Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-04-26/In the news

Der Spiegel looks at how the sausage gets made on German Wikipedia
An article that appeared in last week's edition of German magazine Der Spiegel is available online in English: "Backstage with the Wikipedians: Inner Workings of Global Encyclopedia 'Better than a Soap Opera'". As an example, the article examined a controversy over a single word in the German Wikipedia's article about the Donauturm (a tower in Vienna, Austria), which began last fall and produced over 600,000 characters of discussion (assembled, tongue-in-cheek, into a 440-page book available from Pediapress). Der Spiegel interviewed several Wikipedians and also quotes sociologist Christian Stegbauer.

Briefly

 * Jimmy Wales is featured as one of the commentators in the new documentary America: The Story of Us on the History channel.
 * Larry Sanger has published an article, "Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age", in EDUCAUSE Review; Sanger criticizes the idea that resources like Wikipedia are replacing the need for memorization in education.
 * A BBC news blog, in discussing the retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, notes that "Wikipedia briefly suggested today he was unique in other ways, but the entry, which had the bow tie-wearing nonagenarian down as the former bass player with Led Zeppelin was later removed...", a reference to John Paul Jones.
 * In "Judges rap Wiki-evidence in immigration cases", The Globe and Mail reports that Canadian officials have used quotes from Wikipedia in rejecting immigrants and asylum seekers (see also Wikipedia as a court source).