Ex-Britannica Editor Reviews Wikipedia

0-9a-f writes "Robert McHenry, one-time Editor in Chief of Encyclopædia Britannica, offers his thoughts on Wikipedia at Tech Central Station. While many Wikipedia zealots might discount his obvious bias outright, his broad argument is difficult to ignore. A million monkeys might eventually write Shakespeare, but how would they recognise it once they had?"

Comments

Re:Evolve, Sir.

[daivzhavue]

But it has been edited by others:

The history page for this article reveals a most interesting story. Originally, the 1757 birth date was used. Thus the internal inconsistencies of ages and dates that I saw are artifacts of editing. Originally, the two citations of the year Hamilton resigned from the Cabinet agreed; editing has changed one but not the other. In fact, the earlier versions of the article are better written overall, with fewer murky passages and sophomoric summaries. Contrary to the faith, the article has, in fact, been edited into mediocrity.

His whole point is that the article started off reasonably good and through haphazard editing sounds like a highschool student wrote it.

I use wikipedia as well, but just to get a starting point on a subject I know little about.

What's all the fuss about?

[JanneM]

I don't really get why some people get so upset over WIkipedia, and wants to defend ordinary encyclopedias as "more authoritative".

When it really matters, Wikipedia is of course not a primary source to go to. But then, neither are ordinary encyclopedias. When it _really_ matters, you go to the original research papers, subject-specific anthologies and conference proceedings. You will likely never see Encyclopedia Britannica referred to as an authority for an FDA application, for example, or for an envrionmental consequence analysis for some proposed industrial development.

What encyclopedias are good for, on the other hand, is to give a quick tour of and route into an area the reader isn't already familiar with. And since any deeper delving into the subject will require referencing a lot of other sources in any case, any smaller biases or omissions in this "portal text" isn't going to matter.

Re:What one's looking for...

[wertarbyte]

From an academic point of view I can quote say Encyclopadia Brittanica article on the charango from the 1995 edition.

You can do such things with Wikipedia as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Slashdo t&oldid=279882

Re:so, what did he say?

[joss]

Wikipedia is a community effort.

If we replace the word "community" with the word "committee" the problem is obvious.