[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia isn't just a good idea - it's compulsory

[Carcharoth]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 1:32 PM, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Carcharoth wrote:
>> [Correcting previous post - can't Wikipedia have editable posts?]
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Carcharoth
>> <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Charlotte Webb
>>> <charlottethewebb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>>>> Nationalism is a major factor in school social studies curricula, and a
>>>>> great medium for indoctrinating the child with official truth.  Access to
>>>>> Wikipedia and other on-line sources helps him to formulate the
>>>>> questions that needed to challenge the teachers of those truths.
>>>> History textbooks tend to lie by omission but the board of education
>>>> will be loathe to approve anything that explicitly encourages students
>>>> to look elsewhere for the director's cut. They don't want to deal with
>>>> the fallout when students report back to class asking why their
>>>> curriculum bears no mention of the Mỹ Lai massacre, the bombing of
>>>> Dresden, Operation Northwoods, the Bonus Army, the School of the
>>>> Americas handbook, Martin Luther King's FBI fan-mail, Jonestown, or
>>>> the Tuskegee Study, etc. Indeed, who would?
>>
>> Doesn't that make the "board of education" part of the problem?
>>
> So, replace all such specialist elected and accountable bodies (or
> bodies accountable to the elected) with a wiki?

Not sure such bodies are accountable (at least not in the UK).
Definitely not elected in the UK.

> Replace the expert, who wrote the textbook, with the anarchy of the truth according to
> whoever made the last edit?
>
> I think I'll stay off the koolaid and stick with democracy,
> professionalism, and expertise - yes it can be, on some occasions,
> stupid, biased and myopic, but it is still the best system we've got.

Yes, and Wikipedia should reflect that. The problem is people thinking
that Wikipedia is authoritative. If the editing is true to the
sources, Wikipedia works well. If it isn't, then Wikipedia doesn't
work well. The disclaimer should read: "please check everything
written here against the sources provided - if there are no sources,
the article cannot be relied upon". The trick is to harness the
editing power of skilled (and trained?) volunteers to write the
articles, and combine that with the expertise needed to independently
fact-check, review, verify and sign off on an article.

The former ("anyone can edit") doesn't involve any selection for
skills or training (though some natural self-selection and
community-driven selection takes place), and the latter ("review by
experts") doesn't scale.

The result is "reader beware". And it's always been like that. If
someone using Wikipedia only learns that they need to check and assess
the sources of information - any information - then they have learnt
something invaluable.

Carcharoth