Wikipedia

Wikipedia Editor Faces Consequences

One of my favorite short pieces of writing is Douglas Adams' pedantic history of the world, a chronology that notes the start of the new millenium. He must have been sorely disappointed when the events of Jan. 1, 2001, did not transpire as expected. I am a pedant. I once alarmed my relatives in the middle of the night by rearranging their collection of leather-bound Franklin Library Pulitzer Prize classics in the order they won the prize. My brother-in-law, who must also be a pedant, ... (read more)

2007/03/02

Wikipedia Admin Loses His Religion

Seth Finkelstein covers the latest scandal to embarrass Wikipedia: a site administrator and Wikia employee who's been lying for years about his academic credentials. Ryan Jordan, a 24-year-old in Kentucky who's never taught a class, claimed on his Wikipedia bio and in an interview with the New Yorker to be a tenured professor of religion with four degrees: a bachelor of arts in religious studies, master of arts in religion, doctorate of philosophy in theology and doctorate in canon law. The ... (read more)

2007/03/01

Fuzzy Zoeller Sues Over Libelous Wikipedia Page

Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller has sued a Florida company for libel over edits made to his Wikipedia entry from one of the company's computers. Although I reported one of Wikipedia's best-known gaffes -- project founder Jimmy Wales edited his own page to remove credit from a former colleague -- I'm a defender of the project. I think it's an amazing experiment in collective fact-gathering that deserves to be nurtured, no matter how many different ways Seth Finkelstein proves it should've been smothered in ... (read more)

2007/02/22

Amapedia: The Conspicuous Consumption Community Wiki

While browsing Amazon.Com this evening I noticed a reference to Amapedia, a collaborative wiki the company describes as a "community for sharing information about the products you like the most." The site's newly launched, because there's not a single mention yet on Technorati or Google Blog Search and its ... (read more)

2007/01/25

Want Out of Wikipedia? Fight to Stay In

If you dive into the Wikipedia talk page on Seth Finkelstein, you'll find his interesting and utterly futile effort to be deleted from the encyclopedia. Getting a piece in The Guardian isn't helping his claim to be insufficiently famous at all. On the mailing list WikiEN-L, Steve Summit identifies a law of Wikipedia that should become known as the Finkelstein Paradox -- a subject who argues he doesn't belong in Wikipedia is more likely to remain in Wikipedia: I was struck by Seth's account of ... (read more)

2006/10/01

Wikipedia Leader: I Want to Be Deleted

In a provocative commentary for The Guardian, Seth Finkelstein argues that having a biography in Wikipedia is a magnet for libel: For people who are not very prominent, Wikipedia biographies can be an "attractive nuisance". It says, to every troll, vandal, and score-settler: "Here's an article about a person where you can, with no accountability whatsoever, write any libel, defamation, or smear. It won't be a marginal comment with the social status of an inconsequential rant, but rather will be ... (read more)

2006/09/29

Aaron Swartz Running for Wikipedia Board

Aaron Swartz is running for a position on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, an election that began today and ends in three weeks. A contributor to the site since 2003 with around 2,400 edits, Swartz is running in part to help out on the huge engineering requirements of the project: Since January, Wikipedia's traffic has more than doubled and this group is beginning to strain under the load. At the technical level, the software development and server systems are both managed by ... (read more)

2006/09/01

New Wikipedia Subject: Kathy Sierra

All of the talk about last week's BlogHer conference reminded me of an effort I began last December to add overlooked female technologists to Wikipedia. In a discussion with Shelley Powers, I said that the encyclopedia is one area where gender disparity is easy to rectify. Someone just has to take the time to write comprehensive, neutral biographies that will pass muster with the site's editors. A person's presence in Wikipedia tends to attract new bios for people of similar background and ... (read more)

2006/08/02

Bloggers Don't Want Anyone to Name Names

Two of the best-known Daily Kos diarists, Redacted and Expunged, are uncomfortable with people knowing their real names. Redacted discourages the press from identifying him, as he told the Philadelphia Inquirer: ... the 47-year-old blogger who goes by the pen name [Redacted] gave an interview on the condition that I not write what I know about him, because the publicity could hurt his blogging or his job. Let's leave it at this: he works in corporate marketing in the Philadelphia area. He's ... (read more)

2006/06/27

Writer Tells Wikipedia He Got a Divorce

I fleshed out a placeholder entry on Wikipedia this morning, giving the Richardson, Texas, high school where "Jeremy spoke in class today" enough substance to inspire future editors to work on it. I've made around 150 edits to Wikipedia in the past year, most extensively on new bios and the unspeakably hideous "alcopop" drink Zima. Starting new subjects is a lot more fun than defending existing ones from vandalism. My Drudge Retort coconspirator Jonathan Bourne and I worked on the Zima entry as ... (read more)

2006/05/04

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