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Observer Gives Wikipedia Glowing Report
JaxWeb writes "The UK newspaper The Observer is running an article about the open encyclopaedia Wikipedia. The article, 'Why encyclopaedic row speaks volumes about the old guard,' gives Wikipedia a glowing report and mentions some of the issues which have recently occurred regarding the project, including the need to lock the George Bush article in the run up to the election, and Ex-Britannica editor Robert McHenry's comments, as previously mentioned on Slashdot."
First, don't attribute a columnist's piece to the newspaper. Second, John Naughton praises wikipedia for what it could be more than what it is right now. He's excited about it as a proof-of-concept.
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Long-term effects of Bush deficits
If you go to Wikipedia in the press then you can see all the articles about Wikipedia that have been in mainstream newspapers. There really isn't any reason to post every single one, especially since this is probably the fifth article on Wikipedia that has been in the observer in the last year. Granted, I love Wikipedia, but everyone on slashdot already knows what it is so linking to it every week only serves to cause problems for the people monitoring the recent changes by giving them a surge of extra work.
Just in case you hadn't known, the Economist once mentioned Wikipedia, in passing, in a favorable light. However, I suspect if the magazine reviewed Wikipedia more thoroughly, it would come down much more critically.
Once again, the apocryphal tale of bumblebees flying "despite the laws of aerodynamics saying they can't" makes the rounds.
In truth, the only reason such a "proof" exists is that the laws were applied incorrectly; the scientists involved used the explanations for single-foil flight (i.e. birds' wings.)
Whether they did so accidentally or as a joke remains the domain of speculation, but the truth is that the laws of aerodynamics can account for bumblebees quite nicely.
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
No it's been like that for the last two days. They don't really know what is wrong with it as far as I knew last. If you look at the traffic chart you will see there are just some random holes where the servers requests for a few minutes. However in the last couple days it has been much more laggy than normal.
Articles I've seen vandalized have been targets of recurring vandalism; some obscure, some very 'popular'. Part of the problem is that not everyone knows how to correctly revert a candalized article. Part of the problem stems from vandal monitoring via recent changes. Articles that get locked don't necessarily stay locked indefinately anyhow...the vandals are free to try again a year later. For some reason, the vandalism tends to have a childish, scatalogical nature; once locked, the vandals quickly lose interest and find some other target.
You do have a very good point about popular articles being correctly reverted faster. The mentality that seems to prevail is that it's better to lock down a known target, rather than let 'x' number of viewers see a vandalized page.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." - Josef Stalin
Nonsense. He says he and countless others use it all the time. He says he finds the articles useful and more timely than EB's. He cites the articles of George Bush and Sollog and Tsunami as examples of Wikipedia's enormous success. He even begins the article by comparing Wikipedia to the bumblebee: all of our theory says that it shouldn't work, but it does. This is not a man waiting for things to get better; it is a man who thinks things are great now. Perhaps you only read the last paragraph where he says that someday it will as invaluable and popular as Google. That hardly means he isn't praising its current state. RTFA next time.
Probably refers to Sollog, self-proclaimed "Son of light, light of god" or something like that.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
It was locked because of people blanking it, changing the content to "omgwtf Bush is Evil!", and other such malicious vandalism. The John Kerry article was also protected for similar reasons on multiple occasions.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Actually, Sollog denies that it means "Son of light, light of god" and says it's derived from "sol" and "logos", giving a meaning of "the word of the sun" (which is clearly mentioned in the Sollog article).
The Sollog/Wikipedia incident was covered on Slashdot back on December 14, 2004.
The Observer is what one might call 'The Guardian on Sunday'.
Rich
John Naughton, who wrote the article, writes regular articles on the internet, software and related matters in the Observer's business section. He is one of the few journalists in the UK who really "gets it", and is also the author of the book "A Brief History of the Future" (published 1999) about the history and future of the Internet.
In fact his journalism is only a sideline to an academic career.
His Observer articles can be found archived at http://www.briefhistory.com/footnotes/.
His blog is at http://www.skillbytes.co.uk/memex/.
The Paris squids began serving their first content today.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
You seem to have supplied an excellent example on the weaknesses of Wikipedia.
When it started out, I expected it to die within a year It didn't. I was wrong.
I never refer to it myself, though, because I do not trust it. How could I - even if a friend referred me to your article, I can't be sure of the source when I get around to viewing it.
This seems to be a common worry, but it also seems primarily theoretical. That is, a worry by people like you who don't use wikipedia, rather than those who have actual knowledge of its quality.
Most people don't use wikipedia in a vacuum--we have some ability to detect BS, and make judgements as to the quality and reliability of information after we read an article. The concerns are different, but this is fundamentally no different from using critical facilities when reading a book or newspaper article.
Well, wouldn't such a person be violating the three revert rule often? Wouldn't he/she be subject to being banned temporarily or permanently (if it went on for long enough that is)?
I edit Wikipedia articles regularly, and its weak spot IMO is not vandalism - blatant or sneaky, vandalism is easier to rectify than content disagreements. Read the page history of "Clitoris" and "Male circumcision" for instance - edit wars of almost operatic tenor, but no vandalism. But Clitoris is in decent shape after the war.
On the other hand, reading the page history of a controversial topic *really* tells you what different camps and factions think of the subject. You just have to be a reasonable judge yourself.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.