One “very senior Wikimedian,” we are told, “came to think of the project as a ‘city built by Asperger’s.’ ”
If you get the paywall, it’s readable at http://archive.today/R2rnW
One “very senior Wikimedian,” we are told, “came to think of the project as a ‘city built by Asperger’s.’ ”
If you get the paywall, it’s readable at http://archive.today/R2rnW
I doubt the number of errors is significantly different. The horrible mistakes I’ve had to correct on WP suggest otherwise, even if that’s just anecdotal.
Sometimes, less is more. I don’t think we really need trivia from the film set of the Infinity War or whatever. Selecting the most relevant material is an art in itself. A scholarly monograph might be used to dump info; an encyclopedia has to make sense of it for the layman.
Up to date, mostly yes (unless the editors get their info from outdated sources, which does happen), and accessible, definitely.
I do agree that condensing an encyclopedia to a limited size and keeping the most significant information was a very difficult art that was performed admirably by the old encyclopaedias.
I however think it’s an art that would be innappropriate and harmful if applied to Wikipedia.
Just because you can condense the information doesn’t mean you should. Encyclopaedias are not for reading through, so limited length was an artificial limitation imposed by the printed format not for any good reason.
I’m sure there’s articles that go on a bit about irrelevant minutia, and they should be trimmed, but that’s an article specific flaw.
FWIW I think I misremembered the accuracy point, looks like most studies have put it similar or slightly lower accuracy. Citation needed I guess.