Knol, Google's single-author answer to Wikipedia, has gone live. Or at least beta. Early beta. While there is a great Knol (defined by Google as "a unit of knowledge") on unclogging a toilet, it still has a way to go, as can be seen by contrasting Wikipedia on Knol and Knol on Wikipedia.
posted on Jul 23, 2008 - View this thread

XKCD mocks Wikipedia's "in popular culture" sections. Wikipedians take the idea seriously. The article ("Wood"). goes on lockdown. But is adding correct, even if useless, information really WikiVandalism?
posted on Jul 7, 2008 - View this thread

Wikipedia Updater Fired For Scooping NBC on Tim Russert's Death -- "When Tim Russert collapsed ten days ago, his colleagues at NBC held off reporting the news for almost two hours so his family wouldn't hear about it from the media....The news appeared on Wikipedia 40 minutes before the NBC report, with all of the verbs in Tim's entry changed from present tense to past. It appeared on the New York Times's web site 5 minutes before the NBC story. It zipped around Twitter all afternoon. According to the New York Times, the person who updated the Wikipedia entry 40 minutes before NBC reported it worked at Internet Broadcasting Services, a company that provides web services to TV stations including NBC affiliates."
posted on Jun 23, 2008 - View this thread

Ever wonder what music videos were popular the week Lorena Bobbit cut off her husband's penis and the Unabomber injured computer scientist David Gelernter at Yale University? Or what about the week The Simpsons first went on air? Grabb.it TV has the answer. It aggregates the top 20 music videos for each week of the 80s and 90s and mashes them up with wikipedia to make the ultimate virtual retro music video station.
posted on May 27, 2008 - View this thread

Google Maps now integrates with Wikipedia (click "More" tab). Concharto is a geographic wiki for documenting historical events. Flick also has a map service.
posted on May 14, 2008 - View this thread

New Books In History. Historian Marshall Poe talks with other historians about their newly published books.
posted on Apr 18, 2008 - View this thread

Biographicon : crowd-sourcing non-notables.
posted on Apr 1, 2008 - View this thread

[Former Novell chief scientist] Jeff Merkey,... claims [Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy] Wales told him in 2006 that in exchange for a substantial donation from Merkey, he would edit his uncomplimentary Wikipedia entry to make it more favourable. Merkey made a $US5000 ([AU]$5455) donation in 2006... around the same time, Wales personally made changes to [Merkey's Wikipedia] entry after wiping it out completely and ordering editors to start over.

But it's all in a good cause, to keep Wikipedia ad-free, right? Well, no, according to Danny Wool, Wales's former "right-hand man" at Wikipedia: Wool says Wales used the contributions to pay for, among other things, Russian massages and as much as $650 on wine for a dinner for four, while Wales traveled at Wikipedia's expense. And though Wikipedia paid his expenses, Wool claims that Wales kept the proceeds: "At one point [Wales] owed the Foundation some $30,000 in receipts, and this while we were preparing for the audit. Not a bad sum, considering that many of those trips had fat honoraria, which Jimbeau kept for himself."
posted on Mar 11, 2008 - View this thread

Wikipedia page hit statistics (finally).
posted on Mar 5, 2008 - View this thread

Animal magnetism, or testiment to the stupidity of the male species. Rachel Marsden, the right-wing pundit better known in Canada for a series of scandals in her personal life, has apparently had a messy breakup with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Marsden is currently selling off Wales' belongings on Ebay.
posted on Mar 3, 2008 - View this thread

Nicholson Baker, who in his book, Double Fold, argued for saving newspaper collections, explores "The Charms of Wikipedia" with insightful and hilarious results. He also has a new book, Human Smoke, coming out (excerpt)
posted on Feb 29, 2008 - View this thread

The Wikimedia Commons Picture(s) of the Year 2007.
posted on Feb 9, 2008 - View this thread

The Cult of Wikipedia - An expose by The Register on conflict of interest at Wikipedia.
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - View this thread

It was revealed last week that former Wikipedia Chief Operating Officer Carolyn Doran was a convicted felon, her prior record includes four convictions for driving under the influence, two of check fraud and petty larceny, one hit and run with fatality, one unlawful wounding for shooting a former boyfriend, suspect in a murder case, and some suspicion surrounding the drowning death of her newlywed husband. Senior Wikipedians are "shocked", and the waves are still reverberating as apparently something totally secret and big is going down at the Foundation (that runs Wikipedia) that may radically alter the board for better or worse.
posted on Dec 19, 2007 - View this thread

Google takes on Wikipedia with Knol. The web responds. Invite only, of course.
posted on Dec 14, 2007 - View this thread

Live anonymous edits to the English Wikipedia on a Google map in real-time. (The FAQ)
posted on Oct 30, 2007 - View this thread

The 8 Most Needlessly-Detailed Wikipedia Entries
posted on Sep 28, 2007 - View this thread

We've discussed Simple English Wikipedia, and descriptions of other languages in English, but have you tried reading wikipedia in Scots? You asked if Scots is a language? How about any of the other 253 languages of Wikipedia?
posted on Sep 5, 2007 - View this thread

Tonight I present to you Wikipedia articles that are too technical. Warning: Your brain may explode.
posted on Aug 30, 2007 - View this thread

People vandalising Wikipedia is hardly a new thing but now even the office of the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, is getting into the act. Website Wiki-Scanner (previously) has traced several edits to Wikipedia articles by the Prime Ministers staff, according to Australian newspaper The Courier Mail. And they aren't confined solely to the Wikipedia entry on the PM himself; there was even an act of vandalism on a martial-arts related entry, in which one of Howard's ministerial staffers wrote, “Poo bum dicky wee wee” on the page. Not good news on the eve of a federal election that the PM is largely expected to lose. Meanwhile, 'new media' is being put to good use at Opposition leader Kevin Rudd's website, Kevin07, where a recent blog entry compiles Youtube's 'best' political videos. Hours of fun for the whole family!
posted on Aug 23, 2007 - View this thread

See who's editing Wikipedia. The most shameful Wikipedia spin jobs and another one from Fox News. Meet Virgil Griffith and find a few interesting Wikipedia battles of your own with his new creation.
posted on Aug 14, 2007 - View this thread

How to build a fast offline Wikipedia reader using open-source tools in two days
posted on Aug 14, 2007 - View this thread

The human network is the paradigm and the infrastructure which supports social software.
posted on Jun 25, 2007 - View this thread

Wikipedia claims it has an accuracy rate similar to that of Encyclopedia Britannica. But are Wikipedia articles accurate enough to be relied on? The media frequently cite to the free encyclopedia despite a chance the information might be wildly inaccurate. In an effort to improve the accuracy and quality of articles, Wikipedia's internal editorial team has assessed and graded the content of 300,000 articles (out of 1.8 million articles in English alone.) One obvious way to improve accuracy is to reveal editor names, such as on the Citizendium (as previously posted on MeFi.) A simpler idea, however, might rely on a color scheme to automatically alert users to the accuracy of the article (or lack thereof).
posted on Jun 14, 2007 - View this thread

Fun with Wikipedia. Try Catfishing, where you guess the article based on the often idiosyncratic Wikipedia categories to which it has been assigned. The related Wiki'd Game involves guessing a topic based on the first seven Wikipedia internal links to it. Or find the shortest path between two concepts (try using the fascinating Omipelagos, which does so automatically) or race to get from one topic to another. Most recently, Something Awful developed the concept of Wikigroaning. [A few challenges inside]
posted on Jun 5, 2007 - View this thread

Why waste time on playing roleplaying games or writing pastiches when you can actually worship Cthulhu? Join an existing Cthulhu cult or form your own!. They've got a book and everything! (though it may contain big chunks of wiki-plagarism). As ever, the ability to rock a traditionalist shaved-head-and-goatee satanist look considered a plus.
posted on Apr 29, 2007 - View this thread

Lightsaber Combat. Far more than you ever wanted to know. Part of the magic that is the Star Wars Portal on wikipedia.
posted on Apr 11, 2007 - View this thread

Wikipedia/Essjay/‘New Yorker’ updates The New Yorker denies ever offering to pay the expenses of “Essjay” (“Ryan Jordan”), the Wikipedia administrator with the fraudulent credentials. The Wikipedia Weekly podcast, Episode 14 (not transcribed yet), at about 12:30, reports:

I actually did correspond with the deputy editor of the New Yorker... and I asked them specifically: Did Miss Schiff ever ask Essjay for his real full name during the course of reporting? [...] They came out with this, which I don’t think has been published anywhere yet...: “I think that between our Editors’ Note and the Times story, it’s clear what happened. The only thing that hasn’t come up before is the question of expenses. So, for the record, Stacy Schiff never offered to reimburse Essjay for his telephone expenses or anything else. [And] Essjay did tell her that if she wanted to cover them, she could send a cheque to the Wikipedia Foundation, which she did not.”

posted on Mar 17, 2007 - View this thread

The New Yorker appends a correction (scroll to bottom)... It seems that Essjay, an inner-circle Wikipedian favored by Jimbo Wales, has been lying about his "credentials " to everyone for years, including to The New Yorker (covered previously prior to correction.)
posted on Feb 28, 2007 - View this thread

"Tired of the LIBERAL BIAS every time you search on Google and a Wikipedia page appears?" At Conservapedia, a "conservative encyclopedia you can trust," you can learn that "faith" is a concept "exclusive to Christianity," and about how Wikipedia is biased in matters such as its description of the Bell Trade Act of 1946, its gossipy treatment of the private life of NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, and its seeming acceptance of evolution. The Wikipedia bias entry also complains of a "rant" against the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a group for which Conservapedia founder (and son of conservative gadfly Phyllis Schafly) Andrew Schlafly has worked. Signups are here; its take on evolution is criticized here.
posted on Feb 23, 2007 - View this thread

The Wikipedia List of Unusual Articles. Including popular favorites such as Raining Animals, Penis Panic, The Utah Teapot, The Jesus Nut, The Mexican Perforation, and The Liver-Eating Johnson. But wait, there's more! Sweater Curse! Turtles All The Way Down! Acoustic Kitty! (Seriously, WTF CIA?) The Ding Hai Effect. Blue Peacock, the Chicken Powered Nuclear Bomb. Chess-Related Deaths, ETAOIN SHRDLU, Alien Hand Syndrome, Colors of Noise, Drake's Plate of Brass, and Mole Day. Click now and they'll also include List of Songs in English Labled the Worst Ever and the List of Songs Whose Title Constitutes The Entire Lyrics free of charge!! Had enough? Succumb to the Flynn Effect but watch out for Exploding Head Syndrome!
posted on Jan 29, 2007 - View this thread

Microsoft has been caught paying for Wikipedia edits. But wasn't this inevitable? Now that Wikipedia has become the de facto online reference, wasn't it inevitable that it would attract governments, corporates and other groups to create their own version of events. Is this an inherent and fatal flaw in open source knowledge?
posted on Jan 24, 2007 - View this thread

Wikiseek. A better way to search Wikipedia.
posted on Jan 16, 2007 - View this thread

Wikiasari search engine. Wikipedia founder plans to offer a new search engine using "the same network of followers" for the process. “Essentially, if you consider one of the basic tasks of a search engine, it is to make a decision: ‘this page is good, this page sucks’,” Mr Wales said. “Computers are notoriously bad at making such judgments, so algorithmic search has to go about it in a roundabout way. But we have a really great method for doing that ourselves,” he added. “We just look at the page. It usually only takes a second to figure out if the page is good, so the key here is building a community of trust that can do that.”
posted on Dec 24, 2006 - View this thread

"YES! YES! YES!" He's got a website, 200+ photos on flickr, fans documenting their run-ins on youtube ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5]), is the subject of a documentary, and even has an inspiring backstory. (I won't mention the inevitable myspace page.) But life is not all red Santa hats and pushups for David "Zanta" Zancai, 36, of Toronto. A local TV station got him banned from downtown, Toronto's subway won't let him do his bare-knuckle schtick on trains, and now even the bitter pedants on Wikipedia wants him deleted. Pissed? Email him!
posted on Dec 6, 2006 - View this thread

Wikipedia Brown - a minimystery for the internet generation.
posted on Nov 20, 2006 - View this thread

That clever Ryan North fellow has come up with a fool proof plan to solve wikipedia's vandalism problem. Trouble..
posted on Nov 8, 2006 - View this thread

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales asks: Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you like to see purchased and released under a free license? Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific, be general, brainstorm, have fun with it. And they do.
posted on Oct 22, 2006 - View this thread

These institutions have one very clear problem: they promote facts and books. Clearly something needs to be done. Call your local police or FBI field office or speak clearly into the closest potted plant to give the NSA all pertinent information regarding these and other terrorist elements. View a rough sketch of Hell. What we're doing is bringing democracy to knowledge.
posted on Oct 19, 2006 - View this thread

ABC Australia reports on plagiarism of Wikipedia by traditional media.
posted on Oct 9, 2006 - View this thread

Wikipedia gets forked.
posted on Sep 16, 2006 - View this thread

Wikipedia's lamest edit wars
posted on Sep 6, 2006 - View this thread

Wikipedia: Featured pictures (plus candidates) Fellow arachnophobes beware!
posted on Sep 2, 2006 - View this thread

Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism. An essay by Jaron Lanier.
posted on Aug 15, 2006 - View this thread

Websites that changed the world? This Observer piece lists fifteen websites that aught to be considered the best of the web. It's a bold claim and although the potted histories are excellent, I'm wondering the extent to which it mostly includes website that have broken the public recognition barrier in the uk rather than changing the world. How many are simply pioneers in their field? Where for example is flickr?
posted on Aug 13, 2006 - View this thread

[Login required] At Wikimania 2006, Founder Admits Wikipedia's Shortcomings and Announces New Projects At this past weekend's conference, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, acknowledged that "[it] is not as good as [Encylopaedia] Britannica yet" and spurred contributors to "improve the quality of existing...articles instead of rushing to create new ones." Wales also announced a number of new initiatives involving One Laptop Per Child, Wikiversity, and the German version of the encylopedia. Stanford University professor Lawrence Lessig cheered Wikipedia for playing an important role in "democratizing knowledge" and spurring a new burst of individual creativity.
posted on Aug 7, 2006 - View this thread

Prolific Canadian Is King of Wikipedia Simon Pulsifer, posting as SimonP, is reported to be "the world's most prolific author on...Wikipedia,with 78,000 entries edited and 2,000 to 3,000 new articles to his name." Although highly regarded by his fellow Wikipedians, Pulsifer describes his 3- to 4-hour-a-day efforts as "an addiction".
posted on Aug 6, 2006 - View this thread

Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence. Founding Fathers, Patriots, Mr. T. Honored.
posted on Aug 5, 2006 - View this thread

Wikiality: the reality that the majority of people agree upon. Stephen Colbert is at it again, provoking some chaos in his segment, "The Word," by asking viewers to change the Wikipedia entry on elephants to say that the population has tripled in the last three months. How can Wikipedia deal with the problem of vandalism? Here's an interesting article from the New Yorker about "the world’s most ambitious vanity press."
posted on Aug 1, 2006 - View this thread

PediaPress. Print-on-demand compendiums of Wikipedia articles.
posted on Jul 18, 2006 - View this thread