Enjoyable two-page review today in the Times Literary Supplement by Peter Thonemann, flagged on the front page as "The triumph of Wikipedia?"
Lynch's book You Could Look It Up has the subtitle "The reference shelf from ancient Babylon", and WP is duly mentioned in the review at length, with Rich Farmbrough getting a namecheck.
Thonemann is at Wadham College, Oxford, and gives good quotes: e.g. "Wiki-editors are, in my experience, an exceptionally friendly and helpful bunch".
Charles
The Thonemann article turns out to be public (about a third of TLS articles are):
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/encyclopedic-knowledge/
I rather enjoyed this -
"Given the manner of its compilation, the accursed thing really is a whole lot more reliable than it has any right to be. Like many university lecturers, I used to warn my own students off using Wikipedia (as pointless an injunction as telling them not to use Google, or not to leave their essay to the last minute). I finally gave up doing so about three years ago, after reading a paper by an expert on South Asian coinage in which the author described the Wikipedia entry on the Indo-Greek Kingdom (c.200 BC–AD 10) as the most reliable overview of Indo-Greek history to be found anywhere – quite true, though not necessarily as much of a compliment to Wikipedia as you might think."
Andrew.
On 26 May 2016 at 11:56, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Enjoyable two-page review today in the Times Literary Supplement by Peter Thonemann, flagged on the front page as "The triumph of Wikipedia?"
Lynch's book You Could Look It Up has the subtitle "The reference shelf from ancient Babylon", and WP is duly mentioned in the review at length, with Rich Farmbrough getting a namecheck.
Thonemann is at Wadham College, Oxford, and gives good quotes: e.g. "Wiki-editors are, in my experience, an exceptionally friendly and helpful bunch".
Charles
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
Thanks for this Charles and Andrew, this is exactly the kind of thing that we would like to feature on our social media channels. It's by far one of the most even handed looks at the strengths and weaknesses of Wikipedia and therefore something that is useful to share to help people understand Wikimedia projects better.
If you see stuff like this in future please let me know so I can repost it!
John
On 26 May 2016 at 13:42, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
The Thonemann article turns out to be public (about a third of TLS articles are):
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/encyclopedic-knowledge/
I rather enjoyed this -
"Given the manner of its compilation, the accursed thing really is a whole lot more reliable than it has any right to be. Like many university lecturers, I used to warn my own students off using Wikipedia (as pointless an injunction as telling them not to use Google, or not to leave their essay to the last minute). I finally gave up doing so about three years ago, after reading a paper by an expert on South Asian coinage in which the author described the Wikipedia entry on the Indo-Greek Kingdom (c.200 BC–AD 10) as the most reliable overview of Indo-Greek history to be found anywhere – quite true, though not necessarily as much of a compliment to Wikipedia as you might think."
Andrew.
On 26 May 2016 at 11:56, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Enjoyable two-page review today in the Times Literary Supplement by Peter Thonemann, flagged on the front page as "The triumph of Wikipedia?"
Lynch's book You Could Look It Up has the subtitle "The reference shelf
from
ancient Babylon", and WP is duly mentioned in the review at length, with Rich Farmbrough getting a namecheck.
Thonemann is at Wadham College, Oxford, and gives good quotes: e.g. "Wiki-editors are, in my experience, an exceptionally friendly and
helpful
bunch".
Charles
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org