On 21/08/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The author of the article seems to forget that while
you should take any
source with a grain of salt, online ones in particular. Wikipedia has the
advantage that it is subject to quality control (despite of what the author
says) althought it's nearly impossible to keep an eye out on all entries.
Wikipedia has the advantage of allowing the readers to track down the
sources for any given entry. If there aren't any, you can contact the author
and ask where they got it.
Of course in theory it works perfectly like that. However, if a "fact"
was included in a version a year ago how easy is it to figure out who
put it in to go and ask them for verification? There is no automatic
mechanism for "blaming" any one user for any word in an article, which
means it is a possible, but totally manual process.
Coming from a non-chalant user point of view though, they do not
realise that they can track back through the history of the page to
verify things themselves. The quality control you speak of is not
perfect, the author of the article was not attempting to say there was
no control, just that the control is susceptible to failure due to its
passive nature.
Not everyone thinks like a seasoned Wikipedian!
Peter Ansell