Wikipedia and notability

The barrier to entry into Wikipedia articles is notability: Subjects must be notable enough to create enduring articles on the encyclopedia. According to policy, while news reporting covers announcements, sports news or celebrities, the fact that something is "in the news" is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopaedia. Notability is difficult, perhaps impossible to predict directly after an event, and can result in historical events being described in purely modern terms or an article being created about something noteworthy at a particular time which later might not meet notability requirements. Wikipedians call this "recentism" and have a tag to make it transparent to readers that the article might be skewed towards "recent perspectives." In an essay on "recentism," Wikipedians describe the phenomenon as "writing or editing without a long-term, historical view, thereby inflating the importance of a topic that has received recent public attention."

Britannica goes Wiki

Encyclopaedia Britannica which already contains 46 million words and other forms of media content is now inviting anyone to edit and contribute to its online version. Jorge Cauz - Britannica's president said: "What we are trying to do is shifting to a much more proactive role for the user and reader where the reader is not only going to learn from reading the article but by modifying the article and - importantly - by maybe creating his [or her] own content." Well, at last they got the idea.
Mr Cauz also took a swipe at Google for helping to promote Wikipedia via its search engine rankings. He characterised Wikipedia as containing "plenty of cracks" and "facts which are not always correct".

McCain and Wikipedia

One of the Wikipedia editor has noticed similarities between Sen. John McCain's statements and Wikipedia entry on Georgia. Well, it only shows how influential Wikipedia has become.

1. One of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia)

vs.

One of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion (McCain)

2. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic (1918-1921), which was terminated by the Red Army invasion of Georgia. Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and regained its independence in 1991. Early post-Soviet years was marked by a civil unrest and economic crisis. (Wikipedia)

vs.

After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. As the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the Cold War, Georgia regained its independence in 1991, but its early years were marked by instability, corruption, and economic crises. (McCain)

3. In 2003, Shevardnadze (who won re-election in 2000) was deposed by the Rose Revolution, after Georgian opposition and international monitors asserted that the 2 November parliamentary elections were marred by fraud. The revolution was led by Mikheil Saakashvili, Zurab Zhvania and Nino Burjanadze, former members and leaders of Shavarnadze's ruling party. Mikheil Saakashvili was elected as President of Georgia in 2004. Following the Rose Revolution, a series of reforms was launched to strengthen the country's military and economic capabilities. (Wikipedia)

vs.

Following fraudulent parliamentary elections in 2003, a peaceful, democratic revolution took place, led by the U.S.-educated lawyer Mikheil Saakashvili. The Rose Revolution changed things dramatically and, following his election, President Saakashvili embarked on a series of wide-ranging and successful reforms. (McCain)

Medical Wiki

AskDrWiki.com is a nonprofit educational website operated as a public service by the Open Access Medical Informatics Group. One can publish review articles, clinical notes, pearls, and medical images on the site. Using a wiki anyone with a medical background can contribute or edit medical articles. The main focus has been on Cardiology and Electrophysiology but we have started to expand to other specialties.

Wikitravel.org Guide

Wikitravel - wikitravel.org contains close to 20,000 destination guides. It is an open source travel guide featuring up-to-date information on attractions, hotels, restaurants, travel tips and more. It also provides free and reliable advice written by Wikitravellers from around the globe.

Organic SEO Wiki

There is a new wiki about search engine optimization. Organicseo.org was started on March 20, 2005 by Anthony Ettinger and it refers to the manual type of page optimization versus automatic submission to search engines. Everything described on this wiki can be implemented by one motivated person, or you can always hire someone to do it. This is a public work, and anybody is welcome to edit the content.

Chinese version of Wikipedia

China’s Baidu.com, has launched a Chinese language online encyclopedia inspired by the cooperative reference site Wikipedia, which the communist government bars China’s Web surfers from seeing. The Chinese service, which debuted in April, carries entries written by users, but warns that it will delete content about sex, terrorism and attacks on the government. Government censors blocked access last year to Wikipedia, apparently due to concern about its references to Tibet, Taiwan and other topics.

Splunk Wikipedia

A US company called Splunk is setting up a public collaborative website, or wiki, for IT professionals who hunt down system glitches. Splunk is today expected to launch a commercial version of a hosted service called Splunk Base, which aims to be the equivalent of an online encyclopaedia, like Wikipedia, but for technology administrators.
Splunk Base is a hosted wiki where system administrators can post information on errors they encounter while running data centres. A database administrator, for example, might report a problem that often occurs when setting up an Oracle database to run with Apache Web server.
The system, which is available for free, allows administrators to tag, or label, their entries so other users can more quickly find solutions to their system woes. The company name is a play on "spelunking," or cave exploration.

From silicon.com