I'd reply to this diatribe but I can't be bothered. Suffice it to say that none of your argument stands up to the slightest pressure.
Like most Wikizealots, you can't spell, can't write in coherent sentences and can't argue a case if your life depended on it. Oh, and I abandoned "tu quoque" arguments as worthless in the second grade.
No Wikipedia is NOT slightly less accurate than Britannica, it's very very inaccurate. The study that wikiphiles like to quote was a stitch-up designed to show Wikipedia in the most favorable light.
Most of the time Wikipedia varies between mediocre and deeply flawed. Yes there's lots of interesting trivia in there but there are also gaping flaws that the unwary won't pick up on.
Nor can you avoid Wikipedia by just putting -wikipedia and -wiki in your search engine: there are at least 965 domains that scrape Wikipedia and more are being setup by the day.
Will Citizendium avoid the bear-trap that Wikipedia has fallen into? It depends very much on how much control the editors really have. It also depends on whether Citizendium's contributors continue to do so when they have no guarantee that their work ever sees the light of day.
If the "community" or just the FSF decide to take away the ball, then Novell could forget its pledge as well. I don't like Novell, but this move by the FSF could backfire very badly with Linux in the Enterprise just as its beginning to reach critical mass. Linux needs large software companies to contribute code, patents and intellectual property to the Linux cause, and if Novell is attacked, then other software companies may reconsider their strategies.
You have no idea how bad those problems are. Robert McHenry was right in calling it a "faith-based encyclopedia" because faith, absent of any evidence, is all you've got.
Because Wikipedia is a primary example of a free information source that is actually propaganda. Because it matters that the biases in articles can be traced to their source - unlike newspapers or books, the veracity of articles is guaranteed by no-one, not Jimbo Wales, not the Wikimedia Foundation, not "the community" (whatever that is).
Wikipedia is therefore a prime target for multiple coordinated assaults by special interest groups up to and including getting those people to be voted in as admins and gaming the political system to get people thrown off (and this has happened).
Also because Wikipedia is difficult to avoid. There are now more than 965 domains that scrape content from Wikipedia.
Because the truth matters.
It is not clear to me that Wikipedia is "a clearly beneficial resource", and it is not open. Many decisions regarding content are made behind closed doors between admins themselves. I think Wikipedia has made the net a worse place, a place where convenience overrules every other consideration.
Perhaps you confuse "free to use" with "freedom from bias, error or malicious editing". They are not the same.
I'm sick and tired of this particular beef with wikipedia. Just because you can't quote wikipedia in your thesis for your doctorate doesn't mean its useless. If you want reliable source material look elsewhere, if you want an exorbitant quantity of information, Wikipedia has that. It's the quick and dirty resource for people who might just need to know a few things about a subject without having to fact check and such. That's what it should be treated as. The fact that non-experts are allowed to edit entries is what made it grow to be the resource it is today.
I love this. Let me translate: "Never mind the quality, feel the width" or "Never mind the stench, the answer's in the cesspit somewhere"
There appears to be a neverending conveyorbelt of excuses for Wikipedia's acute failure to be authoritative or reliable. We get this on slashdot all the time, and it still stinks.
Let me make it clear - if Wikipedia is not reliable, but full of half-truths and errors, then its not simply useless, it's potentially dangerous. An information resource that is unreliable as history IS PROPAGANDA.
Let's see if the special pleading continues...
If some of the information is inaccurate, so what? It's not like heart surgeons are looking up how to conduct an operation on Wikipedia. People need to stop beating on its potential for inaccuracy and instead see it as what it is, a great resource for learning about topics or at least a starting point given no other resources. The Internet as a whole tends to have a large amount of inaccurate information, but that doesn't make the Internet useless. The quantity of information largely and fully outweighs the risk of inaccuracy.Everything has inaccuracies anyway, and Wikipedia's usefulness makes any mistakes it has well worth the benefit of having it versus not having it. It's a mighty powerful resource, and I'm tired of hearing it bashed just because some random vandal could and sometimes does screw up a few entries (even though they are usually fixed in a pretty timely manner). It's an online resource, take it for what it is and quit bitching about how one entry out of 10,000 is inaccurate, and just be thankful you have the 10,000 entries. Or better yet, just don't use it if you find it offensive.
You have no idea whether 1 out of 10,000 is inaccurate or 1 in 100 or 1 in 2. You have no idea whether the article has just been vandalized or whether key information is missing. I'm willing to bet that you don't expect surgeons make the same excuses that their work is generally acccurate apart from occasional slips which kill patients, or your college textbooks to have key formulae wrong after someone at the printers decided to improve an equation for the good of Mankind. It's the special pleading for Wikipedia that amazes me.
And no-one is responsible. That's the tragedy of the Wikipedia commons. The good work by some is undone by the ignorant majority.
I'd rather have an encyclopedia of one completely accurate, scholarly, well-written and complete article than a million articles written by ignoramuses. That's where I beg to differ.
I think you have a problem with the concept. The tragedy of the commons happened when common ground was abused because no one stakeholder managing their produce had a stake in the integrity of the common land.
That applies just as much to Wikipedia as well. No editor or group of editors has a stake in the integrity of Wikipedia when anyone connected to the Internet can undo, vandalize or otherwise screw up what they have written. Still less do they have a stake in the maintenance of encyclopedia standards since very few take any notice of them, and those that do are rapidly undone by those that don't. The resources are NOT communally managed at all.
Add to that a monolithic bureaucracy and you have a perfect example of the Tragedy of the Commons.
Reasoning such as yours could be used to justify the 'privatization' of wikipedia, turning it into an experts-only publication where the public has no input.
Oh the horror. Just imagine if Wikipedia was written only by people who knew what they were talking about. Terrors like that keep me up at night.
In all three scenarios, I will accurately measure the light moving away from me at 3,000,000 km/s and you will accurately measure the light moving toward you at 3,000,000 km/s
The speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s = 299,792 km/s
Like it or not, if global warming is caused by rising carbon dioxide, and if that rise is largely man-made, then the climate system does not give a shit about the per capita amount of carbon dioxide, only the absolute amount emitted.
Yes it *needs* to open coal plants. Which is why it will produce more CO2 than any other country by 2009.
Of course we *need* to cut out carbon emissions because the Chinese have obviously produced a non-greenhouse enhancing version of CO2 and we produce the nasty stuff.
Well the Chinese government is now pro actively trying to counter the threat of climate change
They certainly are. They're building and opening coal-fired power stations at the rate of one per week. They have also said they will never sign Kyoto or any successor economic vice. Which means that as soon as 2009, China will overtake the US in carbon emissions.
Just to make it clear: this was ONE union official responding to a single incident. Not the union. Not all teachers by any means.
And that official made a fool of herself through her ignorance of the Internet.
After all, why not ban the 3G mobile phones which recorded the vandalism and then sent it on to the Internet? Hasn't anyone thought about what these Internet enabled, videophone spy accessories could do in the hands of children?
There's already a guerrilla force destroying Novell from the inside: its called the Novell Board. And the chosed method to destroy Novell? Management by objectives.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd reply to this diatribe but I can't be bothered. Suffice it to say that none of your argument stands up to the slightest pressure.
Like most Wikizealots, you can't spell, can't write in coherent sentences and can't argue a case if your life depended on it. Oh, and I abandoned "tu quoque" arguments as worthless in the second grade.
No Wikipedia is NOT slightly less accurate than Britannica, it's very very inaccurate. The study that wikiphiles like to quote was a stitch-up designed to show Wikipedia in the most favorable light.
Most of the time Wikipedia varies between mediocre and deeply flawed. Yes there's lots of interesting trivia in there but there are also gaping flaws that the unwary won't pick up on.
Nor can you avoid Wikipedia by just putting -wikipedia and -wiki in your search engine: there are at least 965 domains that scrape Wikipedia and more are being setup by the day.
Will Citizendium avoid the bear-trap that Wikipedia has fallen into? It depends very much on how much control the editors really have. It also depends on whether Citizendium's contributors continue to do so when they have no guarantee that their work ever sees the light of day.
In Soviet Russia, Linux advocates YOU!
If the "community" or just the FSF decide to take away the ball, then Novell could forget its pledge as well. I don't like Novell, but this move by the FSF could backfire very badly with Linux in the Enterprise just as its beginning to reach critical mass. Linux needs large software companies to contribute code, patents and intellectual property to the Linux cause, and if Novell is attacked, then other software companies may reconsider their strategies.
You have no idea how bad those problems are. Robert McHenry was right in calling it a "faith-based encyclopedia" because faith, absent of any evidence, is all you've got.
What are the others?
Because Wikipedia is a primary example of a free information source that is actually propaganda. Because it matters that the biases in articles can be traced to their source - unlike newspapers or books, the veracity of articles is guaranteed by no-one, not Jimbo Wales, not the Wikimedia Foundation, not "the community" (whatever that is).
Wikipedia is therefore a prime target for multiple coordinated assaults by special interest groups up to and including getting those people to be voted in as admins and gaming the political system to get people thrown off (and this has happened).
Also because Wikipedia is difficult to avoid. There are now more than 965 domains that scrape content from Wikipedia.
Because the truth matters.
It is not clear to me that Wikipedia is "a clearly beneficial resource", and it is not open. Many decisions regarding content are made behind closed doors between admins themselves. I think Wikipedia has made the net a worse place, a place where convenience overrules every other consideration.
Perhaps you confuse "free to use" with "freedom from bias, error or malicious editing". They are not the same.
Nobody, not even slashdotters, believes that Slashdot is a competent or reliable encyclopedia of anything.
I'm sick and tired of this particular beef with wikipedia. Just because you can't quote wikipedia in your thesis for your doctorate doesn't mean its useless. If you want reliable source material look elsewhere, if you want an exorbitant quantity of information, Wikipedia has that. It's the quick and dirty resource for people who might just need to know a few things about a subject without having to fact check and such. That's what it should be treated as. The fact that non-experts are allowed to edit entries is what made it grow to be the resource it is today.
I love this. Let me translate: "Never mind the quality, feel the width" or "Never mind the stench, the answer's in the cesspit somewhere"
There appears to be a neverending conveyorbelt of excuses for Wikipedia's acute failure to be authoritative or reliable. We get this on slashdot all the time, and it still stinks.
Let me make it clear - if Wikipedia is not reliable, but full of half-truths and errors, then its not simply useless, it's potentially dangerous. An information resource that is unreliable as history IS PROPAGANDA.
Let's see if the special pleading continues...
If some of the information is inaccurate, so what? It's not like heart surgeons are looking up how to conduct an operation on Wikipedia. People need to stop beating on its potential for inaccuracy and instead see it as what it is, a great resource for learning about topics or at least a starting point given no other resources. The Internet as a whole tends to have a large amount of inaccurate information, but that doesn't make the Internet useless. The quantity of information largely and fully outweighs the risk of inaccuracy. Everything has inaccuracies anyway, and Wikipedia's usefulness makes any mistakes it has well worth the benefit of having it versus not having it. It's a mighty powerful resource, and I'm tired of hearing it bashed just because some random vandal could and sometimes does screw up a few entries (even though they are usually fixed in a pretty timely manner). It's an online resource, take it for what it is and quit bitching about how one entry out of 10,000 is inaccurate, and just be thankful you have the 10,000 entries. Or better yet, just don't use it if you find it offensive.
You have no idea whether 1 out of 10,000 is inaccurate or 1 in 100 or 1 in 2. You have no idea whether the article has just been vandalized or whether key information is missing. I'm willing to bet that you don't expect surgeons make the same excuses that their work is generally acccurate apart from occasional slips which kill patients, or your college textbooks to have key formulae wrong after someone at the printers decided to improve an equation for the good of Mankind. It's the special pleading for Wikipedia that amazes me.
And no-one is responsible. That's the tragedy of the Wikipedia commons. The good work by some is undone by the ignorant majority.
I'd rather have an encyclopedia of one completely accurate, scholarly, well-written and complete article than a million articles written by ignoramuses. That's where I beg to differ.
I think you have a problem with the concept. The tragedy of the commons happened when common ground was abused because no one stakeholder managing their produce had a stake in the integrity of the common land.
That applies just as much to Wikipedia as well. No editor or group of editors has a stake in the integrity of Wikipedia when anyone connected to the Internet can undo, vandalize or otherwise screw up what they have written. Still less do they have a stake in the maintenance of encyclopedia standards since very few take any notice of them, and those that do are rapidly undone by those that don't. The resources are NOT communally managed at all.
Add to that a monolithic bureaucracy and you have a perfect example of the Tragedy of the Commons.
Reasoning such as yours could be used to justify the 'privatization' of wikipedia, turning it into an experts-only publication where the public has no input.
Oh the horror. Just imagine if Wikipedia was written only by people who knew what they were talking about. Terrors like that keep me up at night.
Trofim Lysenko
Nah! Couldn't happen here, could it?
You are a complete looney tunes and I claim my $5
In all three scenarios, I will accurately measure the light moving away from me at 3,000,000 km/s and you will accurately measure the light moving toward you at 3,000,000 km/s
The speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s = 299,792 km/s
So the reviewer is a factor of 10 out.
Impressive strike rate so far.
PS The book by Smolin rocks.
Smolin is highly skeptical of many string theorists' reliance on the Anthropomorphic Principle
That's the ANTHROPIC Principle. Not anthropomorphic.
Like it or not, if global warming is caused by rising carbon dioxide, and if that rise is largely man-made, then the climate system does not give a shit about the per capita amount of carbon dioxide, only the absolute amount emitted.
Your call.
I'll get back to you on that one...
The Fair Use crowd has won Round One; now how will the industry respond?"
Lawyers. Lots of them.
China is doing their part to limit that with the means available within the realms of reason and financial viability.
Obviously nobody else needs to follow in the realms of reason and financial viability.
Yes it *needs* to open coal plants. Which is why it will produce more CO2 than any other country by 2009.
Of course we *need* to cut out carbon emissions because the Chinese have obviously produced a non-greenhouse enhancing version of CO2 and we produce the nasty stuff.
Well the Chinese government is now pro actively trying to counter the threat of climate change
They certainly are. They're building and opening coal-fired power stations at the rate of one per week. They have also said they will never sign Kyoto or any successor economic vice. Which means that as soon as 2009, China will overtake the US in carbon emissions.
Never mind.
Just to make it clear: this was ONE union official responding to a single incident. Not the union. Not all teachers by any means.
And that official made a fool of herself through her ignorance of the Internet.
After all, why not ban the 3G mobile phones which recorded the vandalism and then sent it on to the Internet? Hasn't anyone thought about what these Internet enabled, videophone spy accessories could do in the hands of children?
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Yes, out with SuSE for it has supped with the Devil!
Force them to use Slackware. If we have to suffer why not them as well?
Name a spy caught after failing a polygraph test.
Neither can I. It never happened.
TFA is completely correct on polygraphs.
If islands can rise like that, it can only mean that sea levels are falling as global warming increases evaporation and...
No need.
There's already a guerrilla force destroying Novell from the inside: its called the Novell Board. And the chosed method to destroy Novell? Management by objectives.
No I'm not kidding.