Ex-Britannica Editor Reviews Wikipedia 869
0-9a-f writes "Robert McHenry, one-time Editor in Chief of Encyclopædia Britannica, offers his thoughts on Wikipedia at Tech Central Station. While many Wikipedia zealots might discount his obvious bias outright, his broad argument is difficult to ignore. A million monkeys might eventually write Shakespeare, but how would they recognise it once they had?"
Shakepsearmonkey.pl (Score:3, Funny)
Simple. For each Shakespeare literature there would be another million monkeys reading and discussing the article. Thus you have a million writing monkeys and you would have maybe a million million reading monkeys; thus, the noise from the million million monkeys during discussion would drive the million monkeys.
foreach $monkeys(keys {%Shakespeare})
{
print "You\'ve got Shakespeare" if %shakespeare{$monkeys} = $It;
}
See the infinite monkey rule isn't good to apply as that rule doesn't facilitate feedback from the system.
My Favourite (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My Favourite (Score:5, Funny)
This reminds me of Bart's discovery that he was drinking "smilk."
Good luck with your encyclypedia.
Re:Evolve, Sir. (Score:3, Funny)
perhaps you meant FTFA?
MMmonkeys (Score:4, Funny)
So true! Thats like saying a million monkeys might write a great open-source operating system, but how would they recognise it once they had?
ermm.. wait...
Re:Shakepsearmonkey.pl (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmm... We can rephrase that, can't we?
For each Slashdot headline there are another million monkeys reading and discussing the article.
Re:Bias?! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, Goebbels was more hands on.
Re:Shakepsearmonkey.pl (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm. I think we need quantum monkeys.
Re:Shakepsearmonkey.pl (Score:1, Funny)
How in the hell... (Score:5, Funny)
Now how in the hell am I supposed to trust this definition of Asymptote?
Re:My Favourite (Score:1, Funny)
I'm guilty of that (Score:2, Funny)
I am turning in a paper tomorrow that cites the wikipedia as a source. I suppose if I attended a less-crappy university, I might care.
I think that the information I used was accurate enough. It was about voting systems.
Re:Out of date? (Score:1, Funny)
If only it were true
Re:My Favourite (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shakepsearmonkey.pl (Score:3, Funny)
But are they reading, or aren't they? Who knows? Heisenberg and Schroedinger don't, that's for sure.
What are you talking about? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:approaching truth (Score:3, Funny)
On Slashdot?
My head just exploded.
Re:Already fixed! (Score:3, Funny)
Typos happen. *shrug*
You can't tell me a misplaced apostrophe is a typo, though. Look at a QWERTY keyboard, and you'll see how it happened.