American Journalism Review has an interesting look at how Wikipedia is being used by journalists.
[Founder Jimmy] Wales says it doesn’t surprise him to hear that some journalists are cautiously trying it out. “I think that people are sort of slowly learning how to use Wikipedia, and learning its strengths and its weaknesses,” he says. “Of course, any reasonable person has to be up front that there are weaknesses… On the other hand, there are lots of sources that have weaknesses.” Wales thinks the encyclopedia’s best journalistic use is for background research rather than as a source to be quoted.
Wales, a board member and chairman emeritus of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation Inc., which owns Wikipedia, says the company constantly strives to improve its product. “Right now we’re tightly focused on making sure that, for example, the biographies are well sourced,” he says. The foundation is also developing new tools “to block people who are misbehaving,” including one for new German-language Wikipedia users that will vet their contributions. If it works, Wales says, it can be rolled out for Wikipedia encyclopedias in other languages.
He also defends the right of Wikipedia — and perhaps even reporters — to have a little fun. “I subscribe to Google alerts and I saw that turducken [item in the Wall Street Journal e-mail] and I thought, well, what other source would you use? Britannica doesn’t cover this nonsense,” he says….
Wales maintains that the more people use Wikipedia, the more they’ll come to understand and accept it. His conclusion, he says, “comes from people who have used the site for a long time and know, ‘I have to be careful’.. which is what good reporting is supposed to be about anyway.”
