[Web4lib] The Wikipedia Gotcha

[Rob Styles]

You're right of course that not all edits are improvements and that is
the thrust of much of the discussion on this thread. That's part of the
downside of collaboration with groups of any size. I agree that there
also a number of pages that are so contentious that they have to be
special cases.

 

You are incorrect about the assertion that there is no versioning,
however. All pages carry full history in a little tab at the top:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Library_2.0&action=history

 

rob

 

Rob Styles
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From: Richard Wiggins [mailto:richard.wiggins at gmail.com] 
Sent: 21 February 2007 15:58
To: Rob Styles
Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] The Wikipedia Gotcha

 

That cuts both ways.  It would be foolish to assume that each article
grows ever more perfect over time.  Remember Wikipedia having to ban
house.gov because Congressional staffers were gleefully editing their
bosses' bios to sanitize away their foibles?  Any given edit could be an
improvement, or it could turn the Wikipedia article into total
falsehood.  

 

And there is no version control.

 

Thus you could cite the earlier, correct version of the article, and
when people follow the citation link, they get the current, 100% wrong
version.

 

/rich

 

On 2/21/07, Rob Styles <Rob.Styles at talis.com> wrote: 

Let's also consider though how the two systems - journals and Wikipedia
- handle failures in the integrity of the work. 

 
If I reference (in print) an article on Wikipedia that has incorrect
material in it my reference may remain static but the material need not.
The article can be updated to reflect new information, corrections, 
citations of newer sources. If my article achieves notoriety for,
perhaps, misquoting or misrepresenting the meaning of the Wikipedia
article the article can supplemented to correct and specifically address
visitors arriving from my reference. Those interested in what was 
contained on Wikipedia at the time of my reference can refer to the
history and make their own conclusions.

In short, web-based material is able to recover from mistakes in a way
that printed material is not.
 
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