On 29/07/06, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
Hello all, originally this mail was sent to other mailinglist, but someonw urged me strongly to share it with a broader audience ;)
Asahi Shimbun http://www.asahi.com, one of leading newspaper in Japan focused on Wikipedia (mainly Japanese edition) on its front page and the second. The whole space this article taken was equivalent to a half of page.
Most of space was used to describe how it worked, with three Japanese Wikipedians' comments (two anonymous, supposedly sysops, one by Suisui under his real identification). The general atmosphere seemed very positive to me. Fact checking seemed to be done properly, and no apparent criticism was shown. I daresay it is one of the best articles on Wikipedia as for fact correctness view, and would like to make my applause to the editors.
Japanese newspapers carry a column ("series" they call) on the front page (1/4 of pages except advertisements) and Wikipedia was chosen as the first theme of their new series on net activities. Usually it is placed on the first page, but this special version continued to the second page, and there took 1/4 page too, so 1/2 of first two pages were dedicated to Wikipedia.
The first part mentioned almost only to the Wikipedia and was signed by Mr. Yasuda Tomooki, one of their journalist based on Tokyo. The second part was credited by two journalists including Mr. Yasuda, and referred to other net communities in the Japanese speaking world, with comments of authorities, one of them are interesting a researcher and Wikipedia editor with her real name and her involvement to the project. "Not job, but as specialist [I contribute to the Wikipedia] said she ... she found some remarkable mistakes on articles of her field, and many thought Wikipedia credible. "As professional, I would like to prevent to spread misunderstanding" (relying on remembrance, very lough translation)
Regretfully the column itself can't be available online for free, but if you are in South Korea, Australia, New Zealand or India, you can utilize "trial subscription" of Web Asahi Shimbun (http://wasa.asahi.com/) for 3days (and get the 2 days before article).
Thanks for the information. I don't suppose you, or someone else who can understand Japanese, could translate the article for us?