Bitcoin in the Irish Times

[Bimmerhead]

Here's some mainstream coverage of bitcoin:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2010/1126/1224284180416.html

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[kiba]

And there is no link to bitcoin.org at all.

[dob]

It's for the print edition -- I don't get to file markup language in my final copy, sadly

And while I've given URLs in the past, it's always been a little awkward, and in the end I figure that people can just as easily Google for a term and find a site like bitcoin.org.

Best,

Danny

[kiba]

Thanks for covering us.

[dwdollar]

Fantastic!

This should be Wikipedia worthy...  Yes?  No?

[The Madhatter]

This should be Wikipedia worthy...  Yes?  No?

Jeeze.. I sure hope so. Someone should revive the wikipedia page and add this article as a 'source' ASAP.

It would be nice to have Bitcoin in wikipedia before interested readers start trying to search for it.

[Anonymous]

I bought $70 worth of Bitcoins to write this article.

 Thanks for being so willing to try it out. 

[jgarzik]

This should be Wikipedia worthy...  Yes?  No?

Jeeze.. I sure hope so. Someone should revive the wikipedia page and add this article as a 'source' ASAP.

It would be nice to have Bitcoin in wikipedia before interested readers start trying to search for it.

The wikipedia page is pretty lame at the moment, and I agree with one commenter who says "smells like an advertisement" -- especially the Acceptance section.

"Monetary and financial benefits" section is quite off-the-cuff, with many of the items easily open to question, or are quite plainly an opinion, not fact.

I think bitcoin is best served by first having a respectable wiki page -- even if stored in From_Xenu or incubator -- then going back a third (fourth? fifth?) time to ask that the article be undeleted.

Having a popular From_Xenu web page "riddled with facts", looking good, will do more to get a Bitcoin page into wikipedia than a million people posting "add it!" to a Talk page somewhere.  Google searches will find the From_Xenu wiki page without a problem...

[The Madhatter]

The wikipedia page is pretty lame at the moment, and I agree with one commenter who says "smells like an advertisement" -- especially the Acceptance section.

Yes it is lame, but it is better than nothing. You know how the average joe thinks. If it is on wikipedia it makes Bitcoin seem more credible and "real".

[caveden]

Nice article! Shared it!

And I agree about the wikipedia page.

[mpkomara]

What does our local wikipedia/wikimedia RHorning have to say about this?  Is bitcoin notable yet? 

[theymos]

Google searches will find the From_Xenu wiki page without a problem...

The page isn't indexed by search engines because it contains the {{NOINDEX}} template.

[jgarzik]

Google searches will find the From_Xenu wiki page without a problem...

The page isn't indexed by search engines because it contains the {{NOINDEX}} template.

Various google searches get you one step away, either linking to the bitcoin forum or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undeletion/Archive_20#Bitcoin

[hugolp]

Beautiful. This things make my day.

[MoonShadow]

Google searches will find the From_Xenu wiki page without a problem...

The page isn't indexed by search engines because it contains the {{NOINDEX}} template.

Then something is wrong, because I still get the forum's new topics via Google Watch, and much more besides.  From that alone, I can tell that interest on the blogosphere has increased much since the EFF put up their bitcoin address.

[skull88]

excelent written 

[RHorning]

What does our local wikipedia/wikimedia RHorning have to say about this?  Is bitcoin notable yet? 

I'm not sure what you are implying here.  I'm not an admin on Wikipedia, but I've been involved there for some time and do have a feel for what might generally be expected by the Wikipedia community.

Bitcoin is a noteworthy concept and certainly deserves more widespread discussion in a variety of venues.  This article proves the point too, and it is about as mainstream as it comes.  This article certainly comes close to being a "reliable source" so far as to prove that the concept isn't just a flash in the pan.  One of the reasons for the notability guidelines is to keep crazy things like some snake oil salesman or UFO "researcher" from essentially making stuff up out of whole cloth and claiming that there are "sources" to support their theories.  That has been the case so far for Bitcoins in terms of similar self-published sources and I've always said that the goal here is to get the word out beyond that.

Encouraging more articles like this one to be written can only help the cause.  Just give it patience as more will be written as well as other cultural references to Bitcoins eventually as it becomes more widely used.

By the formal rule you can now point to at least two independent and "reliable sources" that at least discuss Bitcoins in length and describe its behavior.  There is even a third significant source to point to for those in doubt.  That is significant.  Now the trick is to simply write the article in such a way that it describes the concept of bitcoins without sounding like an advertisement.  That isn't as easy as it seems where you have to work hard to keep the tone of the article neutral.

As for the Irish Times article itself, I'm glad that it is written and as an article written for an average person, it is nice.  I'd like to see something about Bitcoins in a more technical journal that goes into the technical details or better yet some peer-reviewed white paper or scholarly article that goes into details about Bitcoins, but this article is an excellent start and shows there is some "buzz" about the concept in general.  I'm expecting many more general news articles about Bitcoins before the scholarly papers get written, particularly given the nature of the peer-to-peer networking community.

[JohnDoe]

According to Alexa, irishtimes.com is the 15th most visited site in Ireland, so if that's not notable enough for wikipedia we could accuse them of being biased.

[da2ce7]

Now the trick is to simply write the article in such a way that it describes the concept of bitcoins without sounding like an advertisement.  That isn't as easy as it seems where you have to work hard to keep the tone of the article neutral.

Ok, Lets start composing the "Wikipedia article" to be on our own wiki.

[RHorning]

According to Alexa, irishtimes.com is the 15th most visited site in Ireland, so if that's not notable enough for wikipedia we could accuse them of being biased.

OK, so this article is from a widely read website.  Is the information accurate and reliable which is in the article?  Can the information from this article be used, with of course other "reliable sources" to compose the article?

While perhaps the overview of what Bitcoins really is can come from articles of this nature, I don't think it is going to be that useful to go into the technical details of how Bitcoins actually work being derived from this article or from sources of this nature.  Far more useful from articles like this are the social impacts of using Bitcoins and what they are being used for rather than how it actually works.

Also, who are "they"?  The "cabal" who hangs out poking the AfD discussions and shooting down articles with weak sources?  What bias are you talking about, that "they" are looking for high quality sources of information?

I'll say it again, Wikipedia is about what already is, not an advertising forum to say what you'd like it to become.  Do you really think everybody who would ever be interested in Bitcoins has already heard about it and nobody else cares?  If you are looking to advertise Bitcoins, there are many other much better places to do so.

The purpose of Wikipedia is to write content which encompasses the whole of human knowledge, but it must be based upon some rational source of information.  I realize that the standards of Wikipedia are perhaps higher now than they were in the past, but at the same time Wikipedia is getting recognized for those standards and what I see here is a complaint that the standards are perhaps too high.  Unfortunately for most of the content the complaint is that the standards for including Wikipedia content are too low, so the participants creating Wikipedia are responding to that by raising the standards.  This Bitcoin article is caught in the no-mans-land of that fight, which is why I'm trying to be patient here to explain Wikipedia policies and perhaps help to explain why the current Bitcoin article there isn't quite "ready for prime time" and why there even was a drive to get it deleted in the first place.