[WikiEN-l] Microsoft phrase re Google: "The Wikipedia problem"

[Todd Allen]

Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 24/05/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> On 24/05/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> On 5/23/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>       
>>>> http://liveserials.blogspot.com/2007/05/uksg-write-up-wikipedia-problem.html
>>>>         
>>> I don't really get a great idea of what they MEAN by that phtase, though ...
>>>       
>> It's entirely unclear ... that public participation ruins their
>> business model? In which case look out for them as a threat in the
>> future?
>>     
>
> I think you're inferring far too much here. This is, really, nothing
> at all to do with Microsoft or Google; it's to do with the web and its
> users.
>
> The link is talking about a meeting of the UKSG, the United Kingdom
> Serials Group, who are a perfectly staid and respectable group of
> librarians. It simply so happened that one of the talks was given by a
> guy from MS, talking about their products and Google's.
>
> Now, pause for a second. Serials librarians. The context here is
> identifying and retrieving information, discussing search tools. Hence
> all the statistics abour search groups, content available, etc.
>
> The "Wikipedia problem" - well, talk to half a dozen librarians or
> teachers, you'll know exactly what they'd say if you asked what the
> "Wikipedia problem" is. It's ubitquitous, it's pervasive, it's not
> very good compared to a lot of other stuff out there. It's the same
> problem *every other person* who worries about Wikipedia is concerned
> with - that peoples behaviour online is to google for something, take
> the first result uncritically; if it's something researchable, that
> first result is probably served up by us; they'll take it and read it
> and never think to check it.
>
> This isn't news. It's the problem we've known about ever since we
> became a runaway popular success - we get given far much more
> uncritical credence than we deserve, and people are hurting themselves
> through it.
>
>   
Anyone who is willing to take information uncritically off the Internet,
without doing basic cross-checks as to its reliability and provenance,
will have a problem. That's true whether Wikipedia exists or not.
Wikipedia (or for that matter, any encyclopedia) makes a great starting
point for research, but a very poor finishing point for it.

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