[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[Micah R Ledbetter]

On Apr 15, 2007, at 07:23, Mike Meredith wrote:

> It has become trendy to throw stones at Wikipedia for inaccuracy. I've
> noticed that the biggest stones seem to be thrown by people who make a
> living from writing (journalism) thus who might have a vested interest
> in preserving the reputation and business of older equivalents (by
> which I mean encylopaedias that pay writers).

There was a Nature article that compared 11 or 12 Wikipedia articles  
with some Encyclopedia Brittanica articles (or something like that, I  
don't remember the details very well, and I can't find it to look at  
for free in my not-very-comprehensive search). They found that the  
two were on par, and Wikipedia even scored very slightly better than  
Brittanica.

(Apparently, there was a little industry drama, as Brittanica really  
didn't like Nature's allegations and asked them to retract[0]. Nature  
refuses[1].)

I kind of feel like if you apply some (un)common sense and don't cite  
articles which are in dispute, or have other warnings at the top of  
the page, you are probably doing pretty well to use Wikipedia  
anywhere you would normally use an encyclopedia. That goes double if  
the article is long enough and/or established enough to have had  
people deliberating about it. IIRC, the Nature article mentioned this  
as well.

> All the Internet has really done (in the research area) is to make the
> easier parts of research easier ... we can now do some of the initial
> stages from a laptop in front of the TV or from a convenient pub.

I wish that publishers would get collective head out of collective  
ass and let us do the harder parts of the research easier. Sometimes  
it's much *less* of a PITA to use paper books than search through  
(for example) electronic libraries full of copyrighted works. "Oops,  
you don't have FULL RIGHTS to that 200 word article, but if you want  
to buy it for THIRTY DOLLARS, click here." Why did you let it come up  
in a search if I didn't have rights to read it?

  - Micah

[0]http://xrl.us/vrvi (informationweek.com article)
[1]http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_response.pdf