The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0763 Tuesday, 5 September 2006
[1] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 1 Sep 2006 14:09:27 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0758 Wikipedia
[2] From: Kevin De Ornellas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 01 Sep 2006 14:31:33 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0758 Wikipedia
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 1 Sep 2006 14:09:27 +0100
Subject: 17.0758 Wikipedia
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0758 Wikipedia
Ike Rodman mentioned the comparison of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia
Britannica that Nature published.
While on average they may be about the same, there are particular
problems with Wikipedia's policy of letting anyone edit a page. The most
famous failing was that John L. Seigenthaler found himself accused of
complicity in the assassination of American president Kennedy when, to
'prove' a point in a workplace argument, a user edited Wikipedia to
present this as a known truth. That sort of problem does not occur in
Encyclopedia Britannica.
Last year I set undergraduate student a presentation assignment on the
notion of the 'unconscious' and it was abundantly clear which of them
had simply cribbed the Wikipedia entry for this term, which was wildly
(hilariously) inaccurate. The entry has since improved.
Gabriel Egan
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Kevin De Ornellas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 01 Sep 2006 14:31:33 +0100
Subject: 17.0758 Wikipedia
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0758 Wikipedia
>"among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not
>particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained
>around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three"
Firstly, 42 is a pathetic sample given that Wikipedia currently boasts
over 1,300,000 articles in English alone. A survey that compared 42,000
pieces might have been instructive - a different conclusion would be
inevitable even if just 420 pieces were compared.
Secondly, for me the major problem with Wikipedia is that users are
allowed to advertise their own often sub-standard work. For example, a
chancer called Simon W. Golding has just delivered a vanity-published
book on Ken Loach's seminal film, 'Kes'. The book is atrocious beyond
belief: as well as being bereft of filmic insight or even the capacity
to process basic information, the man literally cannot write a proper
sentence; there has been no editor to correct his incompetent English.
But the Wikipedia entry on 'Kes - the film' contains a massive plug for
this book - one that has to have been placed there by the author or his
associates. Every time one intervenes, toning down the self-praise for
this book, one's intervention is quickly vandalised off the site, and
the glorifying plug for it is restored. This, I am told, is a fairly
typical Wikipedia experience.
Regarding accuracy, Wikipedia is self-evidently just not reliable enough
- because of the vanity aspect of it and because of the sheer
hit-and-miss quality of so many of the entries. I am dogmatically
banning students from citing it in their essays on all three of the
Shakespearean modules that I am convening this coming academic year.
Kevin De Ornellas
University of Ulster
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