Daniel Morgan wrote:
> 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).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/23/britannica_wikipedia_nature_study/
"Almost everything about the journal's investigation, from the criteria
for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text
and its headline, was wrong and misleading," says Britannica.
"Dozens of inaccuracies attributed to the Britannica were not inaccuracies
at all, and a number of the articles Nature examined were not even in the
Encyclopedia Britannica. The study was so poorly carried out and its
findings so error-laden that it was completely without merit."
In one case, for example. Nature's peer reviewer was sent only the 350
word
introduction to a 6,000 word Britannica article on lipids - which was
criticized for containing omissions.
A pattern also emerges which raises questions about the choice of the
domain
experts picked by Nature's journalists.
Several got their facts wrong, and in many other cases, simply offered
differences of opinion.
"Dozens of the so-called inaccuracies they attributed to us were nothing
of the kind; they were the result of reviewers expressing opinions that
differed from ours about what should be included in an encyclopedia
article.
In these cases Britannica's coverage was actually sound."
Nature only published a summary of the errors its experts found some time
after the initial story, and has yet to disclose all the reviewer's notes.
So how could a respected science publication make such a grave series of
errors?
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