[WEB4LIB] Co-founder of Wikipedia talks about problems

[Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt]

Hello!

I have been participating in Wikipedia for about a year and a half now
sprucing up articles like "Library" and Dublin Core" (to mention but
two) with a few other participants, and I heartily agree with Sanger's
observations.  Yet I find his conclusions impossible.  No academic body
would be interested in such a monumental task. It would not profit
them.  Basically, Wikipedia is far from being an encyclopedia in any
sense of the term.  It is a beter organized outgrowth of communal blogs
and nothing more.  The best solution would be to drop "pedia" from the
name and put in something else.

Alain Vaillancourt

 --- Karen Coyle <kcoyle at kcoyle.net> a écrit : 
> Following up on the various discussions here about Wikipedia, there
> is
> an article by one of its co-founders, Larry Sanger:
> 
> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25
> 
> He feels that Wikipedia is a reliable source of information, or can
> be.
> (And cites librarians as being among WP's main detractors.) The
> problem,
> though, is that it has developed in a culture of anti-elitism that
> results in a lack for respect for expertise.* This means that experts
> who want to write articles have to spend an inordinate amount of time
> defending themselves when they are questioned by less knowledgeable
> (but
> apparently still quite outspoken) members of the Wikipedia community.
> He
> feels that this is driving off exactly those writers and it sounds
> like
> he's anticipating some kind of melt-down of the Wikipedia process.
> 
> * Without waxing too philosophical on this issue, this does have
> elements of the old "democracy=equality=all the same" debate that
> comes
> up in so many venues, and leads to long, drunken arguments over
> whether
> janitors should be paid the same as heart surgeons. I don't have an
> answer, but buy me a drink and I'll join in the debate. ;-)
> 
> kc
> -- 
> -------------------------------------
> Karen Coyle
> Digital Library Specialist
> http://www.kcoyle.net
> Ph: 510-540-7596 Fax: 510-848-3913
> --------------------------------------
> 
> 
>  

=====
Alain D.M.G. Vaillancourt

ndgmtlcd at yahoo.com

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