On 29 August 2010 15:38, Peter Damian <peter.damian(a)btinternet.com> wrote:
The problem is that until someone sits up and notices
the serious errors that
are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the
folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one
*knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting
the problem in a small way, e.g. here
http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html
and here
http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only
in my own area of expertise.
What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?
Probably just documenting problems, as you note.
It is helpful that on Wikipedia the editorial process is largely
transparent, so the question "how did it get like this?" can actually
be answered. Wikipedia is not reliable, but it turns out that how
paper encyclopedias and newspapers were written was similarly
susceptible - with Wikipedia we can see inside the sausage factory
rather than pretending that the mass media is a happy unicorn-filled
fairyland of scrupulous fact-checking and expert supervision.
- d.