Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert | Hacker News Reader

Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert

theawl.com

27 pointsmeadhikari9 comments

There are two issues here. On the initial point about Wikipedia's accuracy I'd offer this very article as proof of the problem Wikipedia has. In the opening sentence of the second paragraph the author says...

"It's been over five years since the landmark study in Nature that showed "few differences in accuracy" between Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica."

But if you follow the link provided you find the study " examined a range of scientific entries on both works of reference and found few differences in accuracy." So the analysis wasn't of the encyclopedia as a whole but only scientific articles.

So the author chose to bend the truth to make the point he wanted. This is the problem with Wikipedia. Of course most scientific entries will be largely accurate because very rarely are empirically observed facts controversial. But compare an entry on a political topic and you'll find a greater variance (or at least that's what I found when I just compared the Wikipedia entry of George W. Bush with the Britannica 2010 Deluxe)

The rest of the article is basically just a rehash of two widely discussed ideas: Social Learning and the Wisdom of Crowds. Both are issues too complex to address in this already overly long comment.

The biggest problem with Wikipedia is not that entries about current politics may be biased by national/religious propaganda.

The real problem is when the political propaganda influences the scientific entries. For example here I loosely refer to entries on evolution and pharmacology.

But, perhaps Wikipedia handles this better than other encyclopedias?

My biggest problem is when politics influences articles about history. Trying to smash all previous ideology into modern factions is insane.

True, but has it not always been the case that writers have tended to view the past through a lens shaped by their contemporary mores? When I studied history (we used Books -- it was that long ago) I was taught that the development of arguments about a historical thing was part and parcel of the knowledge of that thing (rather like the article suggests). The critical evaluation of historiography must take into account the prevailing attitudes of the time as well as any other political biases. Reading around helps to elucidate these, so crucially one never relies on a single source.

>"I'd offer this very article as proof of the problem Wikipedia has"

Assuming it is a fault, how is a fault in an article about Wikipedia attributable to Wikipedia itself, let alone proof of a problem with Wikipedia and evidence that Encyclopedia Britannica does not have similar editorial faults?

Interesting you brought up that entry. I just looked it over. What is your issue with it precisely?

Experts got replaced by administrative bureaucrats who delete other peoples knowledge and work.

The counterpoint to that: sufficiently advanced trolling is indistinguishable from expertise, except by an expert.

Oh no, another "death of something" scare. This is more like "death of creativity in titles".

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