John C. Penta wrote:
The idea that
articles can have different degrees (or different
categories) of certification also has a certain appeal. But I
prefer to
make small steps to a full-fledged certification system, so that
we can
always turn around if something goes wrong.
Much agreement. IMHO, a cert system would be a good idea for one very simple reason:
As it stands, NONE of my profs will trust ANYTHING from Wiki. I imagine many professors
and teachers are like that; It would help immensely if there was some credibility built
up.
Really, really annoying when Wiki has a fact I can't easily find anywhere else.
This is going to need more verification than just saying "yeah, this is
a good article" though. To be able to trust the content of any
Wikipedia article, someone with knowledge of the field has to check up
on the facts in reliable primary or secondary sources. The vast
majority of Wikipedia articles, as far as I can tell, currently draw
their facts from the internet, which is filled with incorrect facts
propagated from website to website. Even things like birth dates are
suspect, with it not being uncommon for a typo on a single website to
propagate to others and eventually into Wikipedia. So, to get something
reliable, we need to find people who are willing to verify facts in
libraries, not just in google. The only major exception I see to this
are facts taken from US government websites (census bureau, NASA, etc.),
which I'd be more likely to trust than facts taken from some random
biography on geocities (at least when we're dealing with strictly facts,
not subjective analysis).
-Mark