[WikiEN-l] Slashdot article

[Carl Beckhorn]

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 07:59:34PM -0400, Philip Sandifer wrote:
> The problem here is that this line of reasoning, though consistent, is  
> divorced from how people actually use an encyclopedia. We use  
> attribution and verifiability because, in empirical fact, they are  
> reasonably similar to truth. But in terms of actual use of Wikipedia  
> as a resource, people depend on that isomorphism between accuracy and  
> attribution. When that isomorphism breaks down, it poses a genuine  
> problem.

Hear hear. It's simply incoherent to write without any concern for 
whether the content is generally "correct" in the widely-understood 
sense of the word, and then call the resulting product an "encyclopedia".

 - Carl