Dear Mom,
You know how it says something about ‘mild peril’ on the age restrictions signs of some children’s movies?
Well, on Saturday, I experienced what can only be described as ‘mild outrage’ when I visited the wikipedia entry for Protocol natural sciences.
This was the first Wikipedia entry that I started from scratch and it was completely different in content and philosophy to what I had originally written! Admittedly, we wiki-enthusiasts are warned: “If you don’t want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it.”
But still!
After my jaw had returned to its normal position, I was able to see that the new author had made many useful points, and I added some of my thoughts to the discussion page of this topic.
Wikipedia is still my absolute-favourite website (possibly of all time), but the infatuation phase of the relationship has now ended.
Incidentally, while looking for the image of the ‘Finding Nemo’ classification, I found this (amusing?) blog: Very mild peril.
Had better get back to work – I promise to write about ‘that network protocol’ in my next letter…
Yours etc.
Bronwen
Dear Bronwen,
Good to hear that you’ve been initiated into the true realm of Wikipedia, having lost your innocence along the way! Incidentally, what does mild outrage feel like?
As you may know, I’m one of those highly rare and treasured species- a gullible person. I believe most things I read on Wikipedia, and it never occurs to me to take articles with a pinch of salt, or even a slightly raised eyebrow.
However, there was a story I heard a while back about some articles that were posted on April Fools Day and ‘removed’ pretty fast. One was a spoof on the spaghetti tree (they could at least have been original), and another was on hieroglyphs. Apparently, it went something like this: The Egyptians had a stupid language. Even they couldn’t understand it. It died out. The end.
I would love to know if such articles get stored somewhere- it would be fun to read them (and I WOULD know to take those with a pinch of salt!!).
Somewhat off topic: I always think that they should put a ‘sad ending’ warning on the consumer advice for films…
Looking forward to hearing about ‘that network protocol’ (it’s infamous already!),
Mom (with a slight headache)
Nature’s famous Wikipedia vs Britannica news investigation is here (subscription required):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
And some of the fallout is here (subscription required):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7084/full/440582b.html
And here is a story about Wikipedia’s problems with the kind of thing you describe above:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7111/full/443493a.html
(See, the Nature archive is a very useful site;-) )
(Sorry, I have just realised that N Network does not automatically convert your URLs to live links, we users have to do that manually, sigh. Will try to remember next time.)
Thank you for highlighting these Wikipedia vs Britannica articles. The initial excitement on finding that Wikipedia did not have like five-times as many errors as Britannica (what I might have expected given that Britannica would have had very few mistakes) must have been quite intoxicating!
Britannica’s response was perhaps understandable?
It was a really good example of a topic where reading the full story gave a much better picture than just glossing over the headlines?
the quality of Wikipedia is improving, and new initiatives are coming such as KNOL of google. Within the netherlands also LearnWiki is initiated “http://www.leerwiki.nl”