RicketyPedia
Robert McHenry, Former Editor in Chief, the Encyclopædia Britannica, does not much care for the Wikipedia. It isn’t reliable enough for him. His example: The uncertainty of Alexander Hamilton’s birthdate got edited out by someone at some point, and the user won’t even know it. Good point. But I notice that the Hamilton article now has been amended with both dates, and has details about the controversy.
Ok, I admit that’s a cheap shot because it distracts from the general problem McHenry points to. But the way to resolve whether it’s truly a problem is to see how the Wikipedia develops. If it turns into a swamp of misinformation, then McHenry is right. If not, he’s wrong. And, so far, my casual use of the Wikipedia shows that he’s much more wrong than right.
(Thanks to Tim Bray for the link, whose comments on the topic are, as always, well worth reading.)
Categories: Uncategorized dw
The wizards behind the Wikipedia software are discussing how to validate articles as being accurate, neutral, whatever. Since every version of every article is preserved forever in the database, all you need is a way for some editor (or committee of experts, or Slashdot-like poll) to say “I certify that version X of article Y is of true encyclopedia quality”, and then give users an option to see the certified version rather than the latest version. Well, of course, then you need some trusted people to do the grunt work of certifying.
Until that system is set up and running, there’s an association of Wikipedia users who are just as interested in quality as McHenry, except they want to do something more than write nyah-nyah columns for TCS.
I don’t know. Does Wikipedia have to be as reliable as Brittanica for it to be worth having? Wikipedia is the web (a little bit broken all the time, a conversation) more than it is traditional publishing (fact-checked, professionally produced and one-to-many). Is reading a blog “worse” than reading a newspaper article? Is that even a sensible question? Perhaps it would be less confusing if Wikipedia stopped referring to itself as an encyclopedia, because it’s clearly different than something like Brittanica.
But maybe I’m just soft on Wikipedia because they brilliantly included a photo of me in one of their articles. (Near the bottom, yo).
Well heck…why didn’t he edit the date and make it right? Wikipedia works when people take responsibility for its contents. It doesn’t work when people noitice and error and then point it out to the world and complain about it. Obviously he doesn’t get the business model.
Passion bounded by responsibility…it’s how anything gets done!
Anyway, whAt if I find an error in Brittanica? How long do we have to wait before it changes?
Don’t know ’bout the Wikipedia, but my only contact with whatever-it’s-name-was encyclopedia Microsoft used to supply with every new PC turned out badly: my girfriend asked me to show her on a map the country of my origin; the first thing I noticed was Vladikavkaz (a city in Russia, in the Northern Caucasus) placed right in the center of Ukraine. I trashed the CD and took her to Borders.
I suspect that the encyclopedia Britanica guy is probably not aware on a fully conscious level that his brain resists the idea of Wikipedia being better or even as good as the old printed encyclopedia. Humans have difficuly acknowledging built in biases. Even when there is an acknowledgement that they exist, which is rare, it is still usually difficult to do anything about. Since Britanica man’s survival is linked in some way to the printed encyclopedia, and not so much to the wikipedia, he will defend its superiority against all rational argument.