On 29 August 2010 15:38, Peter Damian peter.damian@btinternet.com wrote:
The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise. What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?
Probably just documenting problems, as you note.
It is helpful that on Wikipedia the editorial process is largely transparent, so the question "how did it get like this?" can actually be answered. Wikipedia is not reliable, but it turns out that how paper encyclopedias and newspapers were written was similarly susceptible - with Wikipedia we can see inside the sausage factory rather than pretending that the mass media is a happy unicorn-filled fairyland of scrupulous fact-checking and expert supervision.
- d.