There has been a fascinating project underway in Australia for the last year.
A group of experienced and new wikipedians have been developing wiki pages for Australian Paralympians under the guidance of Tony Naar at the Australian Paralympic Committee.
I receive daily updates of their work and have been staggered by the scale and scope of their creativity.
One of the contributors to the project is Laura Hale. Laura has been working on Olympic pages too and she set herself the objective of developing pages for all female Australian Olympians in 2012.
This week Brian Mossop has produced an account of the overall use of Wikipedia at the Games in a Wired article.
He points out that:
Despite being staffed entirely by an army of volunteers, Wikipedia — which is not, strictly speaking, a news site — is keeping pace with conventional media outlets. Official results make their way to athletes’ Wikipedia pages within hours, and sometimes minutes, of their finish. With dedicated editors working 24/7, Wikipedia pages are proving to be faster, leaner and more popular alternatives to traditional reporting.
Photo Credit
Orbit – Olympic Park
