The thing I love about blogging is that everyone involved in a news story can give you their point of view. Here’s Laurent Haug, the founder of LIFT, who interviewed Florence Devouard, of Wikipedia, on stage, and what she said on stage has now been quoted and read around the world. Laurent, last night, went back and looked at the video tape and gave her exact quote and the context in which it was said. He did that because people were reporting that Florence said Wikipedia would shut down in three months if it didn’t get more cash. That is NOT true, based on the transcripts of what she actually said. It’s why I would rather memetrackers (and other bloggers) actually link to people who were in the audience at a news event.
Compare this to the world we used to live in, where journalists would write an article and there was almost nothing the people who were involved in the story could do to augment, correct, or improve on the understanding we all had about a news story. I far, far, far prefer this new world. Thanks, Laurent, for demonstrating what your conference was all about: that the way we share things worldwide has changed. And for the better.
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We’re about to hop on a plane to Munich, then onto SFO. We will be offline for the next 12 hours or so. See ya Sunday night.
Scobleizer 
I’m not sure what the problem is, here. I was there, I heard her say what she said and I took it to mean that Wikipedia operates with three months cash. In other words, come back in a month and they will still have three months’ operating cash. I also looked in vain for any report in the news (‘MSM’). I can find enough bloggers who mis-heard or quoted the hard of hearing who actually were there, but alas, I can find no real media organisation that perpetrated the myth. There was an article in the Financial Times last December in the ‘Observer’ column about Wikipedia’s chronic cash shortages, though.
I think this is an example of the blogosphere feeding on itself. Nothing to see here – move along, please.
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I’m not sure what the problem is, here. I was there, I heard her say what she said and I took it to mean that Wikipedia operates with three months cash. In other words, come back in a month and they will still have three months’ operating cash. I also looked in vain for any report in the news (‘MSM’). I can find enough bloggers who mis-heard or quoted the hard of hearing who actually were there, but alas, I can find no real media organisation that perpetrated the myth. There was an article in the Financial Times last December in the ‘Observer’ column about Wikipedia’s chronic cash shortages, though.
I think this is an example of the blogosphere feeding on itself. Nothing to see here – move along, please.
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I do not agree at all that Wikimedia only has money for “three months” left – here’s my analysis: http://dan100.blogspot.com/2007/02/wikipedia-short-of-money-no.html .
Quite apart from that though it seems that bloggers have been badly misquoting Devouard, in a manner all too much like the MSM is fond of doing. Maybe bloggers are not quite as good as they think they are.
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I do not agree at all that Wikimedia only has money for “three months” left – here’s my analysis: http://dan100.blogspot.com/2007/02/wikipedia-short-of-money-no.html .
Quite apart from that though it seems that bloggers have been badly misquoting Devouard, in a manner all too much like the MSM is fond of doing. Maybe bloggers are not quite as good as they think they are.
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At least this situation is being talked about, that’s a huge positive!
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At least this situation is being talked about, that’s a huge positive!
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Laurent: sorry about your name. I fixed that.
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Laurent: sorry about your name. I fixed that.
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“Compare this to the world we used to live in, where journalists would write an article and there was almost nothing the people who were involved in the story could do to augment, correct, or improve on the understanding we all had about a news story.”
now we have non-journalists spewing stuff so fast search engines can’t index it fast enough, making a big pile that humans can’t sort through.
as just one example, answer me this: how many people watch Rocketboom every day? i see six different numbers on the Rocketboom blog, three conflicting numbers on the BusinessWeek blog, one really embarrassing guess at TechCrunch and a number at Wikipedia that doesn’t match any of ’em.
i choose this ridiculous example because 1) its had plenty of attention for some dumb reason and 2) it’s the exact type of semi-important meaningless little fact that mainstream media always gets wrong but bloggyland should sort out. but no, we just offer up more crap layered on top of the initial wrong stuff. not sure why you’d expect anything else, really.
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“Compare this to the world we used to live in, where journalists would write an article and there was almost nothing the people who were involved in the story could do to augment, correct, or improve on the understanding we all had about a news story.”
now we have non-journalists spewing stuff so fast search engines can’t index it fast enough, making a big pile that humans can’t sort through.
as just one example, answer me this: how many people watch Rocketboom every day? i see six different numbers on the Rocketboom blog, three conflicting numbers on the BusinessWeek blog, one really embarrassing guess at TechCrunch and a number at Wikipedia that doesn’t match any of ’em.
i choose this ridiculous example because 1) its had plenty of attention for some dumb reason and 2) it’s the exact type of semi-important meaningless little fact that mainstream media always gets wrong but bloggyland should sort out. but no, we just offer up more crap layered on top of the initial wrong stuff. not sure why you’d expect anything else, really.
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It would be great if you pushed solutions about linking to blogs instead of griping about the current state.
http://daviddalka.com/createvalue/2007/01/29/making-it-easier-for-blogs-to-link-to-blogs-instead-of-news-sites/
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It would be great if you pushed solutions about linking to blogs instead of griping about the current state.
http://daviddalka.com/createvalue/2007/01/29/making-it-easier-for-blogs-to-link-to-blogs-instead-of-news-sites/
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The video of Florence’s speech is now available on:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-431051858508446013&hl=en
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The video of Florence’s speech is now available on:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-431051858508446013&hl=en
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