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Wikipedia Entry Turned Into Actual Encyclopedia

Posted by timothy on from the now-how-much-would-you-pay? dept.

Ponca City, We love you writes "If journalism is the first rough draft of history, what does that make Wikipedia? Time Magazine reports that technology writer James Bridle has created a 12-volume compendium of every edit made to the Wikipedia entry for the Iraq War between December 2004 and November 2009. 'It contains arguments over numbers, differences of opinion on relevance and political standpoints, and frequent moments when someone erases the whole thing and just writes "Saddam Hussein was a dickhead.,"' writes Bridle. 'This is historiography. This is what culture actually looks like: a process of argument, of dissenting and accreting opinion, of gradual and not always correct codification.' The books presumably only exist in one copy, so they are not for sale."

5 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Ah yes by Pojut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Never let facts get in the way of a poorly constructed opinion.

    Of course, it's hard to tell what the facts are when your opinion is constructed of information told by people who refuse to divulge the facts...or something.

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    Living With a Nerd
  2. they say history is written by the winners by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Insightful

    now, with the internet, we get to see all of the opinions forming: the opinions that won out, the opinions that lost out, and of course, the trolls

    internet: what is history without trolls?

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    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  3. Re:Cathedral vs. Bazaar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think you may need to spend more time reading history books. Historians are not content to assume that every document from a verifiable is the "truth".

    If you scan through any history textbook, you will always find a debate on the accuracy of all of their sources, as well as discussions on the motivations of the author, and the weaknesses in their account.

    Only very poor historians ever assume a documented "fact" is the absolute truth.

  4. Bad summary by Improv · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This wins the award for the day for being the post where the title disagrees most with the article content. Yay!

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    For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
  5. !encyclopedia by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's a big book at 12 volumes, but it's not an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is "training in a circle", the "full circle" of knowledge of the world. "Iraq War Jr" is not a full circle; even "everything about its Wikipedia entry" is merely a small point of knowledge in a full education.

    Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Indeed, it's more like a cylinder, since its circle is stacked atop the previous circle of revisions. It's an encylindropedia.

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    make install -not war