[WikiEN-l] Re: The return of Prillinger.

[Gerrit]

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> There's nothing "faith based" about it -- it's good old fashioned
> *rational* hard work, undertaken by people of good will in a spirit of
> love and kindness.

There is some truth in the rest of the article, though.
The example on Alexander Hamilton is indeed striking.
I use Wikipedia for information a lot. But in the back of my head, I
always keep thinking: "it is a wiki, it may not be true, it may not be
NPOV, it may be very incomplete, even if it doesn'n say so". If I would
need information and it would be important that I was sure about it, I
probably wouldn't trust Wikipedia as a single source. I probably would
look first into Wikipedia, and then check the facts with sources like
Encyclopædia Brittanica or the Dutch Winkler Prins. In the end, the
authority of Wikipedia will always remain below that of estabished,
commercial encyclopedia's. It does not mean Wikipedia isn't very very
great, but it is a unpreventable consequence of the whole Wiki concept.

We will soon have 'validation'. I don't know the details, but it would
be good if a knowledgeable user's validation would weigh more than a
non-knowledgeable user's validation. Somewhat like /.'s karma: if my
edits/articles get good ratings, my karma goes 'up', and the validations
I do on other articles weigh more. Or: if I write a lot of articles in
[[Category:Physics]], validations I do for other articles in this
category weigh more than I do for [[Category:Music]], and vica versa.

There is a problem with the Alexander Hamilton story. The problem cannot
be solved 100% in a wiki. We can lessen the problem with validation and
other techniques, though.

I will always love Wikipedia.

yours truly,
Gerrit Holl.

P.S. It is very cool to see that his complaints are dated by now. Was
the Encyclopædia Brittanica editor responsible for the edit? I guess
not...

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-- 
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
    -Dwight David Eisenhower, January 17, 1961