wikipedia

Online travel information can be very difficult to gauge.

Sometimes, you have no idea if the person who posted about a hotel's supreme service works for the hotel itself or whether the person revealing the presence of cockroaches just happens to be a competitor.

Yet now the bastions of objectivity at the Wikimedia Foundation seem to be getting into the travel business.

For, as Skift.com tells it, the boys from Wikipedia are to set up their own, as yet unnamed, travel site.

It seems that this travel site will be a guide for all who wish to depart … Read more

Wikipedia plans to introduce a new feedback tool allowing it to gather opinions from readers on how to improve its articles.

The editorial group behind the popular user-generated encyclopedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, announced this week that the new version of the Wikipedia Article Feedback Tool is on the way.

The current V4 version, which has been in operation since 2010, features a rating form at the end of each article. Readers can rate articles on a scale of 1 to 5 across four different metrics: the objectivity, trustworthiness, quality and completeness of the article.

Version 5 aims to further expand … Read more

Wikipedia shut down for 24 hours, just six months ago, joining a massive Web protest in the U.S. over the proposed anti-piracy laws SOPA and PIPA. Now, it's stepping up again in a major Internet revolt against online censorship in Russia.

According to The Next Web, the Russian government is looking to amend a law called the "Act for Information." The proposed changes to the law could lead to sweeping censorship of the Internet, including the complete closure of Wikipedia in Russia.

Wikipedia posted a statement in Russian on its Web site, which The Next Web … Read more

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has launched an online petition to stop the extradition of a 24-year-old British student to the U.S. for alleged criminal copyright violations.

The U.S. Department of Justice has been attempting to extradite Richard O'Dwyer to face criminal copyright charges for allegedly linking to copies of copyrighted films through TVShack.net, a crowd-sourced site that has been seized by the Department of Homeland Security. O'Dwyer faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

In an article penned for The Guardian, Wales called O'Dwyer the "human face" a global battle … Read more

DataSift, the company that gathers stats on social media trends and that took Twitter by storm, is now tracking trends on Wikipedia.

The company launched Wikistats today, a site that shows real-time data on which articles have been edited the most in the last 24 hours. The site identifies when changes were made and by how many different users. The data also shows how many lines were removed from articles and how many were added.

Most people forget that Wikipedia -- one of the largest crowd-sourced data repositories in the world and the sixth most popular Web site overall -- … Read more

In the quest for knowledge, Microsoft's Bing announced a partnership with Encyclopedia Britannica today. Now, alongside all other results -- like Wikipedia and Web pages -- users will see a box of information with an image linking to results from Britannica's online encyclopedia.

"A core focus for us here at Bing has been about delivering relevant information in a more organized way to help you find what you need more quickly and get stuff done," Bing's principal development lead Franco Salvetti wrote in a blog post. "We're very excited to collaborate with Encyclopedia … Read more

It's been two weeks since Google embarked on its biggest overhaul since its inception and...so far so good.

The Internet giant said it has had a clear increase in search activity over the past couple of weeks, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"Early indications are that people are interacting with it more, learning about more things...and doing more [search] queries," top Google search executive Amit Singhal told the Journal in an interview. "It's stoking people's curiosity."

Google spokesman Jason Freidenfelds also told the Journal that more people are doing more … Read more

The Internet continues to escape from its virtual confines. Clothing hangers hook into Facebook. Twitter comes printed on toilet paper. And now, Wikipedia has its own town.

Monmouth in South Wales has a population of less than 9,000, but plenty of tourists come to see the local castle and walk the historic streets. Those tourists will be able to plug into Wikipedia articles about the town through special QR code plaques placed in strategic locations.… Read more

Richard, our studio engineer, is the inspiration for today's show title that goes along with a story about his old Dumpster-diving days, when he'd raid the Hostess factory at the end of the night to recover "old" Twinkies and Ho Hos.

Jeff faced childhood memories of his own this weekend while cleaning out his old closet, unearthing treasures like Palm Pilots, two Sega Dreamcasts, and a box of old CD jewel cases. If you don't know what those things are, you're too young to be listening to The 404.… Read more