It is worth mentioning that in terms of academic credibility, Encarta is not very highly regarded. In fact I have heard it described as a triumph of image over substance. But it is great to see wiki doing so well. We have /so/ many quality articles and also other than the 32K limit, we have greater scope to go into things in more detail.
I think wiki does need as it develops to be able to have some 'final' articles that, having reached a clear standard of accuracy, readability etc can he removed from the editing process. The downside of constant editing is that some articles that reach a high standard then can lose that as those who produced the standard leave and someone comes on and rewrites it to a lower standard. Wiki's open edit policy is its major plus, as it allows us to evolve and update, but its downside is reliability. Can I be sure if at 8.17pm I read an article /everything/ in it is factual or could I have the bad luck to read it just after some user either through not knowing what they were doing or deliberately, mucked it up and added in false information? For example, Jerusalem's status as the capital of Israel is disputed. That is stated on wiki (after a battle!). But what if a reader at 8.17 reads a version that says in a POV edit it is an 'undisputed' capital. Or someone doing an essay on JFK reads an edit at 8.17 that says he was the 33rd not the 35th president?
For all their downsides, the 'centainty of standard' is the one major plus that Brittanica, World Book, Encarta has. When you read an article you are getting a definitive version, not that moment's edit. At some stage wiki is going to face a credibility barrier where people ask 'but can I be sure that King Edward VI of England actually died on that day, or is it a bad edit? How can I be sure W.T. Cosgrave said that? How and when we deal with the 'certainty of standard' issue will mark the moment we go from being a good secondary source that may give a fascinating insight but which just to be sure you might want to cross check, just in case, to a /guaranteed/ reliable primary source.
Please don't think I am knocking wiki. It is a superb encyclopædia that I am proud to associate with. But it still is in its relative infancy. However just because we get more hits than other encyclopædias does not mean we are as generally reliable as they are. (I came across an article on [[John Redmond]] some time ago that before rewriting would have completely screwed up any reader's understanding of the early 20th century Irish leader.) As we grow and become more famous, people's expectations of our reliability and our 'certainty of standard' will grow and we are going to need to find a mechanism to ensure that, while not losing wiki's mass participation ethos.
JT
If only Wikimedia could buy out EB........cheap......Imagine!! Ec
Erik Moeller wrote:
Toby-
Jimmy Wales wrote:
So, this is pretty interesting. According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia is now more popular than Britannica.
We should probably keep in mind that Britannica is also available in print. In fact, that's the brand's traditional medium.
Encarta has very much harmed Britannica's print sales. Britannica counted on their brand name and image, but even many of their customers did not see why they would have to pay thousands of dollars for a paper encyclopedia when they could get a decent encyclopedia, plus lots of multimedia stuff, maps etc. for 100 bucks or less, and the whole thing would fit neatly into their back pocket.
Swiss investor Jacob Safra bought Britannica in 1996 (it's still based in Chicago), and the sales staff for the paper version was fired shortly thereafter. Since then the focus has been almost exclusively on the Internet and CD-ROM version, which was massively reduced in price and is now dirt cheap. For some time they even had the full text online -- remember, those were the dot com days.
Things are looking pretty grim for Britannica. Their Java-based software is a piece of crap, and Encarta has much better marketing. They still have their original content bonus, but even in terms of content they have massive weaknesses in some areas (for example, compare their article on circumcision with ours). I think the Britannica brand will live on, but in terms of competition we should be more worried about Encarta (and vice versa).
Regards,
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james duffy wrote:
It is worth mentioning that in terms of academic credibility, Encarta is not very highly regarded. In fact I have heard it described as a triumph of image over substance. But it is great to see wiki doing so well. We have /so/ many quality articles and also other than the 32K limit, we have greater scope to go into things in more detail.
In terms of user review ratings at Alexa we have 5 out of 5 to Encarta's 3 and EB's 2.5. Most amazing is that they consider our server to be fast in the 69th percentile!!! EB is rated very slow in the 19th percentile. Encarta is considered even slower in the 17th percentile!! (Maybe it's because the use too much Microsoft software. :-D )
I think wiki does need as it develops to be able to have some 'final' articles that, having reached a clear standard of accuracy, readability etc can he removed from the editing process. The downside of constant editing is that some articles that reach a high standard then can lose that as those who produced the standard leave and someone comes on and rewrites it to a lower standard. Wiki's open edit policy is its major plus, as it allows us to evolve and update, but its downside is reliability. Can I be sure if at 8.17pm I read an article /everything/ in it is factual or could I have the bad luck to read it just after some user either through not knowing what they were doing or deliberately, mucked it up and added in false information? For example, Jerusalem's status as the capital of Israel is disputed. That is stated on wiki (after a battle!). But what if a reader at 8.17 reads a version that says in a POV edit it is an 'undisputed' capital. Or someone doing an essay on JFK reads an edit at 8.17 that says he was the 33rd not the 35th president?
We need to stress this as a virtue. Being continually afraid that our data might be full of errors is a losing strategy. We need to be open and frank about our errors. We need to accept the fact that our articles sometimes do get badly mucked up, and that we depend on our users to fix this. If a reader picks up on the simple JFK error and can make the correction himself, let's just hope that he spells Wikipedia correctly when he boasts to his friends about it.
For all their downsides, the 'centainty of standard' is the one major plus that Brittanica, World Book, Encarta has. When you read an article you are getting a definitive version, not that moment's edit. At some stage wiki is going to face a credibility barrier where people ask 'but can I be sure that King Edward VI of England actually died on that day, or is it a bad edit? How can I be sure W.T. Cosgrave said that? How and when we deal with the 'certainty of standard' issue will mark the moment we go from being a good secondary source that may give a fascinating insight but which just to be sure you might want to cross check, just in case, to a /guaranteed/ reliable primary source.
The huge amount of information that is now available to everybody affects the role of education. Knowing how to find information has become more important than the information itself. Critical thinking is the most important thing that the schools can teach. The student who hasn't learned to question his teachers probably hasn't learned a damn thing. There is a down side to that "certainty of standard" in the complacency that it engenders, and in the consequent abatement of the critical faculty. Resorting to authority is a form of logical fallacy. For nearly two millenia the church pulled the wool of authority over people's eyes. It often did this in the guise of education at a time when no other institution was available to fill the instructional vacuum.
Though we should certainly strive to have Edward's correct date of death in Wikipedia, it's not a particularly important fact. It is sufficient to put this relatively insignificant boy-king in the context of the mid 16th century. I am very satisfied with Wikipedia being a good secondary source. Any encyclopedia is a secondary source, and those "fascinating insights" are an important aspect of an encyclopedia's function, and I certainly hope that readers will be inspired to cross check the data no matter how authoritative we become.
Perhaps you use the term "promary source" differently than I. I always understood "primary sources" to mean original documents and texts. But Wikipedia is not a repository of original texts, so it will never be a primary source.
Eclecticology
james duffy wrote:
I think wiki does need as it develops to be able to have some 'final' articles that, having reached a clear standard of accuracy, readability etc can he removed from the editing process.
Removing an article from the editing process isn't a great idea; for example, as books come on to [[Distributed Proofreaders]] we can get access to public domain images which may have a place in an article; I have a few pictures from the "Bellows and Blowing Machines" article, as well as some incomplete text, which could add to the bellows article, once I have the complete text (and have "weeded" it).
As for the sifter idea, I'd love to see it done like the languages links; "Click to see a certified version of this article" or whatever, but I recognise that this would give a catch-22 type situation.
james duffy wrote in part:
I think wiki does need as it develops to be able to have some 'final' articles that, having reached a clear standard of accuracy, readability etc can be removed from the editing process. The downside of constant editing is that some articles that reach a high standard then can lose that as those who produced the standard leave and someone comes on and rewrites it to a lower standard.
I don't think that an article sould ever be /removed/ from editing, especially when we don't know what light the future may shed on it. Even EB doesn't stop editing their articles for the next edition. Rather, they /capture/ an article when it's good and publish that.
This is what the Sifter project is supposed to do. I doubt that the time will /ever/ come that people say �Look it up on Wikipedia -- that's a reliable source.�. Rather, they'll say �Look it up on /Sifterpedia/.�. Nobody's really working on the Sifter project right now -- but that can change at any time.
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
This is what the Sifter project is supposed to do. I doubt that the time will /ever/ come that people say �Look it up on Wikipedia -- that's a reliable source.�. Rather, they'll say �Look it up on /Sifterpedia/.�. Nobody's really working on the Sifter project right now -- but that can change at any time.
I rather think that people realize that the web is always "under construction", and that since time generally allows new knowledge to come to light, the W will generally increase in quality.
Also, the EB is trusted as far as people trust a British commercial entity. The British, as a nation and to their credit, are probably the most even keeled in terms of their pov. However, they cannot touch the diversity of thoughts and points of view that is available on a truly international encyclopedia. They are still western in outlook, and maintain quite a fondness for the scientific process, at the expense in my opinion for more populist notions.
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===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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Christopher Mahan wrote:
Also, the EB is trusted as far as people trust a British commercial entity. The British, as a nation and to their credit, are probably the most even keeled in terms of their pov.
Actually, the EB has been owned and operated in here in the US of A since the early 20th century. See: http://corporate.britannica.com/company_info.html
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
--- Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
Also, the EB is trusted as far as people trust a British
commercial
entity. The British, as a nation and to their credit, are probably the most even keeled in terms of their pov.
Actually, the EB has been owned and operated in here in the US of A
since the early 20th century. See: http://corporate.britannica.com/company_info.html
Brion, thanks for the update (I am, it seems, nearly 2 centuries behind... eh) What I wrote in my earlier post is then compounded by oh so lovely US influence.
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com wrote: Also, the EB is trusted as far as people trust a British commercial entity. The British, as a nation and to their credit, are probably the most even keeled in terms of their pov. However, they cannot touch the diversity of thoughts and points of view that is available on a truly international encyclopedia. They are still western in outlook, and maintain quite a fondness for the scientific process, at the expense in my opinion for more populist notions.
Isn't the Encyclopedia Brittanica an American commercial entity?
RickK, making his first post on the mailing list
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--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Isn't the Encyclopedia Brittanica an American commercial entity?
RickK, making his first post on the mailing list
/me hands RickK helmet, wrist and kneepads. Welcome to the fray.
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, james duffy wrote:
I think wiki does need as it develops to be able to have some 'final' articles that, having reached a clear standard of accuracy, readability etc can he removed from the editing process. The downside of constant editing is that some articles that reach a high standard then can lose that as those who produced the standard leave and someone comes on and rewrites it to a lower standard. Wiki's open edit policy is its major plus, as it allows us to evolve and update, but its downside is reliability. Can I be sure if at 8.17pm I read an article /everything/ in it is factual or could I have the bad luck to read it just after some user either through not knowing what they were doing or deliberately, mucked it up and added in false information? For example, Jerusalem's status as the capital of Israel is disputed. That is stated on wiki (after a battle!). But what if a reader at 8.17 reads a version that says in a POV edit it is an 'undisputed' capital. Or someone doing an essay on JFK reads an edit at 8.17 that says he was the 33rd not the 35th president?
Keep in mind that as topics gain a density of articles, it will become harder for a vandal or crank to quickly make edits that lower the quality of information of that topic. To directly address your example, James, if someone changes the article on JFK in the manner you mentioned, they would also have to change the links to previous presidents & future presidents -- as well as to the list of US Presidents. Yes, a determined vandal could make all of those changes, but not before he was detected & the changes reverted.
The problem lies in topics that are not as well populated. To throw a hypothetical example, it would be possible for someone to sneak fabricated information about a crank theory of Atlantis into existing articles on Ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, because there are so few of us working on articles about ancient history (off the top of my head I could name three of us, & if given time I might be able to double that number), & it would take us weeks -- if not months -- to discover the change.
I'd say that as Wikipedia gathers more articles & more contributors, this problem will recede -- as long as the computer resources scale to handle the demand.
For all their downsides, the 'centainty of standard' is the one major plus that Brittanica, World Book, Encarta has. When you read an article you are getting a definitive version, not that moment's edit. At some stage wiki is going to face a credibility barrier where people ask 'but can I be sure that King Edward VI of England actually died on that day, or is it a bad edit? How can I be sure W.T. Cosgrave said that? How and when we deal with the 'certainty of standard' issue will mark the moment we go from being a good secondary source that may give a fascinating insight but which just to be sure you might want to cross check, just in case, to a /guaranteed/ reliable primary source.
As someone else remarked, they have to apply a certain degree of scholarly scepticism to the information. Wiki isn't the first resource that faces this problem: I recall a book where a scientist, out of curiousity, examined the articles in EB concerning his area of expertise -- & was appalled at how out of date the information was! Then again, the EB suffered for decades from the practice of making only minor revisions to certain articles, adding other items of current interest, & ignoring topics "nobody" reads (Ancient and Medieval History comes to mind as examples) until the text was painfully out of date.
[I'm snipping James' last paragraph because I don't have a response for the points he raised there.]
Geoff