[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia trumps Britannica
Folks, According to John Graham-Cumming, Wikipedia is a better resource for researchers than Britannica. http://newstilt.com/notthatkindofdoctor/news/wikipedia-trumps-britannia http://newstilt.com/notthatkindofdoctor/news/wikipedia-trumps-britanniaWhile writing The Geek Atlas I used both Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia for research. It quickly became obvious that Wikipedia trumps Britannica. ... While researching the history of places appearing in my book, The Geek Atlashttp://geekatlas.com/, I used a lot of different resources. ... But the most useful resource was Wikipedia http://wikipedia.org/. At the start of writing the book I bought myself a subscription toEncyclopedia Britannica http://www.britannica.com/ because I was worried that Wikipedia might be inaccurate. What I discovered was that Wikipedia trumps Britanncia all the time because its articles are in more depth and provide better references. And the site design means that Wikipedia is easily navigable and focuses on the content, whereas Britannica’s site assaults the eyes with distractions. Initially, I’d find myself double-checking facts on Wikipedia by looking in Britannica. I’d read that Boltzmannhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann died on September 5, 1906 on Wikipedia and jump to Britannica to check the datehttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/72401/Ludwig-Eduard-Boltzmann/72401main/Article#toc=toc9080519 . After weeks of doing this I realized that Britannica wasn’t helping. Any errors I found on Wikipedia were because I was reading original source material (see for example this correctionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experimentdiff=248412125oldid=248347239 ). And more often than not I was finding original source material via Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia has a policyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability of linking to reliable sources it turned out to be a wonderful starting point for research. Britannica, on the other hand, appears to view its role as being the reliable source. Because it is edited and managed, part of its brand is reliability. This leads to a sort of self-sufficiency which contrasts with Wikipedia’s need to prove its reliability constantly. The beauty of being forced to prove reliability is the wealth of third-party links provided by Wikipedia. For example, when reading about the Miller-Urey Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment you’ll find a link to Miller’s 1953 paperhttp://www.issol.org/miller/miller1953.pdf describing the experiment. If you search for “Miller Urey Experiment” on Britannica the best you’ll find is a short (248 words) article about Stanley Miller that mentions the experiment. There are no links to external web sites concerning the experiment, and no references to material such as academic papers. So Wikipedia’s supposed ‘unreliability’ actually plays to enhance its reliability and usefulness because it’s forced to continuously declare where a particular fact was found. At the same time Britannica is a walled garden of truth. After a few weeks I canceled my Britannica subscription and worked solely with Wikipedia as a starting point for research. I never relied on Wikipedia as the sole source of information, but it was always a marvelous spring board to get me started. The richness of Wikipedia trumped the hallowed reliability of Britannica. -- Keith Old 62050121 (w) 62825360 (h) 0429478376 (m) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia trumps Britannica
Keith Old wrote: Folks, According to John Graham-Cumming, Wikipedia is a better resource for researchers than Britannica. http://newstilt.com/notthatkindofdoctor/news/wikipedia-trumps-britannia snip Initially, I’d find myself double-checking facts on Wikipedia by looking in Britannica. I’d read that Boltzmannhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann died on September 5, 1906 on Wikipedia and jump to Britannica to check the datehttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/72401/Ludwig-Eduard-Boltzmann/72401main/Article#toc=toc9080519 . After weeks of doing this I realized that Britannica wasn’t helping. Any errors I found on Wikipedia were because I was reading original source material (see for example this correctionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experimentdiff=248412125oldid=248347239 ). Yes, this is an interesting testimonial. For me the turning point was the realisation (this was in relation to history) that I was finding errors in academic writing, in compiling and using Wikipedia, about as often as finding errors in Wikipedia itself. Though that depends a bit where you look on the site. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia trumps Britannica
What I discovered was that Wikipedia trumps Britanncia all the time because its articles are in more depth and provide better references. And the site design means that Wikipedia is easily navigable and focuses on the content, whereas Britannica’s site assaults the eyes with distractions. Not to mention that Wikipedia is fully free. And more often than not I was finding original source material via Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia has a policyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability of linking to reliable sources it turned out to be a wonderful starting point for research. After a few weeks I canceled my Britannica subscription and worked solely with Wikipedia as a starting point for research. I never relied on Wikipedia as the sole source of information, but it was always a marvelous spring board to get me started. Well, that's exactly where Wikipedia today fits into the research dimension. It's a starting point; a springboard to further research material. So Wikipedia’s supposed ‘unreliability’ actually plays to enhance its reliability and usefulness because it’s forced to continuously declare where a particular fact was found. At the same time Britannica is a walled garden of truth. That walled garden seems in many cases to actually be less reliable than Wikipedia. A proper study into the reliability of Britanica relative to Wikipedia hasn't been done in a while, though: http://bit.ly/a2WSI2. Anthony ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia trumps Britannica
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 10:34 AM, Keith Old keith...@gmail.com wrote: Folks, According to John Graham-Cumming, Wikipedia is a better resource for researchers than Britannica. http://newstilt.com/notthatkindofdoctor/news/wikipedia-trumps-britannia http://newstilt.com/notthatkindofdoctor/news/wikipedia-trumps-britannia Thanks for the link to this story. One bit stood out: Because Wikipedia has a policy of linking to reliable sources it turned out to be a wonderful starting point for research. That sums up the usefulness of Wikipedia where sources are provided. Of course, you still need to check those sources, and unsourced material is a less helpful starting point than sourced material, but all this is key to how to use Wikipedia. The ending quote sums it up nicely as well: I never relied on Wikipedia as the sole source of information, but it was always a marvellous spring board to get me started. Perfect summary. Source-aggregator, sometimes with well-written text and nice images as well. Though you have to be wary in some areas of editorialising and source-selection issues. Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged protection and patrolled revisions
These are great questions, and we're actually having a big meeting about the project this afternoon, so I'll be sure to raise them to make sure we all have the same notion. That said, a few of quick responses from my perspective: On 05/03/2010 08:15 AM, Carcharoth wrote: Since it does seem very close to going live, could I ask if plans have been made for how to handle announcing the arrival of this feature and any post-implementation problems? Hopefully there won't be any or many, but are there plans ranging from rollback completely if things go awfully wrong to make adjustments as needed and be responsive to concerns raised? There's the technical part of this and the community part of this. My understanding is that the technical side of the rollout is well understood, and that our substantial time in the labs environment means we are not expecting major problems. I also am given to believe that if there are major problems, rolling back will not be a big deal. That will get us to having the feature enabled, but not in use. That next leg is mainly up to the community. Once the software is enabled, any admin will be able to turn on flagged protection for any page, just as they are now able to turn on full protection. I expect there will be a period of experimentation and vigorous discussion to discover exactly when that is a good idea. Once it's in use on particular pages, there's the question of who does the reviewing, how much is needed, and how we make sure it gets done in a timely fashion. Most of that is up to the community as well, and part of the purpose of this experiment is to figure that out as well. From a technical perspective, there are a couple different approaches to deciding who has reviewer powers; in the next week or so I want to start a community discussion on the right model, but we need a little more internal discussion to be able to clearly present those options. As far as the making adjustments as needed, the plan is that we will absolutely learn things after release, and some of those things will probably require code changes. There is also a list of nice-to-haves that we can do if nothing else more pressing comes up. So work will continue as before, with frequent releases either to production or to the labs environment as appropriate. Once that work tapers off, I'm sure there will be a discussion of where best to allocate resources, but that hasn't even been mentioned yet; the Foundation is definitely committed to supporting this experiment. And how much input exactly will ordinary editors have post-implementation? Is the interface flexible and can be changed by editors or admins, and which bits can only be tweaked by developers (either using common sense or following a community poll or Bugzilla request or request somewhere else)? I ask this partly as someone who (with others) may have to deal with any massive disputes or edit wars that break out over this if some aspects of flagged revisions or its interface are editable and changeable on-wiki (presumably in the Mediawiki namespace, editable by admins only). This is an area where I'm personally a bit ignorant, so I'll be sure to ask. I know that some parts of the interface definitely require a developer to change code and release it. I know that some, possibly all purely textual changes can in theory be done hot, but I don't know who has the mojo to do that on the English Wikipedia. If somebody here knows that, please speak up. Presumably, an update will be made to the on-wiki pages about this before it goes live? And there will some site notice giving some warning? having things change mid-edit could be a bit disconcerting! My belief, which I will double-check, is that releasing the software will have little or no impact on the editing experience; it's only when an admin activates it on a particular page via the protection interface that the editing experience will change. William ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
