January 5, 2006--Wikipedia
Have you ever used Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia? If you have, you are then aware that its entries are written collaboratively by its readers, as compared with a more conventional encyclopedia such as the Britannica which is written by experts. If you are unfamiliar with Wikipedia and are learning here how it is complied you undoubtedly are skeptical about the quality and accuracy of what it publishes—how could the general public, who contribute the entries get it right, be as authoritative as experts?
Further, if you have followed the recent flaps and controversies surrounding Wikipedia, you probably are even more doubtful. For example, in the section on the Kennedy Assassinations, Wikipedia says that John Seigenthaler Sr., who served as Bobby Kennedy’s assistant when he was Attorney General, “For a brief time was thought to have been directly involved in [both] assassinations.” This proved to be untrue, Seigenthaler was justifiably outraged, and Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, needed to disavow that entry and publicly apologize.
If you need further reasons to be skeptical, at the top of the Wikipedia home page, there is a blatant appeal from Wales for contributions—as he claims, “For the sake of my daughter, who I hope will grow up in a world where culture is free.”
And speaking of the founder, he has acknowledged that he edited his own Wikipedia biography at least 18 times, and not just to add to it or correct inaccuracies. It seems that he substantially wrote co-founder Larry Sanger out of Wikipedia history; and altered the way in which Bomis Babes was described. Bomis Babes was a website, also founded by Wales, that was originally described as containing “soft-core pornography.” Wales changed that subsequently to describe it as having “adult content.”
So why would anyone turn to Wikipedia except, as to the Drudge Report, for some juicy gossip?
Well, leave it to the NY Times to take another look as this extraordinarily popular venture (see link below for article). You may be surprised to learn that when comparing Wikipedia to the legendary Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia often includes more up-to-date information and about the same number of errors. Last month Nature published the results of a study in which they engaged experts to assess the accuracy of 42 competing entries. They found, are you sitting down, that there were four errors per Wikipedia article in comparison to three for each Britannica entry. And Wikipedia has just recently instituted additional quality controls to lessen the error rate so one might expect that perhaps by next year they will be doing at least as well as Britannica.
This then may turn out to be another magnificent example of the wonder of self-organizing systems, systems such as bird and fish flocks, ecosystems, immune systems, economies, pre-historic habitations, and even languages—all formed and regulated without significant external controls or the assistance of experts.
I find this so attractive and encouraging that I am even going to send Wikipedia some money. You can do that too, right on line.
Further, if you have followed the recent flaps and controversies surrounding Wikipedia, you probably are even more doubtful. For example, in the section on the Kennedy Assassinations, Wikipedia says that John Seigenthaler Sr., who served as Bobby Kennedy’s assistant when he was Attorney General, “For a brief time was thought to have been directly involved in [both] assassinations.” This proved to be untrue, Seigenthaler was justifiably outraged, and Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, needed to disavow that entry and publicly apologize.
If you need further reasons to be skeptical, at the top of the Wikipedia home page, there is a blatant appeal from Wales for contributions—as he claims, “For the sake of my daughter, who I hope will grow up in a world where culture is free.”
And speaking of the founder, he has acknowledged that he edited his own Wikipedia biography at least 18 times, and not just to add to it or correct inaccuracies. It seems that he substantially wrote co-founder Larry Sanger out of Wikipedia history; and altered the way in which Bomis Babes was described. Bomis Babes was a website, also founded by Wales, that was originally described as containing “soft-core pornography.” Wales changed that subsequently to describe it as having “adult content.”
So why would anyone turn to Wikipedia except, as to the Drudge Report, for some juicy gossip?
Well, leave it to the NY Times to take another look as this extraordinarily popular venture (see link below for article). You may be surprised to learn that when comparing Wikipedia to the legendary Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia often includes more up-to-date information and about the same number of errors. Last month Nature published the results of a study in which they engaged experts to assess the accuracy of 42 competing entries. They found, are you sitting down, that there were four errors per Wikipedia article in comparison to three for each Britannica entry. And Wikipedia has just recently instituted additional quality controls to lessen the error rate so one might expect that perhaps by next year they will be doing at least as well as Britannica.
This then may turn out to be another magnificent example of the wonder of self-organizing systems, systems such as bird and fish flocks, ecosystems, immune systems, economies, pre-historic habitations, and even languages—all formed and regulated without significant external controls or the assistance of experts.
I find this so attractive and encouraging that I am even going to send Wikipedia some money. You can do that too, right on line.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:40 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home