Rick wrote:
Jimbo is being a little too modest when he says that scholars haven't
picked articles for fact-checking - we have a number of scholars and
other authorities who are WPers, the articles in their areas get pretty
thoroughly fact-checked, and they watch those articles closely to see
that new errors don't get in. The only thing that hasn't happened yet
is a large-scale systematic review.
As a future response to news queries, I suggest "de-personalizing"
a bit; Wikipedia's authority should rest on the published body of
knowledge, not individual expertise. Part of how we're able to
leverage non-experts is that if an article references an authoritative
source, anybody can compare the two. I have no personal experience of
aircraft carriers, but I can make sure a launching date matches what
the Royal Navy says it is.
Conversely, if random Nobelists were to get on WP and add unpublished
bits, I would expect those to get smacked down as quickly as the latest
crackpot ranting. It's also a feature that we're not held hostage to
(almost-)dead-white-guy viewpoints, which as we know sometimes lack,
uh, "neutrality". :-)
The Britannica guy should read a little more Linux history, so he
doesn't embarass himself by saying exactly the same things that
Microsoft said about Linux years ago. Hundreds of professional
programmers were working on GNU and Linux as part of their day jobs
while most of the world still thought it was a "hobby operating
system" - we didn't advertise it so much at the time, so as avoid
getting squashed by MS while we were still vulnerable.
Stan