I think one problem is that of perception... Wikipedia despite some errors (possibly not more than professional encyclopedias) and temporary vandalization is of a decent standard.
The article on cold fusion is (without checking I feel confident in saying) decent. I'm sure many well established physicists would agree with it. If you saw Britanica have a very much similar view point on cold fusion you might not bat an eyelid. So why does Wikipedia's treatment of cold fusions and various other subjects cause such objection? Because it is freely editable, supposedly normal people have as much of a say. For this reason Wikipedias view on controversial subject such as alternative medicine, 9/11 and cold fusion etc... seems too much to reflect the view of those with money, power and supposed authority and not necessarily reflect the opinion of the majority or the side which has the best evidence/logic. I'm not sure I know the answer other than perhaps for a large number of "good" editors to join make good contracts work up the ranks and help counter the bias. Yes Wikipedia is no doubt suffering somewhat from these issues but I doubt it's going to go away or easily be replaced with anything better. I guess the main point is that no one should read an encyclopedia or anything of the sort to establish what to believe when it comes to a contraversal subject and perhaps all it needs it a permenant tag affixed to some topics which says "this is a controversial subject and this article may be strongly biased, it is not recommended to solely consider this article in coming to a conclusion on controversial elements of this complex subject, rather do your own in depth research.". On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]>wrote: > Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > > It's really an aspect of the problem of scale. Those who could do >> something about it are overwhelmed and must make snap judgments, so when an >> issue is complex, really bad decisions are made. >> > > This is true, and it is difficult problem. Sometimes, this is what causes > capable people in the top ranks of huge organizations to make horrendous > errors. For example, in the Federal Gov't, or at IBM or GM. It seems likely > to me that Obama or the head of the DoE have no knowledge of cold fusion, > for example, because they have so much else on their plates, and so many > people giving them advice. They have no time to hear about cold fusion. No > one in their office happened to see "60 Minutes" last April. (I suppose . . > .) > > This also explains why skilled generals in the heat of battle sometimes > make huge mistakes that are out of character. The press of events, fatigue, > or the need to make snap decisions without enough information causes them to > make mistakes they would not normally make. > > You have to sympathize with the Wikipedia Foundation in this regard. When a > method generally works but occasionally causes disastrous failures it is > hard to say they should abandon it. The free-for-all technique does not work > for an article on cold fusion, but it works for hundreds of thousands of > other articles, and many of these would not even be written in the first > place with a tighter set of rules. Articles about Japanese comic book > characters, for example, would not be written. They have some social and > literary value for people who want to learn about Japan. See, for example: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maison_Ikkoku > > Not important, you say? Maybe not, but neither is most literature. It is a > good way to learn about what it was like living as a college student in > Japan in the 1980s. > > Perhaps we need one set of procedures for comic-book fans and another for > physics. After all, in the real world information on these topics is > written, reviewed and published by very different means, with utterly > different standards. > > There does not seem to be any acrimonious disputes in the talk section of > this comic book article, by the way. The article content seems accurate to > me. > > - Jed > >
