On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Ryan Delaney <[email protected]> wrote: >> This article by Evgeny Morozov, nominally a review of Andrew Lih's >> book "The Wikipedia Revolution", is worth reading: >> >> http://www.bostonreview.net/BR34.6/morozov.php >> >> -Sage >> >> > I've long puzzled over why journalists constantly post editorials > criticizing Wikipedia and proclaiming that it will never take off. I thought > that eventually we'd win them over. > > Then I realized why this will never happen. > > News media is a business. We are a threat to their model. Therefore, it's > important to them to convince their readers that Wikipedia is unreliable, > whether it is or not. They will never stop criticizing and attacking us as > long as we undermine their bottom line. > > As such I have no interest in news print or journalist opinions of > Wikipedia. Their paychecks depend on our failure. Pay them no heed. > > - causa sui > _____________
I'm not sure about that; journalists are no more a monolith than are Wikipedians. I think its just human nature; I don't have the citations handy, but quite a few studies have shown that we focus much more intently on the negative elements of anything than we do their positive counterparts, regardless of relative weight. Just as much, we can't refuse to acknowledge the fact that Wikipedia does have its problems - journalists may miss the scope, and some lose the plot entirely, but by and large the issues they identify are real: we do place a high bar on new contributions, we do have a problem with battlefield editing, we are vulnerable to interest groups and individuals and companies can be harmed by inaccurate information about them that we host. The only problem we are currently addressing in any coordinated way is usability - on the other problems, progress proceeds at geologic speed. This is a function of leadership - the Foundation has it, and the projects do not. Nathan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
