Mark Pack

Having been using Wikipedia more than usual in the last few days, and even made a couple of minor edits (there's now one less surplus space in the world, yay!), I've been struck by how old school it now feels. There's no 'login with your Facebook or Twitter account' option - instead it's got a [...] »

I previously blogged about how some of the key statistics for Wikipedia suggest the site is stagnating or declining. This picture is reinforced by new evidence: A sharp drop in Wikipedians, the volunteers who write and edit the online encyclopaedia, is a disturbing and inevitable trend, the Toronto man who was once their top contributor [...] »

These two graphs are taken from the statistics at stats.wikimedia.org, using data up until 31 July 2009. The trends for other languages not shown in the graphs varies considerably, but for the English version of Wikipedia there are clear - and long running - signs of stagnation and decline when it comes to the generation [...] »

Whether it is outsiders commenting on how parties and politicians use the internet, or people comparing their own party with others, or an individual looking to assess different website suppliers, reviews of political websites are a frequent occurrence. Across these reviews there are several very commonly made mistakes. Watch out for those explained below and [...] »

If your Wikipedia entry explains what your firm is about better than your own website, it's time to get to work on the website. (Many of the Wikipedia entries for companies do a very good job at making clear what a company is about largely because, I suspect, Wikipedia is generally free of business jargon. [...] »

That’s the headline from The Register: In an unprecedented effort to crack down on self-serving edits, the Wikipedia supreme court has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates. Closing out the longest-running court case in Wikiland history, the site’s Arbitration Committee voted 10 to 0 (with one abstention) [...] »

The Guardian's Readers' Editor has highlighted how a fake quote in a Wikipedia entry got used by journalists: An obituary of French composer Maurice Jarre, which appeared in the Guardian on 31 March, began and ended with quotes. It opened with: "My life has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me [...] »

Wikipedia’s dominance of search results (and the increasing degree to which people equate research to putting something into Google) means it often takes some effort to avoid ending up relying directly or indirectly on the accuracy of information contained in it. There are though some basic points to bear in mind when wondering whether to trust [...] »