[WikiEN-l] BBC

[David Gerard]

On 25/07/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

> It isn't so much that he's wrong, but how much can you learn about WIKIPEDIA by interviewing Larry Sanders and the management of Britannica? David Gerard had to show him the edit button...


I must say he got it very quickly though. And by "it" I mean what's
addictive about Wikipedia. I could see it in his eyes!

Although only a few minutes of talking to me made it in out of an hour
or two's recording, I did point out that you'll meet idiots on
Wikipedia, just like anywhere on the internet. So I tried not to
whitewash the joys of Wikipedia.


>The piece reflects more on the reliability and integrity of the BBC
than on that of Wikipedia. It was amateurish.


It was a magazine-style article rather than investigative journalism.
Though [[Clive Anderson]] is no idiot, and his fans know this. I
thought it was an entirely reasonable approach for him and his
producer to have taken to the show.

(Arkady was away that day and her jaw dropped when I told her. "Clive
Anderson was in our house?!" "And sitting in your chair!")

(Free pic of him up on his article next week. It's currently on the
Linux share of my work laptop, which is living in Windows for the week
while I'm on a training course.)


> However a nice note at the end encouraging people to edit, "It's your encyclopedia".


I was enormously pleased with how positive the resulting piece was.
I'm only worried it was too positive.

I was somewhat annoyed my usual description of "neutral point of view"
didn't make it in - "it's the overview from 20,000 feet. And none of
us are 20,000 feet above, we're all down here, but we try to work out
what the view would look like  from there with others." This answers
Britannica's frequent furphy about the truth not being up for a vote.


- d.