Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-08-29/In the news
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Virginia Earthquake: Wikipedia as a news source revisited
Although Wikipedia identifies itself as explicit not a source of news, it is often updated rapidly to reflect current events (for example, its coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake received a favourable writeup from traditional news media). As a result, Wikipedia articles were appearing on the front page of news aggregation service Google News as early as June 2009, and often receive large page view spikes when news break. This was also the case on Tuesday, with an article on the 2011 Virginia earthquake springing up within minutes of the event, and with Hurricane Irene, whose article grew from nothing to over 100kB as the hurricane approached the city of New York in the latter half of the week.
Such rapid growth attracted its own media attention. The Washington Post dedicated a story to the English Wikipedia's article on the Virginia earthquake, noting that "Wikipedians needed just eight minutes to cooly consign the '2011 Virginia earthquake' to history". The Post's coverage was positive, appearing to praise the encyclopedic, historical tone of the coverage, the quick reversion of vandalism to the article, and the merging of another article on the same event. Online news site The Daily Dot looked instead at the Hurricane Irene article, including favourable quotations from editors to the page who explained the difficulties of editing such a popular article.
Wikinews also has articles on the events: Tropical Storm Irene passes over New York and Magnitude 5.8 earthquake in Virginia felt up and down U.S. east coast. In addition to specific coverage of the Wikipedia articles, a number of news organisations quoted Wikipedia articles for facts and figures on the events and similar ones from history.
Wikipedia's endemic left-wing bias?
Pulling no punches, David Swindle kicked off a series of articles for FrontPageMag analysing the political slant of Wikipedia, proposing to show How the Left Conquered Wikipedia. He does this firstly by comparing specific articles from opposite sides of the U.S. political spectrum, and showing how in each pairing the "liberal" personality or organisation receives a more favourable writeup (he does not appear, however, to have attempted a systematic analysis of all pages from each side). In articles that appear well-referenced, he also notes the low percentage of sources used in these articles that he would characterise as "conservative", compared to the relatively high percentage of "liberal" sources. Swindle adds that articles on "leftists" may include controversy, but only where the subject has apologised for their error, thus "transforming a failing into a chance to show the subject's humanity".
After a brief interlude discussing the vulnerability of Wikipedia
Brief notes
- The Economist found itself in hot water with Hindu readers over its reliance on Wikipedia's characterisation of lingham, a form of Lord Shiva, as a "phallic symbol".
- Pravda Online weighed in on the imminent demise of Wikipedia, comparing its importance to that of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia for previous generations, and gloomily asserting that "Most likely, the encyclopedia is no longer the medium for the people."
- The British Library Editathon, held in June, was covered in The New Yorker.
- The day-long scavenger hunt Wikipedia Takes Montreal, which took place on August 28, was highlighted in The Canadian Press and on the blog of Tourism Montreal.
- In the first of a series of posts looking at the use of Wikipedia for marketing, SocialFresh asked "Wikipedia for Marketing, Should Your Business Use It?"
- XXL, a magazine devoted to "hip-hop on a higher level", revealed the existence of a "Wikipedia Rap" (download) by impresario Skyzoo in the final installment of his The Penny Freestyle series. The rapper was presumably inspired by the pioneering "Bold I Be" by User:Scartol.
Discuss this story
Original research?
I suggest you buy a copy of the New Yorker and read the article about the work session at the British Library. I checked only one Wikipedia entry resulting from the Wiki-work, Ruth Traill, and I marked it as Original Research and Synthesis. I wonder how many other WP articles from that session suffer from the same failings? It would be nice to know. Sincerely, a friend to all, including the British Library, GeorgeLouis (talk) 16:55, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]