[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news - WSJ Article

Mon Dec 19 13:44:28 UTC 2005

Here is a tiny url for the WSJ article which is in it's free features
section:
http://tinyurl.com/8dwbt

Excerpts:

*Wikipedia's Woes*
It's been a strange couple of weeks for
Wikipedia<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>.
To say the least.
...
First the online, volunteer-created encyclopedia was blasted by a retired
newspaper editor who found a phony bio about himself in its listings. That
controversy soon became a furor in which Wikipedia's entire workings were
put on trial. While the debate was still going on, Wikipedia then got an
unexpected boost from a venerable science publication ...

At the heart of this is the fact that at a very basic level, Wikipedia
*is*out of control ... The important thing to note is that this
self-correcting
mechanism also depends on Wikipedia's being fundamentally out of control.
Whether you find that basic truth invigorating or frightening is something
of a Rorschach test for how you feel about the Internet as a whole.

Check out Wikipedia's entries on
deconstructionism<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstructionism>,
the history of records <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_record>, or the
Replacements <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Replacements>, then consider
that those entries and some 868,000 others are the work of volunteers. I
find that impressive -- revolutionary, even. And if you follow those links
and find something you know is wrong, fix it.

As has been done with the entry for John
Seigenthaler<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr.>
.
--REAL TIME  By JASON FRY
--
Jim (trodel at gmail.com)