[Foundation-l] Quality is function of the sources, not the editors Re: At school

[Billinghurst]

On 15 Feb 2010 at 16:53, 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. 
> 

Tyler,

The full answer is probably awaiting you at university in the terms of a thesis. ;-)  The 
abridged answer as I see it ...

I can redirect your thinking to focus on the issue in another way.

1) For any encyclopaedia, it is not about who edits, it is the  quality of the data.  
Hence it is not about trusting or not trusting Wikipedia, it is looking at the article of 
interest (at WP or elsewhere) and evaluating its use of sources, the primacy of the data 
utilised, the quality and breadth of data used, the independence of the sources.

For biographical detail, what is the source of the detail of the birth, the marriage, the 
death.  If it came from offical BMD sources, then it is official data, if it came from 
someone's scrapings on a toilet wall, it isn't. When put in that perspective, it looks 
bleeding obvious.  Always remember the basic principle of "Garbage in; garbage out"[1] aka 
SISO.

Is it perfect? No. It is continually improving, and all participants can provide the 
rigour.

Let's look at some advantages and strengths? The broader Wikimedia community and the data 
that they bring. For instance, Wikisource is working on bringing public domain sources 
online. So Wikipedia has the ability to direclty link to the works of Isaac Newton, 
Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin etc., and editors can work on such projects simultaneously.

With respect to vandalism? Yes, it is there, and the reality is that redirects some 
people's focus and efforts away from all the positive work. At the same time, it is a 
function of the battle on the web against some negative factors. We build better tools to 
address this. My perspective on this is that every journey has some difficulties, and if 
we do wish to just stay in an area of absolute security, we are not going to be out there 
to discover.  Personally, I prefer discovery!

Regards Andrew

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_In,_Garbage_Out