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.
--- "Daniel P. B. Smith" wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
There is a discrepancy between what WIkipedians know Wikipedia to be and what outsiders think it is.
They think it's an encyclopedia.
That might be because we call ourselves "Wikipedia -- the free encyclopedia" ;-)
I agree with your main point, though. We could consider making [[Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia]] more prominent. Wikipedia is quite unique as a resource, and it's not immediately intuitive how to make the best use of it. We push lots of editing tutorials at newbies (which is good and proper, as we want to encourage people to edit as much as possible), but it wouldn't hurt to help out the silent, read-only majority as much as we can.
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
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"Daniel P. B. Smith" wrote
There is a discrepancy between what WIkipedians know Wikipedia to be and what outsiders think it is.
They think it's an encyclopedia.
A modest suggestion. We protect all the articles, prior to deleting them here (let the mirrors take all the traffic.) Then we can concentrate on the really important issues for the future of the project.
Charles
G'day Charles,
"Daniel P. B. Smith" wrote
There is a discrepancy between what WIkipedians know Wikipedia to be and what outsiders think it is.
They think it's an encyclopedia.
A modest suggestion. We protect all the articles, prior to deleting them here (let the mirrors take all the traffic.) Then we can concentrate on the really important issues for the future of the project.
Excellent idea! How are we supposed to concentrate on userboxen and other such Earth-shattering issues when all these idiots keep cropping up and saying "we should be working on the encyclopaedia!"
I reckon if we removed the articles from Wikipedia, these people would go away and allow us to continue the betterment of mankind unmolested.
-- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse
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]].
John
On 2/12/06, John Lee johnleemk@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.
There are three other Boston Globe articles.
The other one appearing on 12 February, entitled Questions of Fact, is here:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/02/12/questions_of_f...
The second part of the main story, Many contributors, common cause, is here:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/02/13/many_contribut...
which includes comments from a number of local (to Boston, MA) Wikipedians.
Accompanying today's article is another piece, The idealists, the optimists, and the world they share, which has further comments from WPians:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/02/13/the_idealists_...
Kind regards
Jon
The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote: On 2/12/06, John Lee 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. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On 2/12/06, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
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 agree it is one of the better newspaper stories about Wikipedia. The fact that it's the subject of a "two-part series" is a nod to Wikipedia's prominence.
However, the concept of NPOV was not explained significantly, which would have given the casual reader a better understanding of how the community works. The only mention was in a list of other Wikipedia values:
"However many there are, the Wikipedians have developed a complex and more-or-less democratic system of rules and policies for contributions, such as neutral point of view, civility, citation of sources, and no libel or vandalism."
Even the phrase "more-or-less democratic" makes me wince. The word "consensus" is not used at all in the two articles.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 2/13/06, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
"However many there are, the Wikipedians have developed a complex and more-or-less democratic system of rules and policies for contributions, such as neutral point of view, civility, citation of sources, and no libel or vandalism."
Is this the first article to correctly spell "Wikipedian"? And not "Wikitopian" or "Wikipodian"?
Steve