[Wikipedia-l] A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project Has Been Around For A While

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Shaun MacPherson <shaun_macpherson2001 at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> Larry Sanger believes that the solution to make
> Wikipedia more credible are with experts.  You can see
> a good article descriping his criticisms here (
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/03/144207&tid=95&tid=1
> ) posted on Jan 3, 2004.

I respect Larry and what he did to help Wikipedia along in its first year. But
I will never just assume that somebody with a PhD is right since many PhDs all
too often are not; I've come across and know of a good many PhDs who have axes
to grind and who have pet theories to push. 

NPOV is a much better guarantee of accuracy than trusting a supposed expert
(although I do highly value feedback from field experts - I just don't take
their ideas as the last word). 

Many in academia are used to being the gatekeepers and stewards of 
information. Wiki opens those gates to anybody with an Internet connection. So
many in academia will always recoil in horror at the mere concept - that is
their problem, their failing, not ours. 

That said, we can and should continue to find ways to make our articles better.
Milestone snapshots (aka Wikipedia 1.0) selected via a credible process would
help a great deal toward that (as the FAC/featured article process already has
for the best articles we have). 

> The thing holding this project back, and ultimately
> Wikipedia from sheading the skin of being
> 'noncredible' is the lack of intelligent foot/end
> notes.  A way to format an article with autonumbering
> endnotes for crossreferencing is lacking. 

Yes, we need to encourage referencing of articles and an auto-note feature
would help a great deal.  

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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