NPR's Weekend Edtion has run an article on Wikipedia, focusing on the usual pro/con views.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4506421
This follows 2003's "All Things Considered" article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1344426
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 10:37:32 -0500, Henry Tan-Tenn share2002nov@lomaji.com wrote:
NPR's Weekend Edtion has run an article on Wikipedia, focusing on the usual pro/con views.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4506421
This follows 2003's "All Things Considered" article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1344426
Apparently, the audio will not be available online until noon US Central ltime (UTC -6),
-Rich Holton
--- Henry Tan-Tenn share2002nov@lomaji.com wrote:
NPR's Weekend Edtion has run an article on Wikipedia, focusing on the usual pro/con views.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4506421
This follows 2003's "All Things Considered" article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1344426
Nice story. It focuses on our strong points and on areas where we need more work (aside: which could be helped-along by some type of approved article system and then outreach to librarians and educators).
The new Britannica FUD was interesting: Their new take is that Wikipedia is too detailed and one of the things that makes EB great is that they make careful decisions on what is most important to include.
So that looks to me like they are giving up and declaring their much smaller size and long time between updates to be 'features.' :)
What they have lost grip of is that Wikipedia is redefining what an encyclopedia can be or even what one should be.
That said, we do need to make sure that long articles are started with good-sized lead sections that give a quick summary of the topic (we might even want to encourage larger lead sections so they could approach the size of concise encyclopedia articles in their own right). We also need to make sure long articles do not present more detail on a page that is appropriate for that level of article and to make sure that the detail stays on-topic.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lead_section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Summary_style
-- mav
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On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 11:33:48 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
The new Britannica FUD was interesting: Their new take is that Wikipedia is too detailed and one of the things that makes EB great is that they make careful decisions on what is most important to include.
So that looks to me like they are giving up and declaring their much smaller size and long time between updates to be 'features.' :)
Mav, I found that new argument curious as well. In general, I think WP articles already do a good job of not "burying the lead." If not, it's easy to fix.
For Britannica, it's going to be much harder to come to grips with the two things you mentioned.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
The new Britannica FUD was interesting: Their new take is that
Wikipedia is too detailed and one of the things that makes EB great is that they make careful
Well, I think that some of Wikipedia's articles suffer from imbalances and lack of focus. This is probably the result of cooperative editing without restructuring: - when there's an "edit war" on a particular aspect of the topic, this aspect usually gets documented by quotes, references etc by both parties, leading to an inflated coverage of the opinions surrounding this aspect - some editors have pet peeves and will over-document whatever is related to it.
Andrew Lih wrote:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 11:33:48 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
The new Britannica FUD was interesting: Their new take is that Wikipedia is too detailed and one of the things that makes EB great is that they make careful decisions on what is most important to include.
So that looks to me like they are giving up and declaring their much smaller size and long time between updates to be 'features.' :)
For Britannica, it's going to be much harder to come to grips with the two things you mentioned.
The broad popular participation in Wikipedia, and the deep pockets that support Encarta suggest that EB's attitude is based on desparation. Where is their growth potential? I'd love to look at their financial statements. As Bill Cosby's God once chastised Noah: "How long can you tread water?" :-)
Ec
Daniel Mayer ti 2005/2/20 EP 02:33 sia-kong:
The new Britannica FUD was interesting: Their new take is that Wikipedia is too detailed and one of the things that makes EB great is that they make careful decisions on what is most important to include.
So that looks to me like they are giving up and declaring their much smaller size and long time between updates to be 'features.' :)
EB will do well sticking to its real strengths, most notably (as far as I can tell) its _uniformly_ good if not excellent English and a general consistency in style, matched if not exceeded by a subset in en:, ie the featured articles.
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org