Craig Franklin wrote:
I think there's something of a lesson here for
people: don't trust the
press.
The part of the piece I found most striking was that the author readily,
and almost boastfully, admits to speaking to "a minority of the minority
of the minority," but she seems to have no issue using this very limited
sample size to evaluate Wikipedia on the whole. Even if we assumed that
there are 22,000 registered Wikipedians, is a sample size of five or six
appropriate? If she meant 22,000,000, it seems like an even crazier leap.
After re-reading the piece, I'd probably stand by a lot of it. It's not a
great reflection of Wikipedia, but I also wouldn't call at least many
parts of it inaccurate, per se, just crudely distorted and manipulated.
The author used the tactic where you mention that Mandela was a convicted
criminal that spent 27 years in prison, but fail to mention that he won
the Nobel Peace Prize and was the revered president of South Africa.
This tactic is an easy way to create a distorted, but technically
accurate, impression. Some of the fine folks at Wikipediocracy are very
good at employing this tactic as well. :-)
MZMcBride