

Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert - meadhikari
http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/wikipedia-and-the-death-of-the-expert

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TomOfTTB
There are two issues here. On the initial point about Wikipedia's accuracy I'd
offer this very article as proof of the problem Wikipedia has. In the opening
sentence of the second paragraph the author says...

"It's been over five years since the landmark study in Nature that showed "few
differences in accuracy" between Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica."

But if you follow the link provided you find the study " examined a range of
scientific entries on both works of reference and found few differences in
accuracy." So the analysis wasn't of the encyclopedia as a whole but only
scientific articles.

So the author chose to bend the truth to make the point he wanted. This is the
problem with Wikipedia. Of course most scientific entries will be largely
accurate because very rarely are empirically observed facts controversial. But
compare an entry on a political topic and you'll find a greater variance (or
at least that's what I found when I just compared the Wikipedia entry of
George W. Bush with the Britannica 2010 Deluxe)

The rest of the article is basically just a rehash of two widely discussed
ideas: Social Learning and the Wisdom of Crowds. Both are issues too complex
to address in this already overly long comment.

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Read_the_Genes
The biggest problem with Wikipedia is not that entries about current politics
may be biased by national/religious propaganda.

The real problem is when the political propaganda influences the scientific
entries. For example here I loosely refer to entries on evolution and
pharmacology.

But, perhaps Wikipedia handles this better than other encyclopedias?

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nazgulnarsil
My biggest problem is when politics influences articles about history. Trying
to smash all previous ideology into modern factions is insane.

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zbyszek
True, but has it not always been the case that writers have tended to view the
past through a lens shaped by their contemporary mores? When I studied history
(we used Books -- it was that long ago) I was taught that the development of
arguments about a historical thing was part and parcel of the knowledge of
that thing (rather like the article suggests). The critical evaluation of
historiography must take into account the prevailing attitudes of the time as
well as any other political biases. Reading around helps to elucidate these,
so crucially one never relies on a single source.

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hermanthegerman
Experts got replaced by administrative bureaucrats who delete other peoples
knowledge and work.

~~~
JoshTriplett
The counterpoint to that: sufficiently advanced trolling is indistinguishable
from expertise, except by an expert.

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wladimir
Oh no, another "death of something" scare. This is more like "death of
creativity in titles".

