> On Dec 13, 2016, at 3:19 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote: > > For the record I wouldn’t trust Britannica on technical topics either. > > I'm not sure what you mean by 'trust' here. An encyclopedia is meant > principally as a first or preliminary source and, as John Collier suggested, > students--and, indeed, all researchers--should consult multiple sources, > perhaps including encyclopedias.. Indeed, encyclopedia articles are > characteristically brief enough that one might read Wikipedia's, > Britannica's, and perhaps a few other 'basic' sources before plunging into > deeper research. >
That’s a really good point to make. People talk about trusting wikipedia but probably mean many different things by that. I just mean that I assume what they say is correct in the details. I use wikipedia (and other encyclopedias like the SEP) regularly. But to me they are the first step in my inquiry rather than the last. I think they’re fantastic for that. I think one thing wikipedia does that is both a strength and a weakness is have more detailed topics than typical encyclopedias like say Brittania. Where I tend to find problems are often in these more narrow places. Although wikipedia by its very nature tends to improve every year. > Clark also wrote: > > I think the Britannica/Wikipedia comparison is a bit problematic though. On > more general topics such as traditional encyclopedias cover I’m sure > Wikipedia is typically fine. It’s the more narrow topics where problems tend > to pop up. > > I would tend to see it in just the opposite way. John Collier wrote: > > One of our brightest students, and my TA for a couple of years, was a big > contributor of articles and editor for Wikipedia. He took it very seriously. > > I know a number of Wikipedia contributors who take "it very seriously," and > are quick to correct errors when they appear. And this seems especially the > caseas concerns more 'narrow' topics. But John also wrote re Wikipedia There most definitely are places like that. Indeed Ben Udell as I recall spent considerable time a few years back fixing the entries on Peirce. But do you remember what the entries were like before Ben did that? Is it fair to assume there are still narrow topics where that problem remains? The one nice thing about wikipedia is that it does tend to get better over time. Especially on the core more frequently accessed entries. It’s dramatically better from 10 years ago and (in my experience) even from 5 years ago. That’s both due to the aggregation of improvements along with certain structural changes by the maintainers. (There were several concerted efforts within the last few years to improve physics and related topics for instance which were very uneven) However problems remain. Often these are in biographical entries where most studies find more errors. The Nature article from a year or so ago found 4 major errors in 42 articles from both wikipedia & Britannica but others found more in pop music. However I’d bet there the obscurity of the band would make a huge difference. i.e. probably Led Zepplin will have far fewer mistakes than Blue Peter. Not that pop music is relevant for our discussion but I think it highlights the underlying structures that cause problems. From what I can tell science improved dramatically due to concerted efforts to fix a lot of problems that had been there. Where I think wikipedia falls down a bit is not having the discussion around the issue. So on more contentious issues - especially narrow technical ones - you can end up with one view dominating and flaws not being mentioned. That’s why I think it’s a good first step but you can be left with an incomplete and distorted view. I find Stack Overflow’s technical areas (physics, chemistry, philosophy) helpful here. They tend to discuss these nuances and controversies more. Further by their very nature misunderstandings come up and get corrected. (With a new topic or a topic I’ve forgotten a lot on the erroneous ‘answers’ are sometimes as informative as the canonical answer) Doing an other more careful look at wikipedia though I must say it’s improved a lot since I did this last (3 or 4 years ago). Especially on things like energy conservation. So part of my view was just out of date.
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