[Web4lib] Web4lib: Wikipedia

[Lars Aronsson]

Tim Spalding wrote:

> If we're comparing old media to new, Wikipedia should be compared to a whole
> library of encyclopedic reference works.

Exactly that comparison is being made millions of
times each day -- by Google's ranking algorithm.
Wikipedia often comes out on top. I don't know
how that ranking works, it's probably a lot more
complicated than the original "Page rank", but
I know lots of people use it happily.

Google is digitizing all printed books, and
this includes all encyclopedic reference works.
Google could easily adjust their ranking algorithm
to prefer printed encyclopedias from any decade.
I think they would do this, if they thought it
would make users more happy.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se