Tiger C. Roholt

Errors in Wikipedia

Here is a link to a portion of an interview with the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, on the BBC UK program Hardtalk. The discussion centers on errors in Wikipedia. Two interesting points: (1) Wales admits to previously tampering with his own Wikipedia entry in order to remove Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger from the historical account of Wikipedia's origin (but Sanger is not referred to by name in the interview). (2) At another point in the interview, for a moment, it appears that Wales is attempting to downplay the seriousness of the fact that there are errors in Wikipedia by emphasizing that there are errors in newspaper articles too. Comparing reference works to journalism seems odd, to say the least. Wales goes on to claim that the way to make a reference work more dependable than a newspaper is to get "as many people participating as possible." —Doesn't the reasonableness of this claim depend upon how well the participants know the subject that they are writing about? Isn't this the most obvious problem with Wikipedia? And, of course, there is the problem that contributors remain anonymous. (For an example of a case in which the "editors" in charge of a Wikipedia page did not have an acceptable level of expertise, click here.)

wikipedia worries

Here is a link to a Crooked Timber entry that recounts the funny discussion between David Chalmers and a Wikipedia "editor." Chalmers is attempting to suggest improvements for an article on consciousness (some of which involves his own work), but he is met with replies like this from the "editor":  "As can be seen above, most of your criticisms are not supported. Please demonstrate your familiarity with the field by supporting your critique with reasoned arguments rather than pejorative comments." (The editors didn't believe that Chalmers was really Chalmers.)