Wikipedia Mistakes

The New York Times has an interesting story on Wikipedia and how it can get students in trouble because some of its entries are flawed. I use the reference somewhat frequently and sometimes forget that individual entries can be mistaken. If Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia – how do you know you aren’t citing or referencing an entry written by someone who flunked out of school?
 
I guess you don’t.
 
Wikipedia and other collaborative Web 2.0 sites would be much more useful if the authors had a rating. In much the same way eBay ranks sellers, I suppose Wikipedia should rank content providers. If you constantly submit crap, your info should be taken with a grain of salt by all.
 
Likewise if your entries are ranked highly by many, you should get credits of some sort. Perhaps the Wikipedia credits will even become something to help people negotiate bigger raises or better jobs. Sure it sounds nerdy but then again downloading MP3s onto a portable music player was nerdy in the nineties as well.

  • Peeyoosh Pandey
    February 25, 2007 at 11:54 am

    They may use Google’s page rank system to rank the entries on the wikipedia.
    Peeyoosh

  • Charlotte
    October 8, 2009 at 9:58 am

    Indeed, after the movie ‘10.000 bc’in said on wikipedia that the first pyramids were built around 10.000 bc.
    Luckily this was ‘quickly’corrected.

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