On 03/06/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
we have tons of articles that literally haven't been updated since 1849 (not to mention 1911).
Wow, I didn't know Wikipedia was *that* old!
You may be joking, but just in case I'll explain. Many of Wikipedia's articles are copied from public domain sources, like the 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. A lot of them (hopefully most of them, but I don't have the statistics) get updated to include more modern information (and match them to the house style), but a significant number don't. Those articles, therefore, are essentially unedited since 1911 (or earlier, in some cases).