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Contributors Flee Wikipedia's Stricter Rules

Harry Kimball — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:18:31 CST

In an attempt to rein in the lawlessness and veiled opinion running rampant among its volunteer editors, Wikipedia may have shot itself in the foot. In the first 3 months of this year, there's been something of a stampede of contributors exiting the crowdsourced online encyclopedia, leading to a net...

Wikipedia Adds Editor Review for Some Articles

Will McCahill — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:10:02 CDT

After riding its users to popularity, Wikipedia is now moving to rein them in, the New York Times reports, by mandating editorial review for articles about living people. The feature, called “flagged revisions,” means an experienced editor will check updates to the free, user-generated online encyclopedia. The change should take...

Europe's Culture Gets Virtual Backup

Ambreen Ali — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:10:37 CDT

European culture is going digital. Priceless items such as the Magna Carta, the Mona Lisa, and the Gutenberg Bible will eventually be accessible worldwide for free on “Europeana,” an online encyclopedia funded by the European Union. It plans to match Google Library Project’s 10 million artifacts by 2010, Der Spiegel...

Author Shares a Bit of 'Knol' on Google

Katherine Thompson — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:37:48 CDT

Now that Google has launched its "Knol" option to Wikipedia that allows people to pen articles on topics, CNET writer Elinor Mills takes a stab at being one of the site's experts. Google's offering has a key difference to Wikipedia: the writer of a Knol entry has near total control...

Google Unveils Wikipedia Rival

Rob Quinn — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:30:31 CDT

Could Wikipedia's assassin be lurking behind a Knol? Google opened up its online encyclopedia with articles—or "units of knowledge" Google calls "Knols"—to the public today, featuring major differences from its well-established rival. The pieces are written by experts and their names are highlighted, in marked contrast to the...

New Site Wants Your Wikipedia Rejected Bio

Zach Samalin — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:45:00 CDT

While Wikipedia may promote itself as an encyclopedia of, for, and by the people, anybody who's had his stint as autobiographer cut short by the infamous "notability" requirement knows the site to be otherwise. Or so hope the creators of startup Biographicon, a website that invites the nobodies of the...

Google Takes On Wikipedia

Laila Weir — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:40:36 CST

The company is developing a collaborative online encyclopedia, called the "knol project," that will allow contributors to earn money by including Google ads on their pages. Google won't edit content, but will give high search ranking to entries it considers high quality, reports CNET. Users will also be able to...