Re: Cyberiad question, re Wikipedia

Bryan Derksen wrote: [snip-snip]
Lots of other prominent sources don't claim to be authoritative
either. So perhaps it's a good thing that in Wikipedia's case people
are willing to take the information there with the grain of salt that
they should really be taking _everywhere_. :)

The most obvious difference is that regular encyclopedias have
identifiable editors. You don't have to agree with, say, John Clute's
(and John Clute-selected) articles in his encyclopedias, but at least
you know where he is coming from. Wikipedia's editors, on the other
hand, are unknown and vary tremendously -- see, for example, the most
recent attack on James D. Macdonald's article --
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_D._Macdonald&diff=72475463&oldid=69309012
..

Granted, WP has rules, regulations and processes in place, which, if
they were followed meticulously, would result in a slow but steady
improvement in the quality of all articles. However, that's predicated
on the number of manhours dedicated to Wikipedia by well meaning *and*
at least moderately competent editors exceeding the manhours spent by
POV warriors and "well meaning but clueless" folks. It doesn't look
particularly promising at this point.

As an aside, this also means that obscure topics are often better
covered in WP than popular articles. Take
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin as an example. It recently
confused Will in New Haven (see
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/137839769dfc5945) and is
generally of very poor quality, misstating or omitting many important
facts of his biography. And yet you can find the same facts explained
in considerable detail in related articles because their editors didn't
have to worry about revert warriors. Well, not as much :)

Still, as cheap epistemological experiments go, it's not a bad one ;-)

--
Ahasuerus

.

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