Editing Encyclopedia:Testimonials (section)

==Published articles==

[[John C. Dvorak]], "[http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2253665,00.asp Why Wikipedia Just Gets Better]" ''[[PC Magazine]]'' (February 1, 2008):
:You don't think I'm here as a Wikipedia booster without some deeper commentary, do you? There has to be something wrong with it, since the idea is utopian, and utopian ideas are bound to fail in the long term. 

Dan Tynan. "[http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ttpcworld/20051216/tc_techtues_pcworld/123923 Winners and Losers of 2005]". ''Tech Tuesday - Yahoo! News''. (December 16 2005). Rated as '''both''' the "Winner" and "Loser of the Year".
:You can't do a Web search on any major topic without this wiki popping up near the top of the results page. Heavily linked, authoritative, and constantly updated, the world's largest interactive encyclopedia came into its own this year[...] Popular, yes. Accurate? Not necessarily. Because its entries can be edited by anyone, the Wikipedia can be the source of dubious or biased information. <nowiki>[</nowiki>...(citing the [http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Wikipedia_gets_Swift_Boated_1129.html Swiftboat controversy] and [[John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy|Seigenthaler Incident]])...<nowiki>]</nowiki> [W]ith more than 800,000 articles in English and well over 1 million in 15 other languages, foolproof policing is well nigh impossible.

Crispin Sartwell, [http://articles.latimes.com/2005/may/04/news/0e-sartwell4 "See 'Information,' 'Amazing,' 'Anarchy']", ''Los Angeles Times''  p. B15 (4 May 2005).
:So is it to be trusted? Does it have the credibility of Britannica? Well, I have monitored over a decent period a number of entries on matters about which I know something and have found them almost invariably accurate. And I have watched some of them grow, becoming ever more elaborate and interlinked.

Wynn Quon, "[http://www.legadoassociates.com/wikipedi.htm Wikipedia: The new know-it-all]", ''National Post'', p. FP19 (26 Feb. 2005).
:Are traditional encyclopedia publishers aware of Wikipedia's threat? Here's a clue: Try looking for the "Wikipedia" article in the online version of Britannica. You won't find it. Nor will you find it in any of the half a dozen or so mainstream encyclopedias currently on the market. These folks should be busy brainstorming a survival strategy. Instead, the range of reaction has run in a comically limited range from denial to derision. Even Britannica, with its prestigious reputation, needs to figure out how it will thrive in what will increasingly be a Wikipedia world. In the final analysis, Wikipedia is more than just the raising of a new barn. It's the tearing down of the old ones.

Simon Waldman, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1335892,00.html "Who knows?"], ''The Guardian''  (Oct. 26, 2004):
:It has no editors, no fact checkers and anyone can contribute an entry - or delete one. It should have been a recipe for disaster, but instead Wikipedia became one of the internet's most inspiring success stories.

[http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2747734 "Open source"], ''The Economist'' print edition, (June 10th 2004)
:Wikipedia... [is a] ...force for good.

Bill Thompson, [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3653425.stm "A question of trust online"], ''BBC News Online'', (Apr. 23, 2004)
:And there is the Wikipedia, a community-written encyclopedia that has evolved over the years [...] into one of the most reliably useful sources of information around, on or off-line.

[[Bill Bailey]], "Big Night In" [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-8086-1008394,00.html], ''[[The Times]]'', (Feb. 21, 2004)
:If I'm writing a show I spend a lot of time researching it on the net. I use Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) a lot. It's a brilliant online encyclopaedia, invaluable for historical stuff, and probably the most accurate of all those sites.

Sean Carroll, "[http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2266624,00.asp Site of the Week]", ''[[PC Magazine]]'' (Jun. 6, 2003):
:This may sound like a recipe for disaster, but the results are impressive. While many of the site's 130,000-plus articles are definitely works in progress, many are rich, concise, and polished. [...] Surprisingly, our time spent on Wikipedia turned up no junk entries and no defacements. [...] A few of the articles seemed a bit dated, and we came across many red links or blue links that led to single-sentence placeholders. But for the most part, the items were useful and thoughtful. And the typos and awkward constructions we found? As editors, we plan to return to those pages, on the subjects we care about, and tweak them a bit.

[[Ben Hammersley]], [http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,884666,00.html "Common Knowledge"], ''Guardian'' (Jan. 30, 2003):
:The Wikipedia [is] perhaps one of the greatest testaments to the generosity on the web [...] What makes the Wikipedia so compelling&mdash;and this article so hard to finish&mdash;is the way everything is so massively linked. You read one entry, and before you know it, you're reading up on Anne Boleyn or Italian greyhounds.

John Jerney, "The Wikipedia: The encyclopedia for the rest of us", ''The Daily Yomiuri'' (Oct. 22, 2002):
:In particular, the goal of the Wikipedia is to produce the best encyclopedia encapsulating the sum total of human knowledge. And a quick run through some of the articles shows that this community based approach can indeed work. [...] The Wikipedia, and hopefully other services similar to it, offers the possibility of everything being written into history, with all of mankind sharing knowledge and information in a way that enables everyone to profit from it.

Mary Ellen Quinn, [https://web.archive.org/web/20021024151011/www.ala.org/booklist/v99/se2/47wikipedia.html "Wikipedia"], ''[[Booklist|Booklist Magazine]]'' (Sep. 15, 2002):
:What about authority and reliability and all the other things we've been taught to look for in an encyclopedia? We were prepared to hate Wikipedia, but were disarmed when we got to the section [[Wikipedia:Our Replies to Our Critics]], which answered all these questions and more. [...] [Wikipedians] believe that their process of continuous editing means that articles can only improve. Bad content will be edited out, and good content will rise to the top, like cream: As further edits accumulate, the quality of the article moves asymptomatically towards perfection, and likewise the quality of the encyclopedia as a whole. Maybe. We'll keep an open mind.

Steven Johnson, "Populist Editing", ''New York Times'' (Dec. 9, 2001):
:But an intriguing new subgenre of sites, called WikiWikiWebs, really are interactive: users can both read and write.  [...]  The most ambitious Wiki project to date applies this governing principle to the encyclopedia, that Enlightenment-era icon of human intelligence.  [...]  With a total of 16,000 articles in the database, the Wikipedia is already large enough to be a source of generally reliable information, though stronger in some areas ("[[Star Trek]]" spinoffs) than others (the [[Charles_Dickens#Works|novels of Charles Dickens]]).