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Wikipedia To Accept Ads

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is considering accepting ads on the pages of the successful encyclopedia. The move could generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues, writes Times Online.

I think that's a great idea. But only if the Wikipedians can find a way to bolster the editorial content against commercial interests. That is going to be a difficult task since the defining trait of Wikipedia is that there are no editors in charge of the content.

Also I would very much like to see a large portion of the money earned used to do good in the world! Luckily Jimmy Wales ensures that this is indeed the objective:

»The Foundation's mission is to provide a free online encyclopedia to everyone in the world in their own language. Mr Wales said that both he and the site's community of volunteers would have to ask themselves "how the charitable mission could be supported by money raised through advertising".«

Happy New Year everybody :-)

Technorati: Wikipedia |Advertising

Why Newspapers Are Too Slow

Most newspapers are still not doing all they can to make a shift into the digital era. The fact is that a lot of traditional papers and magazines still treat their online editions as somewhat of a stepchild.

Meanwhile a generation of technology savvy teenagers are coming of age while loving the web, short messaging on their cellular phones, writing and reading blogs etc.

Hypergene MediaBlog has an interesting perspective on the news organizations' lack of innovation when it comes to digital news:

"(...) the greater threat to the longevity of established news media might not be a future that’s already arrived; it might be their inability to do anything about it. Bureaucratic inertia, hierarchical organizational structure and a legacy mentality have paralyzed many news organizations from developing a meaningful strategy in this dynamic information age."

As obvious as this notion may seem I think it is important to remember when traditional news organizations try to develop a strategy for the future. It is simply not enough to launch a blog or some other gadget. The organization (from top to bottom) has to really believe in it.

Technorati: Newspapers |Media|Journalism

Wikipedia Faces Competition

Digital Universe is the name of a new encyclopedia which launches early 2006. The site is set to challenge collaborative knowledge banks such as Wikipedia.

Like Wikipedia Digital Universe will receive most of its content from users but in addition Digital Universe will have acknowledged experts in a range of subjects review the material, writes news.com.

The launch comes at a tricky time for Wikipedia, the encyclopedia where you, me and everybody else can publish anything at anytime without having expert editors intervene. The wiki service is still stumbling from the blows it took when a user posted false allegations about John Seigenthaler Sr.

I question whether expert reviewers will help create any real credibility for Digital Universe, though. Yes it's true that experts in themselves are perceived of as more credible than lay persons. But the fact still stands that Wikipedia in a recent study was shown to be just as reliable as the expert driven creme of the crop of encyclopedias: Encyclopedia Britannica. This tells me that the general public doesn't need an official board of expert reviewers to produce a reliable encyclopedia.

Technorati: Wikipedia |Credibility

Study: Wikipedia As Reliable As Britannica

The latest debate about the credibility of Wikipedia is put into perspective by a study conducted by the scientific journal Nature.

Nature has had scientists investigate Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica's coverage of science and surprisingly the exercise revealed that among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great. The average science entry in Wikipedia had around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

Encyclopedia Britannica is commonly seen as the credible voice of science whilst Wikipedia is often talked of as the less reliable source written by lay persons.

"Yet, Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries," writes the journal.

Technorati: Wikipedia |Credibility

Web 2.0: Old Wine, New Bottles

Web 2.0. It's the talk of the web. Google offers no less than 242.000.000 search results. But what is this 2.0 thing? Tim O'Reilly (at the top of the Google list) offers an explanation so broad that almost anything can be deemed web 2.0.

As I see it web 2.0 is basically about user orientation, participation and involvement. But does that really call for the introduction of a whole new term? Hasn't the web always been about involving  users? I remember attending web conferences in the late nineties where dialog, conversation and collaboration were essential keywords. The social web was a topic even before the dot-com bubble burst.

Among other things Wikipedia has this to say on the matter:

"[web 2.0] means whatever its proponents decide that they want it to mean in order to convince the media and investors that they are creating something fundamentally new, rather than continuing to develop and use well-established technologies."

I'm not sure if this is the case. But I do know that the term and the hype surrounding it somehow bothers me.

Technorati: Web 2.0|Internet

Wikipedia Not Less Credible

Wikipedia has really taken a blow in the past week. The whole deal took off when a false Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville, was discovered by Seigenthaler himself. In the entry he was falsely linked to the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy.

Now it turns out that the entry wasn't written out of ill will against Seigenthaler. It was a prank that an employee at a small delivery company tried to play on one of his co-workers who knew of the Seigenthaler family. The prankster has now revealed himself and apologized to Seigenthaler, writes CNET News.com.

Strange what some people find humorous!

American media is now debating whether Wikipedia is at all credible and whether to trust web sites where penmanship for anyone is only the stroke of a keyboard away?

In my opinion the Seigenthaler incident doesn't change a damn thing. Wikipedia is not less trustworthy for this. Silly prank or not, web pages as any other media should never stand alone. If I was researching a subject there's no way I would rely on just one source. Only by using several different sources can one get a fuller (no not full) picture.

The whole story bears a striking resemblance to the NYT-incident where a reporter admitted to having fabricated articles. I don't automatically distrust mainstream media more for that reason. Incidents like these just reaffirm my strong belief in fact checking.

Technorati: Wikipedia |Credibility