Phil Bradley's Blog

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

 

Nicholas Carr's Blog includes a fascinating piece on Web 2.0 and the main focus of much of the current flurry of comments relates to his description of the Wikipedia as factually unreliable with often appalling writing. He goes on to really take it to pieces with a couple of examples. A flavour of what he says: "this is garbage, an incoherent hodge-podge of dubious factoids", "the slipshod quality of much of Wikipedia". It's a very thought provoking piece, and I agree with much of what he says. However, it's worth reading the contrary opinion, as posted on Wikipedia itself.

I use Wikipedia a little bit, if I want to get an overview of a subject, or to generally read up on something that I don't know much about. However, while I might (if I'm doing a poor citation) say 'The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that...' I'd never dream of doing that with Wikipedia. I'd be more likely to say 'Some unidentified source that may or may not know what they're talking about at Wikipedia says that...'. I simply don't trust for anything important - sorry, but there it is.

Phil 10:35 AM