Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-08-28/In the news

ABC News plagiarizes Wikipedia?
First reported by blogger Christopher Blizzard, an article on ABC News online appears to have lifted a sentence from Wikipedia article Parasitic twin. An entry on the phenomenon of Fetus in fetu, a rare form of a parasitic twin, was submitted by Emperorbma in April 2004. The ABC News article from 23 August, 2006 appears to borrow a sentence nearly word-for-word from the article. The claim is discussed in more detail on Talk:Parasitic twin.

Media covers experimental German editing procedure
A feature to, by default, withhold displaying edits until the edits have been checked by a "trusted user", is set to be enabled on the German Wikipedia (see for details German page approval solution). Stories were published about the plan in the following publications:


 * Der Spiegel
 * CNet
 * ArsTechnica
 * BBC News

The BBC News piece pointed out that the policy, if implemented generally, could have an adverse effect on the way users perceive Wikipedia. In response to another user pointing out inaccuracies in the article, Jimbo Wales commented: "The journalist is typical of bad journalists. Running with only the slimmest of understanding, he pukes out his biases about how the world works with little concern for underlying facts." The article has now (8/29) been updated by the author with responses to criticism of the article. He has also blogged about the way that the issue was addressed by the Wikipedia community

Other articles:

 * The New York Times covered discussions at Wikimania on the low participation in African languages.
 * Russian article on the Russian Wikipedia's 100,000th article.
 * The Wichita Eagle published two articles on partisanship in Kansas political articles (particularly Sam Brownback).