[WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

[George Herbert]

On 1/26/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
> >>There are more citations per article in Wikipedia than in Brittanica.
> >>Is Brittanica an unreliable source?
> >>
> >>
> >We know who wrote Britannica. We can (or at least, should be able to -
> >let's not get into a discussion about the actual reliability of
> >Britannica) trust that their authors really do know what they're
> >talking about, and even if they are writing from memory, their memory
> >is more reliable than that of a random Wikipedia user we know nothing
> >about. (Not necessarily more accurate, but it is more reliable.)
> >
> I think the term for what you say is "double standard".  Are Wikipedia
> editors really that much more prone to Alzheimer's?

It's fair to point out that WP editors aren't vetted experts.

Even vetted experts make mistakes, as the accuracy research indicates
with Britannica.

That is actually the one thing that I'd say pretty much answers the
ultimate question here - WP's existing methods, and existing editors,
produced content which was independently measured to be comparably
accurate to the work of selected, vetted experts.

All of the complaints about our process fundamentally don't change
that the result has been a success.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com