Wikipedia stories
We have collected various bits and pieces on everyone’s favourite libre encyclopedia for you. The Indie takes an hyperbolic look at the WikiMania conference in Frankfurt, and — lest we get carried away — The Sydney Morning Herald is on hand to fill us with doubt concerning a couple of hoaxes that have cropped up recently. The Guardian, never short of praise for the Wiki, has an op–ed piece from David McKie, almost entirely sourced from the encyclopedia, which concerns itself with noting various apocryphal misquotations and everyday misattributions — exactly the kind of “common knowledge” errors which the Wikipedia is occasionally accused of perpetuating.
The site has again won applause for its coverage of a disaster, with Journalism.co.uk, The Digital Divide Network and BBC News all tipping their hat for its reporting of Hurricane Katrina.
Finally, an observation; have you ever tried doing a Google News search for the term “Wikipedia”? More and more respectable news outlets are lending the site further credence by regularly linking to it in articles, both as a reference and as a source of further details on a given subject, e.g. from Market Watch:
A spokesman for the FBI warned of e-mails making bogus appeals for support, a practice known as phishing. Read more at Wikipedia.