jrharshath - Slashdot User

Comment You want more tags? You want XML. (Score 1) 338

by jrharshath on Friday July 03, 2009 @12:33AM (#28568355) Attached to: HTML Tags For Academic Printing?

Since HTML wont add new tags for you, you could write your paper as XML, and use a stylesheet to display it in whatever fashion you want. That way you could have "one column stylesheet", "two column stylesheet" etc formatting the same XML document in your favourite way of presenting it :)

Wikipedia's New Definition of Truth 428

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 21, 2008 @01:43PM from the beware-the-man-with-the-lantern dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Simson Garfinkel has an interesting essay on MIT Technology Review in which he examines the way that Wikipedia has redefined the commonly accepted use of the word 'truth.' While many academic experts have argued that Wikipedia's articles can't be trusted because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted, studies have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. 'But wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience,' says Garfinkel. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is verifiability — that it appeared in some other publication, but there is a problem with appealing to the authority of other people's written words: many publications don't do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right. Wikipedia's policy of 'No Original Research' also leads to situations like Jaron Lanier's frustrated attempts to correct his own Wikipedia entry based on firsthand knowledge of his own career. So what is Wikipedia's truth? 'Since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it's the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.'"

Slashdot Top Deals