Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-10-15/In the media

Beatles debate on the front page
This week saw a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal (the largest newspaper in the U.S. by circulation) on editorial debates in Wikipedia. The story focused on the title-naming dispute surrounding the Beatles article, and specifically the RfC on whether the "the" in the band's name should be capitalized or not.

This isn't the first time The Beatles (or is it "the" Beatles?) has shown up in the press: a 2009 Telegraph story named it as the number-two read article on Wikipedia, behind the eponymous (and often accidentally reached) wiki.

As of this writing, there were 45 comments on the Wall Street Journal story, many of them debating the capitalization point itself, while others raised the question of whether consensus on Wikipedia was a viable decision-making model. The most recommended comment opined "They argue so loud because the stakes are so low...."

The results of the RfC will be announced next week.

Conflicts of interest
Since the last installment of In the media, a few stories reported on the controversy surrounding GibraltarpediA (see the Signpost's 24 September detailed report and the followup on 1 October). The Telegraph ran a story on 2 October, following the publication of two more CNET stories by Violet Blue, who first wrote about the story.

In brief

 * Does writing Wikipedia make you a better scholar?: Martin Poulter asks this question (and answers it affirmatively) for a blog post.
 * Metro on editing: The Metro, a widely-read free commuter paper in the UK, interviewed David Gerard for a story on "the role of a Wikipedian," focused on the day-to-day activity of editing.
 * DMCA debacle: a number of tech press outlets, including Mashable, Torrentfreak, Gizmodo, Infoworld, and the BBC (which was also served with a takedown notice) covered the issue of Microsoft's mistakenly serving DMCA notices to a number of sites, including Wikipedia (covered in last week's News and notes.)
 * Finweek interview: Finweek, a South African business magazine, interviewed Jimmy Wales.
 * Haymarket heard: An October 3rd story on Morning Edition (an NPR news show) revisited the issue of the Haymarket riots with Professor Timothy Messer-Kruse; Steven Walling was interviewed.
 * Torah scholarship: A piece in the Jewish Voice outlined the work of Bill Dauster, who has contributed significant Torah scholarship as well as in-depth U.S. Congressional knowledge to Wikipedia.
 * Armenian conference: The Armenian Reporter described the Yerevan WikiConference, held in Yerevan on September 8–9.