[Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.

[David Gerard]

On 29 August 2010 15:38, Peter Damian <peter.damian at btinternet.com> wrote:

> The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that
> are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the
> folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one
> *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting
> the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html
> and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only
> in my own area of expertise.
> What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?


Probably just documenting problems, as you note.

It is helpful that on Wikipedia the editorial process is largely
transparent, so the question "how did it get like this?" can actually
be answered. Wikipedia is not reliable, but it turns out that how
paper encyclopedias and newspapers were written was similarly
susceptible - with Wikipedia we can see inside the sausage factory
rather than pretending that the mass media is a happy unicorn-filled
fairyland of scrupulous fact-checking and expert supervision.


- d.