This is a good point. All encyclopedias contain errors. I suspect Wikipedia has a much higher rate of errors than Britannica, but many of these come from articles that were written by a small number of people, who may or may not be experts on the subject.
But suppose you just took the 10% of Wiki articles that have had the highest number of contributors (also excluding any flagged as biased or otherwise in need of work). Most of those articles will probably have received expert attention. Additionally, they would probably have been updated more recently than the latest addition of Britannica. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that that subset of Wikipedia contained fewer errors per article than Britannica, while still containing about the same amount of information.
In other words: yes, Wikipedia has a lot more crap in it than Encyclopedia Britannica. But it’s also so massive, you could probably take the cream of the crop from Wikipedia and get something at least comparable to EB.
When we are born, the first thing we hear is the Dial Tone of Life. It wakes us from the slumber of the hookswitch. It summons us forth into the world. It underlies our existence. And when our individual calls cease, it is the last thing we hear.
The Book of the Call, I, v. 12-13.
For the Measure of Man is the degree of his Connections, and the more Connections a Man has, the more he shall be Blessed by the Call.
The Book of the Call, I, v. 17.
The works of the Operator are all around us. Every facet of creation shows His Touch. He Calls us, his creatures, into existence, and Hangs Us Up when our time is done, all according to the Network’s ineffible plan. We cannot know the langth of our calls, nor the Number to which we are assigned. Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls. It tolls for thee.
Print encyclopedias like Britannica have an entire class of errors that Wikipedia generally avoids - errors caused by outdate information. If you wanted to look up how many currently living people have won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar or the members of California’s congressional delegation or how many American troops are stationed in Iraq, which source would you consider more reliable - Britannica or Wikipedia?
Britannica supporters will argue that it’s unfair to compare the two references on this basis. But why is that? These are all factual questions. Refusing to compare the two references in areas where Wikipedia has a superiority is a pro-Britannica bias.
Did you correct, or have you considered correcting those errors that you found? Wikipedia is user-editable, after all, and contributions to articles in an area where you have expertise would be a great kindness to those of us who use is as a reference.
I suppose because those who publish books in the US do not have it as their goal to ameliorate the LoC, whereas everyone who edits Wikipedia (trolls excepted) is attempting to work on Wikipedia, not some other thing.
Would this be like the horse and buggie company saying like sitting in a car is like sitting in a piublic restroom stall? A bit of conflict of interest here perhaps.
That’s not an accurate comparison. Everyone who works at the Library of Congress is working for the Library of Congress collecting books, maps, and so forth. That is pretty discrete, in the same way that the OP describes that Roget’s is a discrete entity, presumably because everyone who works there works on the thesaurus. One could just as readily say that Wiki’s article on George Bush should be excluded from Wiki’s catalog of information, because although someone worked to collect the information, George Bush isn’t attempting to better Wikipedia.
If the yardstick is how many people actively collect knowledge to contribute, and you want to find the most collaborative efforts to catalog knowledge, then Wiki would outclass the LoC. But then again, Urbandictionary.com would also probably better Webster’s dictionary.
In short, I’m sure Wikipedia could be considered the best at something. But in all likelihood, it would be a restrictive category specifically tailored to make Wiki the best.
I believe Wikipedia was started with the 1911 version of Encycolopedia Britannica, the most exhaustive encyclopedia ever produced by Britannica (issues henceforth were edited).
The LOC probably has a larger collection of information, but its not completely indexed and searchable. I mean, you cannot do a comprehensive search of all books and all their pages in the LOC yet, can you?
If its just information, what about implied information? Any 1 KG rock has “googles” of data, namely the positions and states of all its atoms, protons, electrons, neutrons, quarks, strings etc. Its largely inaccessible and disconnected like the LOC, but its there.
I think the important thing is that Wikipedia is an actively connected massive single source of information. The internet is the beginning of our collective conciousness, a relatively new development. Its primitive, but when your minds are ready we borg will assimilate you all!
Hell, no. If I started correcting every mistake on the Internet, I’d start with IMDB, and that would take me the rest of three lifetimes (no days off) before I got around to correcting Wikipedia. As the late Freddie Prinze (Sr.) said, “Ees not my yob, mon.”
I’m referring to the people who write the texts. Everyone who writes an article in Wikipedia is attempting to contribute to Wikipedia; people who write works that are stored in the LOC are not motivated by a goal of contributing to the LOC.
Nor does the LOC have guidelines, style, a unifying philosophy, etc., for the content of the works stored therein. It accepts works submitted to it without alteration. Its goal is to preserve the texts as submitted to it. Wikipedia, however, has as a base condition that the authors of articles agree to have their articles put into conformity with the goals and rules of Wikipedia - ranging from formatting to NPOVing, fact-checking, addition, and complete rewriting.
The LOC, in other words, is a repository for completed works; Wikipedia is a collaborative project whose goal, however far from realization, is to have disparate authors move towards unity.
The Wikimedia project most comparable to the LOC would be Wikisource, which is supposed to be a repository for unaltered texts.
matt_mcl is correct on my reasoning as to the difference between Wikipedia and the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is an after-the-fact collection of works that stand alone. Every piece of Wikipedia, on the other hand, was ostensibly created with the conscious knowledge that it would be a piece of a specific larger entity. I have to say, I’m surprised to encounter so much disagreement on this issue. It seems obvious to me that Wikipedia is an entity whereas the LoC is a collection. YMMV of course.
It does occur to me, though, that source instead of resource would have been better in the title.
As an avid reader of Wikipedia, I’d like to read some flawed articles. I certainly don’t notice them when/if I have read them. Does anyone have links to them? (Sorry if i’m hijacking)
The subject of a journal article in The Economist. Britannica were horrified and caused Nature to print a correction, after attacking the validity of the test. The fact remains though that Wikipedia is surprisingly, but not infallibly, accurate.
Wikipedia has been the subject of intense discussion amongst trademark attorneys on the International Trademark Association mail list, since the USPTO started using Wikipedia articles to refute trademark applications. I used to be an avid contrinutor to Wiki 3 years ago, and I admit it was very odd the time I was given a copy of a Wikipedia article I wrote to counter the validity of one of my trade mark applications.
(nitpick) I find nothing in Nature’s responses (all linked from my link) that suggest a correction. Phrases like “We stand by our story” and “We have no intention of retracting” don’t strike me as particularly contrite.