You know, I agree with basically every one of his points. I have 2 problems with this and other articles.
1: The Wikipedia does present a vast amount of very good, useful, real information, often much more than is in the average enyclopedia. He talks about inaccuracy and revisionist history, but pretty much any school text book is full of the same, as are encyclopedias, and all history is somewhat influenced by perspective as we all hopefully well know here. He's not pointing out anything particularly damning but by making it seem that this is an exclusive issue of the Wikipedia I think he loses credibility. Granted there may be *more* inaccuracy there, but there has been no real accounting done of the percentage of inaccuracy vs. real fact.
2: Every single one of these articles I have seen has been authored by someone who is mad about their *own* entry in the Wikipedia! If that's not a conflict of interest I don't know what is.
Sure they have a right to be mad about it and point out that something may be inaccurate in the article, and this conflict of interest doesn't invalidate their points. But it certainly makes me take everything they say with a grain of salt. They are not impartial by any means. Ok they make no claims to be either; in fact impartiality is really quite difficult to achieve. Still they seem *particularly* biased to be writing a damning "What's wrong with the Wikipedia" article.
2a: The damning of Wikipedia by these people always seems based on some microcosm of the greater body of articles. This is only natural, no one could read it all; the problem is the articles examined always seem to be something the author has a vested interest in which again reinforces the previously mentioned bias. I have yet to see a general, open comparison of the Wikipedia and several authoratative encyclopedias to see how well their info compares. I know there was one comparison done but according to one of these authors it focused on things the Wikipedia would be particularly good at. Fair enough but won't *someone* take a more impartial, rational look at this? Someone who isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia itself and doesn't have an apparent axe to grind?
Bottom line, as I said at the beginning, I agree with many of the points raised. What's interesting IMO is how much quality and accuracy does shine through and remain consistent. There are definitely some major areas of contention - topics where personal preference, fandom, etc. have a special interest. These topics are actually things many encyclopedias are unlikely to cover at all, or at least in much depth, so perhaps there's not much loss there anyway. I do wish for better controls in the Wikipedia - I'd like to one day feel a bit more confident in all information it presents me. But as it is I have learned a tremendous amount of real, independently verifiable info there. One should not rely on any one source of information anyway, at least not for anything important. I think the Wikipedia deserves a place as one of those sources of info at this point.
It should also be noted that they do seem to be responding to criticism over time. If I recall correctly they have changed some of the rules due to abuse. At its base the Wikipedia is still a big experiment, albeit a highly successful one thus far (IMO anyway). I think it will continue to evolve and if real problems are identified and persist they will be corrected where possible. I have the feeling the first few editions of Britannica wouldn't have even measured up to the Wikipedia in its first year.
- Oshyan
