On May 7, 2:42 pm, "Don Moody" <dpmo...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> "Steve Hayes" <hayesm...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>
> news:frr324tbt1cg6fs64c9tflbvlhmu2sptq7@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
> > Is there a Wiki for genealogy anywhere?
>
> > I haven't seen such a thing mentioned in the newsgroups, but it
> > seems a
> > logical kind of thing to have.
>
> > About 20 years ago, before the Web got going, I played around with
> > hypertext
> > using TurboPascal, and created a kind of beginners guide for
> > genealogy. In
> > those days such things were called "expert systems".
>
> > It seems to me that a Wiki could do the same thing, but on a far
> > bigger scale,
> > and with far more information. It could be a truly expert system,
> > making use
> > of all sorts of people's expertise.
>
> > So I'm wondering why I haven't heard of such a thing.
>
> I hope you never hear of such a thing, if by a Wiki you mean the
> original model where anybody can submit anything and muck about with
> the submissions of others but there is no expert refereeing and no
> rejection of opinionated nonsense.
>
> If you want an on-line encyclopaedia of real worth, it has got to be
> written by experts, refereed by experts, edited by experts, and
> maintained in an ongoing way by experts. Those experts, being human
> beings, will need money to live on. A hell of a lot of money for a
> hell of a lot of expertise.
>
> Where is that money going to come from? And if your answer is Pay Per
> View, then who is going to provide the many millions of capital to set
> the thing up before the first viewer pays?
>
> Don
In 2005, the journal Nature got 42 expert reviewers to compare science
articles in Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica for accuracy. To
quote from their original writeup, "the difference in accuracy was not
particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained
around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three."
Britannica disputed the Nature study. Nature rebutted their rebuttal
and stood by their original findings. See Editorial, Nature 440, 582
(30 March 2006).
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