[Web4lib] The Wikipedia Gotcha

[Richard Wiggins]

And this is precisely what I worry about: the authenticity of Wikipedia's
long tail.

I've already cited the particulars of my personal episode with totally false
information on Wikipedia concerning the history of computing at Michigan
State, so I won't relay the episode again here.  I will repeat that
Wikipedia zealots are more interested in Wikipedia etiquette than in the
truth.

What that episode caused me to realize is this:

-- Since anyone can publish an article on any topic, the Wikipedia corpus
will grow ad infinitum.  By contrast, a print encyclopedia has a budget, and
articles on very obscure topics won't get published.  The Britannica will
never offer a long tail of very obscure articles.

-- On Wikipedia the article on "Why is the sky blue?" will be constantly
checked and corrected if a numbskull edits it to say "Because Crayola says
so."   So the short head will be relatively reliable.

-- An article on an obscure topic won't be checked, and will live to be
cited as authority someday when finally someone stumbles on it.

-- Therefore, where Wikipedia fails is in the long tail.  And it will have
an ever-growing, ever-longer tail of falsehood.

/rich


On 2/18/07, Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt <ndgmtlcd at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> >
> > "I love it how I can use Wikipedia to win just about any argument..
> > and it only takes a few seconds to make the edit beforehand."
> >
>
> That's really cute, but is it true?
>
> Many of the basic articles are patrolled so tightly at such a high
> frequency that such a self centered edit would be reverted in a matter
> of seconds.  Gotta be fast, real fast in saying and then acting out on
> "heylookwikipediasaysImrightandyourewrong".
>
>