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FUD-Based Encyclopedias
blacklily8 writes "Someone has finally gotten around to offering an intelligent point-by-point rejoinder to an ex-Brittanica editor's lambasting of Wikipedia--which was covered in this earlier Slashdot post. Aaron Krowne, a mathematician and head of Emory University's library research department, argues here that established encyclopedias are using FUD to discredit what is actually a more reliable way to build an encyclopedia: 'McHenry's definition of quality seems to consist solely of presentational matters such as spelling, grammar, and text flow. These are of course important considerations, but I propose that there are other important facets of quality - for example, coverage.'"
so, if that's the case, MTV2 made MTV better quality? After all, it gave all those music videos better quality?
Sorry, while I see how some times bigger coverage can push for better quality (in the form of competition, for instance), it just doesn't necessarily translate to it.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
It's pretty much a rule that in every online community I visit that Wikipedia doesn't count as a source of factual information.
Hell, two of my professors have specifically said that Wikipedia can't be used as a reference for projects and papers.
But to think that Google will automagically give you the right information is just rediculous. Not long ago there was a review of a book in a paper here. The author of the book mentioned Francis Bacon, and discussed his philosophy. The journalist writing the article about the book didn't know who Francis Bacon was, so he consulted the great Internet. He got his information and wrote a small paragraph about how the painter Francis Bacon's philosophy was mentioned in the book. The author of the book obviously didn't mean the 20th century painter Francis Bacon, but the philosopher who lived in the 16th and 17th century. See, looking on the internet isn't always great. And when it comes to Wikipedia, it's a good source, most of the time. But it does happen that articles written by people who know what they are talking about is being re-edited into mediocrity.
One might add these aren't mutually exclusive. It would be perfectly possible, for example, to take a "snapshot" of Wikipedia, have the articles reviewed by (paid?) experts, grammar and spelling errors corrected, rubbish that crept in weeded out and all that and then publish that "stable" version - whether it's on a website (presumably a static one, not a Wiki), on CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/... or even in print or another medium.
The GFDL under which all Wikipedia content is licensed does allow you to do that. In fact, it already *has* been done, too: a snapshot of the German Wikipedia was published on CD-ROM (also available for download as an ISO image) last September, IIRC.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
After Microsoft did Encarta and began to crush Brittanica, Brittanica management went back to Bill Gates and proposed a lower buy-out price. Gates told them that their product now had negative value, because their sales force was so expensive to operate that it made the product noncompetitive.
I've found Wikipedia to be a great source for even somewhat esoteric things, in particular, chemistry/biology.
For example, I needed to know the biological significance of Zinc metal for a chemistry problem set the other day... lo and behold, Wikipedia's page on Zinc had a broad answer that led me to know what to search for in books (Zinc "fingers" & DNA).
I also used Wikipedia as the starting point for a large research paper on thrombin, a blood clotting enzyme. Note: this is not some simple little tidbit, but a enzyme in a extremely complex series of reactions that are the blood clotting cascade. And who had a good overview of the process to get me started ? Wikipedia ! (Coagulation) & (Thrombin).
What I find MOST helpful about wikipedia is the cross-linking. It represents uncommon words as a treasure trove of further information instead of a confusing word just sitting there. Sometimes you avoid looking up all those words because of the effort involved, but w/ Wikipedia it's extrememly painless.
As you can see, i've had a lot of good experiences w/ Wikipedia. I've found it to be lacking in certain topics, but I've actually found myself contributing to those topics due to the help i've received from it before.
I think the fact that it provides such a high quality resource to a lot of people will only encourage them to help add to it, to make it better, or as a way of saying thanks. I sure did.
Yeah, and if you want to bypass the hype, go to the source and read the mailing list archives at http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/, for some good old-fashion dead horse beating.
Of course, it will be informative in showing the nature of the kind of people that participate heavily in the Wikipedia, yours truly included.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Call me elitist if you like, but I like my doctor to have a M.D.; I like the guys who design my buildings and aircraft to be Real Engineers, and I like the guys who write my reference sources to be real scholars.
The basic difference between Wikipedia and Free Software is that Wikipedia doesn't have a compiler. A compiler, you say? Yes!
Compilers do something much more important than turn C into machine instructions. The do a critical first step of filtering out people who are not able to usefully contribute. They get rid of the people who can't learn to program and the people who can't be bothered to learn the details of the program in question. If someone sends you a patch and it doesn't compile, just toss it out! Sure, you'll lose a few good ideas, but you'll throw out a lot of incoherent garbage and save yourself some valuable time.
Without a compiler as a first filter, can you imagine actually getting the Linux kernel to compile, if everyone could add patches? (If you can imagine it, you should start writing science fiction...) That's the situation of Wikipedia.
Does anyone seriously believe that human knowledge is simpler than the Linux kernel? Seesh!
The problem with the Wikipedia idea is that all the people who really know and care about some topic would have to spend their entire lives guarding it from all kinds of problems: inveterate fiddlers, guys with axes to grind, and the many many slightly confused people in the world. Without that intense and permanent guardianship, it will simply be wrong. Just like the Linux kernel would, if anyone could add in patches.
Oh, yes. Software has one more advantage over the Wikipedia. When there's a mistake inside, sometimes you get lucky and it crashes. When that happens, people tend to realize that something is wrong. When an entry in the Wikipedia is wrong, what happens? Nothing.
The problem with Wikipedia is that the one person who knows the correct answer is taken out by the 100 who 'think' they know the correct answer and yours is wrong. In a business scenario I would hope that you require more proofing for your answer. With some things like 1 + 1=2 (except for large values of 1) I can write a proof via refernece, things like , George Washington's birthday, or God then there's .
For instance creationism doesn't have the theory of evolution or any counter argument listed as a related topic.
It only takes
13% of Americans believe that Creationism and evolution should be taught as 'scientific theories' in science class;
16% of Americans believe that only Creationism should be taught;
or
20% of Americans believe public schools should teach evolution only;
to unbalance the article.
n.b. The discovering the structure of DNA was held up because text books listed an incorrect structure for one of the amino acids.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The problem with Wikipedia is that the one person who knows the correct answer is taken out by the 100 who 'think' they know the correct answer and yours is wrong.
:)
It's worse than that, actually. Two people who "think" they know the answer can easily trump five people who actually do, if those two people have nothing better to do than sit at their computers and revert changes all day. But with that said, it's still a pretty good system. Like Democracy, it will often fluctuate away from the most optimal solution, but it will usually tend toward the better ones.
For instance creationism doesn't have the theory of evolution or any counter argument listed as a related topic.
10 minutes have passed since you posted this. It seems to have evolution listed as a related topic now.
too bad I don't have time to go though and suggest editorials for the rest of wiki, if only I was on the pay-role of an encyclopedia producer like Britannica......
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I would have thought that in matters such as encyclopedias, the biggest indicator of quality would be accuracy.
Exactly. I can report a small sample of experience in seeing how accuracy has been managed in a particular wiki. That sample does not inspire me with confidence.
In a nutshell, I read a wiki page, saw some incorrect data about a subject which has been my bread and butter, and I added a note giving correct data (plus citations for independent verification by whoever might want to check it out).
A day later, the note had been removed to a discussion page accompanied by a comment by someone who seemed to be taking a role as the wiki's maintainer, saying that he 'didn't feel like' putting that stuff in 'right now'. Several months later, the correct info still was not back on the wiki page, the information on the wiki page was as incorrect as it had been when I first saw it.
I didn't try to push the correction, it's a free medium, seemingly the maintainer and maybe everybody else (or maybe not?) has a right to offer and put in what they please.
That freedom clearly has a lot of pluses.
But accuracy, or an assurance of accuracy, equally clearly isn't one of them.
I don't know how many wiki pages have maintainers. But that's what I saw happening.
My conclusion is that a wiki appears to be as accurate (or inaccurate) as its maintainer keeps it; or if there is no maintainer, then it is as likely to be as inaccurate as the most careless of its contributors.
-wb-
It exists:
Wikinfo
Wikinfo, formerly known as Internet-Encyclopedia (renamed in January 2004), is a fork of Wikipedia initiated by Fred Bauder in July 2003. It is hosted by ibiblio. Wikinfo makes no attempt to be multilingual, although existing links to Wikipedia articles in other languages are retained in the case of articles copied from Wikipedia.
Wikinfo's policy on point of view is different from Wikipedia: rather than adopting a neutral point of view, the set of articles about a particular topic are split into a number of articles with a specified point of view--thus it tries to have several points of view on each topic. The main article is written from a sympathetic point of view which is described as "a way of encouraging a pluralism of content, rather than limiting content to an unattainable encyclopedic goal."
Main Page
It's funny to hear encyclopedia editors stand up and talk like their profession represented the pinnacle of intellectualism. Encyclopedias try to reduce complex subjects to miniscule overview articles, often written by non-specialists. Encyclopedias are great for children and teenagers to find out about the world, but for adults, if you want to know something about a subject, just "get the book".
Encyclopedias are the fast food of the book publishing business, with encyclopedia editors writers being the short order cooks among editors and writers.
As such, the fast food served up by Wikipedia is better than most: it represents more viewpoints, it represents genuine debate among many interested parties, and it isn't constrained by size or budgets. The fact that you can't be certain of the quality of articles in Wikipedia is a good thing: you can't be certain of the quality of anything you read, and with Wikipedia, people at least think about that fact.
And therein lies the value of WIkipedia, even if you didn't notice it. Nothing is free of bias, its an indeterminate state. So there is mention of crazy fringes, that you can google and discount on your own. Now you know, instead of being ignorant. Ignorance is not knowledge; knowledge is hard; its hard to trust; trust no one. General rules. If you want spoon feeding, don't use it.
Actual examples of where this is important:
Chinese-English dictionary printed by the Chinese Govt had definitions of english words like:
religion - The persuit of superprofits is the religion of the capitalist.
party - The one party, the glorious party, our party, the Communist Party.
etc.
If that's what you want, so be it. But to criticize something because it forces you to have stronger knowledge is pretty fucking weird. I know that my history classes had no mention of things like Baconian Theory or the Warsaw Riots. Coverage is important as the article says, human knowledge isn't cast in stone, and crazy shit is out there. Do you want exposure to it as a thinking feeling human being or do you just want your vat-fed lifestyle? There was a movie that covered this that you probably like, and you probably cheered the hero for escaping the lifestyle you are now advocating. Crazy....
andy