[Foundation-l] Quality is function of the sources, not the editors Re: At school

On 15 Feb 2010 at 16:53, Tyler wrote: Tyler, The full answer is probably awaiting you at university in the terms of a thesis. ;-) The abridged answer as I see it ... I can redirect your thinking to focus on the issue in another way. 1) For any encyclopaedia, it is not about who edits, it is the quality of the data. Hence it is not about trusting or not trusting Wikipedia, it is looking at the article of interest (at WP or elsewhere) and evaluating its use of sources, the primacy of the data utilised, the quality and breadth of data used, the independence of the sources. For biographical detail, what is the source of the detail of the birth, the marriage, the death. If it came from offical BMD sources, then it is official data, if it came from someone's scrapings on a toilet wall, it isn't. When put in that perspective, it looks bleeding obvious. Always remember the basic principle of "Garbage in; garbage out"[1] aka SISO. Is it perfect? No. It is continually improving, and all participants can provide the rigour. Let's look at some advantages and strengths? The broader Wikimedia community and the data that they bring. For instance, Wikisource is working on bringing public domain sources online. So Wikipedia has the ability to direclty link to the works of Isaac Newton, Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin etc., and editors can work on such projects simultaneously. With respect to vandalism? Yes, it is there, and the reality is that redirects some people's focus and efforts away from all the positive work. At the same time, it is a function of the battle on the web against some negative factors. We build better tools to address this. My perspective on this is that every journey has some difficulties, and if we do wish to just stay in an area of absolute security, we are not going to be out there to discover. Personally, I prefer discovery! Regards Andrew [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_In,_Garbage_Out