[Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[David Gerard]

On 4 October 2010 19:43, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> The Wikipedia that went from nothing to top ten site was never built
> on  verifiable knowledge. It was built on what people happened to have
> in their heads. The whole citation thing outside the more
> controversial areas came later. Don't believe me? This was a featured
> article:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Murder_of_James_Bulger&oldid=3191413


This is true - it took until 2005 even to get people to accept the
{[unreferenced}} tag as being a good idea.

I believe we were #20 on Alexa by the end of 2005.

Not that there's anything wrong with references. But yes, claiming
that Wikipedia was built on referenced information is simply a
factually inaccurate claim, and you should not make it.


- d.