Wikipedia has started to hit the big time. Accordingly, several critical articles have come out, including “The Faith-Based Encyclopedia” by a former editor-in-chief of Britannica and a very widely-syndicated AP article that was given such titles as “When Information Access Is So Easy, Truth Can Be Elusive”. These articles are written by people who appear not to appreciate the merits of Wikipedia fully. I do, however; I co-founded Wikipedia. (I have since left the project.) Wikipedia does have two big problems, and attention to them is long overdue. These problems could be eliminated by eliminating a single root problem. If the project’s managers are not willing to solve it, I fear a fork (a new edition under new management, for the non-techies reading this) will probably be necessary.
…excerpt from: www.kuro5hin.org…
Sysloggin' one day at a time.
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- Tammy Lynn Stewart (formerly Dean) 30-Apr-2024
- SoBe Bottle Cap Qoute 21-Feb-2006
Larry Sanger does his essay a disservice when he uses charged words like ‘elitism’ and ‘anti-elitism’. Frankly, one of the great downfalls of the entire Geek Kingdom is it’s propensity towards arrogance. A zillion little kids who grew up feeling ostracized because they had more brain than brawn grew up into adults who still have that chip on their shoulder and are still trying to shout to the world that they are smarter than everyone else in the class combined.
Yeah. Got it. Heard it a few times. Shouted it a few times, too. Let it go for God’s sake.
The key is ‘respect’. Not ‘respect for expertise’, but respect period. If there are people working in these groups who are not being respectful…I don’t care if they are ‘the unwashed masses’ or the ‘experts’, boot their asses on out of there.
It’s a simple matter and its got nothing to do with elitism. Once a simple environment of respect exists, nobody will need to worry about ‘respect for expertise’…it will already exist.