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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

Less than a decade later my father, a history professor, thought I was a fool for thinking Wikipedia could hold a candle to Britannica for many reasons similar to those in the article.

Obviously I didn't know what editing meant, how quality came about in publishing, or what an encyclopedia was for. The value of the GPL was utterly lost on him.

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Wikipedia is a great place to publish your views with little real oversight, as long as you get seniority, make a few external sites to link to, and squat the relevant pages. The best part is that your message can be taken up well because even adults think they can rely on it (no adult relies on Britannica for anything, few own it anyway).

Maybe you were wrong and your father was right.

> Wikipedia is a great place to publish your views with little real oversight, as long as you get seniority, make a few external sites to link to, and squat the relevant pages.

Sounds a lot like academia to me (I'm biased, son of a prof here...). Seriously, it's unclear to me which the best form of editing there is, and unclear how you would know one is better than the other.

I use Wikipedia nearly every day. I have learned a great many things that I am able to immediately apply in my work (recent example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyer_moore)... I guess its just a coincidence that this false information had the exact same running time complexity as the real thing (O(n+m))?

It might be an incredibly useful tool for learning new information, but that still doesn't mean it's something I would rely on when publishing a non-fiction document.

You mean in the same way you shouldn't rely on any encyclopedia when publishing a non-fiction piece?

and yet it accurately states facts in a majority (if not all) matters I've looked up in recent years.

What's more, Wikipedia gets better the more contentious the topic. For example, the Evolution article is well-cited, due to constant bickering, and constantly policed, because it would otherwise be taken over by religious people who are utterly convinced that T. rex fossils were planted by God to test the faith of the masses.

(The Talk pages are a hoot and a half if you're in the mood for that sort of thing; some people get really annoyed when NPOV means "We put the scientific consensus front and center, because that's what the reliable sources state.")

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