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It's true that wikipedia is imperfect. One of the ways in which wikipedia is imperfect is inconsistent treatment of subjects whose notability is borderline. Luc
by hugh3 16y ago
It's true that wikipedia is imperfect. One of the ways in which wikipedia is imperfect is inconsistent treatment of subjects whose notability is borderline. Luckily this doesn't impact too badly on the usability of the encyclopaedia for most people since the borderline-notable articles are the ones that are least read.
The article suggests that this should be fixed by making wikipedia easier to edit, allowing people who can't quite grok the complexities of the existing interface or difficult guidelines like "Verifiability" to make their own entries. I am extremely unconvinced that this would raise the overall quality of wikipedia.
Overall I think there are two schools of thought about wikipedia. I join the school of thought which thinks it's like a dog walking on its hind legs: instead of complaining that it's doesn't work perfectly we should be amazed that it's done at all. This guy seems to be in the school of thought that thinks the dog might walk a lot further if we gave it shoes.
- spxdcz 16y agoThat's quite the metaphor you've got going on there... Not at all: what I'm saying is that it would be better if it had a more diverse, representative audience contributing to it. That just makes sense. Why wouldn't you want older, more experienced people contributing to an encyclopedia? Or women!?? I agree that given the current complexities of the system, a wider audience would currently not be able to easily improve the quality - there would be plenty of mistakes. But this is the fundamental problem, and some would say responsibility, that Wikipedia now faces.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoI'm intrigued by criticisms of Wikipedia, because most of them are terrible. Often poorly constructed, illogical or just plain demented. This one however is a genuine problem. I first read about it on Wikipedia a few years back: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias The origins of Wikipedia's bias The average Wikipedian on the English Wikipedia is (1) a man, (2) technically inclined, (3) formally educated, (4) an English speaker (native or non-native), (5) white, (6) aged 15–49, (7) from a majority-Christian country, (8) from a developed nation, (9) from the Northern Hemisphere, and (10) likely employed as a white-collar worker or enrolled as a student rather than employed as a labourer.[1] They've got various projects to counter this imbalance and it all seems worthwile. I'm glad to see coverage of things like the Second Congo War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War) which were mere stubs when I first looked at them have been thouroughly fleshed out. I will say though, that no matter how many non-white, blue-collar, elderly woman from developing nations sign up for Wikipedia I doubt many will be interested in baby-sitting a list of Content Management Systems.