[Wikipedia-l] in response to your article "Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source" in the Post-Standard

[Christopher Mahan]

> we just had someone on the de mailinglist who purposely modified
> four articles 
> and introduced a mistake in each of them.

That's nice.

> He also told us which
> articles he  
> modified and claimed that none of the mistakes was detected by now.

Could it perhaps be that he was trusted to not do that (misplaced
trust if you ask me).


> I checked 
> three of the articles he was right with his claim.

That's nice too.

 
> In the german article about "consumer surplus" the error was there
> for about 9
> (!) days before I removed the nonesense. In other articles the
> errors were 
> there for more than 9 days.

A whole nine days? Woa, that's like incredible. I would not believe
it. Now, a year would be a real challenge. 


> I agree with most of what you wrote, but I think it is a mistake to
> believe 
> that we have any kind of review system which is on par (wrt error 
> elimination) with a real peer review. 

A real peer review is done by people who are paid. We are volunteers,
and while some people might think our work worthless, we don't. 

> At least my experience is
> that the 
> probability for finding a mistake in Wikipedia is by far higher
> than for 
> Britannica.

And britannica has been around what, 100+ years?

> 
> best regards,
>   Marco 

Marco, tell your friend next time he wants to experiment, to use the
sandbox.

And if you like Britannica so much, then, it's there for you to use.
Oh, and I forgot, you have to pay to read Britannica articles. (look
up Blade Runner, the movie)

Now, granted, the review on W takes more time, but we don't release
every year, we release constantly. 

There is a program afoot to make a printed wikipedia, and I am sure
tht your attention to detail and factual accuracy would be extremely
valuable in reaching the completion of the project. 



=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/


		
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