On 1 Jul 2006 at 8:43, Carl Dershem wrote: > Michael Cook wrote: > > > Don't forget that somebody writing an article for Britannica or any > > other commercial encyclopedia may also have an axe to grind. My > > impression is the articles in Wikipedia are about as accurate, and > > often more complete, than those in the encyclopedias in the public > > library. > > Britannica is reviewed by committee, which tends to remove bias, . . .
This could only have been written by someone who's never participated in the process. Committees don't do any such thing -- they are not necessarily composed of experts in the individual subjects and often force an article author to introduce inappropriate information, precisely because they are not experts and don't understand that the information does not belong (I can provide an example in New Grove, for instance). > . . . and > cannot be edited by just any crackpot, . . . Unless, of course, the crackpot is the one who was chosen to write the article in the first place. Don't think that crackpots don't get asked to write articles on obscure subjects -- they do. > . . . which is how Wiki is designed > to work. That would only be true if Wiki edits were permanent. No "crackpot" ideas survive long in any Wikipedia article. > Wiki, as said before is OK for technical articles, but almost useless > for other areas. . . . This is simply not true, and has been demonstrated by a study of Wikipedia and printed encyclopedias to be FALSE. > . . . I know people whose Wikipedia biographies have been > repeatedly hacked and changed by asocials. . . . Then those articles need to be protected and a resolution among the contributors reached. The mechanisms for resolving these kinds of problems are in place and THEY WORK, as long as the interested parties continue to participate. > . . . And there are too many > incidences of historical articles being edited by, for instance, > holocaust deniers and the like, to make it reliable there. That's just a falsehood. Point out any Wikipedia article on the holocaust where holocaust deniers have gotten information into the article that stays for any length of time. The beauty of Wikipedia is that such edits cannot stand for any length of time -- any vandalism is quickly repaired. And the history of the whole thing is available for all to see, as well as the discussion that led to the editing of the article in its present state. Hostility towards Wikipedia is hostility to the wisdom of the masses, the smartness of committed people working together to share knowledge. Wikipedia as a whole works, even if individual articles may have problems (articles with controversial histories are so marked, BTW), and over time, the articles reach a very accurate and reliable state *as long as* there are interested parties with appropriate backgrounds participating in the process of revising the entries. If you don't like a Wikipedia entry, then get involved and help make it better. Otherwise, you're just a whiner, in my opinion. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
