Comments on: Would you trust WikiPedia with your life?

By: Would you trust WikiPedia with your life?

Would you trust WikiPedia with your life? — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:32:00 +0000

[...] then I suddenly remembered this post I had written a while ago on my personal blog titled “Would you trust WikiPedia with your life?“. I think it is still a valid point so I decided to simply copy paste it [...]

By: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:53:02 +0000

Hi Michiel, I’m sure you will like it…

By: Michiel Ebberink

Michiel Ebberink — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:31:22 +0000

I’m cheap and dirty . I’ll probably tell you i didn’t like it. (just kidding) No, I will trust you on this one and just buy and read it. ;-)

By: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:20:43 +0000

Hi Michiel: I liked his book so much that I have an offer for you: buy the book, read it and if you think it wasn’t worth the price I will give you your money back!

I found it extremely inspiring and wouldn’t mind a second hand copy to give away to other people…

By: Michiel Ebberink

Michiel Ebberink — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:12:11 +0000

Hi Boris,

I went to David Weinberger @ Picnic ‘07 and I hope his book is better then his presentation. I thought it didn’t have much depth. I thought it was just somebody speaking enthusiastically about some interactive model on the web which supposedly is changing our human relationships, communication, and society. The deeper meaning about media theory, interaction and social behavior was completely left aside. Let us not forget about Marshall McLuhan. I guess he got stuck in front of his own little computer box too long.

By: Stephan

Stephan — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 18:36:21 +0000

Robert McHenry chose his analogy in a very smart way. I haven’t read posts attacking his position, but I sure hope someone commented on this comparison.

I have never heard of visitors to public toilet that clean the toilets before or after they use it. Why not make it a fair comparison with e.g. a chalkboard?

The mental picture of the toilet is a smart brainhack though…

By: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 18:13:59 +0000

Hi Bas. I don’t think an editor at the Encyclopedia Britannica could change 20 diseases to malignant and get away with it. The problem isn’t the percentage of errors but the possible effect of the errors.

In other words; this is a quantity VS quality discussion. It might be true that the same quantity of typos are present in both services but I’m guessing that the quality of errors is more important for this discussion.

By: Bas van de Haterd

Bas van de Haterd — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 13:42:44 +0000

Well, although you have a point, problem is that research done by nature (we’ve probably all read it, it’s even in ‘the long tail’ (and I mean the book), that there’s not that much difference in conformed mistakes between Brittanica and wikipedia. Although Wikipedia had a few more, those were corrected when it turned out that they were wrong. In Brittanica, that’s not 100% correct either, those mistakes will live on and on and one forever, untill that specific example gets burned or thrashed.