Ray Saintonge wrote
Slim Virgin wrote:
On 3/23/07, Sheldon Rampton sheldon@prwatch.org wrote:
Wikipedia is a big enough topic that it attracts all kinds of reporters, all kinds of criticism and all kinds of praise. Overall, I think it has gotten fairly sympathetic press.
Yes, indeed, though I sense that's coming to an end.
Yeah. The alternative would be for the reporters to learn what putting Wikipedia in proper perspective means. They might even have to check their facts. That would not be the easy way out for them. :-)
Sheldon is talking good sense, Sarah and Ray are not. The press will print bad-news stories about WP, but that's because such stories are _news_. As David Gerard has just said, the hacks like WP and are well disposed towards us. That doesn't mean they are obliged to make propaganda for WP. If you take open-source software as a comparison, I doubt mainstream journalism has ever had the slightest interest in putting that in "proper perspective". With that as baseline, WP has already done well. A single story about citation in college work probably will have more thoughtful content than you could find about Linux distributions in a month of Sundays.
Charles
----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
On 23/03/07, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Sheldon is talking good sense, Sarah and Ray are not. The press will print bad-news stories about WP, but that's because such stories are _news_. As David Gerard has just said, the hacks like WP and are well disposed towards us. That doesn't mean they are obliged to make propaganda for WP. If you take open-source software as a comparison, I doubt mainstream journalism has ever had the slightest interest in putting that in "proper perspective". With that as baseline, WP has already done well. A single story about citation in college work probably will have more thoughtful content than you could find about Linux distributions in a month of Sundays.
I think our media coverage is mostly pretty nice. Our press is good when decently informed, only bad when it isn't. TV is a *lot* more soundbitey. Radio is not nearly as bad, if it's live rather than prerecorded (thinking of that recent NPR where ten minutes was cut down to one sentence out of context).
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Sheldon is talking good sense, Sarah and Ray are not. The press will print bad-news stories about WP, but that's because such stories are _news_. As David Gerard has just said, the hacks like WP and are well disposed towards us. That doesn't mean they are obliged to make propaganda for WP. If you take open-source software as a comparison, I doubt mainstream journalism has ever had the slightest interest in putting that in "proper perspective". With that as baseline, WP has already done well. A single story about citation in college work probably will have more thoughtful content than you could find about Linux distributions in a month of Sundays.
I think our media coverage is mostly pretty nice. Our press is good when decently informed, only bad when it isn't. TV is a *lot* more soundbitey. Radio is not nearly as bad, if it's live rather than prerecorded (thinking of that recent NPR where ten minutes was cut down to one sentence out of context).
The problem with the press comes when they use some article without checking their facts. Most of the time the articles will be good, but when they use stupidities there tends to be a backlash when they make a fuss and use this as an example of just how bad Wikipedia is.
Ec
On 3/23/07, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Slim Virgin wrote:
On 3/23/07, Sheldon Rampton sheldon@prwatch.org wrote:
Wikipedia is a big enough topic that it attracts all kinds of reporters, all kinds of criticism and all kinds of praise. Overall, I think it has gotten fairly sympathetic press.
Yes, indeed, though I sense that's coming to an end.
Sheldon is talking good sense, Sarah and Ray are not. The press will print bad-news stories about WP, but that's because such stories are _news_. As David Gerard has just said, the hacks like WP and are well disposed towards us.
A rule in journalism is that there comes a point when the story has to change; when what was good is made bad, and vice versa. The story always has to change.
Sarah