I have a guilty confession to make. I love Wikipedia. I had not realised this was a particular source of shame until I went to a recent conference on the new media. Speaker after speaker said that, of course, no responsible journalist would take facts off Wikipedia, which is notoriously full of errors. I said nothing. I’m sure I’ve done this lots of times – usually uncontroversial little, fact-checky things. But data all the same.

In fact, I was at it again this afternoon – as I was researching my newspaper column for next week (small trailer) on sex scandals (out on Tuesday!!!!). Put in almost any name into Google – Bill Clinton, Jeremy Thorpe, Tony Blair – and it is likely that the Wikipedia entry will be the thing that comes up first. It’s really useful.