Wikipedia Version 2: Promise and Peril
From TechCrunch:
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has announced that his new knowledge sharing wiki project called Citizendium will launch at the end of this month or earlier. The defining characteristic of the site is that topic experts will have final, enforceable authority to “resolve†controversy and kick out trolls. Citizendium will be a progressive fork of Wikipedia, allowing its own community to change Wikipedia articles but also offering Wikipedia’s version of those that haven’t been edited in Citizendium. Sanger says the topic experts will function like village elders or college professors – they’ll simply make the wiki a civilized place.
The need for adult supervision is unfortunately obvious. Here’s just one example (”Credit Counseling), brought to my attention be Jeff at Credit/Debt Recovery. Jeff made numerous attempts to modify the relatively harsh anti-counselor tone of the entry, to no avail, and ultimately said “I lost the edit war when trying to keep the article useful and non-biased.” That’s a shame, as some who read the Wiki entry may be dissuaded from getting the help they need.
The ultimate question on Citizenium will be whether the topic experts really will conduct themselves like village elders (wise men and women) or too many of today’s college professors (close-minded pretenders who stifle independent thought and are impervious to facts and evidence).
Tom, try this one on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refund_Anticipation_Loan
I was preparing another post about Refund Anticipation Loans, which you and I both think are a terrible deal. As much as I counsel people against them, the anti-RAL bias in the wikipedia entry is astonishing.
Comment by Jeff — September 20, 2006 @ 12:29 pm
Geez, though the negative points appear to be valid (except that one about EITC, which I find VERY hard to believe), the person’s not even trying to be objective.
Comment by TBlumer — September 20, 2006 @ 12:40 pm
What’s interesting is here we are, two guys who basically agree with the article, outing its lack of objectivity. Just because it shares our biases doesn’t mean we don’t recognize that it IS biased. Would any two members of the MSM do the same? Would they even understand the principle at work here?
That’s why I increasingly trust bloggers more than the dinosaur media… we acknowledge our point of view from the outset.
Comment by Jeff — September 20, 2006 @ 1:01 pm
Exactamundo, Jeff.
Comment by TBlumer — September 20, 2006 @ 1:03 pm