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

Sat Jul 29 15:11:11 UTC 2006

On 29/07/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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).

Thanks for the information. I don't suppose you, or someone else who
can understand Japanese, could translate the article for us?
-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)