[Wikipedia-l] The New Yorker on Wikipedia

Mon Jul 24 13:27:40 UTC 2006

On 7/24/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> FYI,
>
> The latest piece about Wikipedia from The New Yorker:
> http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact
>
> Generally great expository that aptly captures Wikipedia's most interesting
> corners. But this deserves a big whaaa?
>
> "Wales—who resembles a young Billy Crystal with the neuroses neatly tucked
> in—recalls the enchantment of pasting in update stickers that
> cross-referenced older entries to the annual supplements."
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

You're right in that it's pretty good- the level of quality and quiet
humor one expects from the New Yorker.

But there are a few oddities; like for instance, "He [Sanger] left
Wikipedia in March, 2002, after Wales ran out of money to support the
site during the dot-com bust. "  I think this part may be wrong - I
thought Wales had money for the site, but not for Sanger's salary? I
mean, Wikipedia didn't go off the internet at this point.

Or: ""It's a perfectly reasonable power in any other situation, but
completely antithetical to this project," said Jason Scott, a longtime
contributor to Wikipedia who has published several essays critical of
the site."
Jason Scott == longtime contributor? Sure, he has ~200 edits, but most
seem to center around himself and his article, and 200 edits isn't the
sort of magnitude or long-term participation I'd characterize as "a
longtime contributor".

Or: "According to the survey, Wikipedia had four errors for every
three of Britannica's, a result that, oddly, was hailed as a triumph
for the upstart." <-- Why is it so odd? I mean, almost everybody said
that this was good news for Wikipedia because it showed that we
weren't *that* bad. Critics were expecting it to be much much worse
than it was.

But despite the occasional cluelessness or error, there are some
genuinely interesting bits in there, even for a hardened editor like
meself:
"Wattenberg and Viégas, of I.B.M., note that the vast majority of
Wikipedia edits consist of deletions and additions rather than of
attempts to reorder paragraphs or to shape an entry as a whole, and
they believe that Wikipedia's twenty-five-line editing window deserves
some of the blame."

~maru