Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-20/In the media
In the media
15th anniversary news round-up
Media discusses Wikipedia's fifteenth anniversary
- NPR, All Things Considered On Wikipedia's 15th Anniversary, A Look At The Most-Edited Entries
- NPR, Weekend Edition Saturday Wikipedia At 15: The Struggle To Attract Non-Techy Geeks
- The Sunday Times discusses "Why Wikipedia skews white" on articles about South Africa. (Jan. 17)
- Wired discusses Wikipedia's struggles for accuracy in "At 15, Wikipedia Is Finally Finding Its Way to the Truth". (Jan. 15)
- Al Jazeera discusses calls for more diversity on Wikipedia in "'White and Western' Wikipedia marks 15th birthday", including comments from editor and occasional Signpost contributor William Beutler. (Jan. 15)
- The Conversation offers two viewpoints: "Wikipedia at 15: in decline but condition isn’t terminal – so what may the future hold?" and "How Wikipedia’s silent coup ousted our traditional sources of knowledge". (Jan. 15)
- Fusion writes "Why Wikipedia might be the most important invention ever". (Jan. 15)
- Tech Radar writes "Wikipedia is still disrupting after 15 years", featuring an interview with Wikimedia Foundation chief communications officer Katherine Maher. (Jan. 15)
- The Signpost's own Andreas Kolbe offers eight myths about Wikipedia in The Register. (Jan. 18)
- On his blog, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger notes that he's not actually Wikipedia's most outspoken critic, media reports to the contrary. (Jan. 15)
- Lenta reports that the Russian government's Internet watchdog Roskomnadzor has given Wikipedia a birthday cake. Maybe we'll forget about all the times that Wikipedia was banned in Russia. (Jan. 15)
- The Pew Research Center examines Wikipedia's worldwide growth in "Wikipedia at 15: Millions of readers in scores of languages". (Jan. 14)
- Time lists "Wikipedia’s Top 15 Moments", some of which are nowhere near the top, and one which is not actually true. (The mistake about Ja Rule's height wasn't made by Wikipedia. Also, who cares?) (Jan. 14)
In brief
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- Jimmy Wales writes about the case of imprisoned Syrian free culture advocate Bassel Khartabil for CNN: "Information can beat oppression". (Jan. 20)
- Gawker continues its tongue-in-cheek series "The 10 Best Articles Wikipedia Deleted This Week". (Jan. 20)
Discuss this story
As a complement to this post, in this page you can find a list of Spanish media reports or interviews regarding the 15th anniversary of Wikipedia. --Hispalois (talk) 20:45, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, there's another myth out there that probably needs debunking: no, Wikipedia did not kill off the traditional encyclopedias, like Encyclopædia Britannica, although Wikipedia's success did EB no favors. The mortal blow came from Microsoft's Encarta, which provided a "good enough" encyclopedia at the fraction of the cost of a set of EB. The latter had become by the mid-20th century simply a symbol for upper-middle class Americans to show their devotion to education, with minimal effort given to keeping it up to date & accurate; when Microsoft created their own encyclopedia -- which might not have the reputation of EB, but was good enough for student use & to answer basic questions -- EB instantly was in trouble but could not respond meaningfully out of concern for alienating its extensive network of salespeople. Even after eliminating this network as unnecessary, EB still could not reinvent itself to effectively compete on the Internet. By the time the first Wikipedia article was written, EB was fighting for its existence & all Wikipedia did was administer the coup de grace. -- llywrch (talk) 18:47, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]