On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
On 5 March 2013 16:42, Federico Leva (Nemo)
<nemowiki@gmail.com<javascript:;>>
wrote:
It's also telling that the longest hoax was
about ancient history: it
matches the popular belief that history is by far the biggest weakness of
Wikipedia.
Our historical coverage is patchy, but I don't think it's our biggest
weakness - art and culture probably are. That said, history (especially
non-western history) is one of the bigger weaknesses of the internet as a
whole, which reinforces the problem; it's much easier for something made up
to "stick" if there's no easy online falsification of it. You can
plausibly
demonstrate that a contemporary band or ongoing war does not exist without
too much trouble; if you draw a blank on a Renaissance painter, you're more
likely to assume the digital resources are lacking.
I believe that non-computer related engineering fields (mechanical
engineering, structural engineering, civil engineering, materials
science) are still large gaps as well, though better than 3 years ago.
There's a large amount of raw material on the internet, and our job of
forming coherent pictures out of it leaves something to be desired.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com