On 2/12/06, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gawab.com> wrote:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/02/12/
bias_sabotage_haunt_wikipedias_free_world/
First of a two-parter. Seems pretty good to me, the reporter has done
some work, it's not just a hatchet job. But it's pretty negative
about Wikipedia.
There is a discrepancy between what WIkipedians know Wikipedia to be
and what outsiders think it is.
They think it's an encyclopedia.
That discrepancy is going to cause us more and more trouble unless we
find a better way to deal with it.
That was seriously one of the best articles I've ever seen written about
us. I've shot an email to the author thanking him for doing his research
instead of shabbily ommitting and making up stuff to support a
particular viewpoint as most other journalists do. I don't think it's
negative at all; I find it highlights some of the best and worst parts
of Wikipedia and would probably comply with [[WP:NPOV]], if not [[WP:NOR]].
I think it places too much emphasis on the idea of fighting vandalism,
but then so do a lot of editors these days. I wrote the author about
the obvious factual error, "On his own, Seigenthaler tracked down the
saboteur to a business in Nashville." As if.