{"id":720,"date":"2004-12-23T09:40:38","date_gmt":"2004-12-23T13:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2004\/12\/23\/wp-critics-deemed-boring-competition-f"},"modified":"2004-12-23T09:40:38","modified_gmt":"2004-12-23T13:40:38","slug":"wp-critics-deemed-boring-competition-for-wikinews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2004\/12\/23\/wp-critics-deemed-boring-competition-for-wikinews\/","title":{"rendered":"WP critics deemed ‘boring’; competition for Wikinews"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

For those of you who can’t wait for the next Quarto<\/a> to come out, here is a quick rundown of some media highlights from December:<\/p>\n

Forbes<\/span> had one of their encyclopedia editors (they manage American
\nHeritage these days) half-heartedly compare<\/a> WP to Britannica Online :
\nchecking Haydn, Millard Fillmore, warblers, King James II.<\/p>\n

…Frederick
\nAllen, Managing Editor of American Heritage admitted, ‘it looks as if
\nWikipedia’s gotten a lot better, more thorough and more
\naccurate.’…Even the Wikipedia’s James II of Britain article beat
\nBritannica in size, reach and outside references…<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

\n(For those of you keeping score at home, it is James II of “England”,
\nif you please.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Tim Bray sat down and wrote a delightfully thoughtful piece
\n<\/a>on the emerging properties of  Wikipedia.<\/p>\n

…the
\nproposition that the Wikipedia is a misguided waste of time is boring.
\nSomething poorly-understood is happening here, and the observed results
\nare immensely better than intuition from first principles would
\nsuggest. This is interesting; it seems obvious to me that there are
\nlessons to learn here, about reference publishing in particular and
\nknowledge husbandry in general.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

And journalists continue to get heated up about collaborative journalism:<\/p>\n

Mark Glaser wrote a passionate piece on the collaborative news org he
\nwants to work for<\/a>, almost a community Wikiproject (see also his earlier notes on Wiki and journalism<\/a>).  Then Mitch Ratcliffe spun a long editorial on Wikinews itself<\/a>…<\/p>\n

And now some local citizen journalism enterprises are starting to take shape:
\nfrom the fully-realized Baristanet<\/a>, “serving Montclair, Glen Ridge, and Bloomfield, NJ”, and the entire town of Greensboro, NC<\/a>…  to Pegasus News<\/a>,
\n“launching in Dallas in late 2005, but with a cool blog up now,” which
\nplans to eventually expand to “every major U.S. city with a monopoly
\nnewspaper”… to Dan Gillmor’s “jumping out of a window, and building a
\nparachute in midair” departure from the SJ Merc<\/a> to start his own venture that enables and illustrates the kind of grassroots journalism he has been writing about.
\n 
 ========<\/p>\n

Finally, a question for the style gurus: is it “Wikipedia” or “the Wikipedia”?
\nSomeone had better start thinking about this, fast. A quick score sheet from recent pubs:<\/p>\n

– Frederick Allen, American Heritage editor  : “Wikipedia”
\n– Matt Rand, \/Forbes\/ writer : “the Wikipedia”
\n– Mitch Ratcliffe, veteran journalist : “Wikipedia”
\n– Robert McHenry, Former \/Britannica\/ editor  : [unintelligible]
\n– Tim Bray, Encyclophile : “the Wikipedia”
\n– Val Souza, Express Computer columnist, India : “the Wikipedia”
\n– Dr. ‘Alfaso’ Gizmo, semi-anonymous journalist : [frothing, unintelligible]
\n– Wired Magazine, various writers : “Wikipedia”
\n
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those of you who can’t wait for the next Quarto to come out, here is a quick rundown of some media highlights from December: Forbes had one of their encyclopedia editors (they manage American Heritage these days) half-heartedly compare WP to Britannica Online : checking Haydn, Millard Fillmore, warblers, King James II. …Frederick Allen, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-la-mod"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-bC","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}