Wicked 'Cycplopedia

A few interesting pieces in recent on-line zines & newspapers on the wikipedia phenomenon. Most fascinating (and, ultimately, irritating) piece is Jaron Lanier’s essay on Edge, with its claims that wikipedia is something like a maoist conspiracy. Read it here. A range of reactions to the piece can be read here. Democracy now has also weighed in with a defense of the wikipedia philosophy, here.Meanwhile the New York Times ran a piece on wikipedia’s editing troubles and it’s ensuing decision to impose some limits to the editing process. Read it here.

Meanwhile, The New Republic is all over the blogosphere, or at least has a cover feature about the bloggers Las Vegas convention in its print edition. Here is signandsight’s summary of the piece:

Ryan Lizza provides an amusing report of the first meeting of liberal bloggers in Las Vegas, the “Yearly Kos”, put on by the Website Daily Kos. Everyone found the event very signficant, but the atmosphere was a little heavy after the guru of the scene, Armando, confessed to being a corporate lawyer for Wal-Mart. “Las Vegas could be the beginning of a new era of blogger influence and authority. Or it might just be the weekend they all sold out. This uncertainty over what will happen at the first major convention for liberal bloggers drives Yearly Kos participants into a strange and ritualistic dance. Throughout the four-day convention, bloggers, politicians, and reporters circle one another like a trio of underwater species not quite sure who eats whom anymore. The bloggers alternatively ridicule and suck up to the reporters. The politicians prostrate themselves before the bloggers one minute and then roll their eyes at them in off-the-record pow-wows with the ‘mainstream media’ the next. The press smile and yuk it up with the bloggers during the day and escape to decadent, MSM-only meals at night. All three groups seem to agree that everything in their respective spheres is changing because of the blogs, but nobody is quite sure how.