FUD-Based Encyclopedias 364
blacklily8 writes "Someone has finally gotten around to offering an intelligent point-by-point rejoinder to an ex-Brittanica editor's lambasting of Wikipedia--which was covered in this earlier Slashdot post. Aaron Krowne, a mathematician and head of Emory University's library research department, argues here that established encyclopedias are using FUD to discredit what is actually a more reliable way to build an encyclopedia: 'McHenry's definition of quality seems to consist solely of presentational matters such as spelling, grammar, and text flow. These are of course important considerations, but I propose that there are other important facets of quality - for example, coverage.'"
Coverage = quality? (Score:2, Interesting)
so, if that's the case, MTV2 made MTV better quality? After all, it gave all those music videos better quality?
Sorry, while I see how some times bigger coverage can push for better quality (in the form of competition, for instance), it just doesn't necessarily translate to it.
Re:Coverage = quality? (Score:5, Informative)
That being said, "coverage" does not refer to how widely-known/widely-used a certain piece of information is. It's not about how much coverage an article (or a music video) gets; it's about how much coverage it *contains*. What Krowne means is that a longer article with more information and more details has a higher quality (measured in the coverage metric, that is) - provided that the information is correct, but that goes without saying -, not that an article that's read by more people is of a higher quality (even though in Wikipedia's collaborative model where everyone can edit articles, at least, an article with more readers will likely reach a higher coverage and/or cohesion, too).
Re:Coverage = quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
For a long time the first four Chinese dynasties were dismised as 'mythological' by Western academics. The original reason for this was that the dates of these dynasties were incompatible with the biblical flood and so they had to be explained away. This claim still persists today even though there is at least as much evidence for the existence of the yellow emperor as Homer. The criteria for changing the established view are far higher than creating one.
The modern Brittanica is both huge and for many purposes useless. If you want detailed information on a topic like cryptography you will find maybe a short article on RSA in Brittanica but unlikely to find out very much. Wikipedia on the other hand has extensive in depth coverage of far more obscure points.
Every information source is biased and wrong. If you have the misfortune to watch Fox News you will see plenty that is deliberately deceptive, much that is outright lies. There are very few blogs on either the right or the left that sink to the level of mendacity that is standard operating procedure for the Murdoch/Hearst press. We don't see many editorials in the old media complaining about that.
The issues raised by the Brittanica guy are not completely groundless, the Wikipedia people need to consider them carefully. Wiki is not the first extended Internet collaboration system to reach a large audience. The problem is that success brings trolls, spammers and cranks. Together the trolls spammers and cranks destroyed USENET in the mid 90's. It only recovered when the parasites moved on to try to wreck email.
I think the issues raised are fixable but we will have to think carefully about mechanism. I do not think peer review is feasible on that scale but reputation systems might be.
A deeper problem that Wiki shares with Britanica is that it tries to impose a single systematization of knowledge. This is fine for areas where there is no controversy. Where controversy is active the result is either a tug of war between extreemes or some bland statement that takes no position.
Sometimes you have to put the facts on the line, there is no 'scientific' theory of creationism. Creationism is revealled knowledge and that is simply not compatible with science. But there are people who honestly beleive the opposite.
I firmly beleive in the 'reality based' universe and want information sources that share this belief. I do not want my information contaminated by the crationist world view or any other silliness.
there are also cases of genuine academic dispute where things get equally nasty and ideological.
Re:Coverage = quality? (Score:3, Interesting)
a lot of what you say makes sense, but i'm thinking about this statement a little differently than you are.
in my mind, both of these universe origin stories are just that. the scientific version is a 'theory' which means that science itself believes pretty strongly that it is true. the religion version is 'reve
Re:It all boils down to one thing...Control (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that the control over what various ideas and concepts mean, has been, quite literally, handed over to the people at large, This is one more stone wall that will come tumbling down, as institutions like Encyclopedia Britannica no longer have an iron grip on the acquisition, distillation, and dissemination of information. People always put up a fight when an entrenched institution is supplanted with something newer, so it's no surprise that we're starting to see some resistance.
Re:Coverage = quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is wrong: Wikipedia works on these things very actively. Check the article on Zoophilia [wikipedia.org] to see example where NPOV (Neutral Point Of View) was achieved without loss to the quality of the article. The rule is simple: If consensus can't be achieved, best of voices/arguments of all sides are published and it's up to the reader to decide which one they prefer. Something hardly ever happens in Britannica: If some "expert" has his own agenda to push, there's no way to achieve NPOV, if there is some kind of argument going on, encyclopedia either takes one side or does what you said: leaves a short, bland statement. No way to discuss things, no way to explain differences, no chance for rebuttal of fallacious arguments.
Re:Coverage = quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, if I look on wikipedia for evolution, I DO NOT WANT to read a thing saying why it is wrong. I want to read about the theory of evolution. The bottom of the article shuld have links and there might be a criticism of it etc. If i read an article on christianity i don't want it to be a criticism of why it's wrong, or a proponent of why it's right. I just want it to be the facts, what the people believe in, how it originated etc. Then at the bottom links to theories and ideas supporting or not in support shuld be presented.. and for the most part, I have seen it done this way on Wiki.. bravo
Re:Coverage = quality? (Score:3, Interesting)
And rightly so. The early dynasties were credited as emperor-magicians who lived tens of thousands of years. The Yellow Emperor and his wife were supposed to have invented writing, cultivated silkworks, and various other essential inventions. Modern scholars still refer to him as legendary (including Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], so maybe you should direct some of your righteous anger against them, or at least edit the en
You're wrong (Score:3, Funny)
Homer does not really exist. He's a cartoon character. But he is yellow!
Re:Coverage = quality? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, the first edition came out before 1776!
It did, actually. According to the Wikipedia entry, the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica [wikipedia.org] was published in 1768. The second edition may also have described the American colonies as happy subjects, since it was published in 1777.
Somehow I doubt the Brittanica has nearly as much information about Wikipedia :-)
Re:Coverage = quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Coverage = quality? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, I can create the greatest encyclopedia on earth by being very accurate? Well, here goes say's quality encyclopedia:
Wiki resistant to accuracy: a sample experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. I can report a small sample of experience in seeing how accuracy has been managed in a particular wiki. That sample does not inspire me with confidence.
In a nutshell, I read a wiki page, saw some incorrect data about a subject which has been my bread and butter, and I added a note giving correct data (plus citations for independent verification by whoever might want to check it out).
A day later, the note had been removed to a discussion page accompanied by a comment by someone who seemed to be taking a role as the wiki's maintainer, saying that he 'didn't feel like' putting that stuff in 'right now'. Several months later, the correct info still was not back on the wiki page, the information on the wiki page was as incorrect as it had been when I first saw it.
I didn't try to push the correction, it's a free medium, seemingly the maintainer and maybe everybody else (or maybe not?) has a right to offer and put in what they please.
That freedom clearly has a lot of pluses.
But accuracy, or an assurance of accuracy, equally clearly isn't one of them.
I don't know how many wiki pages have maintainers. But that's what I saw happening.
My conclusion is that a wiki appears to be as accurate (or inaccurate) as its maintainer keeps it; or if there is no maintainer, then it is as likely to be as inaccurate as the most careless of its contributors.
-wb-
Re:Coverage = quality? (Score:2)
I say, (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I say, (Score:3, Insightful)
This is probably the best comment on this topic. Not only are *all* encyclopedias just simple gloss-overs of real research but Brittanica is aimed at the early teen market.
The wikipedia oughtn't worry about how traditional encyclopedia's view them. It won't matter in the end -- the wikipedia is free, accessible, pervasive and mainly supported by the people. Those are winning factors everytime.
Bad spelling (Score:4, Funny)
McHenry was right. (Score:2, Funny)
Having glanced at Krowne's missive, I'd have no choice but to support McHenry in whatever it was he said.
Re:McHenry was right. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can submit an article and it will be published.
2. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can edit that article, and the modifications will stand until further modified.
Then comes the crucial and entirely faith-based step:
3. Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy.
Personally, I suspect he may be right. I fail to see the sorting mechanism in Wikipedia by which good writing and accurate facts rise to float above all the shit and the articles are often of low quality; I'm speaking as a fairly frequent contributor.
It often feels like a fool's errand. Articles frequently seem to become more jumbled, incoherent, and full of extraneous bullshit over time. Articles usually lack any sort of references to primary literature, and it seems that in general (a) it's failed to draw in the experts it needs to produce a really high quality product, and (b)the experts voices don't sound any louder than those of some quasi-literate high school sophomore, so they tend to get lost in the storm, and (c) the result of dozens of different voices working on a text is something which is bland and lacking in life, prose designed by committee and largely stripped of life. In particular I wonder if it will suffer the same fate as many mailing lists: the ignorant idiots with nothing intelligent to say tend to scream loudest. The informed people tend to speak less because they have a better sense of their own ignorance, eventually get fed up, and leave.
Granted, it works a hell of a lot better than I'd expect it to, and it's useful if you want facts in a hurry and are going to check them later, but the idea that it currently stands shoulder-to-shoulder with traditional media and peer-reviewed scientific publications is just ridiculous. I think the project has potential, and I think in its current incarnation it can be a useful alternative to traditional journal articles, texts, and soforth, but I think it's a long way from being a consistently well-written and reliable resource. Can it get there? I wouldn't write it off. It's amazing it got this far and works as well as it does.
information is not a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, you're making another crucial mistake (one that McHenry also made): you assume that people are, generally, stupid, uninformed and/or not able/willing to check facts. Now, that may be true for many people, of course, but it's not true for *all* people, and in fact, I'd say that anyone who makes substantial edits on Wikipedia is likely to have a reasonable amount of intelligence at least.
Also, new articles in Wikipedia *are* being checked by others (I'm doing that myself, some time), and that *does* include checking for factual accuracy just as much as it includes checking for spelling errors (like "intelligen"), grammatical mistakes and the like.
Finally, last I checked, George Washington's birthday as listed in Wikipedia is, in fact, correct, so that's not a good example by any means.
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2, Interesting)
For instance creationism [wikipedia.org] doesn't have the theory of evolution [wikipedia.org] or any counter argument listed as a rela
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2)
It doesn't always happen, and even when it does, it's no guarantee that there never will be misleading or even outright inaccurate information in Wikipedia, but generally, I think Wikipedia does converge towards perfection, so to speak *s*, and surprisingly fast so far, too, for that matter.
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2)
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:3, Interesting)
It's worse than that, actually. Two people who "think" they know the answer can easily trump five people who actually do, if those two people have nothing better to do than sit at their computers and revert changes all day. But with that said, it's still a pretty good system. Like Democracy, it will often fluctuate away from the most optimal
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
But what are you checking it against? Common knowledge? You're own personal research? Another encyclopedia?
This question is neither aimed at being pro- or anti-wikipedia, just meant to point out a general problem/issue with "information" and "facts" in general, which is that there isn't a real way of knowing what constitutes a "reliable source". Each and every so
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be nice to have a couple of links to your edits - not the articles, but the edit history itself, so we can check the story. Political debates can get hot, but I've never seen a wikipedia article with a clear bias.
Apart from the fact that addressing wikipedia with "they", let alone "they have an agenda", shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how wikipedia works.
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess you haven't been looking too hard. Maybe you haven't seen a Wikipedia article that has a bias different from yours? Or maybe you haven't seen a Wikipedia article with bias because edit wars generally turn the article into something little more informative than a cereal box. Or maybe you just aren't knowledgeable enough to evaluate when an article has bias and when it doesn't? How many people wach Fox news and believe that it is 'fair and balance
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:5, Informative)
That being said, conflicts happen, of course, and not every single Wikipedia user does hold this principle in as high a regard as they should; and in fact, with certain topics (politics are one example), there unfortunately are users who not only try to push an agenda, but are also very insistent.
However, it is not true that Wikipedia in general has either a bias or an agenda (outside of the agenda of providing a good, accurate and neutral encyclopedia).
That being said, if you have problems with specific articles and a consensus with other editors of these articles cannot be reached, there are ways to resolve those conflicts. The first step is to ask for comments from other (not directly involved) people at Wikipedia: Requests for Comments [wikipedia.org]. If that does not help, you can file a request for mediation [wikipedia.org], where the two parties agree to a mediator that tries to help them resolve the problem; if that does not help, either, you can bring the case to the arbitration committee [wikipedia.org], who will hear all involved parties, gather evidence, hear statements etc. and ultimately come to a binding resolution. Try it - I've done so myself, and although the conflict this was about lingered for about three months and produced at least 300 KB of mud-slinging on the relevant article's talk page alone, it ultimately *did* get resolved; the offending user (who continued to push an agenda of their own and continually violated the NPOV principle) was banned from editing the relevant article and all pertaining to it for a year, and since then, constructive work on the article has resumed.
That being said, for immediate conflict resolution, if there is an edit war going on over a page, you can also request page protection [wikipedia.org]; locking an article for a few days is often is a nice way of making sure that everyone cools down and a civilised discussion can resume.
As for facts not being negotiable, of course they aren't, but you should take care not to confuse facts with opinions. Not everything that *looks* like a fact is one, and while things like the date of George Washington's birthday really *are* facts, other questions like whether the it'd be justified to list shrub's regime on the Kleptocracy article ultimately revolve around opinions, not hard facts.
Don't forget: Wikiproject Fact and Reference Check (Score:3, Informative)
If we can get 'smart' foot/end notes designed into Wikipedia's Software (MediaWiki) then I am sure Wikipedia could become the most authoritative source of information every created: Each article's facts being referenced with dozens of sources, and each of these references being confirmed by dozens of in
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Actual examples of where this is important:
Chinese-English dictionary printed by the Chinese Govt had definitions of english wor
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Facts aren't negotiable, nor are they reached by concensus. Nor are they "fair". They simply ARE.
I agree, but then again any given encyclopedia doesn't consist of more than five or ten percent facts. "Facts" about history or "facts" about dinosaurs may very well be in Encyclopedia Britannica, but they don't fall into the category of things that simply are. The reasons for world war 2 aren't a priori facts.
Written, monolithic encyclopedias are known to be quite error-prone on information that should be
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2)
So check it in 12 months. Articles have a habit of evolving nicely with time.
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
What's worse, you use an article as an example where most people (me inclu
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:4, Informative)
The NMR article is, overall, fine. I have a physics degree, and feel that I can accurately judge an article at this level. If you don't believe me, get a physicist friend to check it for you.
Excellent troll, though.
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:information is not a democracy-A "ruler" by day (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it's not perfect, but it works quite well, and I dare conjecture it does converge towards perfection, too.
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
And it probably takes less time to do so than it takes to complain about it on Slashdot.
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:3, Informative)
As for someone with enough devotion / resources being able to control an article, there *is* a process for dispute resolution. You are welcome to use facilities like WP:RFPP (requests for page protections), WP:RFC (requests for comments), WP:RFM (requests for mediation) and WP:RFAr (requests for arbitration); see my other comment i
Which leads to... (Score:5, Insightful)
Both have their place, and both have pros and cons.
Re:Which leads to... (Score:5, Interesting)
The GFDL under which all Wikipedia content is licensed does allow you to do that. In fact, it already *has* been done, too: a snapshot of the German Wikipedia was published on CD-ROM (also available for download as an ISO image) last September, IIRC.
Re:Which leads to... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actualy, what I would expect to see is "stable" and "unstable" branches of wikipedia, much like the linux kernel.
Periodically, the wikipedia database could hav
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem, is not willfull ignorance, as the Intelligent Design bit
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2)
Ultimately you can't have your cake and eat it too. There is something to be said for the model of democratic information. Then again, there's something to be said for only one right answer.
There can be compromises, of course. But there is no way to preserve the ideal state o
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2)
It seems to me that it's either going to be an authoritarian revelatory expert-based system ("This is true because I say so an I'm the expert") or a democratic, peer-based system ("Most people tend to agree on this, but some argue...").
Even if you take the extreme position and tell people to personally verify all information the encounter,
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2)
That's why wikipedia is not a democracy :) (Score:2)
There is no survey whether 2+2 is 5 or what day Alexander Hamilton was born.
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2)
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2)
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2)
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it is. All historical, scientific, or other accepted "facts" are only those that the greatest ammount of people agree with.
Science is and always has been very democratic. If it wasn't, it wouldn't work.
It's like the people in certain areas who want "intelligen design" to be taught instead of Darwin's scientifically viable theory of evolution.
It's not that the Theory of Evolution is somehow innatly superior
Re:information is not a democracy (Score:2)
--dave
Yet another battle between haves and have-nots (Score:5, Insightful)
The paper-based encyclopedias are dying fairly rapidly, as I can check the search engines and find many, many sources of information.
Lets do one, shall we... Phrase: Underground Railroad.
1: I get a map thrumbnail showing paths on the Underground Railroad
2: The amount of material gleaned on just the metadata and the URL. See below.
____________
Underground Railroad--History of Slavery, Pictures, Information
You are a slave in Maryland in the 1800s. Can you escape? Learn what challenges slaves faced in National Geographic's Underground Railroad adventure. Get information
www.nationalgeographic.com/railroad/ - 5k - Cached - Similar pages
Underground Railroad--History of Slavery, Pictures, Information
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD CONTENTS.
www.nationalgeographic.com/railroad/j1.html - 8k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.nationalgeographic.com ]
Aboard the Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad refers to the effort--sometimes spontaneous, sometimes highly organized--to assist persons held in bondage in North America to escape
www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/ - 8k - Cached - Similar pages
The Underground Railroad Site - Table of Contents
The Underground Railroad Table of Contents. - This site is no longer maintained!
education.ucdavis.edu/NEW/ STC/lesson/socstud/railroad/contents.htm - 6k - Cached - Similar pages
Harriet Tubman and The Underground Railroad for Children
Click here to go back to Pocantico Hills School. Harriet Tubman & The Underground Railroad.
www2.lhric.org/pocantico/tubman/tubman
___________
If I had no clue, North America, Black, Escape, Harriet Tubman, and much more.
And those who would say "The Encyclopedias check data for us more than we'll ever need to", well.. Look at the 1'st link. Would you consider National Geographic, or then many many colleges to have non-factual information?
Tsk tsk. I await for the death of our past information-controlling overlords.
Re:Yet another battle between haves and have-nots (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yet another battle between haves and have-nots (Score:2)
The Advancement of Learning [gutenberg.org]
Essays of Francis Bacon [gutenberg.org]
New Atlantis [gutenberg.org]
Valerius Terminus; of the interpretation of nature [gutenberg.org]
Wow, I just found 4 of his books, in complete form. Looks like that reporter didnt do his job very well at all. And Im sure, if I looked more, I'd find more of his works.
One thing I did notoice is that retard-of-a-reporter looked at the 'purty' pictures on top of Google. The second link gives a lonk to the life of Bacon the Philosopher.
Re:Yet another battle between haves and have-nots (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yet another battle between haves and have-nots (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps. But it will automagically give you the right spelling of "ridiculous [google.com]".
Re:Yet another battle between haves and have-nots (Score:2)
I tell you, some people just don't have anything better to do than to try being copycats. Tubgirl is the original and best -- accept no substitutes!
Slashdot is a perfect example (Score:5, Funny)
Familiar (Score:4, Insightful)
Information is undergoing the same transformation that government did with the creation of the first modern democracy (republic, whatever). The people decided they could rule themselves just as well, if not better, than those who hold power by divine right.
Now those who distrubute knowledge and information are using whatever power they have left to try and prevent the people from applying the same concepts to their industries.
RIAA/MPAA/ALA - RIP
Re:Familiar (Score:2)
You talk of the democratizing effect of the Internet but ignore the fact that without libraries, many of the poorer areas around the country would go without any access to the Internet or even computers.
I don't think you'd like what the world (or at least US) would be without libraries. You may not realize it but they've done alot to fight much of the same
Re:Familiar (Score:2)
I don't think you'd like what the world (or at least US) would be without libraries. You may not realize it but they've done alot to fight much of the same issues we see here on
I expect libraries to undergo transitions. I hope we don't start destroying books anytime soon, since paper has lasted us lon
Not authoritative (Score:2, Insightful)
Wikipedia certainly has it's place, but it should never be regarded at authoritative. People regarding it is such is bound to upset many more people that McHenry, for example teachers
Tyranny of the Majority v. Tyranny of the Minority (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither approach is right or wrong. The Wiki approach provides too much power to mediocrity. The Britannica approach provides too much power to a concentrated elite.
The real solution, possible within an advanced wiki-like system, is a 'pedia that permits these alternative entries and dissenting opinions. Rather than try to create the "One Right Answer" through a battle between contributors, this advanced online system (a MultiWiki?) could provide space for side-by-side comparison of differing entries. Would this system give voice to crackpots? Sure. But it would also provide the means to directly compare differing opinions and allow different groups to marshal their respective bodies of evidence.
Anyone who studies history, economics, and even science will find that there is often no 100% confident consensus. A MultiWiki would provide the infrastructure of recording the parallel, developing threads of knowledge.
Re:Tyranny of the Majority v. Tyranny of the Minor (Score:2)
Both 'pedias can suffer from bias and distortions due to the opinions and prevailing cultures of the authors. Wiki follows the whims and fads of the editing/contributing public and Britannica follows the whims of the academic elite.
I think you've hit the nail right on the head there. That said, Wikipedia admins probably have less bias than Britannica editors. Wikipedian admins tend to be strongly opposed to any bias. Perhaps this could be considered a bias toward moral relativism and skepticism, but t
Why trust Britannica? (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't the Brittanica guy a bit biased? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the "we're professionals, they're not" argument is just plain childish. I've seen some really damn stupid factual errors in print encyclopedias, at least with Wikipedia someone with a better knowledge of the topic can come along later and fix it.
Re:Isn't the Brittanica guy a bit biased? (Score:3, Funny)
The problem is... Many of Wpedia's article aren't of any great depth. A great many of it's articles are in fact coverage of every anime character, and seperate entries for each and every Dwarven king in LOTR.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Point to point... (Score:3, Funny)
Optimizing for the wrong metric (Score:5, Insightful)
"McHenry's definition of quality seems to consist solely of presentational matters such as spelling, grammar, and text flow."
In other words, McHenry was doing his job. Namely, the checking of spelling, grammar, and text flow, on the generally rational basis that a single person cannot reasonably be expected to be able to verify the truth, falsity, or indeterminacy of every fact in the encyclopedia.
If you were McHenry's boss, on what other basis would you grade the performance of your editor in chief?
I'm not saying that Britannica is a better encyclopedia than the Wikipedia. They're both pretty good. I prefer the Wikipedia because it's more accessible and because I (like Krowne), believe that coverage is an important metric, and I'm willing to sacrifice the quality of the prose somewhat in order to get more coverage. There are plenty of folks like me, and consequently, Wikipedia optimizes for coverage.
McHenry's boss doesn't share my preference. McHenry optimizes for spelling, grammar, and text flow.
Until we realize that, this debate is going to consist of both sides thumping their chests and flinging poo at each other, while screeching "You're optimizing for the wrong metric."
The Wikipedia entries for "primate psychology" and "total quality management" is probably better filled-out than the Britannica ones at my former schools. But that's what this debate comes down to.
Re:Optimizing for the wrong metric (Score:2)
This argument sounds fundamentally flawed to me. Here, lets apply it to the person in charge of Mac OS X at Apple (I'll refer to him as "Bob"). We could use MS Office, or the guy in charge of the kernel at RedHat, it makes no diff
Re:Optimizing for the wrong metric (Score:3, Informative)
However, if you read the article, like I did, you would realize that those weren't the only things he attacked.
I used paper encyclopedias in grammar school and haven't used them since. For any topic of depth they were never any good. Wikipedia on the other hand serves the role as summary reference much better in that direct links to more depth can be placed directly within the articl
Krowne's two points (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The Wikipedia is a "success" because lots of people use it, and the only way you can say that's not a success is by claiming that people are dumb.
2) The Wikipedia makes up for the overall low quality of its entries by its vast "coverage."
If this is the best defense someone can come up with, the Wikipedia is seriously screwed.
Response to point 1: People ARE dumb, by and large, or at least ignorant, and they are also lazy. People use Wikipedia because it's easy, and because they don't know that not everything you read on the Internet is true. By Krowne's logic, Macdonald's is the best restaurant in the world.
Response to point 2: This amounts to admitting that the Wikipedia contains inaccurate information, but that's okay because it has LOTS of inaccurate information. E.g., all my buckets have holes in them, but because I have so many buckets I must also be collecting lots of rainwater.
It may be possible to make a good case for the Wikipedia, but Krowne sure hasn't done it.
Re:Krowne's two points (Score:3, Informative)
The fate of Brittanica (Score:4, Interesting)
After Microsoft did Encarta and began to crush Brittanica, Brittanica management went back to Bill Gates and proposed a lower buy-out price. Gates told them that their product now had negative value, because their sales force was so expensive to operate that it made the product noncompetitive.
Re:The fate of Brittanica (Score:3, Interesting)
Also see Bri [kmmag.com]
Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, I needed to know the biological significance of Zinc metal for a chemistry problem set the other day... lo and behold, Wikipedia's page on Zinc had a broad answer that led me to know what to search for in books (Zinc "fingers" & DNA).
I also used Wikipedia as the starting point for a large research paper on thrombin, a blood clotting enzyme. Note: this is not some simple little tidbit, but a enzyme in a extremely complex series of reactions that are the blood clotting cascade. And who had a good overview of the process to get me started ? Wikipedia ! (Coagulation [wikipedia.org]) & (Thrombin [wikipedia.org]).
What I find MOST helpful about wikipedia is the cross-linking. It represents uncommon words as a treasure trove of further information instead of a confusing word just sitting there. Sometimes you avoid looking up all those words because of the effort involved, but w/ Wikipedia it's extrememly painless.
As you can see, i've had a lot of good experiences w/ Wikipedia. I've found it to be lacking in certain topics, but I've actually found myself contributing to those topics due to the help i've received from it before.
I think the fact that it provides such a high quality resource to a lot of people will only encourage them to help add to it, to make it better, or as a way of saying thanks. I sure did.
Re: (Score:2)
The neatest thing about Wikipedia (Score:5, Informative)
The coolest thing, by far, about Wikipedia, is the culture articles. No traditional encyclopedia can possibly record that like Wikipedia does.
Whether it be language [wikipedia.org] trends [wikipedia.org], popular [wikipedia.org] contemporary [wikipedia.org] figures [wikipedia.org], information on small localities and [wikipedia.org] online [wikipedia.org] subcultures [wikipedia.org], unconventional [wikipedia.org] ideas [wikipedia.org] in science and technology, or books [wikipedia.org], an encyclopedia model like that of Wikipedia is the only thing that can compile and store such stuff.
And I think I exceeded the reasonable link limit for that post.
Never* trust a single source! (Score:3, Insightful)
Both sources are starting points for real research. If you want to get a general overview of something, either encyclopedia is a fine place to start, but don't trust them on the details. Go find primary sources and examine them if you want to find accurate, in-depth info.
* Where "never" is defined as "virtually never," because you have to use your own judgment.
If there aren't references, it isn't scholarship (Score:2, Interesting)
Call me elitist if you like, but I like my doctor to have a M.D.; I like the guys who design my buildings and aircraft to be Real Engineers, and I like the guys who write my reference source
Didn't this guy notice.. (Score:2)
Squaaak FUD! FUD! SQUAAAWK. (Score:2, Insightful)
I tried reading the supposedly 'intelligent rejoinder' but quickly realised it was written by one of those tiresome tinfoil-hattists that just loves to squawk about FUD at the drop of a hat. I must admit that as a result, the guys message, whatever it was, didnt make much of an i
The biggest problem with Wikipedia is Bias (Score:3, Insightful)
To take just one example: Wikipedia has settled on a definition of genocide so narrow that it excludes the masisve genocies carried out by the Soviet Union and Communist China. [wikipedia.org] Moreover, excluding all Soviet genocide even goes against their stated definition, as several instances of Soviet genocide (the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933, the exile of the Volga Germans, etc.) meet the UN criteria of mass murdrers aimed at a particular ethnic group.
There are other examples of bias on similar political subjects. Occasionally the administrators will take steps to prevent the most overt forms of bias (for example, locking the page on George W. Bush), but mre subtle bias eitehr goes on corrected, or if corrected has those corrections erased the original biased entry reinstated.
Re:The biggest problem with Wikipedia is Bias (Score:2)
The answer is not to stand at the sidelines lamenting wikipedia's shortcomings, but to set up a rival encyclopedia which is as objective as possible from the perspective of your peer group.
Truly unbiased information is
Re:The biggest problem with Wikipedia is Bias (Score:2)
So if you think that Soviet genocides are missing from the page, just add them.
One type of encyclopedia excluded... (Score:2)
Hm... (Score:2)
then I'm leery about the rest of his arguments (though I'm still making my way through the rest of TFA).
Wikipedia is great (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedia is great (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe they're not all living at home/university with buckets of free time that they don't need paid for.
Wikipedia is good, but if you want consistantly high quality you need to give people compensation for the amount of time they would need to spend to do a good job. Unless you're indepedantly weathy this is a real issue: people have to eat.
TWW
And most importandly: Independence (Score:2, Insightful)
Spelling and Grammar... (Score:2, Insightful)
If he finds spelling and grammar errors regularly, why doesn't he do his part and correct them?
For someone attacking FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
Ecyclopedias (Score:3, Interesting)
Encyclopedias are the fast food of the book publishing business, with encyclopedia editors writers being the short order cooks among editors and writers.
As such, the fast food served up by Wikipedia is better than most: it represents more viewpoints, it represents genuine debate among many interested parties, and it isn't constrained by size or budgets. The fact that you can't be certain of the quality of articles in Wikipedia is a good thing: you can't be certain of the quality of anything you read, and with Wikipedia, people at least think about that fact.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia could do without the commentary (Score:4, Informative)
Witness the article about Satellite C Band [wikipedia.org]:
And another passage which is not only inflammatory but factually incorrect:
Note this anecdotal comment that the author, whoever it may be (there is no way to tell) had evidently pulled out of thin air:
Over in an article on the use of L Band [wikipedia.org], there is a curious comment about how its allocation affects satellite radio but the entry doesn't offer any supporting facts.
Another article about Television receive-only satellite [wikipedia.org] has an opening sentence that is even worse:
I'm sure this kind of commentary cannot help Wikipedia's credibility. Wikipedia needs a huge content enema.
Re:Boring... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, it will be informative in showing the nature of the kind of people that participate heavily in the Wikipedia, yours truly included.