Derek wrote:
> On Sat, 20 May 2006 08:32:02 GMT, Barky Bark wrote:
>
> > wikipedia is a great tool for a casual overview of a topic or a place to
> > begin one's research, but beyond that it gets mighty sketchy.
>
> Not necessarily (regarding "mighty sketchy"). A study by the journal
> "Nature" found that, on average, Wikipedia was as reliable as the
> Encyclopedia Britannica. Of course, Britannica disputes the findings.

No, at best, it found 4 wikipedia errors for every 3 brittanica errors.
And their protocol was whacked, targeting a section of the wikipedia
(science articles) that was likely to have more-adept people editing it
in the first place.

Wikipedia's structure and management style naturally create a system in
which errors will be created, and many will not be fixed for a very
long time. I.e., the signal-to-noise ratio does not approach infinity,
it approaches an asymptotic value in the short term.

I'm not sure what the long-term trend would be, because one of its
features is that it ****es people like me off so much that it's no
longer worth my time to (a) fight with the trolls, (b) fight with the
admins who think I'm a troll, or (c) fight with Jimbo Wales about how
his admin corps have gotten out of hand.

The "best" wikipedia articles are characterized by semi-professional
layout, lugubrious citation, and no fewer errors than the unformatted,
uncited articles that don't get featured.

Believing the wikipedia is a good source of information is a new form
of the fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam. Citing it as a source,
doubly so

--Blair