Re: Is there a genealogy Wiki anywhere?

"Daniel Morgan" <daniel.f.morgan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:b247a38a-e529-4848-a736-e5371a397142@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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)

Emcyclo[edia Britannica has been known for decades not to be a 
standard of accuracy. Yet again it is a product where commercial 
considerations outweigh metioculous accuracy. A more meaningful 
experiment would be to compare Wiki or EB or both on, say, chemistry 
with, say, the Journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Or in any 
subject compare them with the leading professional, refereed, journal 
of record in that subject. That is the journal which places accuracy 
before commercial considerations.

That is when it will be evident that any information collection of 
solid worth in perpetuity isn't going to be a commercial proposition., 
and it doesn't matter what the noun is for such a collection. For such 
a collection to exist it would be necessary for a vastly wealthy 
philanthropist to fund the entire project with no hope or wish to get 
his money back. Presumably such a person would consider that having 
his or her name remembered in the noun for the collection is reward 
enough. The revenue, if any, would be peanuts compared to the costs of 
establi****ng that much collected, checked and verified, expertise.

So I say again. where is the money coming from? Who has such a 
selfless billionaire philanthropist up their sleeve?

Don