Oh, the curious case of Gibraltarpedia.
Last September, CNET reported that a well-placed Wikipedian named Roger Bamkin was using his influence at nonprofit Wikipedia to promote the British territory of Gibraltar—whose government was the client of a public relations firm run by Mr. Bamkin.
The upshot was, Gibraltar was showing up an awful Read More
Homeopathy, an alternative form of medicine employed by free-spirited aunts everywhere, has just made a very potent enemy. On his newly-minted Quora blog, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales voiced his disapproval for the method, which has been systematically proven to be an ineffective pseudoscience. Read More
It’s a widely-accepted adage passed down from class to class that citing Wikipedia in a paper is not just lazy, it’s unacceptable. This reporter had a high school teacher who insisted she’d outright fail us if she found us even using Wikipedia to glean information about a paper topic. Granted, back then Wikipedia wasn’t the well-respected bastion of crowd-sourced facts it is today, but still: citing the Internet’s favorite encyclopedia was–and is–frowned upon.
It seems that even Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales agrees with this nugget of wisdom. In a recent Quora thread asking what Mr. Wales thought of professors saying Wikipedia isn’t a “viable source,” Mr. Wales cut the BS and agreed with your crochety 10th grade teacher. Sorry, kids. Read More
In the two years since U.S. customs and immigration officials came knocking on his dorm room door, Richard O’Dwyer has become something of a representative figure in the fight between Hollywood heavyweights and the Internet.
But a new ally has stepped foward to support the “unlikely poster boy for a culture war.” Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has decided to intervene on Mr. O’Dwyer’s behalf, launching a campaign on Change.org this weekend to stop the U.S. from extraditing him on copyright allegations. Read More
