Following its second nomination and lengthy discussion, Encyclopædia Britannica was promoted to featured article on 12 April 2007. Promotion to featured article status signifies that the article is "considered to be one of the best articles in Wikipedia, as determined by Wikipedia's editors." This promotion comes a little more than a year after Britannica issued a scathing response to a study published in the prestigious science journal Nature. The study compared the accuracy of content in Britannica and Wikipedia.
First nominated for promotion in October 2006 by Nautica, the article was unable to overcome objections made by a number of editors. These objections included needed formatting changes, unsourced statements, violations of Wikipedia's neutral point of view principle, and criticism that the article focused too much on the differences between Britannica and Wikipedia. Following these objections, the Featured Article Director (Raul654) declined to promote the article.
The article underwent a peer review in March of 2007. Following the review, major contributor Willow nominated Britannica for its second featured article candidacy on 25 March writing:
The family of Britannica articles has expanded significantly since its last [nomination], as may be seen from the new category Encyclopædia Britannica. New pages have been created on the History of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Propædia, Macropædia, Micropædia, Staff of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Bicentennial of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Dobson's Encyclopædia as well as biographical articles for all major people in its history. The present article is stable, a good article, and has been through a recent peer review.
The Encyclopædia Britannica's first nomination came approximately ten months after the Nature study was published. In that study the journal selected 42 of the same articles in Britannica and Wikipedia and had experts evaluate the articles' content. The experts concluded that "in the sample of articles, Encyclopædia Britannica had 123 errors while Wikipedia had 162." This averages to "about 2.9 and 3.9 errors per article, respectively." This study generated significant mainstream media coverage. (see archived story)
Three months later in March of 2006, Britannica issued a biting response titled "Fatally Flawed". This response discounted the Nature study, stating that "almost everything about the journal’s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading." Britannica went on calling for the journal to make a retraction of the study (see archived story). This response also garnered significant media coverage, including an article in The Wall Street Journal.
A featured article is considered to be of the highest quality work on Wikipedia and "features professional standards of writing and presentation." It is considered to meet all of Wikipedia's article requirements and is "well written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral, and stable."
Encyclopædia Britannica received a number of comments during its second nomination, including a number of ideas for improvement. Following the implementation of these suggestions, and tremendous effort on the part of Willow and others, Encyclopædia Britannica was promoted on 12 April 2007.
During the nomination, Robert McHenry, former editor-in-chief of Britannica, was invited on his blog to look over and possibly contribute to the Britannica article. McHenry did not respond. After Willow's second peace overture, McHenry thanked her for her sentiments and "charming letter", but referred her to Tom Panelas, long-time director of public relations for Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
On a sidelight, Warren E. Preece, the famous editor who shepherded the Britannica through the difficult transition to the 15th edition, passed away on the same day that the Wikipedia article became featured. Preece's son updated his Wikipedia biography almost immediately, although this was reverted a day later for lack of a reliable source. After confirmation, his death was recorded, and sundry improvements to his page were made. His online Britannica biography has still not been updated as of this writing (17 April 2007).
Update: Preece's online Britannica biography was updated thirteen hours after the publication of this article. This update came six days after the first announcement on Wikipedia and three days after the New York Times obituary.
Given its visibility in academic circles, Wikipedia remains a focus of both praise and criticism from educators, with some high-profile debate on the subject in the past week.
The latest flurry of discussion started in the UK, where Education Secretary Alan Johnson mentioned the project during a speech while attending the Belfast conference of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers. Johnson said, "Wikipedia enables anybody to access information which was once the preserve of those who could afford the subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica and were prepared to navigate its maze of indexes and content pages." The comment was in the context of discussing the benefits of the internet for education (and later in the speech, its downsides as well).
This endorsement drew some skeptical responses, with a NASUWT officer saying that the union itself has been the subject of "scurrilous claims" on Wikipedia. The article about the union is currently flagged as being of disputed neutrality. Also surfacing in media coverage of Johnson's comments was Larry Sanger, who called Wikipedia "broken beyond repair", although he later clarified that this comment referred specifically to the project's governance. (Even before this, the topic of governance was the subject of some thoughts posted by Wikimedia Foundation chair Florence Devouard that launched a discussion on the foundation's mailing list.)
Martin Ward, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders recommended Wikipedia as a "valuable resource" where children can learn "how to be critical and sceptical of what they read just like they would be with any other medium, be it newspapers or even school text books".
The most widely publicized academic response to Wikipedia has been the Middlebury College history department's resolution, passed in January, that prohibited students from citing Wikipedia as a source. This type of approach has sometimes been questioned as too draconian, or simply elicited puzzlement at the notion that college students would think of citing any encyclopedia in their papers at all. Covering the story, the New York Times also pointed out how some professors are using Wikipedia in their classrooms, sometimes incorporating Wikipedia editing into assignments.
How to approach Wikipedia has also been an issue for educators below the college level, naturally. Chris Anderson of Wired recently blogged about his children getting instruction using Wikipedia already in elementary school. Anderson related that they were specifically being taught to use Wikipedia in combination with other resources, as facts in their papers were expected to have support from two independent sources.
On the other side, Slashdot published a report submitted by one of its readers last week, indicating that a school board had decided to block Wikipedia from the district's computers entirely. Apparently even teachers and administrators would be unable to use the site. As Andrew Lih pointed out, however, the report warrants skepticism considering that the report included no links to support its claim and no identifying information from which the story could be verified.
Meanwhile, for its part Wikipedia has to develop its approach toward those coming to the project from the world of academia. Thus last week Wikipedia editors launched a project to assist with the use of Wikipedia in an academic setting — it will be known as WikiProject Classroom coordination. This effort will try to provide guidance and assistance for the various school and university projects that involve Wikipedia.
WikiWorld is a weekly comic, carried by the Signpost, that highlights a few of the fascinating but little-known articles in the vast Wikipedia archives. The text for each comic is excerpted from one or more existing Wikipedia articles. WikiWorld offers visual interpretations on a wide range of topics: offbeat cultural references and personality profiles, obscure moments in history and unlikely slices of everyday life - as well as "mainstream" subjects with humorous potential. The comic can now be found on cartoon site Humorous Maximus.
Cartoonist Greg Williams developed the WikiWorld project in cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation, and is releasing the comics under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
Following Wikipedia's mention on United States television series, The Office, this article, published by the Associated Press, mentioned the edits made, and the semi-protection of the article. It also referenced previous vandalism to Stephen Colbert and John Seigenthaler Sr.
On the 5 April, 2007 episode of the United States television series The Office, entitled "The Negotiation," Wikipedia ("the best thing ever") was extensively used by Michael Scott, who printed out a list of raise negotiations during salary negotiations. He explained his reasoning for using the article, stating "anybody in the world can write anything they want, about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information." This was the second time that The Office has mentioned Wikipedia (see archived story), and the third time it has been mentioned on an NBC sitcom.
After the article was mentioned on the show, Negotiation (process) was semi-protected multiple times due to the vandalism it received in the thirty minutes following the mention -- immediately after the mention, 50 edits were recorded in a little over a half hour, from 9 anonymous and 2 newly-registered users.
Eight users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Mikeblas (nom), Angusmclellan (nom), J Milburn (nom), Dgies (nom), Fuhghettaboutit (nom), Hemlock Martinis (nom), Coelacan (nom) and Staecker (nom).
Fifteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Knights Templar (nom), Domenico Selvo (nom), Puerto Ricans in World War II (nom), Thescelosaurus (nom), Bam Thwok (nom), Leo Ornstein (nom), Japan (nom), The Orb (nom), History of Sheffield (nom), Moon (nom), Devil May Cry (nom), Ebionites (nom), Liberal Movement (nom), Some Thoughts Concerning Education (nom), and Encyclopædia Britannica (nom) (see related story).
Nine articles were de-featured last week: Chemical synapse (nom), Presuppositional apologetics (nom), John Major (nom), Torchic (nom), Éire (nom), Commodore 64 (nom), Caulfield Grammar School (nom), Architecture of Btrieve (nom) and Beverage-can stove (nom).
Three lists were promoted to featured status last week: Minnesota Vikings seasons (nom), Timeline of chemistry (nom) and List of United States cities by population (nom).
Two topics were promoted to featured status last week: Final Fantasy VIII (nom) and Hurricane Isabel (nom).
No sounds or portals were promoted to featured status last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Dime (United States coin), Anton Chekhov, Scooby-Doo, Fairy tale, Hamersley, Western Australia, 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · · and George VI of the United Kingdom.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: STS-116, Predation, Lesser brown blowfly, Eastern Gray Squirrel, RMS Titanic, Planum Boreum and The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist.
Ten pictures were promoted to featured status last week:
The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week, and closed two cases.
