Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-09-25/In the news

"160 users signed up"
This should be clarified. Sanger is claiming 160 users for the mailing list, not the encyclopedia itself, which of course doesn't exist yet. The mailing list archives show about forty different contributors to the list so far. (A number of those contributors are Wikipedians.) This would suggest that the actual encyclopedia, when it gets going, will not be drawing thousands or even hundreds of contributors, at least initially.

I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about the project. As Wikipedia arbcom member Fred Bauder and others have already pointed out, any good, substantial edits that people make on Citizendium can (and probably will) be copied right back to Wikipedia. That would tend to make the project superfluous, but we'll see. Casey Abell 19:29, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

article list

 * Resulting article: Wikipedia Signpost/2006-09-25/In the news

{| class=wikitable ! width="75px" | Date ! width="250px" | Article Title ! width="120px" | Source ! width="580px" | Summary Quote


 * colspan=3 style="text-align:center; background-color:aliceblue; " |

Wikipedia as source

 * style="background-color:aliceblue; " | see User:Trödel/Signpost


 * 9/17
 * US detaining 14,000 in overseas prisons 'beyond reach of ...
 * JURIST - USA
 * style="font-size:80%;" | ... have been "mistakes." As of September 9, fewer than 1,500 of the Iraq prisoners have been tried by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq [Wikipedia backgrounder]. ...


 * 9/16
 * "The Sting of Ignorance"
 * New York Times
 * style="font-size:80%;" | Author, who is a professor at Harvard Medical School, writes about researching a jellyfish sting remedy: "[A] study published in February in The Medical Journal of Australia.... had conducted a clinical trial that randomly assigned sting victims to application of hot water (to deactivate the poison) or icepacks. The trial was stopped halfway through because the hot-water group did so much better that it would have been unethical to continue. I didn’t discover this through any proprietary medical search engines. I used Google and Wikipedia, and it took about two minutes."


 * colspan=3 style="text-align:center; background-color:aliceblue; " |

Citizendium coverage
Covered last week:
 * style="background-color:aliceblue; " | see User:Trödel/Signpost
 * 1) The Register - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/18/sanger_forks_wikipedia/
 * 2) ZDNet - http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/index.php?p=449 did also


 * 9/18
 * Wikipedia Signpost/2006-09-18/Citizendium
 * Signpost article


 * 9/18
 * Citizendium Forks Wikipedia
 * WebProNews - Lexington, KY, USA
 * style="font-size:80%;" | Skepticism abounds as the co-founder of Wikipedia plans to start a project fork of the anything-goes online encyclopedia with a new project that will abolish ...


 * 9-19
 * New Citizendium to correct Wikipedia's wrongs?
 * Ars Technica - Boston, MA, USA
 * style="font-size:80%;" | Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is starting a Wikipedia competitor. His new Wiki-based Citizendium project (a "citizens' compendium ... "60 users have signed up for the mailing list on Citizendium.com and Mr. Sanger expects that within a month over 500 people will have signed up for the list. He says the wiki will go live September 30 for editors to get things ready. "


 * 9/18
 * Wikipedia Forked by Co-founder
 * Red Herring - CA, USA
 * style="font-size:80%;" | Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger announced Friday what he calls a “fork” from the original user-generated online encyclopedia of information that will ...
 * 9/18
 * Larry Sanger, Citizendium, and the Problem of Expertise
 * Corante
 * style="font-size:80%;" | The interesting thing about Citizendium, Larry Sanger’s proposed fork of Wikipedia designed to add expert review, is how consistent Sanger has been about his ...
 * style="font-size:80%;" | The interesting thing about Citizendium, Larry Sanger’s proposed fork of Wikipedia designed to add expert review, is how consistent Sanger has been about his ...


 * 9/20
 * Citizendium To Be Professional Wikipedia
 * Information Week
 * style="font-size:80%;" | "...it's essentially an indictment of the open Wikipedia model, which has been the subject of legendary abuses and has seen a fair number of "edit wars" in areas that are politically and/or socially charged. Citizendium hopes to change all that by using qualified, trusted experts to make editorial decisions, and by relying on qualified providers and institutions.

But really, this just changes the nature of the underlying problem. Even experts can be susceptible to certain amounts of bias, particularly if they've been involved in the development of their subject area, and this could simply change the participants in the fight, rather than eliminate the fight altogether. "

"In the meantime, however, organizations should consider joining the project in some kind of meaningful partnership role. And preferably soon. At the very least, this may help prevent overly negative content from being published. At best, getting onto the list of experts early should allow for more influence in the direction that relevant coverage areas take. Simply put, if the Citizendium project is going to be using professional experts, then you'll benefit if you don't allow your competitors to become the only voices."


 * 9/20
 * Will Citizendium become Wikipedia 2.0?
 * The Sydney Morning Herald
 * style="font-size:80%;" | Really just the press release juxtaposed with the release of webaroo.


 * 9/21
 * Wikipedia reaches a fork in the road - and takes it
 * The Guardian
 * style="font-size:80%;" | "One of Wikipedia's founders, Larry Sanger, says he plans to rewrite it - as Citizendium, a "citizens' compendium". To succeed, he will probably need to attract many of the people who contribute, or used to contribute, to Wikipedia. But whether the "new Wikipedia" will avoid the problems of the old one, or just create new ones of its own, remains to be seen."


 * date
 * Guerrilla Wikipedians rate rival's chances
 * The Register
 * style="font-size:80%;" | Basically negative coverage of wikipedia and citizendium

"This momentous event has been pored over by bloggers, newspaper columnists and egghead theorists, by the ... er. Well, perhaps as many as half dozen have weighed in...

But for the record, we noticed that there had been no response from the guerrilla group at the heart of the vast bureaucracy that's Wikipedia."


 * 9/23
 * Wikipedia co-founder looks to add accountability, end anarchy
 * San Diego Union-Tribune
 * style="font-size:80%;" | Sanger said he was pleased that Wikipedia was accepting of his new project.

“We will take the best of their articles and edit them and hopefully make them better,” he said. “And they are free to take from our articles. We're in a partnership to a certain extent, two parallel-thinking projects.


 * colspan=3 style="text-align:center; background-color:aliceblue; " |

Acceptance of Wikipedia

 * style="background-color:aliceblue; " | See User:Trödel/Signpost


 * 9/19
 * New centre brings history
 * Edmonton Journal
 * style="font-size:80%;" | ... "I guess the long and short of it is we're trying to avoid Wikipedia," Linda Collier, incoming president of the Historical Society of Alberta, said Monday. ...


 * 9/20
 * Wikipedia chronicles lore, legend, lies
 * The Des Moines Register
 * style="font-size:80%;" | In one fit of mouse clicking, an online curiosity seeker can use Wikipedia to find a number of Iowa towns' strange claims to fame, such as Iowa's "only" porn star from Fonda, diatribes against local citizen ignorance and mechanics who are listed as "notable" citizens.


 * 9/22
 * Wikipedia More Reliable Than Perceived
 * The Daily Campus (University of Connecticut)
 * style="font-size:80%;" | "The popular assumption with Wikipedia is that information in its articles has many flaws since they are not necessarily written by experts on the subject. Though many professors and educators frown upon Wikipedia in a research setting, the information presented in many articles is quite accurate and the validity of the web site should be reconsidered by the public at large."
 * style="font-size:80%;" | "The popular assumption with Wikipedia is that information in its articles has many flaws since they are not necessarily written by experts on the subject. Though many professors and educators frown upon Wikipedia in a research setting, the information presented in many articles is quite accurate and the validity of the web site should be reconsidered by the public at large."


 * 9/22
 * Addicted to Wikipedia
 * The Williams Lake Tribune
 * style="font-size:80%;" | "Still, what excites me even more, is the opportunity to find a mistake on a page, a misrepresentation of a topic, perhaps, or a lengthy paragraph with an obvious bias, and fix it. To participate in the process of making the Wikipedia as good as it can be.

And when it's good, it can be very, very good."


 * 9/23
 * Wikipedia's Place in Academia Questionable
 * ECT News Network (Linux Insider)
 * style="font-size:80%;" | "Research, the cornerstone of academia, has little room for the haphazard information-gathering Wikipedia offers. Wikipedia, as far as education goes, is best left to assist with the seventh-grade history assignment on John F. Kennedy, not the 300-level research paper on the French Revolution.

"There are, of course, caveats to this position. Wikipedia, and other quickly referenced electronic sources, need not be unduly shunned by every person claiming to be of an "educated background." Indeed, there are favorable uses for Wikipedia and the like -- uses that should stay off of one's works cited page."


 * colspan=3 style="text-align:center; background-color:aliceblue; " |

Wikipedia using adsense?

 * style="background-color:aliceblue; " |


 * 9/21
 * Wikipedia Ads on AdSense? "Not Ours," they say.
 * ClickZ Network (Incisive Interactive)
 * style="font-size:80%;" | "It's being speculated that the ads were bought by someone who had links in the crowdsourcing entry, but since Gerard said he has removed all the links in that entry..."


 * colspan=3 style="text-align:center; background-color:aliceblue; " |

China

 * style="background-color:aliceblue; " | see User:Trödel/Signpost


 * 9/18
 * Behind the Great Firewall
 * OhmyNews International
 * style="font-size:80%;" | Like most people these days, I am looking for the answers to these or other questions on Wikipedia, undoubtedly one of the most frequented Web sites of our time. But unlike most of its users, I first have to activate my browser's proxy server before the world's accumulated knowledge will appear on my computer screen. That is because I currently live in China, a country that heavily controls which Web sites its inhabitants can access, and which they cannot. Unfortunately, Wikipedia belongs to a long list of blocked sites in China, and some of its contents remain miraculously hidden even when using a proxy server.
 * style="font-size:80%;" | Like most people these days, I am looking for the answers to these or other questions on Wikipedia, undoubtedly one of the most frequented Web sites of our time. But unlike most of its users, I first have to activate my browser's proxy server before the world's accumulated knowledge will appear on my computer screen. That is because I currently live in China, a country that heavily controls which Web sites its inhabitants can access, and which they cannot. Unfortunately, Wikipedia belongs to a long list of blocked sites in China, and some of its contents remain miraculously hidden even when using a proxy server.


 * 9/21
 * There he goes again, &c.
 * National Review Online
 * style="font-size:80%;" | "In a previous column I cited and quoted from a superb Business Week article that explained how American high-tech companies, such as Cisco, are aiding and abetting the Chinese police..."The founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship" ... "Wikipedia has its faults, but apparently lack of guts or honor is not among them."


 * 9/24
 * Wikipedia Applause
 * The Shenandoah Daily News-Record
 * style="font-size:80%;" | "Several international Internet companies have, in effect, colluded with the Chinese government to silence dissidents. Even Microsoft’s Bill Gates has defended his "get along" policy with the Chinese government.

"However, not everyone is so craven. As the British newspaper Observer reports: "The founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written by its users, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries."


 * colspan=3 style="text-align:center; background-color:aliceblue; " |

Reaching FA status

 * style="background-color:aliceblue; " | "The Cornell Daily Sun" covers the promotion of Cornell University to featured status.


 * 9/19
 * Wikipedia Selects C.U. Page As 'Featured Article' Today
 * The Cornell Daily Sun
 * style="font-size:80%;" | Wikipedia ... elevated the Cornell University page to “Featured Article” status today after impressing Wikipedia editors with its style, completeness and commitment to accuracy.

Benjamin Lowe '04, who worked on the Cornell article for a year, said that the article has come a long way since it was first written in September 2001. “The original article was seven sentences long, and two of the sentences were missing periods,” he said.
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