On Jan 25, 2008 9:47 AM, bharat shetty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That led me to googling and I came upon this
> http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page - which promises to be a better
> Wikipedia, by offering reliable content that can be trusted upon. Any
> insights, enlightening comments around, o' venerable silk-listers ?

While I agree that Wikipedia articles have inaccuracies and many could
do with some good copy editing and pruning, I have my own doubts about
whether a "peer reviewed" encyclopedia is any better when it comes to
accuracy.

I came across the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture[1] a couple of
years ago at SciFoo camp. I glanced at a few of the articles in it and
it looked promising. I then turned to the articles on Indian cuisine
and it full of inaccuracies. For example, an idly is described as deep
fried lentil dough balls (clearly a bonda or vada). There were at
least a couple of dozen such mistakes. What I found annoying with the
mistakes was the fact that (a) I could not quickly correct them and
(b) The article was supposedly written by an expert in the field.

A frequent snarky remark about open source and content is "you get
what you pay for". If all I can get for $420 per volume is articles
with glaring inaccuracies, I would rather settle for wikipedia, warts
and all.

Thaths

[1] 
http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Culture-Scribner-Library-Daily/dp/0684805685/
-- 
Bart: We were just planning the father-son river rafting trip.
Homer: Hehe. You don't have a son.
Sudhakar Chandra                                    Slacker Without Borders

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