[WikiEN-l] Getting hammered in a tv interview is not fun

[William Pietri]

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>   
>> On 30/03/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> It seems to me that an interviewer will for years to come be able to
>>> easily find something in Wikipedia that is obviously wrong. Treating
>>> that a a problem is accepting a negative premise, which I understand to
>>> be a PR mistake.[1] When people catch us in errors, aren't we better off
>>> going with positive responses that begin with, "Yes, exactly..."?
>>>       
>> You got it. "Of course. Wikipedia is not *reliable* in the sense it's
>> all checked. It can't be by the process it's written by. You have to
>> think when you're reading. But if you do, it's good and useful."
>>
>> ("But what if people take it as gospel?" "We can't and don't promise
>> to think for people. You have to do that for yourself.")
>>
>> I take this line every time this comes up - live radio, if not TV -
>> and it works fine. It would have worked here too.
>>     
>
> Well, it more or less DID, and that's what I call dancing.


Are you sure you aren't mentally accepting the premise of their 
question? It seems to me there's no need for feeling like you're dancing 
around something.

My take is that outsiders who look at Wikipedia and demand perfection 
have a fundamental misunderstanding about participatory culture. It's 
like bringing nothing to a church potluck and then getting sniffy 
because haute cuisine restaurants have nicer tablecloths. Of course they 
do; $150 per head pays for a lot of pampering.