On Saturday 20 August 2005 12:22, Mikkel Moldrup-Lakjer wrote:
> "Borek" <borek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> skrev i en meddelelse
> news:op.svo5s91i584cds@xxxxxxxx
>> On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 03:28:59 +0200, Roy Schestowitz
>> <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>>> Wikipedia is *so* much better, with their anonymous authorship of
>>>> articles, lack of credibility, no cites, obscure or non-existant
>>>> sources, and ignorant and biased editors.
>>>
>>> I take your point. I agree that such a system would never work, yet it
>>> is more difficult to 'fool' than most. Maybe they can introduce a
>>> mod-point-like system whereby authors earn a measure of credibility.
>>
>> At the same time it have never failed me yet, so it
>> already earned credibility.
>
> It probably depends on the topics that interest you, and probably also the
> language version of Wikipedia you use. I would suspect that Wikipedia is
> more useful for technical topics than for the humanities.
Technical topics are usually less two(or multi)-sided than the humanities.
This, for example, is why I have never been reluctant to post in technical
newsgroups under my full name.
> Simply because
> personal bias and ignorance is more likely to affect articles on topics
> wihin the human sciences rather than within the natural sciences. As
> languages goes, I have seen that many articles in languages other than
> English are only translations of the original, which carry on the
> misrepresentations of the original and adds some more because of a poor
> translation.
Agreed, but even poor translations, as long as they remain valid
translations, cannot reverse things upside-down.
> It's a bit like reading a poor newspaper (or watching a news programme on
> TV): When it is a topic that you don't know about, the article may seem
> extremely useful to you. However, when it is a topic you _are_
> knowledgable about, you may be uncomfortable with the inaccurate
> reprensentation of the topic.
The latter case is when people intervene and change Wikipedia. That's the
beauty of it all. It will usually be people who know the field that feel a
compulsion to fix the mistakes and provide the best references to support
their argument/s.
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz "Oops. My brain just hit a bad sector"
http://Schestowitz.com
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