, I would like to prevent to
spread misunderstanding" (relying on remembrance, very lough
translation)

Regretfully the column itself can't be available online for free, but
if you are in South Korea, Australia, New Zealand or India, you can
utilize "trial subscription" of Web Asahi Shimbun
(http://wasa.asahi.com/)  for 3days (and get the 2 days before
article).

Cheers,

--
Aphaia
aka
Kizu Naoko
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com