[WikiEN-l] oopsie-- mainstream journalists trust Wikipedia again

[Casey Brown]

On 10/4/07, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not completely off the hook. The incidence of
> errors in the project, and ability of anyone to add anything (which will
> not
> necessarily be picked up by others, despite what ultra-wiki-faith
> evangelists would have you believe) *is* a major issue.


Most agree it is a major issue, see the Wikimedia Quality site. (David
linked to it.)

Look at it another way. People say, well, you shouldn't just rely on
> Wikipedia if you are looking for a proper reference, go and find the
> source
> material after looking at the Wikipedia article. So, even if we accept
> this
> in the context of someone doing research, what about the casual browser?
> They aren't going to go look up the sources. And yet even subconciously
> they
> are going to remember anything non-controversial or plausible that they
> read
> on Wikipedia as fact.
>
> We really really need to take Wikipedia's spreading of disinformation very
> seriously.


We really really do take it seriously and are working on the issue, it is
one of the board's goals or visions or something along those lines. ;-)

One cannot get away with solely blaming those who source
> information from Wikipedia.
>
> At least, if we really want Wikipedia to be an encyclopaedia rather than a
> factoid lucky-dip. Yes an encyclopaedia isn't a reliable first hand source
> for research, but it should be generally quite accurate nevertheless. The
> mistakes Britannica makes are actually worth the hoo-hah people make over
> them. It's very bad for an information source, even an informal one not
> for
> use in research, to have errors creeping into it. People read
> encyclopaedia
> articles for facts, not "maybe facts - I guess I'll check each fact".
>
> Zoney
>
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-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

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