Wikipedia "is producing the world’s least biased accounts of the world’s most polarizing conflict...Two peoples at war can learn to live in peace with the help of what historians have called a “bridging narrative,” a shared understanding of history that takes into account the grievances of both sides. After five regional wars, two intifadas, and endless skirmishes and political confrontations, if any two groups of people on Earth need such a narrative, it’s Israelis and Arabs. By creating an editing environment in which political partisans from the different sides are induced to hash out their disagreements, Wikipedia is showing how a bridging narrative might be created, and what it might look like."

Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Captured Koala. Trust me, it's good.

The Chinese government has effectively stopped blocking Wikipedia. Nevermind.

Category:Lists of fictional animals

Calling shotgun
via kottke

"Sadly, many Wikipedia users still have a sense of humour and, what is worse, use it deliberately. This is why I recently set up the Wikipedia Fun Police, to help eliminate this problem once and for all. "

Via via via via

Another wikipedia blog: WikiDumper is "The Official Appreciation Page for the Best of the Wikipedia Rejects". (I like this one.)

Interesting blog post with a digg-ready title: Wikipedia and the Death of Archaeology: "Since Wikipedia exists in many non-identical, language-based independent editions, each of which is constantly changing, all of the editions taken together provide a real-time record of not only how our perception of ourselves morphs over time, but how that perception differs culturally around the world as well."

On a non-wikipedia-related note, my old band The Allusions finished recording some songs (my keyboard and synths are in the first three). It's impossible to judge a band you've been in objectively, but I think they sound pretty damn good. Check out their shows if you're in michigan.

Google buys Jotspot. (JotSpot is an enterprise-wiki -slash-web-app platform. It looks kind of cool.)

There's a minor war [signpost overview] raging in the blogosphere after Jason Calcamis, CEO of Weblogs Inc., said it was unconcionable for Wikipedia not to run advertising.

Of course, Wikipedia's adlessness is one of the things that makes it work -- it's community-powered, and rather utopian -- but you already knew that. Wikipedians have been talking about this issue for years, and the idea that there are millions of dollars at stake is not new.

What's telling about this exchange is that almost everyone in the wider blogging world has come to the same conclusion the wikipedians did. (Calacanis has taken a lot of abuse, not all of it deserved.)

Speaking of which. I'm on the fundraising committee, and we should be rolling out some exciting new stuff over the next month -- none of it ad-related. The difference between Wikipedia's model and Weblog Inc.'s typifies the difference between blogging and wikis generally, I think.

There's a new podcast: Wikipedia Weekly. (They've got a Jimmy Wales interview this week.) Here's the mp3 feed, and here's the iTunes link.

Florence Devouard is the new chair of the Wikimedia board. Jimbo will become Chairman Emeritus.

Communist Mutants from Space!

0.999...

The NYTimes has a comprehensive article on China's partial unblock.

List of Six Feet Under deaths. (Because episode guides are for pussies.)

From Jimbo, on the list:

Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you like to see purchased and released under a free license?

Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific, be general, brainstorm, have fun with it.

I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own.

If you've got ideas, add them.

The Austrailian: Editing wikipedia is a civic duty

Reporters Without Borders has the scoop on China's partial unblock.

Sure, there's Eastcoast / Westcoast hiphop. But for completists...