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Wikipedia:Press coverage 2011

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January

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  • Bennett, Drake (6 January 2011). "Assessing Wikipedia, Wiki-Style, on Its 10th Anniversary". Bloomberg. Retrieved 8 January 2011. How the online "temple of the mind" became the go-to site for looking stuff up: A drama told in the open-source style of Wikipedia
The story of the first ten years of Wikipedia produced under a loose interpretation of Wikipedia's own collaborative principles. It was rewritten, corrected, and commented upon by a team of guest editors - Jonathan Zittrain , Professor of Law at Harvard Law School ; Robert Dale McHenry, editor in chief for Encyclopædia Britannica 1992-1997; Benjamin Mako Hill , MIT Researcher, Wikipedia editor and member of Wikimedia foundation advisory board; Mike Schroepfer, Developer of the Firefox open source browser and now Vice President of Engineering at Facebook.
Wikipedia is 10 years old this Saturday...still breathes utopian idealism
Celebrating 10th anniversary. Plans to include as editors in the future "more women, more older people and more editors who write in a greater diversity of languages".
"What you see is what you get" editing tools ready for release. If Wikipedia needs to carry advertising, it will.
30 min radio documentary on Wikipedia's first ten years. Raises questions on the use of paid to edit public relations consultants.
  • Rohrer, Finlo (14 January 2011). "Lost in Wikipedia". BBC News Magazine. It's easy to get lost while wandering through Wikipedia. Perhaps sitting at home one evening, a tax return needs to be filled in, or a new shed picked and ordered. Instead there is a sudden desire to immerse oneself in Wikipedia-aided trivia.
As part of the 10th anniversary the author tries to follow a chain of Wikipedia hyper links as far as he can go in one hour.

February

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  • Jorge Cham (February 23, 2011). "Edition". PHD Comics. Retrieved February 24, 2011.
    The unnamed protagonist of the comic strip is honored to be asked by his PhD supervisor, Professor Brian S. Smith, to edit something for him, until he discovers it is the professor's Wikipedia entry.
  • Jackson, Nicholas (25 February 2011). "10 Notorious Google Bombs". The Atlantic. Retrieved 1 March 2011. Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow noticed something weird this morning. When he searched for "murder" on Google, the second result was for the "Abortion" entry on Wikipedia. "However you feel about abortion, this Wikipedia page is pretty clearly not the second-most relevant document regarding murder on the entire English-speaking World Wide Web
    How a Google bomb created by anti abortion activists has targeted the Wikipedia page on Abortion, linking it to results of searches for "murder" on Google.

March

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April

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  • "In praise of Acdemic Wikipedians". The Guardian. London: 34. 6 April 2011. Fresh means must be found to lure big brains into the world's biggest seminar
  • "Study: Wikipedia good source on politics". Science News. UPI. 14 April 2011. Wikipedia has become a reliable source of political information, a U.S. researcher who fact-checked biographical information and voting statistics says.
    Adam Brown , a political scientist from Brigham Young University has published a study in Political Science and Politics in which he confirms that 230 Wikipedia biographical articles about major party US governorship candidates who ran for office between 1998 and 2008 were completely accurate.
  • Carr, David F. (14 April 2011). "Lexalytics Analyzes Wikipedia To Understand How Humans Think". Information Week. Retrieved 15 April 2011. Concepts extracted from the community created encyclopedia can be used to improve analysis of documents and sentiment in social media.
    Lexalytics, publisher of technology that produces automated summaries of documents, has announced that the new release of its software, will be better able to understand concepts and relationships between concepts, thanks to a close reading of the entire content of Wikipedia.
  • Welch, Bob (21 April 2011). "Wikipedia for Eugene in question". The Register-Guard. Eugene, Oregon. Retrieved 22 April 2011. I read through much of the lengthy account, with 110 source footnotes, and found myself somewhere north of "very dismayed" but south of "very interesting."
    Register-Guard columnist Bob Welch finds the Wikipedia article for Eugene, Oregon to be wanting. While some complaints have easy answers, the upside is that he does exhort readers to improve the article according to several reasonable suggestions.
  • Vincent, Alice (19 April 2011). "Wikimedia Commons celebrates 10 million free files". Wired.co.uk. Archived from the original on 10 July 2011. Retrieved 23 April 2011. A photo of a bird hut became the 10 millionth upload to Wikipedia's image, video and sound file library service on 15 April, 2011.
    Reportage of the 10,000,000 file upload to Wikimedia Commons.
  • Swinford, Steven (28 April 2011). "Wikipedia users name celebrities with gagging orders". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 28 April 2011.
    Wikipedia users adding details of so-called super injunctions to the articles of UK nationals, which are then removed for being improperly sourced, sometimes being deleted from the edit histories.
  • "Four UK celebrities hiding sex scandals behind legal super-injunctions are named on Wikipedia". The Daily Mail. London. 28 April 2011. Retrieved 28 April 2011.
    Wikipedia users adding details of so-called super injunctions to the articles of UK nationals, which are then removed for being improperly sourced, sometimes being deleted from the edit histories. (This time, as covered by the Daily Mail).

May

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  • Moe, John (May 2, 2011). "For bin Laden news, it's not Twitter's moment, it's Wikipedia's". American Public Media. Archived from the original on June 16, 2011. Retrieved May 3, 2011. Moe praises Wikipedia's coverage of the Death of Osama Bin Laden and encourages APM listeners to read the article.
  • Zorz, Zeljka (17 May 2011). "Wikipedia-like sites peddling fake pharmaceuticals". Help Net Security News. Retrieved 17 May 2011. Wikipedia is practically a household name now, so it's no wonder that spammers are trying to take advantage of the online encyclopedia's popularity and (relative) trustworthiness to peddle their fake wares.
    Spam sites found by Symantec's researchers use a Wikipedia look and feel website to "sell" pharmaceutuicals, using the name "WikiPharmacy".
  • Higginson, John (16 May 2011). "Education minister John Hayes copied speech from Wikipedia'". Metro. London: Associated Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved 17 May 2011. Every student has been warned of the dangers of lifting passages from the internet - so, perhaps education minister John Hayes should really know better than to allegedly copy parts of a speech from Wikipedia.
    The UK Education minister John Hayes made a speech to Parliament on proposed changes to UK Bank Holiday arrangements that contained large sections lifted straight from the Wikipedia article Bank holiday, without attribution. A researcher has been blamed and subsequently reprimanded.
  • Bustillos, Maria (17 May 2011). "Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert". The Awl. Retrieved 28 October 2013. It's high time people stopped kvetching about Wikipedia, which has long been the best encyclopedia available in English, and started figuring out what it portends instead. For one thing, Wikipedia is forcing us to confront the paradox inherent in the idea of learners as "doers, not recipients." If learners are indeed doers and not recipients, from whom are they learning? From one another, it appears; same as it ever was.
    An article which argues that Wikipedia has created a step change in the way knowledge and expertise is transmitted and cites Marshall McLuhan as the individual who first foresaw the changes now taking place.
  • Mairé, Antoine (20 May 2011). "Sur Wikipedia, on se bagarre au sujet de DSK ("On Wikipedia, we fight about DSK")". Télérama. France. Retrieved 20 May 2011. Je suis en faveur d'une approche plus attentiste, intervenant avant tout pour discuter, préciser ou sourcer des propositions d'autres contributeurs. Il y a une expression aux Etats-Unis qui dit 'si vous ne pouvez pas les battre, joignez-vous à eux', alors voilà, je me joins à la masse de contributeurs... pour essayer d'empêcher les écarts. (roughly translated from: "I am in favor of a more wait-and-see approach... encouraging waiting on a breaking-news story to see how it develops before adding anything... but then actually adding or editing material about the scandalous or breaking-news event myself, to try at least to keep it accurate and sourced... There is an expression in America that says 'If you can't beat them, join them' - so sometimes I have to join them and add material, but try to keep the excesses in check.")
    An article about the difference between the way the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn for sexual assault is handled on French and English Wikipedia, including an interview with User: Tvoz. At the time of the interview English Wikipedia was giving many minute details about the alleged crime, charges, arrest, and legal proceedings, while French Wikipedia gave it barely more attention than a section about his Porsche. Tvoz says: "the paragraph [in fr.wikipedia] about the Porsche is almost as long as the one on the trial. Risk of spending decades in prison is a bit more significant than the car he drives ... no?"
  • Tuazon, JM (24 May 2011). "Dispelling myths, advocating truths in Wikipedia". Philippines: GMANews.tv. Retrieved 27 May 2011. For me it's a way of giving back. It's satisfying to know you're doing something that is building up the public's knowledge. It's free so it's going to be read by a lot of people.
    An article about how the Wikipedia community improves on an article and makes it more reliable. It includes an interview with Remi de Leon (User:Alternativity) and Eugene Villar (User:Seav) who are both members of Wikimedia Philippines (WMPH). Villar is also one of the Board of Trustees of Wikimedia Philippines. The interview was done during the WMPH's 2nd Annual Convention (a.k.a WikiCon) at the Asian Institute of Management last May 21, 2011.
  • "Searching for Wikipedians at WikiCon2011". Manila Bulletin. Philippines. 30 May 2011. Retrieved 22 June 2011.
    An article about the Wikimedia Philippines' event at the Asian Institute of Management last May 21, 2011 that promoted Wikipedia.

June

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"A total of 300 GPs were interviewed across Europe for the report that looked into how regularly doctors are accessing the social web for both professional and personal reasons. The headline statistic has surprised many in the industry, which jumps to 69% when analysing the number of European GPs using social media sites for professional use outside of just Wikipedia (including FaceBook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter).."
Also reported in The Independent, Daily Mail (later removed)
  • "Wikipedia improves students' work". e! Science News. 31 May 2011. Retrieved 11 June 2011. A student writing an essay for their teacher may be tempted to plagiarize or leave facts unchecked. A new study shows that if you ask that same student to write something that will be posted on Wikipedia, he or she suddenly becomes determined to make the work as accurate as possible, and may actually do better research.
    Brenna Gray, an instructor at Douglas College in New Westminster, B.C, Canada has done research that implies students are prepared to take greater pains if work is produced for Wikipedia publication than for the official college website. Originally published in by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Also published in The Register , Daily India
  • Ingold, John (17 June 2011). "Judge orders ISP to release names of Wikipedia posters who slammed Facconable". The Denver Post. Retrieved 22 June 2011. In a ruling that could have broader implications for online privacy and free speech, a federal magistrate judge in Denver has ruled that anonymity for Internet commenters goes only so far.
    A federal magistrate judge in Denver has odered the real identity of anonymous Wikipedia editors be revealed. Fashion retailer Façonnable has cited them in a defamation lawsuit . Also in The Republic
  • Jackson, Nicholas (27 June 2011). "Wikipedia Adds WikiLove Button in Attempt to Stem Criticism". The Atlantic. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
  • Mann, Charles (June 2011). "The Birth of Religion". National Geographic. Retrieved 29 June 2011. It was promoted in countless articles and books and ultimately enshrined in Wikipedia.
  • Lutey, Tom (28 June 2011). "Candidate struggles to control Wiki biography". Billings Gazette. Retrieved 6 July 2011. Wikipedia locked down former U.S. Congressman Rick Hill's biography page Monday, after more than 30 attempts to add or scrub details about Hill's past campaigns and his 1976 divorce.
    A battle between Wikipedia editors and U.S. Congressman Rick Hill’s campaign manager, Chuck Denowh, over the spinning of the former Montana congressman's Wikipedia biography prior to the forthcoming state governor elections.

July

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  • Cohen, Nick (9 July 2011). "Diary". The Spectator. Retrieved 9 July 2011.
    • Part of Cohen's ongoing spat with Johann Hari, alleging improper editing of the articles about each of them, and others.
  • Ball, James (11 July 2011). "The Only Way Is Essex + Wikipedia = philosophy". The Guardian. p. G2-2. Retrieved 11 July 2011. Start at any Wikipedia page, then click the first link (ignoring any that are italicised or nestled in brackets), then repeat. For more than 93% of articles, you will end up at philosophy.
  • Bingham, John (14 July 2011). "Official BBC Twitter rules tell staff: 'Don't do anything stupid'". The Telegraph. Retrieved 15 January 2011.
    • BBC staff have been told: "Don't surreptitiously sanitise Wikipedia pages about the BBC", in an artcile which also says "It follows the disclosure that employees had made anonymous edits to a Wikipedia article entitled 'Criticism of the BBC' removing references to an internal report which found the corporation was seen as 'out of touch with large swathes of the population'."
  • Hachman, Mark (19 July 2011). "Survey: Consumers Give Thumbs Down to Facebook, NY Times". PC Mag. Retrieved 24 July 2011. Wikipedia dominated the social media category, recording a score of 78, one better than last year.
    The 2011 report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index on social media found that Wikipedia topped the table with Facebook the lowest of the social-network companies ACSI evaluated.
  • TechCrunch (27 July 2011). "Greplin Wants You To Redesign Wikipedia Search". Washington Post. Retrieved 29 July 2011. Personal search engine Greplin is announcing the launch of its Wikipedia Search Design Contest today, with the ultimate objective of conceptualizing a better way to search Wikipedia.
    The competition ,run by search engine Greplin, is independent of the Wikimedia foundation and is a response to the perception that a lot of people use Google to search Wikipedia rather than its own internal search engine.

August

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This piece is about Wikipedia's article on Lolita.

September

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October

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November

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Mick Jagger can't remember who played sax on Miss You, so he looks it up on Wikipedia:
"Mel Collins... ‘born in the Isle of Man, is a British saxophonist and flautist.’ He’s the one who played on Miss You. I just Wikipedia’d it."

December

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