Hi L.D.,

> I suggest that this discussion is turning on three
> separate issues: ...

Agreed.

> In regard to the Wikipedia, it has been very
> recently shown that at 
> least some entries in English are not accurate and
> improved oversight 
> is needed. (demonstrating the importance of item #3)
> I certainly would 
> not use Wikipedia for research purposes at this
> stage of development. 

Agreed, although an interesting outcome of the
research was that they found an equal number of
'serious' errors, 4,  in each encyclopedia and
although Wikipedia had more minor errors than
Britannica, (162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica
respectively) that still means Britannica had 123
errors in the selected articles. 

Not an insignificant number.

Jeremy.



> On Mar 2, 2006, at 1:00 PM, Jeremy wrote:
> 
> > This is probably not really the right list to
> discuss
> > Wikipedia culture further however. The really
> > interesting question is whether museums should
> open up
> > their collections in the same way as Wikipedia, to
> > benefit from all that networked brainpower, and to
> > offload *some* of the work from curators?
> >
> > As a museum Curator, (which I'm not) I guess it
> must
> > be legitimate to initially fear the great unwashed
> > hoards decending on your neatly manicured records.
> But
> > think about it the other way around. Those great
> > unwashed hoards potentially include every other
> museum
> > curator and academic researcher on the planet,
> amongst
> > others. Do you really want to turn down that sort
> of
> > assistance?
> >
> > The issue of how to separate the wheat from the
> chaff
> > is a technical challenge, but Wikipedia seem to
> manage
> > it OK.
> 
>
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