Wikipedia
The Story of Jimmy Wales and Bomis Babes
In an interview with Wired News, Wikipedia leader Jimmy Wales renewed his objection to the statement that Bomis Babes was pornographic: If R-rated movies are soft porn, it was porn. In other words, no, it was not. That description is inaccurate. If you're not exceptionally proud of the erotic web site you ran before the dot-com bust, a defense that hinges on the definition of soft pornography probably won't help matters. As someone who grew up after cable television and before the web, I ... (read more)Wikipedia Founder Looks Out for Number 1
I spent a little time this morning expanding the Wikipedia biography of Gordon Keith, a dark-humored and hilarious radio host on the Dallas sportstalk station KTCK. Having a biography in Wikipedia is a double-edged sword, as John Siegenthaler Sr. can attest. You get the perks of being in an encyclopedia at the peril that any crank in the world can contribute unflattering or libelous things to it. When I added my own biography in a misguided experiment last August, I didn't realize that some ... (read more)Podcasting: You're Soaking In It!
Jewish lesbian shock jock Madge Weinstein kicked my "S" yesterday during a 10-minute rant about Adam Curry's role in podcasting: You gotta realize, and I didn't realize this until I started getting more popular with my podcasts, when people blog ---- -- ----, did I spill my water? no -- when people blog ---- -- I'm resting the microphone on my fat, now. You're going to get mike noise, I'm sorry, and it's going to be all bad. This is bad. You know, it's all bad. When people blog things a lot of ... (read more)2005/12/13Podcasting: Accept No Imitations
Randall Stross, New York Times, July 3, 2005: "Podcast" is an ill-chosen portmanteau that manages to be a double misnomer. A podcast does not originate from an iPod. And it is not a broadcast sent out at a particular time for all who happen to receive it. Steven Chen, China Daily, Sept. 8, 2005: The term podcast, a portmanteau of two words, broadcasting and iPod, Apple Computer's now ubiquitous music player is something of a misnomer, since such files do not need either an iPod or a portable ... (read more)
A Hundred Visions and Revisions of Podcasting
I don't want to get into an argument with Adam Curry, because he has better production values. It was a relief not to be criticized in stereo during his 40-minute mea culpa on Friday's podcast of Daily Source Code. I'm one of the only people who had no role in the history of podcasting. I was around when Curry asked Dave Winer to add the enclosure element to RSS and Radio UserLand in 2001, but I thought it was a dumb idea that would never go anywhere. My opinion was something along the lines ... (read more)Adam Curry Caught in Sticky Wiki
Former MTV veejay and podcasting entrepreneur Adam Curry appears to have been caught anonymously editing the podcasting entry on Wikipedia to remove credit from other people and inflate his role in its creation. When someone edits Wikipedia without logging in to a user account, the IP address is recorded to guard against abuse. Four times this year, an IP address controlled by Curry, 82.108.78.107, has made revisions involving the early history of podcasting. On Feb. 5, someone at Curry's ... (read more)Britannica Editor Throws Book at Wikipedia
The Guardian newspaper asked several experts to evaluate a Wikipedia entry in their area of expertise, including the former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica, who critiqued encyclopedia. Wikipedia's a moving target, which makes it tough to criticize. Errors cited by the Britannican were corrected by Wikipedians before his review saw print: It is clear that the critic is commenting on an earlier version of the article -- for example, the typo he takes pains to note was already ... (read more)Breaking News Coverage on Wikipedia Takes Flight
As I write this, a JetBlue Airways plane carrying 140 passengers is preparing for an emergency landing in Los Angeles. The incident has been in the JetBlue entry of Wikipedia for more than an hour: On 21 September 2005 at 7:55 PM Eastern Standard Time, the New York Times reported that JetBlue Airways Flight 292 was in the process of dumping fuel in preparation for an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport following a failure of the front landing gear during retraction. When I ... (read more)Wikipedia: The Agony of Delete
The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article on Wikipedia are disputed. I have been recommended for deletion from Wikipedia. For the next five days, Wikipedians will be having a public debate about whether I am too obscure to be included in the world's largest encyclopedia. Weak Keep: Not as important as the author seems to think ... Delete: Writing a book itself does not mean the person should be included. I looked up the books on Amazon and their sales rankings are #30,000 and ... (read more)Wikipedia's a Sticky Wicket
The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article on Wikipedia are disputed. The Los Angeles Times gave up its wikitorial experiment after three days. Someone got their goat by adding one of the web's most infamous gross-out photos to the site. Jeff Jarvis defends the honor of wikis, blaming the Times: They didn't get that wikis are a collaborative medium where, even when people disagree, they try to find common ground, knowing there can be only one outcome, or else the wiki will, by its ... (read more)
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