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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?"
If you want a great open source operating system, you only need a handful of knowledgeable people.
If you want an operating system written by a million monkeys, you need a large corporate structure that doesn't require return on investment from any of the monkeys. The corporate structure would prevent the operating system from being great or open source. Of course, if you choose this path, you're likely to end up with a hokey operating system that looks good, and due to the creativity that monkeys frequently fail to exhibit, probably named after a trait of buildings that is commonly lacking in their monkey cube farms.
Oh, you mean after going to a known reputable source of information...This isn't meant as flamebait, but doesn't that right there nullify the point of going to Wikipedia as a source?
It would indeed. But in this case Mr. McHenry wasn't going to Wikipedia as a source but rather to check its accuracy. Once he found the article to be internally inconsistent due to the uncertainty surrounding the date of Hamilton's birth, it was his obligation to edit the article. It would only take a minute or two to add a paragraph noting that Hamilton's birth date is either 1755 or 1757 and that even though Hamilton wasn't sure he used the 1757 date.