The National Institutes of Health scores big points for this: on July 16, they hosted Wikipedia staff and scientists at their headquarters in Bethesda, MD, for an all-day "Wikipedia Academy." The goal of the event was to recruit knowledgeable editors and teach them about Wikipedia standards and practices, with the end goal of improving the science articles on the world's largest, most popular encyclopedia. From the press release:

Video war continues between Obama and McCain, McCain is using Wikipedia, David All is impressed with McCain's online ads, Jame Hamsher has a new PAC to boast about, #dontgo campaign gets a little more support,

Mark Glaser interviews Patrick Ruffini; Rolling Stone glowingly investigates Obama's grassroots game; Mike Connery at TPMCafe; who's winning the Wikipedia primary?; Flickr for Good launches; and the candidates do some, er, interesting things with splash pages.

More Wikipedia un-controversies are uncovered, thanks to WikiScanner; Wired talks to David All about his Modern Media Strategies workshop; James Kotecki realizes that the candidates have been BREAKING THE LAW; Cracked produces a parody of the CNN/YouTube debate; Todd Zeigler on the most-viewed YouTube videos from the Dems; and more Facebook and MySpace friends could mean more votes.

Discovering the major and minor edits made to candidates' Wikipedia profiles; Jonah Goldberg argues against the idea that the web is inherently suited to liberals; surprising findings about the effect of Facebook and MySpace on political opinion; Change.org gets into the presidential quiz game; Newt launches a new site called "American Solutions"; and the difficulties of registering and logging into candidates' sites.

The New York Times needs to look a lot harder for questionable Wikipedia edits; Fred Thompson is hit with an FEC complaint; Judy Feder produces a video that should instruct the candidates how to really listen to folks on the street.

What do William Gibson, George Orwell, Karl Rove, Chris Shays, Wikipedia and the rise of YouTube have to do with each other? Browsing today's news offerings, I find a connection.