I interviewed Jimmy Wales on my radio program several months ago, just after I
became a wikipedia editor. It is really a sound knowledge compilation and
dissemination model. It is unfortunate that some organizations eschew the
utility of a wiki. They only slow progress for their own cause.
Good to see you work for wikimedia, Chad.
Smitty
>
> Indeed. To expand upon that a touch:
>
> Malicious and otherwise undesirable activity is controlled by peer
> review and, in Wikipedia's case at least, quite well. Often, any
> mistaken, malicious, or POV-biased content is edited or reverted within
> mere seconds of initial inclusion. That's where the social mechanisms
> come into play. The more people there are that use Wikipedia, the more
> authoritative and reliable the contents become, much as how with open
> source software development you get better development as more people
> become involved.
>
> You (Steve) mention that "there's no technical way [. . .] to keep
> erroneous info out." This is true. The same is true, in a different
> way, with more traditional encyclopedias, though, and they resist
> "fixing" a lot more than Wikipedia. In the case of a traditional
> encyclopedia, you have very limited manpower, and ultimately all final
> editing decisions are made by individuals with biases, and as such stuff
> always ends up slipping through the cracks. With Wikipedia, you have
> far better controls on POV bias because Wikipedia's NPOV (neutral point
> of view) policy encourages everyone involved to edit biased language out
> of an entry, and to include any bias they feel like including in the
> form of a neutral-language reference to the existence of such a bias.
> Rather than getting a dry recounting of facts, sometimes with a biased
> spin on it, you get a comprehensive recitation of facts with all biases
> in common circulation listed and explained.
>
> That's the theory, anyway, and in practice it pretty much adheres to the
> theory. As a result, Wikinews (managed by the Wikimedia Foundation,
> which also handles Wikipedia) is quickly becoming my favorite news
> source: it is quite good at avoiding presenting the world with biased
> reporting. The major news agencies with which we're all familiar (CNN,
> Fox, BBC, AP, MSNBC, et cetera) all seem to have given up on any attempt
> at unbiased reporting a long time ago. It also helps to see that
> Wikinews is beginning to come up with news faster than the major news
> agencies: it had more in-depth reporting of the London bombings faster
> than the various major news agencies did. People who were close enough
> to know something about what was going on became reporters for Wikinews
> in no time flat.
>
> Hopefully that helps to explain how the social mechanisms affect things
> like accuracy and neutrality. In all, it seems to be working
> beautifully.
>
> Note: I may be biased. I work for the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> --
> Chad Perrin
> [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
>
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