[Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees: Davos

[Anthony]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:09 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net>wrote:

> Sage Ross wrote:
> > From my experience talking with people (mostly academics) who have
> > Wikipedia articles, they are often unhappy with their articles but
> > also either don't want to interfere in a community they aren't part
> > of, or don't want to be seen as complaining on their own behalf and
> > thus risk seeming vain.  Most often it's not that there is something
> > really wrong or negative, it's just that the article is so incomplete
> > or imbalanced that it gives a misleading impression of who they are
> > and what they do.  I'd go so far as to say that the significant
> > majority of BLPs for academics (at least) are not appreciated by their
> > subjects.
> >
> I'd guess that it probably holds across a fairly wide swath of people.
> I'm not sure what should be done about it, though. And another thing to
> consider, for those who have been the subject of media coverage, how
> many feel that was really representative and balanced? Dissatisfaction
> is common there as well, it's hard to say if we're qualitatively
> different. Especially when those are the sources we often draw upon.
>

I think you're right that such dissatisfaction is common.  Newspapers and
magazines in particular, seem to get this kind of stuff wrong all the time.
Encyclopedias probably ought to be held to a higher standard, though, and in
theory Wikipedia with its neutrality policy ought to be held to an even
higher standard than that.

I have no idea how Wikipedia can get there.  Flagged revisions might be able
to reduce the blatant defamation, but it's not likely to address issues of
balance or incompleteness (and might actually make things worse in that
space).

In this space, I think Citizendium's "approved articles" is the best a wiki
can hope for.  That has its own problems, and the articles don't always turn
out well balanced, but at least you know who to blame.