[Wikipedia-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia must change with Googling (was: Dartmouth follies)

Thu Aug 26 03:00:09 UTC 2004

> In some sense I agree, but what has bothered me lately is the fact
> that Googling for "wikipedia foo" likely brings up one of our mirrors
> first, and not Wikipedia itself. So when I see a blatant error
> magnified "n" times on the many mirrors on the Internet, it sends a
> chill up my spine.

> Worse, because those sites are mirrors, and don't accept changes, it
> makes it easy for readers to walk off and say, "What a crackpot
> project."

Of course, the only way to correct that is for Wikipedia to *fix* the
information, not to delete it.  If Wikipedia deletes the article, it will
still remain in many of the mirrors and therefore in google.  If we instead
keep the article but remove the fluff (advertisements, POV, original
research), then the mirrors get updated and so does google.