Yesterday I did an interview for a prospective radio show with a young woman called Clara Long, who is putting together something to sell to US public radio. She's already interviewed Jimbo and Larry Sanger, then me (as a Wikipedian who was in London) and after me spoke to Robert McHenry (the public toilet guy from Britannica).
I rambled for about ten minutes - the community process, answering criticisms of quality ("you're familiar with Larry and Robert's criticisms of Wikipedia, how would you answer them?") by vaporwaring the planned article rating feature (on hold 'cos Brion doesn't like the current code) and criticisms of the process by pointing out that just because you can't see inside the Britannica sausage factory doesn't mean it isn't as much or more of one. The other question was whether articles always improve with time - I said there is ever-more *detail*, and what tends to happen is that you have a well-written article, people add stuff, it makes the article clunky, then someone else edits it for flow. So articles may well be middling for writing quality, but will tend to have lots of detailed information.
I completely forgot to mention Wikinews (particularly egregious as she was talking about Wikimedia, not just Wikipedia - so I didn't have a chance to push our scoop on the London bombings!), but did consistently refer to en: as *English* Wikipedia :-) I also pointed James Forrester at her. She says she'll let us know when she sells the show somewhere.
- d.
On 7/21/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Yesterday I did an interview for a prospective radio show with a young woman called Clara Long, who is putting together something to sell to US
Fantastic!
and criticisms of the process by pointing out that just because you can't see inside the Britannica sausage factory doesn't mean it isn't as much or
That said, It doesn't hurt to admint that our process has definite, known flaws; I feel pretty confident, despite not knowing for sure, that the Britannica process is not, in fact, more of a sausage factory than Wikipedia's at present.
++SJ
SJ (2.718281828@gmail.com) [050722 21:55]:
On 7/21/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
and criticisms of the process by pointing out that just because you can't see inside the Britannica sausage factory doesn't mean it isn't as much or
That said, It doesn't hurt to admint that our process has definite, known flaws; I feel pretty confident, despite not knowing for sure, that the Britannica process is not, in fact, more of a sausage factory than Wikipedia's at present.
Oh, yes; the above given the wrong impression. I talked about flaws in Wikipedia's processes in detail. But the important thing is that the flaws are visible - it's not that Wikipedia is less trustworthy, it's that *all* sources, print or not, are untrustworthy and require thought.
Britannica's process is interesting. I don't have it to hand, but Anthony Burgess (the author) wrote something years ago about the process of writing for Britannica. They gave him a detailed topic brief and a number of words, like 413 words or 508 words. If anyone has seen the article in question, it was very interesting. This would have been how it was done in the '60s or '70s.
- d.
David Gerard wrote: <snip>
it's not that Wikipedia is less trustworthy, it's that *all* sources, print or not, are untrustworthy and require thought.
That should be added on wikiquote, it can even become a slogan :)
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