On Tuesday May 20, 2008, page 4 of Dagens Nyheter, Sweden's leading newspaper, carried a signed editorial article by Henrik Berggren, detailing how he found an error in the Swedish language Wikipedia and corrected it, http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=577&a=771422
This [[:sv:Henrik Berggren (journalist)]] has a Wikipedia entry since 2005. He holds a PhD degree in history.
The error is rather serious, a whole paragraph of text claims that [[Fredrika Bremer]] (Swedish writer, feminist pioneer, 1801-1865) found the love of her life in 1820 and married later that decade. In reality, she never married. The error was planted on May 4, 2007 by the username Elinwolf and corrected by Henrik berggren more than a year later. Apparently, the error never spread to other languages.
The editorial article, however, doesn't ridicule Wikipedia as an unreliable source of information. It concludes that this is what might happen unless we are vigilant, and that Wikipedia's quality depends on all of us, especially when it comes to more obscure topics than the most renowned authors.
This follows after the newspaper reprinted AFP's story on May 11 about professor Jon Beasley-Murray at the University of British Columbia, with the puzzle globe and the headline "gains respect" on the front webpage (www.dn.se) for several days, and after a similar story from a Swedish college was featured on May 19, http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=147&a=771168
In summary, Swedish press reporting about Wikipedia is currently very positive and also quite realistic. Wikipedia is described as something that school children actually use as a reference and something we all can and should contribute to, but not as a pile of junk and neither as a promised land. There has also been one mention of how the Russian Wikipedia gained the 10th position.
The Globa and Mail, one of two national newspapers here in Canada, ran an article on the future of the Wikipedia yesterday, May 26, 2008. It's not a bad article, and they have it online already:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080526.wrwikipedia26/BN...
Maury _________________________________________________________________
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