[Foundation-l] At school

[Shlomi Fish]

On Monday 15 Feb 2010 23:53:45 Tyler wrote:
> Kids at my school are criticizing the heck out of your Foundation and will
> not trust Wikipedia because anyone can edit it.  If anyone can edit, then
> why do you exist? There could be a billion vandals.  When the old ones get
> banned, there could be new ones.

You may wish to read:

http://www.madsgormlarsen.dk/2009/02/22/the-fear-of-user-generated-content/

In one of the open source conferences in Israel, the bureaucrat of the Hebrew 
wikipedia, came on stage and said "How can you trust an encyclopaedia that 
anyone can edit? How can you trust an encyclopaedia that no one can edit!!" 
and then he gave two examples of inaccuracies - one in a Hebrew printed 
encyclopaedia and the other in the online Britannica one, where the Hebrew 
word "Hanasi" (הנשיא) was translated into "The prince" instead of "The 
president" or "The leader".

Vandalism is a problem, but there are many way to mitigate it. And by 
harnessing the efforts of a large number of Internet contributors, the 
Wikipedia became much more comprehensive than it was without user-generated-
content. That's the point of wikipedia.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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