Numero dos :P

I used both dogpile.com and ixquick.com (an idea I pretty much stole from Lauren) because I wanted to see if the results would be different or the same on the two search engines. These engines search a variety of search engines at the same time, so I figured the links I got would be the best. While there was some variety (esp. dealing with which article was first, second, etc), I chose sites that we listed on both search engines.

I used the terms "wikipedia controversy"

http://micheladrien.blogspot.com/2005/12/following-wikipedia-controversy.html

This link is to Michael Adrien's blog (bloggers unite!!). According to the blog webpage (http://micheladrien.blogspot.com/2005/12/following-wikipedia-controversy.html) he is a "former news researcher/journalist and web producer, reference librarian in Ottawa, Canada" and his purpose is to write "a purely personal blog for the purposes of sharing information about library issues and legal research."

The blog is posted on blogger.com (yeah...what we're are posting on lol) and is funded by Google.com. While this is obviously a source that isn't necessarily academic and has no editors/fact checkers, etc, the blog basically constitutes an intro and then links to other resources that focus around the controversy of the biography of John Seigenthaler Sr. Since the last update was in 2005, the content is relatively outdated, but at the same time provides links to a variety of articles, including a link to an article written by Seigenthaler himself.

Many of the articles he links to are about the Seigenthaler controversy; there are also links about whether or not Wikipedia is protected from libel suits. And there are links that praise Wikipedia. I feel that there is atleast some balance between the articles, but it's mostly in favor of a negative impression of Wikipedia, esp. since the blogger had the ability to pick and choose what articles he wanted posted. At the bottom of the blog, you can choose to see other blogs Adrien has posted about Wikipedia, which seem to follow the same structure as this one.

We would have to look at a variety of other sources to get the full story surrounding this controversy.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy

This is a wikipedia page that talks about how one of it's editors, Essjay, was found to have falsified his academic record to Wikipedia. As in, this is an example of how ANYONE can edit Wikipedia. The information is very recent as it was last updated on Jan. 21, 2009. The site is owned, operated, and funded by the WikiMedia Foundation, Inc.

"The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, the fourth most visited website in the world" (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home).

While the article seems to portray the information in an unbiased way, we must still be careful since this is a posting about a Wikipedia controversy by Wikipedia itself. More information about it can be found in news sites, such as the NY times.