[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia more popular than Britannica!

Wed Jul 9 09:42:03 UTC 2003

james duffy wrote:

> It is worth mentioning that in terms of academic credibility, Encarta 
> is not very highly regarded. In fact I have heard it described as a 
> triumph of image over substance. But it is great to see wiki doing so 
> well. We have /so/ many quality articles and also other than the 32K 
> limit, we have greater scope to go into things in more detail. 

In terms of user review ratings at Alexa we have 5 out of 5 to Encarta's 
3 and EB's 2.5.  Most amazing is that they consider our server to be 
fast in the 69th percentile!!!  EB is rated very slow in the 19th 
percentile.  Encarta is considered even slower in the 17th percentile!! 
 (Maybe it's because the use too much Microsoft software. :-D )

> I think wiki does need as it develops to be able to have some 'final' 
> articles that, having reached a clear standard of accuracy, 
> readability etc can he removed from the editing process. The downside 
> of constant editing is that some articles that reach a high standard 
> then can lose that as those who produced the standard leave and 
> someone comes on and rewrites it to a lower standard. Wiki's open edit 
> policy is its major plus, as it allows us to evolve and update, but 
> its downside is reliability. Can I be sure if at 8.17pm I read an 
> article /everything/ in it is factual or could I have the bad luck to 
> read it just after some user either through not knowing what they were 
> doing or deliberately, mucked it up and added in false information? 
> For example, Jerusalem's status as the capital of Israel is disputed. 
> That is stated on wiki (after a battle!). But what if a reader at 8.17 
> reads a version that says in a POV edit it is an 'undisputed' capital. 
> Or someone doing an essay on JFK reads an edit at 8.17 that says he 
> was the 33rd not the 35th president? 

We need to stress this as a virtue.  Being continually afraid that our 
data might be full of errors is a losing strategy.  We need to be open 
and frank about our errors.  We need to accept the fact that our 
articles sometimes do get badly mucked up, and that we depend on our 
users to fix this.  If a reader picks up on the simple JFK error and can 
make the correction himself, let's just hope that he spells Wikipedia 
correctly when he boasts to his friends about it.

> For all their downsides, the 'centainty of standard' is the one major 
> plus that Brittanica, World Book, Encarta has. When you read an 
> article you are getting a definitive version, not that moment's edit. 
> At some stage wiki is going to face a credibility barrier where people 
> ask 'but can I be sure that King Edward VI of England actually died on 
> that day, or is it a bad edit? How can I be sure W.T. Cosgrave said 
> that? How and when we deal with the 'certainty of standard' issue will 
> mark the moment we go from being a good secondary source that may give 
> a fascinating insight but which just to be sure you might want to 
> cross check, just in case, to a /guaranteed/ reliable primary source. 

The huge amount of information that is now available to everybody 
affects the role of education.  Knowing how to find information has 
become more important than the information itself.  Critical thinking is 
the most important thing that the schools can teach.  The student who 
hasn't learned to question his teachers probably hasn't learned a damn 
thing.  There is a down side to that "certainty of standard" in the 
complacency that it engenders, and in the consequent abatement of the 
critical faculty.  Resorting to authority is a form of logical fallacy. 
 For nearly two millenia the church pulled the wool of authority over 
people's eyes.  It often did this in the guise of education at a time 
when no other institution was available to fill the instructional vacuum.

Though we should certainly strive to have Edward's correct date of death 
in Wikipedia, it's not a particularly important fact.  It is sufficient 
to put this relatively insignificant boy-king in the context of the mid 
16th century.  I am very satisfied with Wikipedia being a good secondary 
source.  Any encyclopedia is a secondary source, and those "fascinating 
insights" are an important aspect of an encyclopedia's function, and I 
certainly hope that readers will be inspired to cross check the data no 
matter how authoritative we become.  

Perhaps you use the term "promary source" differently than I.  I always 
understood "primary sources" to mean original documents and texts.  But 
Wikipedia is not a repository of original texts, so it will never be a 
primary source.

Eclecticology