[Air-l] wikipedia becomes a reference in French presidential elections
Frank Thomas
news.ftr at free.fr
Fri May 4 01:27:19 PDT 2007
In France we are now J-2 to the final round of the presidential
elections. On 2 May a debate on TV during prime time between the two
last candidates, Segolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, draw more than 20
million spectators out of 64 million inhabitants. One of the
controversial issues was about nuclear energy, with a fight whether the
European Pressurized Reactor //was considered 3rd or 4th generation. The
interest of this fight was to show that one of the candidates was not up
to date when it comes to technology and research.
According to French radio the reaction of the wikipedia scene was
instant: in the next couple of hours the article was changed 50 times. I
don't see some 50 changes but the citation war starts at 2nd May, 22h34,
just during the TV show.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=R%C3%A9acteur_pressuris%C3%A9_europ%C3%A9en&offset=20070502204031&action=history
Now the article on the EPR has been partially protected:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9acteur_pressuris%C3%A9_europ%C3%A9en
I doubt that changing the content in the authoritative Internet
encyclopedia will change the course of French history, but at least it
shows the perceived impact of wikipedia on the public opinion of French
Internet users.
- Frank Thomas
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Dr. Frank Thomas
FTR Internet Research
93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
France
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