Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-05-08/In the news

New York Times
Laura Chang, science editor for the New York Times writes on the difficulty of reporting ongoing scientific research: "Even so, do you really want to wait until every finding is textbook-ready? To me, the sidewinding movement toward knowledge is itself interesting, even when the results are inconclusive, and sooner or later the false leads will be identified. Like Wikipedia, science is a self-correcting enterprise." 

More newspapers noting Wikipedia's inner conflicts
An ongoing dispute over the Cuba article was examined in an article by reporter Pablo Bachelet, carried in several Knight Ridder newspapers, including the Miami Herald: "Cuba entry in Wikipedia stirs controversy". The story included a number of excerpts from the debate on the talk page, and also noted aspects such as the fact that the article does not mention the Helms-Burton Act (part of the ongoing United States embargo against Cuba).

The Canada Free Press notes a smaller-scale tug-of-war in the Toronto Port Authority article in "Wikipedia wars", and provides a list of errors in the article. Editors at the article are already researching the issues the journalist mentions, and adding the correct facts to the article.

The Village Voice noted the conflict over the Wikitruth article in an opinion piece at "Wikipedia spars with a splinter site for truth".

Electronic Frontiers Foundation honors Jimmy Wales
As noted last week, Jimmy Wales was given a Pioneer Award on Wednesday, May 3 (see archived story). The award was noted this week at MSNBC and TMCnet. TMCnet also noted that Jimmy will be speaking at "FM 10 Openness: Code, Science and Content", a conference organized by the journal First Monday.

Wikipedia's reliability

 * The Globe and Mail printed three letters to the editors critical of the Globe's editorial last Monday supporting Wikipedia. (see archived story for a summary of the editorial.)
 * "Wikipedia Strikes Again", The Tennessean, Nashville, Tennessee

SEO article targeted for improvement
The search engine optimization and search engine marketing articles have been discussed by SEO expert Bill Slawski (User:Bill Slawski) in his SEO by the SEA blog, in his post "Improving the Wikipedia results for Search Engine Optimization". He felt the existing article was very weak, and says:
 * My hope is that if I make reasonable changes over a period of time, so that I’m not challenging them, nor making them feel as if I’m spamming the page, that some or all of my changes may stand. I guess we’ll see.