Comment Why Bother Protecting the Gullible? (Score 1) 630
Okay, so one of the points raised in the whole issue is the fact that if it is going to call itself an Encyclopedia then it must be as authoritative and trustworthy as a "real" one right?
If it were just called "Wiki Pile of Conjecture" there would be no issue... right?
This means people should be able to trust it as implicitly as they trust a real encyclopedia... But the problem is that people who are stupid enough to blindly trust what they read on the internet are exactly the ones who have absolutely no idea what "authoritative" even means and who posses no B.S. filters. I mean just look at how many people believe any utter nonsense that they hear... from anywhere.
The people who don't know how to use Wikipedia for what it is are just as likely to go off and leech info of some random geocities page. At least if it's on Wikipedia and it's rubbish it's possible to be weeded out. If you take the average user researching almost any topic they will pop onto google or msn, type a few keywords, and take the first result as being gospel.
There is simply no cure for these types, so why single out Wikipedia as being a special danger?
If it were just called "Wiki Pile of Conjecture" there would be no issue... right?
This means people should be able to trust it as implicitly as they trust a real encyclopedia... But the problem is that people who are stupid enough to blindly trust what they read on the internet are exactly the ones who have absolutely no idea what "authoritative" even means and who posses no B.S. filters. I mean just look at how many people believe any utter nonsense that they hear... from anywhere.
The people who don't know how to use Wikipedia for what it is are just as likely to go off and leech info of some random geocities page. At least if it's on Wikipedia and it's rubbish it's possible to be weeded out. If you take the average user researching almost any topic they will pop onto google or msn, type a few keywords, and take the first result as being gospel.
There is simply no cure for these types, so why single out Wikipedia as being a special danger?
