Results matching “jimmy wales to”

In November 2008, the New York Times' investigative journalist, David Rohde, was taken hostage by the Taliban not far from Kabul, the Afghan capital, where he was conducting research for his book.  His driver, Asadullah Mangal, and local reporter, Tahir Ludin, were also kidnapped. Rohde and Ludin escaped earlier this month and their freedom, say the press, would not have been possible without the self-imposed media blackout.

Thanks to the efforts of New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, for seven months news of the kidnapping did not enter the public domain. Fellow newspapers understood that lives were at stake and nobody was willing to compromise Rohde's safety by breaking the media silence. "But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia," says one New York Times journalist.

A new initiative is being taken up by The Washington Post, Thomson Reuters, Digg, Twitter, Last.FM, Amie Street, amongst others. The newly launched WISE (Wikia Intelligent Search Extensions), from the people behind Wikia Search, is a platform that allows the creation of applications and customization of search results. An application created is called a WISEapp.

There is already a similar product in the market, SearchMonkey, from Yahoo!, however, this is still in closed beta testing. Could the newly launched WISE steal a march on SearchMonkey?

The man behind the project is called Jimmy Wales, who has a reputation for bringing his products to the market quickly. However, this rush to market plan did backfire in the case of Wiki Search, as the product came in for some stingingly negative reviews in its early days.

Source: EJC Media and Mashable

In an increasingly web-based culture of knowledge, it’s perhaps no surprise that websites like Wikipedia.org are now being consulted by credible news sources. Since it’s launch in 2001, Wikipedia has gained notoriety from its entirely user-contributed and edited online encyclopedia.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, has referenced Wikipedia on a piece it featured discussing “turducken” (a bizarre concoction in which a chicken is stuffed into a duck that is stuffed into a turkey). While some critics have judged this sort of Wikipedia usage as un-journalistic, others note, where else would you get information on a turducken? Certainly not from your standard encyclopedia.

However, as a result of its user-generated articles, many news and scholarly organizations immediately write the site off as “false” and “unverifiable.” For example, Mike Leary, managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, recently sent an e-mail to staffers forbidding the use of Wikipedia to “verify facts or augment a story.”

Even the French Agence France Presse banned its reporters from using Facebook and Wikipedia as sources, reported a previous Weblog posting.

Wikipedia’s leadership appears more than aware of the site’s strengths and potential shortcomings. The site features numerous disclaimers, one of which reminds users that "anyone with an Internet connection" can alter the content and cautions, "please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information."

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, suggested that despite these warnings, more journalists are daring to test out the site.

"I think that people are sort of slowly learning how to use Wikipedia, and learning its strengths and its weaknesses," he said. "Of course, any reasonable person has to be up front that there are weaknesses... On the other hand, there are lots of sources that have weaknesses."

Wales thinks the encyclopedia's best journalistic use is for background research rather than as a source to be quoted, the American Journalism Review reported.

The Los Angeles Times has adopted a relatively open stance on the usage of Wikipedia sources. Melissa McCoy, the Times’ deputy managing editor in charge of copy desks, explained that the paper occasionally allows Wikipedia references.

"We're certainly not going to use Wikipedia as a stand-alone news source, but we're not going to exclude it if it takes us somewhere," she said. "If a reporters spots something in there and it makes them do an extra phone call, it's silly not to use it,” McCoy suggested.

With opinions on Wikipedia usage in newsrooms remaining mixed—with most opting to steer clear of the site—papers like The Wall Street Journal and the
are demonstrating that some journalists are discovering the value of the site as a roadmap for further research.


Source: ajr.org through cyberjournalist.net

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has launched Wikia Search today, a search engine that allows members to rate results and improve the relevance of search results for other users.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales plans to launch Wikia Search &#160, an open-source search project, on Jan. 7. Wikia Search will aim to eventually compete with the established search engine giants.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales plans to launch Wikia Search in December, to eventually compete against automated search giants such as Google and Yahoo. The concept seems sound but it’s hard to imagine at this point that Wikia could become a real rival.

Founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales claims that newspaper websites should use wikis as a vital tool to post news that wouldn’t conventionally be published. And European online news aggregator Wikio just secured over $5 million in funding.

Jimmy Wales, founder of the user edited encyclopedia Wikipedia and site Wikia.com, plans to offer software, storage and network access for free to website creators who hope to create their own community websites.

Should newspapers welcome citizen journalists? That's the focus of the first session of the 13th World Editors  Forum, which starts Sunday, June 4 in Moscow. The citizen journalism movement is accelerating around the world and more newspapers are integrating readers and bloggers in the news process. But what are the consequences for quality newspaper journalism? By inviting their public to participate, are newspapers harming their primary function or is citizen journalism a useful means of maintaining relationships with the "free generation?"

The Editors Weblog and Visual Editors are joining forces to bring a new feature to the world's gathering for newspaper editors. Robb Montgomery, CEO of VizEds, and I will be getting crazy with citizen journalism tools to show editors how they can integrate them into the newsroom in order to enrich their reporting.  

Ever hear of Bluffton, South Carolina?  If you are a newspaper professional, you should know about this small US community of 15,000 people, where a new model for newspapers and newspaper web sites is succeeding.

Wikipedia is not usually mentioned in the same breath as leading newspaper companies such as News International or Axel Springer, but they will come together in Moscow in June at the 59th World Newspaper Congress, 13th World Editors Forum, and Info Services Expo 2006, the global meetings of the world's press.

The events, organized by the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum, will bring together leading executives and companies from both the traditional and new media worlds. First speakers announced for the programmes include Jimmy Wales, Director and Founder of the on-line, participatory encyclopaedia Wikipedia, Les Hinton,  Chairman of News International, and Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer.

Amidst a whirlwind of controversy over the reliability of his product, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said in an interview with Business Week Online that Wikipedia should be viewed "as a work in progress -- it's our intention to be Britannica or better quality, and our policies and everything are designed with that goal in mind. We don't reach that quality yet -- we know that. We're a work in progress."

Since its inception, many have wondered if Wikipedia, the encyclodpedia to which anyone can contribute and edit, is a trustworthy tool. Doubters were reassured last week that the "collective intelligence" machine has some flaws.

You're not going to like this, but your readers might. According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' keynote speech at the First International Wikimania conference, the ethos of the rapidly growing Wiki community is 'free.' Wales listed ten challenges for the 'free culture movement' from 'Free the encyclopedia' to 'Free the TV listings.' Although he did not list 'Free the news' as one of the ten points, Wikinews, launched last December, combined with the free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, have immediate consequences for newspapers currently revamping their business models to deal with the digital era. Wikinews still does not pose a serious threat to newspaper organizations as many of the articles posted are summaries of what Wiki contributors read in newspapers. But such Wiki projects have the potential to infringe on a disputed aspect of newspaper websites; archives. Many papers have been toying with charging for their online archives and developing different packages to offer to their readers. Wikis could theoretically render these projects null and void even before they get off the ground as Wiki articles, comprehensive collective intelligence accounts of world facts and occurrences, include various opinions, both sides of a story taken from different journals, and even many quotes found in newspaper articles... for free, forever. The permanence of Wikis as well as blogs should make newspapers reconsider charging readers for their archives. They may be better off adapting a method of topic-specific, time relevant advertising that would appear on an archived article page.

You're not going to like this, but your readers might. According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' keynote speech at the First International Wikimania conference, the ethos of the rapidly growing Wiki community is 'free.' Wales listed ten challenges for the 'free culture movement' from 'Free the encyclopedia' to 'Free the TV listings.' Although he did not list 'Free the news' as one of the ten points, Wikinews, launched last December, combined with the free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, have immediate consequences for newspapers currently revamping their business models to deal with the digital era. Wikinews still does not pose a serious threat to newspaper organizations as many of the articles posted are summaries of what Wiki contributors read in newspapers. But such Wiki projects have the potential to infringe on a disputed aspect of newspaper websites; archives. Many papers have been toying with charging for their online archives and developing different packages to offer to their readers. Wikis could theoretically render these projects null and void even before they get off the ground as Wiki articles, comprehensive collective intelligence accounts of world facts and occurrences, include various opinions, both sides of a story taken from different journals, and even many quotes found in newspaper articles... for free, forever. The permanence of Wikis as well as blogs should make newspapers reconsider charging readers for their archives. They may be better off adapting a method of topic-specific, time relevant advertising that would appear on an archived article page.

You're not going to like this, but your readers might. According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' keynote speech at the First International Wikimania conference, the ethos of the rapidly growing Wiki community is 'free.' Wales listed ten challenges for the 'free culture movement' from 'Free the encyclopedia' to 'Free the TV listings.' Although he did not list 'Free the news' as one of the ten points, Wikinews, launched last December, combined with the free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, have immediate consequences for newspapers currently revamping their business models to deal with the digital era. Wikinews still does not pose a serious threat to newspaper organizations as many of the articles posted are summaries of what Wiki contributors read in newspapers. But such Wiki projects have the potential to infringe on a disputed aspect of newspaper websites; archives. Many papers have been toying with charging for their online archives and developing different packages to offer to their readers. Wikis could theoretically render these projects null and void even before they get off the ground as Wiki articles, comprehensive collective intelligence accounts of world facts and occurrences, include various opinions, both sides of a story taken from different journals, and even many quotes found in newspaper articles... for free, forever. The permanence of Wikis as well as blogs should make newspapers reconsider charging readers for their archives. They may be better off adapting a method of topic-specific, time relevant advertising that would appear on an archived article page.