[Wikimedia-l] Longest living hoax?

[George Herbert]

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
> On 5 March 2013 16:42, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki at gmail.com<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
>
>> It's also telling that the longest hoax was about ancient history: it
>> matches the popular belief that history is by far the biggest weakness of
>> Wikipedia.
>
> Our historical coverage is patchy, but I don't think it's our biggest
> weakness - art and culture probably are. That said, history (especially
> non-western history) is one of the bigger weaknesses of the internet as a
> whole, which reinforces the problem; it's much easier for something made up
> to "stick" if there's no easy online falsification of it. You can plausibly
> demonstrate that a contemporary band or ongoing war does not exist without
> too much trouble; if you draw a blank on a Renaissance painter, you're more
> likely to assume the digital resources are lacking.

I believe that non-computer related engineering fields (mechanical
engineering, structural engineering, civil engineering, materials
science) are still large gaps as well, though better than 3 years ago.

There's a large amount of raw material on the internet, and our job of
forming coherent pictures out of it leaves something to be desired.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com