On May 11, 3:56 am, unknown <unkn...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 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_s...
>
> "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?
As I recall, Nature published a rebuttal of Britannica's criticisms
and said that it stood by its story.
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