Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-10-26/In the news

Portrait of a Wikipedian
The Washington Post featured a story last Friday on Wikipedian User:Epicadam (Adam Lewis) and his work on bringing the Washington, D.C. article to featured status. EpicAdam joined Wikipedia in Spring 2008 and in May 2008, announced his intention to make improvements to the Washington, D.C. article. In July, the article passed as a featured article candidate, and was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page on January 20, 2009 (Inauguration Day). Washington Post reporter Michael Rosenwald also quoted User:AgnosticPreachersKid, who described EpicAdam as "very, very courteous" when making edits on Wikipedia. Since the article was published, a number of readers have left various comments and suggestions on Talk:Washington, D.C.

Jimmy Wales a partner in HP Magazine Project
Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, reported Wednesday that he has entered a partnership with Hewlett-Packard Computer Systems that will allow Wikia users to create and print magazines. This new partnership aims to boost the reading of information by allowing users to personalize what they read. Wales stated Wednesday, "We are doing all kinds of things like that to think about ways to sustain this idea of participatory culture." Using HP's new Mag Cloud, users will be able to select the content to be included in their magazine from Wikia's 3 million pages of information. Users then select an image for their cover, then publish them on Mag Cloud, where they will be ready to purchase.

Briefly

 * As reported by William Beutler of "The Wikipedian" blog, the former director of the CIA Michael Hayden was recently on CNN talking about his occasional use of Wikipedia.
 * David Shankbone's brief encounter with Susan Sarandon in which she said she didn't know what Wikipedia was, was picked up by Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog on The Atlantic.
 * An article in Library Journal, a news publication for librarians, highlighted the issue of archives and libraries contributing to Wikipedia in their report on a workshop last week called "Building on Our Strengths: Opportunities for Special Collections in the Digital Age." Several discussions about making archives freely available online (including on Wikipedia) were had at the workshop, and this case study from the University of Washington's libraries is discussed in the article.