Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Matthew Larsen mat.larsen@gmail.com wrote:
This is all well and good, having a review board and experts stuff and all...
But is it really necessary?
Yes - we are getting slammed in the media (and by school teachers and librarians) for being an untrustable source *and* we want a way to approve content for publication.
I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active. These responses are a sign of success, not of failure. Your reaction to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right. Contrast this with the view expressed in the Observer article. Having WP generaly accepted by the schools may still be five or ten years down the road. It would not surprise me if some of these teachers who reject Wikipedia would then turn around and treat one of the commercial duplicates of Wikipedia as authoritative just because it can't be edited by everybody.
Reacting to these situations by adding more bureaucracy could easily but unwittingly subvert the ideas that made Wikipedia what it is to-day.
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