A Look at the Editorial Changes on Wikipedia

prostoalex writes "New York Times Technology section this weekend is running an extensive article on Wikipedia and recent changes to the editorial policy. Due to high level of partisan involvement some political topics like George Bush, Tony Blair and Opus Dei are currently either protected (editorials are allowed only to a selected group of Wikipedia members) or semi-protected (anyone who has had an account for more than four days can edit the article). From the article: 'Protection is a tool for quality control, but it hardly defines Wikipedia,' Mr. Wales said. 'What does define Wikipedia is the volunteer community and the open participation.'"

Comments

Re:wikipedia!=encyclopedia

[maxpublic]

The point of an encyclopedia or any record isn't to be absolutely right the first time, it's to be as right as possible

Which in many cases Wikipedia certainly is not, for precisely the reasons that others have listed. Sometimes folks fuck up because they don't care to double-check their facts, sometimes they fuck up deliberately because they have an agenda they want to press on others, and at other times they engage in vandalism or the much-harder-to-catch wikipranks. And there's always that group that cites propaganda as 'fact' because they're absolutely convinced in the 'rightness' of their cause, and refuse to entertain the notion that perhaps they aren't in possession of the Absolute Truth(TM).

Anyone claiming that Wikipedia is just as accurate, or even close to as accurate, as a professional encyclopedia written by acknowledged experts in their respective fields is a moron. Probably a moron with an agenda, who's written some half-assed amateur entry in Wikipedia and thinks that fact makes him as knowledgeable as any real expert.

Let the idiots, fools, and fanatics contribute to your encyclopedia and you're bound to get idiotic, foolish, and fanatical entries.

Max