[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

[Tom Cadden]

Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
That's exactly what I always say.  We strive to be (and sometimes, but
not yet nearly as much as we'd like) Britannica or better quality.  But
even at that level of quality, frankly, it's just not appropriate to
cite any encyclopedia at the university level.  That's not the role of
an encyclopedia in the process.

The proper role is what Tony describes here -- you use the encyclopedia
to get started, to get an overview, and *then* you do your homework, and
hopefully a lot more effectively than you would if you took a random
stab at the library catalogue.
 That is what I would hope. Unfortunately our lack of enforceable standards in articles means that even using WP to get started is risky. You may get the best encyclopædia in existence with us (and some certainly are in my opinion) but you may get complete tripe (all too common). Or you may get an article which, up to 30 seconds before you looked at it was a masterpiece, but at the moment you look at it contains utter garbage. The problem there isn't vandalism - that is usually easily spotted, but either illinformed edits, people who don't know what they are talking about on the topic but have a 'stab' anyway and completely screw up the article. 
 
 Unfortunately WP needs to have a major health warning:
 "This encyclopædia strives for high standards but does not always achieve them. Check every fact you read here independently. And remember the analysis you read might not be truthful and unbiased but may be distorted and agenda-pushing. While we do our best to stop it happening, it can and unfortunately it does.". 


		
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