Wikipedia Controversy

Wikipedia was yesterday described as being as reliable as the Encyclopaedia Britannica despite a sustained attack from vandals intent on further wrecking its reputation for accuracy. In an online article published by the respected scientific journal Nature , articles in Wikipedia - the web-based encyclopaedia created by volunteers - compared favourably to those in the foremost repository of...

Vaughan Bell, a neuropsychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, UK, has reworked Wikipedia's entry on schizophrenia over the past two years. Around five others regularly contribute to the reworking, most of whom have not revealed whether they have academic backgrounds. Bell says that is not a problem, as disputes are settled through the discussion page linked to the entry, often by...

One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a much-used resource. But it is also controversial: if anyone can edit entries, how do users know if Wikipedia is as accurate as established sources such as Encyclopaedia...

Online encyclopedia Wikipedia is awash in controversy. The imbroglio was touched off by an anonymously written biography entry that linked former USA Today Editor John Seigenthaler Sr. with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The writer, Brian Chase, has issued an apology for a prank he says went terribly awry. Seigenthaler, in a Nov. 29 USA Today...

NEW YORK, NY -- (OfficialWire) -- 12/13/05 -- WikiPedia.org: you can find links to it everywhere. Online forums, scholarly journals, blogs, high school research papers. WikiPedia is an "open source" encyclopedia with the philosophy of democratic contribution. This encyclopedia differs from other more established encyclopedias by its editors; WikiPedia is composed of anonymous people contributing...

On Monday, in one of his now-weekly appearances on cable news defending the latest Wikipedia scandal, the project's figurehead Jimmy 'Jimbo' Wales expressed his desire to find the anonymous internet user who had libeled John Seigenthaler. Seigenthaler, a former Robert Kennedy aide and newspaper editor wrote about his anguish a fortnight ago, describing how an edit to his Wikipedia biography...

It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker losing his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility. A man in Nashville has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. Brian Chase, 38...

The Wikipedia online encyclopedia is often celebrated for its uniqueness: every internet user can create new articles and edit entries. Since the website's launch on January 15 2001, "Wikipedians" have contributed or edited more than three million articles in 205 different languages. The largest language areas are English, German, French, Japanese and Polish. Wikipedia's popularity is shown by the...

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is often referred to as an "open-source" project because it is written, edited and policed by a global group of volunteers. However, the open-source label doesn't really fit Wikipedia. "Free-for-all," in fact, may be a better match. "Open source," at least the way it's been used in tech circles over the years, usually connotes successful, volunteer projects like...

Wikipedia, the open source online encyclopaedia, is to become a little less open - and, perhaps, a little better sourced - after a bruising encounter with a retired newspaper editor. The website that has spawned some 850,000 articles in English alone since its creation in 2001 has been forced to tighten up its submission rules to prevent unregistered users dipping in and adding complete rubbish...