Talk:Wired (magazine)/Archive 1

Internal ref to external link
Wernher, in an article this short, it is hardly necessary to include an internal reference to the external links. I mean, readers these days don't have that short an attention span. -- Viajero 14:45, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * OK, no problem – the reason I felt the reference should be included was to make sure interested readers would discover the ext. lk to Wired UK's 'rise and fall' (lacking an internal Wired UK lk) :-) -- Wernher 14:58, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

NTK connection
I have another question for you: in the article by Batelle and on the NTK website, I could see not explicit connection between Wired UK and Need to Know. Do you have any idea what it is? TIA -- Viajero 15:18, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * No idea whatsoever. Too bad the contributor who wrote that didn't inform about the (alleged) connection. --Wernher


 * There isn't/wasn't really an explicit connection between Wired UK and NTK - Dave Green and Danny O'Brien, who write NTK, both previously worked at Wired UK. -- Phil Gyford 07:37, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

State of Wired as of 2003
Werner, regarding this line:


 * as of 2003 it still attracts quite significant personalities of the IT world for detailed interviews, such as Linus Torvalds of Linux fame.

with all due respect: Wired is a computer magazine, no? Is there a computer magazine on earth which hasn't run an interview with Linus? I realize that Wikipedia is not paper but one should still try to keep an eye on the Big Picture and be judicious about what to include and what to leave out of an article, whatever its length. Please don't get me wrong: many of your edits to this text have been great, like adding the Wired 40 just now. BTW, I moved the external link down to where the others are. Cheers, -- Viajero 10:15, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the encouragement. My rationale for including the Linus line was that Wired usually features longer and more detailed interviews than most computer 'rags' out there, so I wanted to pull attention towards that fact.  However, I too notice that by and large the article/interview to product placement ratio of the magazine is dropping. I long for the days of Wired publishing stuff like Neal Stephenson's Hacker Tourist %-). --Wernher 23:16, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * While, why don't you add a line to that effect? Something like: In its heyday, Wired was known for publishing long interview with computer industry celebrities, such as Neal Stephenson... or something like that? Just a suggestion. -- Viajero 23:21, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

What is Wired, really?
Re previous Q: Wired Magazine is not completely characterized by the term "computer magazine". It's more about the consequences of digital technology in culture across the world. In some sense, almost a digitally oriented "fashion magazine". Bevo 22:23, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * You have a point; it is not a conventional computer magazine like PC World or something. When I looked at an issue a couple months ago, it remined me a lot of Vanity Fair -- Viajero 00:10, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * For that matter, they have done a number of articles on technology in general... not just digital tech. I reference the artical on the rise of air-ship (aka blimps) use and the german company who has been sitting pretty with multiple US commercial and military intrests, as well as the article on power storage devices that are /not/ digital or acid based, articles on genomics etc. Ramius V. Schweitzer 04:02, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Its a technocultural magazine —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.150.89.26 (talk) 22:18, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Press release re sale of Wired
Not quite sure whether or not to include this in the ext lk list, so I store it here pending discussion/decision. --Wernher 06:52, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * Wired Ventures to sell its magazine (press release, 12 May 1998)

Wikipedia article
For those who haven't seen it, they have just done a very nice feature on us. &mdash; Trilobite (Talk) 05:44, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Contradiction
"Wired's first issue (1.01) de-emphasized the internet, and primarily talked about interactive games, cell-phone hacking, digital special effects, military simulations, and Japanese otaku. Despite rumors to the contrary, the first issue contained many references to the internet, including a long article on online-date and internet sex, and a turorial on installing a "bozo filter" to eliminate online posts to by trolls, among other references." These two sentences slightly contradict each other, it seems. Andre ( talk ) 23:26, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)

WIRED: spell checking, TIRED: fact checking: is an NPOV but critical section appropriate?
It would be nice to see a well-written critique or discussion of the downside of Wired Magazine. Many people believe it is shallow and inaccurate. It embraces capitalism in some ways, but also brings in some fairly worthless postmodern rubish, like articles by R.U. Sirius, etc. And the cover story and trumped-up award for Negroponte some years ago was painfully embarassing. Must be nice to be an egomaniac and own your own magazine too.


 * I agree. Wired is not without more than its share of critics and there are many legitimate criticisms that can be aimed at the magazine and its philosophy.  At times, it seems like nothing more than techno-free market libertarian and socially right leaning moderate propaganda.  Much of the articles on various companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. read more like fanboyish hero worship than real journalism.  the Negroponte story you mentioned was really alarming, as they took a man involved in Iran-Contra, a terrible scandal and abuse of power and the trust of both the American people and the world, and portrayed him as some harmless techno geek, like everyone else who reads Wired, as if he had NO shady past whatsoever.  They seemed to give a fawning embrace to the nonsense of Intelligent Design in 2004.  They also embrace practically every mindless techno-fad that comes along, hoping for the next big thing.  Practically all their articles have an economically libertarian slant to them, and it seems that to Wired, the only meaningul measure of science and technology is how much money those things can make, and the only real good of social progress is the potential for opening up new market demographics.  Much of their reporting on pop culture is shallow and betrays that they have little to no understanding of any form of art or entertainment that they report on, and it often comes off as if their research on the video games, films, books, etc. they review consists of doing a single internet search and reading a press relese and then trying to pretend they played the game before giving it an arbitrary and seemingly random rating.  The magazine, at times, also has a bizzare fixation with Star Wars.  In fact, for the papst several years, it seems that EVERY single issue has to work in SOMETHING related to Star Wars.  Either they think this is the be all and end all to geek life and sci fi, or the Wired staff is on the payroll of George Lucas.  Many justifiably see the magazine as embodying a wide-eyed techno utopianism, that is largely disconnected from reality.  Its like all those absurd books from 20 or 30 or 50 years ago about what the year 2000 was going to be like, and how off the mark they were, only its in magazine form every month and only sets its sights ahead a few years.  I mean, really, for all the things wired has championed as world changing next wave of the future business booms, how many of their predictions have actually come true?  Also, this is FAR from an objective criticism, but their "wired-tired-expired" thing has to be the most obnoxious feature EVER. Kittynboi 20:48, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Spinoza1111 01:48, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Edward G. Nilges

I have added a section on possible reasons for the decline of Wired which addresses the above concerns.

Gary Wolf's attack on Ted Nelson's Xanadu needs mention as does the contradiction between Wired's desire to appeal to geeks, and its advertisers' desire that geeks buy their shit, and work at shit jobs to finance their shit addiction (yeah, I'm angry).

I believe my contribution NPOV insofar as a full picture of the decline of Wired is needed. It is now possibly sending collection letters to nonrenewing subscribers. It said to its readers, ha ha ha, some Hindoo babe bettah dan you. It crucified the author of Computer Lib in an ageist article. Women staffers were systematically exploited by the boys in the backroom.

Worse still, Steve Steinberg of Wired told me my piece would be published in 1999, but was contradicted by some suit because I was "too verbose" and the article never appeared. I've had this experience more than once, at Wired and Fawcette: some brilliant, chiseled and handsome editor, a fount of wisdom, tells me I am a "go"...and the suits at the holding company say, whoa, who is this guy, he lives at the Y but uses a lotta big words. Fortunately, I also get published, mostly when the suits are watching the playoffs or something. But never in Wired, thank G-d.

Yeah, I'm angry; but the NPOV is maintained in the contribution, I believe. Take a look at it, be bold, and discuss changes here.

Primary meaning of "wired"
I suspect that when most people (in this venue, at least) type "wired" they mean this entry. I'd propose that this page gets moved to Wired and the current disambig contents go to a disambiguation page linked from the top. - brenneman  {L}  04:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I have to agree with you on this one. There's not all too much that they could mean. Mythi 19:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Merging Zippie Pronoia Tour with Wired Magazine page
I see the merge is rather an attempt to make the entire thing simply whither away and die! Surely you know better than to destroy history! Don't let the Zippies die, let the tour merge with Fraser Clark! Ethnopunk 11:32, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Needless to say, the merge suggestion is silly and should be rejected. No magazine should be merged with the subject of a single story more than a decade ago. Zlite 14:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the suggestion since the topic is on the history of the magazine not the magazine per se. The Zippies were an important and critical element in making Wired a credible source of information about 1990s counterculture. In fact Mark Dery has written about this use and abuse of culture to coolify technology. I'll go get the reference.Ethnopunk 14:03, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

That is not a scaleable strategy. The magazine has covered many tens of thousands of stories in its history, most of which were also covered by other magazines. Unless a particular story changed the magazine itself, which is clearly not the case here, I doesn't belong in the magazine's entry. The Zippies were one of hundreds of stories Wired covered about 1990s counterculture. If all of them were to be merged here, this entry would collapse into incoherence. Please take your Zippies elsewhere.


 * Your argument doesn't hold water, since 1. It was a cover story, 2. It marked the change from Wired being a quarterley to a monthly magazine. 3. Wired were instrumental in creating the Zippies as a media story, 4. John Battelle turned up the volume and commissioned Jules Marshall to write the story 5. The story was used to pump Hotwired, the first time in history that a youth movement was deployed in the service of technology to Wireds' profit. I vote that the entry stays.Ethnopunk 10:11, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Nonsense. 1) so have 180 other stories. Should they all be merged here? 2) That was unrelated 3) That's a fine point to mention in the Zippies entry, not here 4) ditto 5) also unrelated. I'm going to revert this one more time and then escalate it to Wikipedia management if this continues.


 * Please do, since point 5 is definitely related, and probably a world-first. Remember this was the early days of the internet and Wired executives wanted to get in on the action. I'm not prepared to have this moment in history airbrushed into a one-side history that disobeys the fundemental NPOV of wiki. YOu should try reading Cyberselfish. Ethnopunk 13:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Needless to say, the creation of Hotwired has nothing to do with this, or any other specific story. It was simply the online side of the magazine. I realize that Zippies are very important to you, but as someone who knows all the Wired excutives at the time I can assure you that it was just one of many stories and had no more influence on the magazine's strategy than any other. My point is only that no single story should be merged into this entry.


 * Try looking at Wired, July 1994 page 133, there's a whole advertisement there for Hotwired and the Zippies. I would hate to see history being written by Wired's execs. I don't accept your point since I also have a personal letter from Jules Marshall the author of the piece in which he clearly states that Battelle asked him to pump up the whole thing. The zippies didn't influence Wired's strategy, Wired influenced the Zippies, and for that, I'm not exactly grateful and in fact quite aggrieved at the whole episode which took on a life of its own Ethnopunk 11:28, 18 August 2006 (UTC).

One should also put in something about the Zippies making Wired's top three worst stories of the decade. Surely you haven't forgotten that gem of a nugget?Ethnopunk 11:28, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I've gone and put in the reference to the page with the Hotwired and the Zippies advert and note that cyberselfish is included under the section "Backlash". If we can't reach consensus, then my compromise suggestion is to put the piece under criticism of Wired, along with cyberselfish.

Ethnopunk 13:37, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate the effort to find a compromise. The factual information as far at it concerns Wired itself seems reasonble and I've left it in. I've removed the allegations about Battelle, which are unsourced and (because they discuss motivation) probably unverifiable. [User:Zlite]


 * Thanks, I accept the compromise.Ethnopunk 14:07, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Needs more embedded references
I replaced these two tags

with this one.

Let's get more embedded references, if possible. - Bevo 00:40, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Gibson singapore wired cover.jpeg
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BetacommandBot 22:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Unnecessary and/or Biased Section: "The Ron Paul Controversy"
Though I am perhaps not the most educated person on the subject, it seems to me that the section "The Ron Paul Controversy" is unnecessary for someone interested in the larger history of Wired magazine. If it is important, there should be a source cited explaining the importance of this specific event given the long history of controversial Wired articles. Also, the current text of this section is highly biased, factually incorrect, and does not link to the original Wired article:. For example, "...becoming upset for being degraded as less than human," has the tone of someone personally upset by the article, not an unbiased editor. Also the claim that, "Stirland has continued to post critical blog posts," unless another article has come out in the twelve days since the original that I have not seen on wired.com, is simply not true. If it is true, again, an external link should be provided.

I am new to Wikipedia Talk pages, so I apologize if I am doing something incorrectly, but my suggestions are (in order of what makes the most sense to me): a) removing the section entirely because it is unimportant for someone interested in learning about Wired Magazine, or b) rewriting it with external sources and less biased text, e.g., changing the last two sentences to: "This article led to a highly polemic conversation, including over 200 comments on Stirland's post, several comments on a fake Rudy Giuliani forum by someone pretending to be Stirland and claiming that she had been paid by the Giuliani campaign to post fraudulent information, and a YouTube video based on the Giuliani forum comments that was viewed over 16,000 times." It should also probably mention the other controversial Wired post on the subject:.

Cremlae 03:25, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Of the opinion that the incident is noteworthy if not no other reason that putting Wired's integrity to the test (and, of course, relating to the upcoming elections). I suggest briefly mentioning the controversy and linking to a page explaining it (whether that is a Wikipedia page or not). --AlanH (talk) 23:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

State of Wired in 2004
Werner, two updates worth noting:

After suffering with the rest of the tech category after the bust, the magazine (which is part of Conde Nast) has been growing again, both in circulation and in ad pages

The website, meanwhile, has been sold to Daum, a South Korea portal, along with the rest of Lycos —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zlite (talk • contribs) 13:15, 3 September 2004 (UTC)

Crooked behavior
They've become crooked of late, sending collection agency letters to subscribers who fail to renew the magazine subscriptions. So if you subscribe and then later don't like &  drop out, you can be assured that they will threaten you and ding your credit rating. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.37.199.99 (talk) 18:33, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Format change
Sometime within the last year or two, Wired Magazine switched from their previous fairly unique square-ish thick format to the more standard magazine size. Does anyone know or have any sources for when this happened? This should probably be mentioned in the article, as this is the exact information I was looking for. Peaceduck — Preceding undated comment added 06:59, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Coordinates?
I noticed this article about a magazine has coordinates, I don't think this is normal for articles about magazines is it? They're normally for geographic articles. I don't think the coordinates are really needed here. -- &oelig; &trade; 22:10, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Weird - no mention of Wired Science TV show?
I'm no expert on this topic, but it did exist and should be mentioned. W@ntonsoup (talk) 17:06, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Early issue numbering
Back in 1993 issues of Wired were named like issue 1.1, not as 1.01 as presently known as on the Wired website. For proof I scanned in the first content page of issue 1.4. SpeakFree (talk) 15:12, 8 May 2011 (UTC)== Merge Wired (website) ==

I suggest to merge Wired (website) into this page, as the subjects are closely related (most of the content on this page also applies to the website), and Wired (website) doesn't have enough content for it's own page. The pages are separate because the website was spun of to a separate company in the 1990s to 2006, but now they are one business again, I don't see why we should keep the pages separate. Everything interesting that happened while it was split off, is in HotWired. Lonaowna (talk) 07:33, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Sounds reasonable.--Cúchullain t/ c 20:13, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

No objections, done. Lonaowna (talk) 21:44, 18 March 2017 (UTC)== Purging external links from text ==

Lexor, "wikification" that removes external links from within the text strikes me as profoundly anti-Web, even if it is apparently Wikipedia practice. The power of the Web is its ability to easily and seemlessly connect the user to knowledge. Systematically replacing external links with internal links to a Wikipedia page that doesn't exist and then moving the link to the bottom of the page reserved for References (when they aren't "references" but the actual thing itself) does not seem to me to be an improvement. That this is being done to an entry about a Web pioneer is even more ironic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 0Z (talk • contribs) 22:00, 13 October 2004 (UTC)