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_ Highlighted for Posterity _ Wikipedia's fanatical transparency (Niagara Falls Review)

Posted by: Yahoo! News

As anyone who has gone Googling will tell you, Wikipedia is evolving into the font of all human knowledge. Need an explanation of Einstein's theory of relativity? Curious about who voices those anonymous cameos in the new Simpsons movie?

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia+AND+-jazz/SIG=13djkeepq/*http%3A//www.niagarafallsreview.ca/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=645424&catname=Tech+talk&classif=

Posted by: guy

Interview with 13 year old Canadian admin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Greeves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Greeves

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Journalism : The Oldest Profession

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Wed 2nd April 2008, 3:36pm) *

Journalism : The Oldest Profession

Jonny cool.gif

Linda Ellerbee: "Journalism: That profession whose business it is to explain that which it personally does not understand."

A quote which is much funnier when you realize that this is very near to what the official Wikipedia editorical policy is: Don't worry about whether or not the editor making that change understands the subject or not-- it's irrelevant. The only important thing is whether or not the verifiable source he's using is authoritative.

Nevermind that to understand whether or not a sourced statement is authoritative, or even relevant to the statement at hand, you really do need to understand the subject yourself; and thus, if the subject is at all technical, that means you need some subject-matter-expertise to do much more than fix grammer and spelling. Ahem, but for the sake of Wikipedia's 5 pillars, let's just pretend that's not so. Jimbo says it isn't. And since Jimbo is an acknowleged Universal Expert on Epistemology {{fact}}, how can anything Jimbo tells us be nonsense?


Posted by: Jonny Cache

Linda L-R-B, gosh how I miss her, used to watch that Overnight (?) Show religiously for as long as it lasted — now that was journalism, and I mean that in the good sense of the word!

And so it goes …

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: guy

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 2nd April 2008, 10:25pm) *

if the subject is at all technical, that means you need some subject-matter-expertise to do much more than fix grammer and spelling.

Actually, you need a bit of subject knowledge to know whether what you think is a misspelling is in fact a real word. For example, I have no idea whether a grammer is someone who weighs things in grammes.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

QUOTE(guy @ Wed 2nd April 2008, 11:01pm) *

Actually, you need a bit of subject knowledge to know whether what you think is a misspelling is in fact a real word. For example, I have no idea whether a grammer is someone who weighs things in grammes.


I was somewhat miffed when I deliberately used the word "uneducable", because I had taken it from the source I was referencing, and because it is a valid word, and somebody decided they knew better and made it ineducable (replacement of non-existant word being the edit summary).

It is one of those irritating losses. It wasn't worth fighting over, but I felt a tiny little loss that was needless. A real editor might question it, but it would be returned to the author for confirmation. When I wrote a couple of books, as the author it was my call as to whether to accept the edits or challenge them. This was somewhat tricky at times as I had as an editor some cat from Des Moines without a sense of humour (or a cleaning plant*) who thankfully did not appreciate my little witticisms, which in retrospect I am so glad were removed! I also had to write in a foreign language (American English) so I could not tell if his petty corrections were sensible.

So when you use well chosen words, not long, pseudo-intellectual guff like "at this point in time" and someone messes around for no betterment it is annoying - which is not to say my choice is always best. As mentioned before, I've dropped using "whilst" as it clearly was pissing a lot of people off, but it is not archaic usage, nor wrong, but there is no point writing something where the writing irritates and there is another way or writing.

I wish Wikipedia would understand the Campaign for Plain English (aka the crystal mark) but they make the mistake of thinking it means Simplified English. It is something I am very guilty of, my natural reading age of my writing is very high and I can alter my word choice to improve it. Then it gets annoying when someone thinks (and indeed argues) that we should not be writing in plain English because the encyclopedia is for clever people.

*Just testing, no prizes

Posted by: guy

QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Thu 3rd April 2008, 12:53am) *

replacement of non-existant word being the edit summary

"non-existant"? That's the pot calling the kettle black!

Posted by: dogbiscuit

QUOTE(guy @ Thu 3rd April 2008, 9:51am) *

QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Thu 3rd April 2008, 12:53am) *

replacement of non-existant word being the edit summary

"non-existant"? That's the pot calling the kettle black!


That would be me then. <blush>