Death of Encarta
April 7th, 2009 at 7:00 am by David FarrarAn article in the NZ Herald about how MS Encarta basically killed off the Encycloped Britannica, and how Wikipedia has now killed off Encarta.
I liked this part at the end:
Wikipedia’s ability to respond instantly to developments is just one of the reasons it has transformed the world of reference works.
Another is its sheer scale.
I’ve just checked the main page and it is reporting that the English version currently has 2,822,233 articles.
It is now the place I go to check out any new TV series or film. And if you missed an episode – also there. Plus all the traditional articles.
Yet another is its linguistic diversity – 875,000 articles in German, 774,000 in French, 568,000 in Chinese, 585,000 in Polish etc.
There is no way a conventional, centrally edited, commercially financed operation could match this.
There are now 25 different language Wikipedias that have over 100,000 articles each.
I’m tired of listening to brain-dead dinner-party complaints about how “inaccurate” Wikipedia is.
I’m bored to death by endless accounts of slurs or libels suffered by a few famous individuals at the hands of Wikipedia vandals.
And if anyone ever claims again that the entries in Wikipedia are written by clueless amateurs, I will hit them with a list of experts who curate material in their specialisms. And remind them of Professor Peter Murray-Rust’s comment to a conference in Oxford: “The bit of Wikipedia that I wrote is correct.”
Of course Wikipedia has flaws, show me something that doesn’t.
Of course it suffers from vandalism and nutters who contribute stuff to it.
But instead of complaining about errors, academics ought to be in there fixing them.
Wikipedia is one of the greatest inventions we have. Isn’t it time we accepted it? Microsoft has.
It has opened knowledge up to the masses. No more Google searches on a topic as you search dozens of hits. My first port of call is always Wikipedia now.
Tags: Wikipedia
April 7th, 2009 at 7:14 am Vote:
April 7th, 2009 at 7:47 am
You should have a look at the extensive number articles on about 9 different flavors of NZ communist groups, my favourite being http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_for_Marxist_Unity_-_New_Zealand – reading them you would think there was a vibrant active Marxist-Trotskyist-Leninist etc etc community instead of the same 3 or 4 nutjobs.
Vote:April 7th, 2009 at 8:52 am
wikipedia is great for tv/film ino – i find it more informative and easier than IMDB. Its also great for music, finding out when a bands new album will be out etc etc
im sure some of the political stuff on there is garbage… cant say i use it for that.
i have lost countless houws surfing the site though. start on one subject and just keep clicking on highlighted words.. ya end up all over the place
Vote:April 7th, 2009 at 9:15 am
And yet, if you’re at college or university, Wiki is a big no-no. You get told off for using it; it’s not seen as a reliable source of information, perhaps because anyone can come in and edit it.
[DPF: You can use it but not directly cite it. So smart students use it to get a general knowledge of an issue, and then follow the links and references to material they can cite]
Vote:April 7th, 2009 at 9:17 am
We’d be poorer for not having access to obscure stuff like that KiwiGreg.
Vote:April 7th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Correct fletch. However it’s still very useful for the links and references it provides, so is a fair starting point for any research IMHO.
Vote:April 7th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Wikipedia is a great place to find very general information and for pop culture you just can‘t beat it but it’s subject to incomplete citations, biased views, and inaccuracies. As long as Wikipedia keeps its present model of sourcing information from the general public and relatively weak editorial control then these problems will never go away.
When you absolutely have to have the undisputable facts, that’s just not good enough.
Fortunately there are far more reliable, online, free, convenient and just as up to date sources:
http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Databases/
http://www.aucklandcitylibraries.com/DigitalLibrary.aspx?Page=AZLIST&L=A
http://www.dunedinlibraries.com/home/?page=Databases
http://www.wcl.govt.nz/mygateway/
How do you access all these wonderful online resources? Join your local public library!
Vote:The first to open up knowledge to the masses.
April 7th, 2009 at 9:40 am
OR, something called ‘Knol’
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9997426-93.html
Though the – heh – Wikipedia entry is not so complimentary of Knol
Vote:April 7th, 2009 at 9:47 am
The academic literature is full of errors. While it is peer reviewed, the peer review process doesn’t catch everything, and is often affected by academic politics. Wikipedia has two great strengths – much more peer review, and errors can be corrected after publication.
I notice that the critics of Wikipedia never consider the error rate in other sources. Actually, Wikipedia stands up pretty well.
Vote:April 7th, 2009 at 11:09 am
@Fletch
I don’t permit students using it as a reference, but I’m relaxed about students using it as a launchpad into actual papers/books/articles.
Research skills are something I expect students to develop, and this means actually reading books and papers written on the relevant subjects (rather than a potted interpretation on a website). Many student’s research skills are pretty much reduced to web-browsing these days, and restrictions on internet sources force students to widen their skills.
Vote:April 7th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Kiwigreg, from what I have seen there are a number of people on wikipedia who rabidly go around trying to organise the deletion of article due to a lack of “note-worthyness”. The proceedure for deletion is somewhat questionable:basically a page is flagged for deletion, then left for a while. Contributors who visit the page will involve themselves in some rather simplistic debate, then a moderator shows up, announces a consensus has been reached and either deletes the page or spares it. It is often possible to swing the consensus in your favour just by directing a group of your friends to leave comments such as “DELETE: page is not noteworthy, no external references to show otherwise”. Perhaps a group of the kiwi blog audience could give the three man communist party pages the same treatment, in the interest of improving the quality of wikipedia of course…
Vote:April 7th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Academics seem to have warmed to it, in my first year at university every lecturer made it clear we were not to use it. Now in my fourth year they actually suggest we look there first to find general information so long as we can back it up from other sources and don’t actually reference Wikipedia itself.
Vote:April 8th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Wikipedia is a wealth of information for, as people have stated, a starting point for research but also recreationally. I have spent a lot of time over the past few years recreationally expanding my knowledge on various topics using Wikipedia.
As has been said, it’s not traditional and you need to take it with a grain of salt. The ‘BS Detector’ comes into play here.
In terms of accuracy, I read an interesting article on nzherald.co.nz recently which compared the accuracy. It said that a study compared the accuracy of Wikipedia articles and Encyclopedia Britanica articles and the EB articles contained, on average, 4 errors while the Wikipedia articles contained five. I think that’s pretty good for what it is.
Now when I search for something on Google, I usually add the word ‘wiki’ in the search field. This ensures that when I am searching for information on a topic which is covered by Wikipedia, the Wikipedia article appears at the top of the list.
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