Blair P. Houghton wrote:
> Stefan Goetzinger wrote:

>>(ignoring vandalism and deliberate misinformation for the moment)
>
> 1. You can't ignore them.

I guess I wanted to say that that's mainly a problem with high-profile and
controversial articles (IMO). And even then vandalism is easily spotted and
reverted.

Yesterday I read a couple of Wikipedia articles on the history of breakfast
cereals. I feel pretty safe that very few people feel strongly enough about
this topic that they would inject misinformation. Or that reading something
on this topic that's untrue would harm me.

Honest mistakes are another problem, but I stand by it: your newspaper isn't
that accurate either. People read papers to get an overview, and that's how
I personally read Wikipedia.

> 2. The system doesn't reduce them, it encourages them.

It's a side-effect. It's the price you have to pay for something that anyone
can edit which is very, very useful for certain topics, less so for others.

> And it
> permanently ensconces their results, because it chases off the people
> who could and would fix them.

Agreed. I know of a couple of errors (real errors, I could cite valid
references and laws) that I tried to fix but met fierce resistance by the
main authors. I don't really bother anymore. That's a real problem.

One feature of Wikipedia that I like is multiple languages. That way you can
read articles on the same topic that are often written by seperate groups
of people. I read Wikipedia articles in German, English, French and
Japanese. Sometimes they are bad translations of each other but more often
than not there's different information in each of them.

Wikipedia certainly has its uses. And its fair share of problems.

Stefan