Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-01-23/In the news

In the news

Court orders shutdown of German Wikipedia

Several news and blog reports touched on a legal case involving a German hacker named Tron. His parents did not want his real name revealed in Wikipedia and filed a legal suit to take down the site. German Wikipedians did temporarily remove a redirect from "wikipedia.de" to "de.wikipedia.org" (the site's true address), but the site was never taken down, and the redirect was restored within a day. The hacker's name remained on the site throughout the day, and although German newspapers obscured his identity, the name now appears in international news reports as well.

"German court orders shutdown of Wikipedia", The Register January 20
"German Wikipedia site goes offline after lawsuit", Ars Technica January 19
"Wikipedia.de Shut Down", Google Blogoscoped January
"Wikipedia Germany offline", p2pnet January 19
"Wikipedia returns after legal blackout", The Inquirer January 20
"German Wikipedia Back on Net", Techtree.com January 21

Vandalism spree

A pair of deejays on one of the BBC's national radio stations took to editing their articles while on the air, leading listeners to edit Wikipedia as well. "Wikipedia editing hobby goes nationwide", by frequent Wikipedia critic Andrew Orlowski, was published in The Register January 19.

Opinions and editorials

Two cautious-to-negative columns were printed this week. "Be very wary of that wacky Wikipedia" was printed in the Toronto Star on January 17, and on January 20 the science site Physorg republished a University of California Berkeleyan article carrying a detailed critique from a professor trying to edit the Daniel Defoe article, in "Surfing is safer -- and smarter -- with flotation devices". On January 21 a site called Press Action reprinted an article named "Wikipedia's Accountability Problem" by Daniel Brandt, which originally appeared on his Wikipedia Watch website.

Two more positive evaluations came from The Japan Times ("Something wiki this way comes" and from Digital Lifestyle Magazine ("Wikipedia, despite expert’s opinion, extremely accurate.") on January 20.

Article pans Wikipedia

An article in the Sacramento [California] Bee, on Jan 26, panned Wikipedia. http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/education/story/14116860p-14946117c.html

Congresional Staffers: 1000+ edits on wikipedia

Full article here

The staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war chest. It also deleted a reference to the size of Meehan's campaign account, the largest of any House member at $4.8 million...

More dicussion at User_talk:143.231.249.141 Including a complete list of articles edited.

Also this week: New arbitrators — Adminship debates — News and notes — Press coverage — Features and admins — B.R.I.O.N. — T.R.O.L.L.