Wikipedia Founder Sees Serious Quality Problems

Juha-Matti Laurio writes "The Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has acknowledged there are real quality problems with the online project. From the article: 'Meanwhile, criticism from outside the Wikipedia camp has been rebuffed with a ferocious blend of irrationality and vigor that's almost unprecedented in our experience: if you thought Apple, Amiga, Mozilla or OS/2 fans were er, ... passionate, you haven't met a wiki-fiddler.'"

Comments

Perhaps they need a team of paid editors

[Anonymous Coward]

It's clearly benefited Slashdot. The story quality and lack of dupes proves it.

Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors

[aywwts4]

"Nupedia was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to professional encyclopedias"

Well, at 24 articles they have Wikipedia beat.

Still not the top zealot

[Junior J. Junior III]

'Meanwhile, criticism from outside the Wikipedia camp has been rebuffed with a ferocious blend of irrationality and vigor that's almost unprecedented in our experience: if you thought Apple, Amiga, Mozilla or OS/2 fans were er, ... passionate, you haven't met a wiki-fiddler.'

These people still can't hold a candle to Jack Thompson.

Re:Yes, Wikipedia has accuracy issues, but.....

[Neil Blender]

The real truth:

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Sla shdot

Re:Of course there's a lack of quality

[abh]

Actually there's only one step. You don't need an account. Gee, what other site do I know that allows anonymous random folks to spout off nonsense... *looks around*

Ah, from a rag with accuracy issues...

[nweaver]

It's not like the Register doesn't have accuracy issues either.

Re:What's scary is...

[Chuq]

Nobody's bothered correcting it? Yes they have - you just said you did!

How to do this story for a newspaper.

[SEE]

Register: Wikipedia Inaccurate, Badly-Written
Pots, kettles war over who's the blackest

[Story body here]

Re:Yes, Wikipedia has accuracy issues, but.....

[tktk]

Wikipedia actually has two entries about Slashdot but I hear the second one is a dupe.

Re:Wikipedia generally works

[sco08y]

We went back and forth a few times but we eventually agreed to combine that postive and negative effect lists, and now it is all settled.

What really happened was you all went out to gather empirical evidence and everyone forgot where the article was.

6 - The "funny" idiot

[Moraelin]

(6) The idiot who thinks he's funny. In fact, so funny, that _everyone_ should find his stand-up comedy act when seriously searching for information. In fact, heck, everyone should be mandated by law to read his jokes, but finding them instead of actual info is almost an acceptable substitute.

I still remember one article in the German wikipedia... about cloning didgeridoos. Complete with a picture of tiny little digeridoos in test tubes, and a paragraph about how they live longer than the ones born naturally. About a year later, it was still there. (Now it's finally gone, though.)

OK, so it's a sorta the bastard child of your points 3 and 4. Except while the PR professional knows they're subverting and polluting a resource for profit, and the vandal knows they're defacing, the "funny" idiot might actually think he's doing a public service.