Wikipedia Corrects Encyclopedia Britannica

javipas writes "Despite all the controversy about Wikipedia's work model, no one can argue the potential of a project that has so effectively demonstrated the usefulness of the 'wisdom of crowds' concept. And that wisdom has detected a large number of mistakes in one of the most revered founts of human knowledge, the Encyclopedias Britannica. Among the wrong information collected on this page are the name at birth of Bill Clinton and the definition of the NP problems in mathematics."

Score +5 (Troll)

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad most of the administrators think they know more than you, simply because they read an article on the subject. The others are all to happy to demonstrate the Wikipedia caste system to you.

Re:Score +5 (Troll)

[Anonymous Coward]

Concise but rich. You've really summarized the problem of Wikipedia, and all peer-dictated fora, quite elegantly.

Re:Score +5 (Troll)

[greenrd]

Too bad most of the administrators think they know more than you, simply because they read an article on the subject. The others are all to happy to demonstrate the Wikipedia caste system to you.

[citation needed [wikipedia.org]]

Re:Score +5 (Troll)

[sqldr]

There are times when I feel the urge to write "citation needed" on every single article on conservapedia, eg. on the origins of kangaroos:

"After the Flood, these kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia." [citation needed]

I mean, what the fuck?

"There is debate whether this migration happened over land with lower sea levels during the post-flood ice age, or before the supercontinent of Pangea broke apart, or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters." [citation really fucking needed]

Kangaroos crossing thousands of miles of ocean on rafts.. I'm not sure these guys are strictly adhering to their anti-pot-smoking policy.

Re:Score +5 (Troll)

[IwantToKeepAnon]

[citation needed]

[citation needed] [xkcd.com]

Are These Mistakes Or Intentional?

[jbarr]

When my friends and I were younger, we were Trivial Pursuit fanatics, and one game, I was asked a science question (don't remember the exact question) but the answer listed was incorrect. I was so pissed that I actually wrote the manufacturers complaining, and I received a letter from them explaining that in some cases, incorrect answers and occasional misspellings were intentionally included to help combat copyright infringements. Should a competitor use the same questions and intentionally bogus answers, then proving infringement was easier.

OK, I understand that the Encyclopedia Britannica is meant to be an authoritative source, but is it possible that some inconsistencies or errors were introduced in a similar manner?

Re:

[TheoMurpse]

OK, I understand that the Encyclopedia Britannica is meant to be an authoritative source, but is it possible that some inconsistencies or errors were introduced in a similar manner?

No, and I'll explain why I think so.

The important difference between Trivial Pursuit and an encyclopedia here is that Trivial Pursuit's answers are just a short phrase or small set of words. You cannot copyright the answer (because facts are not copyrightable), but you can copy the set of questions and answers because aggregating

Re:

[Moryath]

Abuse on wikipedia is systemic and ridiculous. The number of people who have been through it are numerous [livejournal.com]. The number of reliable, credentialed academics who've been abused, voluminous. The number of times they have covered up their abuses [antisocialmedia.net], the number of sheer scandals [roughtype.com]. (note that they've deleted all of the Essjay material, to cover up and try to hide what he pulled; a long-running scam to abuse and mistreat and demean Catholics).

Wikipedia administrators regularly abuse their power - in any way possible. Th

Re:

[Moryath]

Where you look - well there's that blog, there's Holkins' commentary, there's Wikitruth, Wikipedia Review, WCityMike's leaving message.

There was Ikkyu's classic discussion - unfortunately, overly censorious admins much like yourself wiped and locked it [wikipedia.org] - again to hide their own abuses.

You have admins like SlimVirgin, who run around abusing the admin tools to hide things [wikipediareview.com] (she's also one of the most prolific liars and frauds when it comes to banning anyone she disagrees with for any reason).

There's another cl

Re:

[Xeth]

Sorry to say it, but Tycho's commentary is as full of pseudo-intellectual bullshit as the rest of his writing. He's clever, but rarely insightful.

And how am I denying the problem? Wikipedia most certainly has problems. Right there. People have been abused, and that's sad. I try and correct it where I can. Sometimes Jimbo makes a ruling that I find supremely ill-advised. Hopefully that will change with time.

The biggest (solvable, not fundamentally rooted in the problems of the real world a la Israel and

Re:

[Moryath]

What supposed pros are you talking about? The "pro" of having a site that catalogues the obsessive behavior of fanboys and otaku who want to argue over Pokemon, or comic books? The "pro" of having a supposed "encyclopedia" where dates and facts are more often wrong than right?

The "Cons" are - it's completely worthless. It's a mess, and anything that might get referenced on a regular basis is something on which wikipedia's listing should ABSOLUTELY NEVER BE TRUSTED.

WP needs a vast overhaul. It needs the lead

Re:

[veganboyjosh]

skewed towards old people

sorry, i couldn't help it.

Britanicca is useless.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Even if it were error free, Britanicca would still be useless - it does not enough content.

I mean, where's the articles on Fanboy [wikipedia.org]? Or the List of minor Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters. [wikipedia.org] (and for that matter, detailed summaries [wikipedia.org] of individual episodes [wikipedia.org]) Or for that matter, where's the article on the Slashdot effect [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

correction:

it does not have enough content.

talk: I hate wikipedia. It's at best a well spoken gentleman in a pub. It sounds right but I can't be sure.

(captcha: deserves)

Re:

[smookumy]

talk: I hate Britanicca. It's at best a well spoken gentleman in a pub. It sounds right but I can't be sure. Fixed that for you.

Re:Britanicca is useless.

[gardyloo]

talk: I hate Britannica. It's at best a well spoken gentleman in a pub. It sounds right but I can't be sure. Fixed that for you.

      Fixed that for you.

Re:Britanicca is useless.

[smookumy]

Thanks! I spell like I love: Poorly and with great haste.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia says it was Flavor Aid [wikipedia.org]

Re:Britanicca is useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if it were error free, Britanicca would still be useless - it does not enough content.

I mean, where's the articles on Fanboy? Or the List of minor Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters. (and for that matter, detailed summaries of individual episodes) Or for that matter, where's the article on the Slashdot effect

I'm glad something is documenting every minutae of our popular culture. Popular culture of the past is fascinating, and often tells you a lot more about what it was really like to live in the time than journalistic or encyclopedia articles or the works promoted to "high culture" of the period.

For example I love old newspaper strips from the turn of the century to the Great Depression. They're endlessly fascinating, ofen very well written and draw you into a world that is very similar yet completely different than our own. They're also incredibly difficult to find, even some of the ones that were enormously popular (like Buster Brown or Mutt and Jeff), and there is almost nil written about them. Someone else might find this in Old West dimestore novels, or minor Victorian theater, who knows. What I wouldn't give for the "fanboys" of the past to have documented every minutae, because there are a lot of great works have simply faded into obscurity because they were considered "throwaway pop culture" at the time.

That's the beauty of Wikipedia; it's limitless and only takes a small community (even of one) to decide something is relevant. If it's something you don't find interesting then there's no reason for you to bother with it. And who knows? In fifty years an article about Fanboyism, Buffy characters or the Slashdot effect may be extremely treasured information to someone else.

By the way how long did it take The Beatles or Charlie Chaplin to make it to Britannica's pages?

Re:Britanicca is useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's completely untrue, isn't it? Hundreds of articles are deleted from wikipedia every day because they're deemed by editors to be irrelevant or of interest to too few people.

Re:Britanicca is useless.

[Spaseboy]

How do you digg comments on here? I see all these scores but no way to digg people up or down.

Re:Britanicca is useless.

[TheLink]

I don't think the Wikipedia is that great for that sort of thing:
1) The admins delete a lot of stuff fairly arbitrarily and sometimes even for false reasons (to paraphrase: it only takes a very small community to delete stuff).
2) There does not appear to be an easily accessible history of deleted stuff.

And what are the odds that the wikipedia will last longer than paper from the 1900s?

Re:Britanicca is useless.

[KeepQuiet]

FYI, Britanicca is not a collection of popular culture or slang terms. It is an encyclopedia.

Re:

[Threni]

> FYI, Britanicca is not a collection of popular culture or slang terms. It is an encyclopedia.

Also, it's hard to imagine Britannica being unable to find loads of mistakes in Wikipedia.

Funny...

[msimm]

Of course I know the slashdot effect (we all do) but Farked, that's the first time I've heard that term. Which is even funnier because I host an arts and music website that was 'farked'. They actually drove the poor disk right into the ground, took me two days working with my hosting provider to recover the server and restore the site. I wasn't laughing so much then, but I probably would have if I'd heard that.

You forgot a step: No caching

[tepples]

Dynamic pages -> excessive memory usage -> swapping -> disk failure

You forgot a step: No caching -> repeated regeneration of dynamic pages -> excessive memory usage -> swapping -> disk failure. Robust content management systems, such as SLASH, Scoop, and MediaWiki, can handle loads of anonymous users because they use cached pages [kuro5hin.org], or static pages that represent a materialized view [wikipedia.org] of the dynamic page.

Re:

[jez9999]

Yeah, you say that, but there have been some depressing editorial decisions that have confined certain useful pieces of content such as you referenced to the scrapheap. There used to be 100% accurate records of all past UK Deal Or No Deal episodes, for example. They were removed because 'Wikipedia is not a data aggregation site'. Well, frankly, that strikes me as exactly what it is. Useful info does get removed from Wikipedia, and it's annoying. I agree with you that an internet encyclopaedia should ha

Although your argument makes sense

[benhocking]

A look at all of the long-lived episode guides (for other proprietary work) on Wikipedia would suggest that the decision with respect to Deal or No Deal (with which I am completely unfamiliar) was arbitrary.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the list of Afghani fish stamps.

Reference, please?

Re:

[rdoger6424]

I believe the correct phrase on wikipedia is [citation needed].

ok lets compare the number of wiki errors

[timmarhy]

why so silent now? Oh thats right Wiki is brimming with incorrect information.

Re:ok lets compare the number of wiki errors

[thegnu]

I'm not much of a grammar nazi, but people who never heard of the shift key come off as 15 or less.

you're talking about e. e. cummings again, aren't you?

A novelty but nothing more.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the kind of thing that Wikipedians love to trot out to show how much better they think they are than traditional sources, but this "corrections" list is not actually very meaningful. Heck, I once caught a typo in The Economist - does that mean a publication I made would thus be more accurate and reliable than The Economist? No, it just means they messed up once. Hey, when you produce a large volume of text, it happens. The real question is, how often do they mess up compared to how often we mess up? And that is a difficult question to find the true answer to, but one thing is for sure: it's certainly not hard to find errors in Wikipedia.

Re:A novelty but nothing more.

[FooAtWFU]

For what it's worth, I seem to recall, a year or two ago, this page having a note at the beginning about how it's not really all that serious of a page, more of a few quick jabs back at Britannica. I'm really very disappointed that it's being posted here with such trumped-up language in the summary.

Re:A novelty but nothing more.

[Frogbert]

This page catalogs some mistakes and omissions in Encyclopædia Britannica (EB) and shows how they have been corrected in Wikipedia. Some errors have already been corrected in Britannica's online version. For many reasons, this page should not be taken too seriously as a comparison; it's just a little bit of fun. It does not mean one is better than the other.

I'd say RTFA but for all I know when you looked at the page it could have said something completely different.

Re:A novelty but nothing more.

[timeOday]

I think that's the whole point - not that Wikipedia contains fewer errors than Britannica (the idea you're debunking), but that finding an error here or there in something doesn't prove anything, much less negate the value of the whole collection. It's simply to blunt accusations against Wikipedia, not bring down Britannica.

However, to me and most people Wikipedia really is far more valuable than Britannica - simply because we have no access to Britannica. And I also think the vast majority of wikipedia pages are quite good - at least the ones anybody is interested in. Certainly a much higher S/N ratio than the Internet at large. I even have a downloaded copy of wikipedia on my PocketPC, it's amazing how rarely I can not settle issues or questions that arise by consulting it.

For every good example...

[alvinrod]

For every good example, there apparently are several bad examples [wikipedia.org] of this so called "wisdom of crowds." I'm not saying it doesn't work, but to pretend that it's the be all and end all of systems is just disingenuous.

Wisdom of crowds is a pretty good concept, but in reality it turns out that the crowds aren't always so wise.

Re:

[howlingmadhowie]

au contraire, mon ami. i'd say that pages like this show the true strength of a format like wikipedia. sometimes knowledge isn't clear cut. sometimes x% believe one thing and y% something else. pages like this show how contested this is and allow wikipedia to rise above the black on white approach necessitated by traditional printed media.

The point

[Per Abrahamsen]

The point is that when you find an error in Wikipedia, you can fix it.

Actually, I don't think the article really has a point, except to have fun. But every joke has some message as well, even if you have to make it up yourself.

Wikiality bites

[nurhussein]

Wikiality bites [photobucket.com].

So says Stephen Colbert.

Britannica should also check its facts about elephant populations. I heard it has tripled.

Nice, but doesn't the Britannica have Copy Editors

[Kid Zero]

Nice, but doesn't the Britannica have Copy Editors? Sounds like someone's gloating that they found a hanging semi-colon or something.

Purposeful

[Oligonicella]

How many of those errors were purposefully introduced? Encyclopedias and map makers do that all the time to see if others are plagerizing.

Re:Purposeful

[gardyloo]

How many of those errors were purposefully introduced? Encyclopedias and map makers do that all the time to see if others are plagerizing.

    I love irony.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not ironic, that's coincidental.

Re:

[Danny Rathjens]

Assuming the use of Alanis-irony was continuing the joke, I love humorous coincidenses.

Re:Purposeful

[rm999]

If an encyclopedia purposefully says something incorrect, it has lost credibility for a poor reason. For example, if I want to know what the NP problem is, I don't consider it acceptable that an encyclopedia purposefully lied to me just to mess with its competitors.

Re:

[earthbound kid]

People do this in dictionaries, not encyclopedias. In dictionaries, they introduce plausible sounding nonsense words, to see if anyone copies the word into their own dictionary without checking first to see if it comes up in old texts. If the word does get into another dictionary, it means that they add words without fully vetting them and producing original definitions based on the vetting process. There's no danger of causing serious harm by doing this, since in the worst case, someone believes that a non

Re:

[jimicus]

Yes, but they're generally minor typos rather than full-blown inaccuracy.

A Bit Biased

[EvanED]

Okay, so where's the Wikipedia article listing all the times that someone found something wrong with Wikipedia, and corrected it with information from E.B.? I'm sure that's not an uncommon occurrence either.

Both Wikipedia and EB have their place. Wikipedia is great for getting a quick overview of something while you're sitting at your desk, or looking up random information like the plot of an individual TV episode. EB is better at having a bit more academic cred (at the very least, EB's mistakes are actual

The first rule about errors ..

[Kong the Medium]

is, you don't talk about errors. You talk about things in need of correction. Or maybe reorientation. But to conced an error? Never.

Re:

[CheshireCatCO]

Why do the Wikipedia supporters always bring up "speed" as if it is a meaningful comparison? It's entirely useless to tell us how fast errors are corrected if you don't *also* tell us how rapidly errors are produced. I've seen articles go back and forth repeatedly between two "facts" (both of which cannot be true). Is the fact that those same errors were repeatedly corrected (quickly) more meaningful than the fact that the errors kept getting inserted? Nope. It's a question of relative rates, not one a

Sources...

[ejito]

It's really not up to Wikipedia to correct another sources mistakes, only to note the conflict, unless verified by other sources. Though it's not on article space, it's a poor show. But getting to the main point, it's a bad idea to discredit Britannica when it's a source used throughout Wikipedia itself as a tertiary source.

Features

[madsheep]

It's good to see them correct some things. It's not like they haven't had errors before of course. However, wikipedia has some great features such as: always being online and free, covers 10000000 more topics, and doesn't come in a defunct hardback copy that takes 20 minutes to search by hand. Btw.. I still have my 1989 Encyclopedia Britannica and it looks great in the two sets of boxes in the basement.

and wikipedia

[largesnike]

...is even self-aware [wikipedia.org]

A Very Old Dispute

[Cerlyn]

It is kind of funny to see this come up now, given that this has been a very old dispute between Wikipedia and Britannica.

Slashdot has already had at least [slashdot.org] three [slashdot.org] articles [slashdot.org] in the past few years on this topic.

It's not the crowd, it's the 3-4 people...

[SuperBanana]

Wikipedia's problem has rarely been with the articles that get widespread review. The problem is with obscure knowledge; pages where only a handful of people maintain them. I wish I could find the op-ed piece I read a year or two ago about how a Florida group was using their Wikipedia entry to disseminate a view supporting their claim to being recognized as a tribe...so they could build a casino. I remember something about numerous statements being wrong, and the only people who would knew it was wrong (other people from that ethnic group who knew the oral history) were unlikely to surf wikipedia, much less correct it, or stick through an 'edit war'.

This doesn't sound like a big deal, until you realize that it's the fringe stuff that can be consulted the most by adults, particularly those who consider themselves well educated.

How many big fish in little ponds have axes to grind? More than most of us suspect, I'm guessing.

On the other hand...

[Xtifr]

That obscure stuff often isn't in Britannica at all. And a lot of the articles about obscure stuff in Wikipedia are fine. I think the only sensible conclusion to draw from this and every other comparison that has been made between the two is that Wikipedia and Britannica each have their strengths and weaknesses, and neither one is indisputably better than the other. They're different. Wikipedia is most useful when you treat it as a source for references, rather than blindly trusting the words on the page. Of course, that kind of goes against human nature, but what can you do? :) ~~~~

Slashdot citation

[Burning1]

This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.
This article has been tagged since July 2007.

Among the wrong information collected on this page are the name at birth of Bill Clinton and the definition of the NP problems in mathematics."

Seriously though, if you're interested in the details behind this comment, see the article about it in wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

Re:Slashdot citation

[AncientPC]

Obligatory xkcd. [xkcd.com]

Re:

[PieSquared]

... and yet again I get the urge to attend a political rally and hold up such a sign whenever someone makes an outrageous statement that probably isn't true. And now I remember that I've never been to a political rally and that I'd probably get tired of holding it up after a few hours. Okay, I'm good.

Re:

[hcdejong]

And another [xkcd.com]

Old news, please disregard

[Taxman415a]

This page has existed nearly since the beginning of Wikipedia. For a long long time it contained a disclaimer that it was just for the fun of it, and not to be taken too seriously. I think the disclaimer was taken off because it should be inherently obvious. Well apparently not to the submitter, who submitted what amounts to a flame bait story. Oh well, such is slashdot. Gotta get pageviews I suppose. But the submitter should have known better than to trump it up so much in the submission.

The most convenient solution wins

[L505]

One of the reasons people reference Wikipedia a lot, and one of the reasons it is so popular, is that it has a very high page rank on google and other search engines. People are lazy, and whatever information pops up first after typing something into google will be what is clicked on, and of course referenced. Wikipedia is clicked on more so than other sources simply because Wikipedia has a higher page rank and is more conveniently available.

Since wikipedia creates a community for users, it means people will link in to wikipedia more than any other encyclopedia (communities create links.. and links create higher page ranks).

If some other encyclopedia wants to be king, then they have to increase their page rank. The other encyclopedias will have to create communities and create reasons for people to link to them, in order for them to increase their popularity on google.

Since people usually choose the most convenient option, and since wikipedia is the most convenient option available on google for our mice to clicky dicky, the convenient option will win. It's not the fittest or the strongest that survive, but rather the most convenient solutions [z505.com] that survive.

Re:

[DerekLyons]

If some other encyclopedia wants to be king, then they have to increase their page rank. The other encyclopedias will have to create communities and create reasons for people to link to them, in order for them to increase their popularity on google.

The funny thing is - I see Wikipedia linked on the web extremely rarely. I don't think that really explains Wikipedia's high page rank.

OTOH, Wikipedia is almost perfectly designed to spam Google. It's full of keywords, and linked keywords, and every pa

Not a reliable source

[fermion]

Ever since I was in middle school I was told that the encyclopedia was merely a starting point and not a reliable source. The nice thing about the Britannica was that it laid out a formal representation of what was known at the time it was written. Although it did not exactly cross our mind that it was wrong, we knew that it was not to be used as a basis of fact. Starting in the 80's, with the less formal style, I think it has become even less useful. This is also the problem with wikipedia. It is useful for pop culture, and some pop technical stuff, but I still go to mathworld when I want to know math, and britannica when I want to know history.

Re:

[JohnFluxx]

Meh, Wolfram often makes the math too complicated too early, without a simple explanation. Wikipedia articles however usually have a simple explanation _and_ a picture (often animated) and an example, before they have the complicated general explanation.

Each to their own I guess :-)

The Encyclopedia Britannica has often been junk.

[Futurepower(R)]

The Slashdot story says, "... one of the most revered founts of human knowledge, the Encyclopedias Britannica."

That's not true in my experience. In my experience, Encyclopedia Britannica salesmen used high-pressure tactics to sell encyclopedias to poor, uneducated people by telling them that their children needed an encyclopedia to become educated. Educated people knew it was better to go to the library.

EB has always been full of inadequate articles that were inadequate because the EB wanted to seem comprehensive, so it had a lot of articles, but didn't want to use a lot of expensive paper, so there was never enough space.

A good example was the EB article on Barbara McClintock [wikipedia.org], 1983 Nobel Laureate in Medicine for her amazing, pioneering work in genetics. Quote from Wikipedia: "In 1930, McClintock was the first person to describe the cross-shaped interaction of homologous chromosomes during meiosis. During 1931, McClintock and a graduate student, Harriet Creighton, proved the link between chromosomal crossover during meiosis and the recombination of genetic traits."

Why did it take 53 years for Barbara McClintock to win her Nobel Prize? Because other scientists had difficulty believing that genetic elements could jump from chromosome to chromosome.

I haven't looked at an EB article in the paper edition in many years, but at one time the EB article about Barbara McClintock was short, maybe 600 words, and gave no idea of the fact that her scientific papers are so extensive they require 40 feet or more of shelf space.

The EB article about Barbara McClintock was subtly misleading in other ways, also.

From the Wikipedia article: "The importance of McClintock's contributions only came to light in the 1960s, when the work of French geneticists Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod described the genetic regulation of the lac operon, a concept she had demonstrated with Ac/Ds in 1951."

Apparently because the controlling purpose of the EB has been to reduce amount of paper required, and apparently because the EB has always been more about creating a way for salesmen to be intimidating than about excellence, a lot of the EB articles have been worse than useless, because they are misleading.

The EB has been a vicious business run for profit, in my opinion. The articles have always been lacking in excellence, because excellence would have cost more.

Earlier Slashdot article:

[Futurepower(R)]

Correction: 80 feet of shelf space, not 40. See my 2005 comment, and a Slashdot story comparing EB and Wikipedia: Encyclopedia Britannica is much worse. [slashdot.org]

Pre-Wiki EB Corrections

[DynaSoar]

EB was being corrected by others long before Wiki existed. A 9 year old corrected their statement that Mercury was the hottest planet. He correctly notified them that Venus was.

Wiki is now operating at the level of a 9 year old.

OTOH, perhaps Wiki will have an article on how often /. posts are wrong.

Yes, but...

[ocop]

I doubt Britannica's editor's let them accidentally kill people (rhetorically, at least). Wikipedia is probably more accurate for large, visible topics but equally (if not more so?) subject to painful bias on obscure subjects.

Conservapedia points out Wikipedia's bias

[mattlmattlmattl]

In reaction to the Wikipedia page pointing out EB's errors, Conservapedia has
put up a link in their "Breaking News" section to their page listing examples
of Wikipedia's strongly liberal bias (you did know that, didn't you? Wikipedia
is SIX TIMES MORE LIBERAL THAN AMERICA! (as reported by Wikipedia on their
page about Conservapedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservapedia [wikipedia.org] )).

As of 11PM PST, July 23rd, Conservapedia has a link to the bias page at the top of
their "Breaking News" section on their home page. But here's the direct link:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Bias_in_Wikipedia [conservapedia.com]

A few choice examples:
A devastating critique of Wikipedia by Fox News describes the impact of Wikipedia smears on popular golfer Fuzzy Zoeller.
Wikipedia is sympathetic to Fidel Castro in its entry about Cuba.
Wikipedia's entry for the Renaissance denies any credit to Christianity, its primary inspiration.
Plus 63 more! Enjoy.

Wikipedia is getting better

[Oldsmobile]

There are a few minor issues I have with the new winds blowing over at Wikipedia, but these are not pressing enough for me to get all worked up over them.

Over all I'm positively surprised at Wikipedia's ability to continually get better, work on not only the content but also the form factor.

A greater emphasis on references and citations has greatly contributed to some articles.

There are a few problems, such as the fact that important and well known scientists are still reluctant to contribute.

Overall though, Wikipedia is continually evolving and getting better, which is a whole lot more than can be said about Britannica or any other encyclopedia which have pretty much kept to their centuries old methods ideas.

Re:

[LardBrattish]

I'm sure some "important and well known scientists" or at least some specialists in their chosen field have at least tried to edit Wikipedia, however they probably gave up after their additions were reverted or mutilated by 13 year olds.
Like me - I'm not important or well known but I simply got fed up with edit wars and so I've given up Wikipedia and a few musical artists are probably the poorer for it ;). If you say anything controversial you're doomed - look at the stuff going on in the Gerry Adams entr

9/10ths science expertise is beneath the waves

[Morgaine]

> There are a few problems, such as the fact that important and well known scientists are still reluctant to contribute. [My emphasis]

You probably didn't mean it quite the way you wrote it, but it's worth correcting anyway for the benefit of other eyeballs.

The accuracy of scientific reporting does not have a strong correlation with the public visibility of the scientist doing it, in general. In some cases, the well known scientists are not the important ones at all, but merely those who are best at self

Oh no!

[SnarfQuest]

So, I'm busy writing my school report, copying^hresearching the information in Wikipedia and EB. Now yo say that they are both wrong? So, now where should I go to crib^hresearch my paper? I only have 10 minutes left to do my paper, it must be at least five pages long, and it needs to include pictures!

Why Britannica is better

[bitspotter]

Britannica is better than Wikipedia for one reason:

When some makes an error in Britannica, almost nobody finds out. ...

See the problem here? You have to be an author, and not a user, for this to be considered a "feature".

Britannica's business model is broken

[wikinerd]

I once paid for on-line access to the full Britannica encyclopedia. I kept it for a while, and then cancelled my subscription. It didn't worth it for me. Perhaps other people would find it useful, but it's simply not for me. When I cancelled my subscription, I specifically told them that free sites like Wikipedia have put them out of competition, and it makes no sense to charge for access to their articles. Not only that, but I would say that for some articles (eg about computing) I would very much prefer Wikipedia or other sources even if the full Britannica was freely accessible, and I'm sorry to have to say this. I am not sure how Britannica makes money nowadays, but I'm afraid their business model is broken in our era. They have to adapt or die.

That said, Wikipedia is not perfect (and I do contribute [wikipedia.org] and sometimes donate nowadays, although I was somewhat more critical in the past), but it's better than many of the alternatives. What could make Wikipedia work better would be a more volunteerist-cooperative ethic among its many members. Perhaps its lack thereof is a result of its publicity: It has become so big that people outside the Internet volunteerist culture have joined and use it for purposes other than creating a good education resource. There is also little coordination between the different language communities. However, the publicity of Wikipedia has made the world of wikis and Internet collaboration (in the open source way) more known to the masses, and this is a significant achievement. Wikipedia is now a good resource and I'd like it to remain as such or become better.

Pros and Cons

[nagora]

The one think WP gets right is the online access. Freed of the need to limit paper use or even disc space (and therefore cost), an online encyclopedia can afford to expand on any topic for as far as that topic needs. WP gets everything else wrong: there's no business model, no quality control except agreeing with the consensus, no overall editing system either for the entire work or individual articles, a deranged approach to point-of-view, and - ironically - no good mechanism for keeping the length of trivial articles under control.

TWW

And so the errors of the Encyclopedia Britannica

[Britz]

will be corrected in the next edition. So the Encyclopedia Britannica even gets some 'wisdom of crowds' in addtion to their own editors. The best of two worlds, and it would not have been possible without Wikipedia. Hurray for competition, hurray for Britannica, hurray for Wikipedia.

I bet that Wikipedia editors sectetly read the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Re:Errors

[iminplaya]

All of them.

Re:

[jginspace]

A sad reflection on the mods that this was modded 100% funny. I did honestly expect to find at least a smidgen of 'Insightful'.

Re:

[Bastard of Subhumani]

But it's not really true that all the errors in wikipedia haven't been noticed. There are errors in there that get corrected, then some 'expert' comes along and reverts them because he knows better.

And trust nme, I know about these things - I have a degree in Nonexistentiology from May-Dupp University.

Re:

[nahdude812]

Feel free to post a link to this article and your revisions, and we'll corroborate your sources and repair the article.

Re:Errors

[LordKazan]

A great many, the problem with the "wisdom of the mob" theory is exactly that- the mob. Information unfavorable to cultural biases will be left out of the encylopedia - take the article on circumcision and the article on penis - there are a few fanatics (including an administrator and a member of arbcom) who use the rules to bludgeon people to keep information (that is clearly verifiable [read: medical studies]) out of those articles (and related ones) because it casts circumcision in an unfavorable light (and appropriately so - it's no more medically appropriate 99.9999999% of the time than female genital mutilation). The bias is subtle, one of withholding information, and the people enforcing the bias are very good at making it look like they're in the right - all because of the idea that "the wisdom of the mob" is infallible. there are definantly other articles that this is true about as well.

Wisdom of the Mob fails when Fact contradicts Culture.

Re:

[Merusdraconis]

Hopefully Citizendium will be able to transcend these problems.

Re:

[David Gerard]

A lot of people bitch about Wikipedia and express hope that Citizendium will be better. Just about 0 actually edit anything on Citizendium. Why is that? Can you think of ways of fixing this?

Re:

[Yetihehe]

Because if it was written in citizendium, it must be true and there is no need for editing.

Re:

[blahplusplus]

"all because of the idea that "the wisdom of the mob" is infallible."

The same holds true for the wisdom of the 'elect', history has shown that their needs to be a deep suspicion of both, able and intelligent people are just as bone-headed and misguided as anyone else, but this bone-headedness always has to wait for the next generation to look back from the current one to see how hopelessly naive they were. Many experts of the past were just as ignorant and barbaric as any other man, its just that experts c

Re:

[howlingmadhowie]

i think this is a standard problem with knowledge. every reference work was written by people living at a certain time in a certain culture. wikipedia should be better than most when it comes to heated issues (politics, sex, emacs/vi) because of the base of editors being global. however, as you say, if the big chief editor of an article supports a certain ideology, it can be difficult to make headway.

this is however a standard caveat. one cannot read a version of the eb from colonial times without being

Re:Errors

[krou]

Yep. A similar problem occurred with me when I tried to edit the Christopher Columbus page. Try including quotes from his journal that show he intended to forcibly enslave the native Arawaks, or attempt to write about what Columbus did when he first met them, and it just gets deleted. Instead, the article tries to show him as some well-meaning Christian who found gold in rivers, or politely asked where he could find it. When I queried this many times on the talk page, the response I got was along the lines of, "Yes, we know he enslaved them, and we know he went after gold, but let's not get too caught up on these aspects, because Columbus wasn't unique in doing this." So you have an article where the word slave is mentioned once, and there is not one statement regarding the actions that Columbus and his men undertook to use the Arawaks as slaves to find gold.

I used to love Wikipedia, but that incident made me realise it's nothing more than a starting point to get a very basic idea of a subject and then move on.

Re:Errors

[bkr1_2k]

"I used to love Wikipedia, but that incident made me realise it's nothing more than a starting point to get a very basic idea of a subject and then move on"

Seriously, it took you a problem with editors to figure that out? I would have expected anyone on Slashdot to recognize that immediately.

Am I too old or something? Are all "those damn kids" being taught that Wikipedia is now an acceptable source to quote without verification?

Wisdom of experts is no better

[Per Abrahamsen]

The Britannica article has nothing negative to say about circumcision either:

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9082690/circu mcision [britannica.com]

Re:

[suv4x4]

The bias is subtle, one of withholding information, and the people enforcing the bias are very good at making it look like they're in the right

Thanks for demonstrating this in your own opinion piece.

Re:

[Frantactical Fruke]

About five years after my circumcision, my father - having one of his occasional lapses in disinterest in us kids - attempted to teach me how to wash the foreskin to avoid the nasty infections he had there. After that, I never regretted not having one. Thanks, Dad! I have difficulties understanding people who take it so seriously that they campaign against it. But do feel free to talk about it.

Just one thing though. Do not ever again mention male circumcision in the same paragraph as female genital mutilati

Re:Errors

[LordKazan]

I see you know absolutely nothing about anatomy. The foreskin is the same structure as the clitoral hood. Removal of the clitoral hood, a form of female genital mutilation, is the direct female equivalent of removal of the foreskin. The foreskin contains 66% of the erogenous nerves of the penis, 50% of the mobile tissue (without that it is MUCH more likely for the female to get sore during intercourse). Only your ignorance makes it seem to be an obscene error in magnitude (that is to not say there aren't forms of FGM that are worse than the one mentioned, but that doesn't make circumcision not evil).

You know why people compaign against it? Because it was done on us when we were infants, without our consent or any ability to reverse the damage done. It is the ONLY cosmetic medical proceedure allowed to be performed on a child with a parents preference.

Even a small amount of HONEST research will reveal that circumcision is an evil practice.

It was started in the english speaking world as a cure to masturbation - because at the time (late 1800s) masturbation was considered the root of all evil. Dr Kellogg and a few others got everyone to start cutting off foreskins - Dr Kellogg also encouraged applying carbonic acid to the clitoris for the same reasons. Infact FGM was practiced in the united states within living history - see the book "The Rape of Innocence" by Patricia Robinett - a woman born in kansas in the 50s who had most of her labia and her clitoris removed.

So before you godwin the thread again, know what the fuck you're talking about.

Re:

[dantheman82]

As far as research into circumcision, there has been an article from the BBC that showed that circumcision helped to cut HIV risk.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/background_brie f ings/aids/434880.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Well, the only reason I'm aware of is in the Old Testament that circumcision was prescribed for the Israelites. Many Christians have continued this practice because it was said to be more sanitary and was originally prescribed by God and thus intrinsically not a harmful practice.

Re:

[Stormwatch]

Honestly, I think unless medically necessary, circumcising a child of any gender should be illegal.

Perhaps you are not aware, but this would outlaw Judaism among other religions. Why be such an extremist?

Because the right keep your body safe from harm trumps the right to impose your stupid supernatural beliefs to anyone else, including your own children.

I take it you haven't seen the common botch jobs on circumcision?

Have you? Isn't it enough to publicize your objection to routine (non-religious and no

Re:Willy

[Anonymous Coward]

his name is Robert Paulson

It's a repeat of "bloggers are journalists"

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Sure Wikipedia might have some materials that is more correct than EB, and likely the reverse holds true too. Good research takes more than just having arbitrary contributions from a wide audience.

Hang on

[ishmaelflood]

who the fuck would look up a novel, the day after its release, in an encyclopaedia? What would they expect to find that doesn't count as a spoiler? How many pages it's got? Who the author was?