Nickname: hormuz

Review: The "study" published by Nature is shoddy, disingenuous, and an embarrassment to the credibility and neutrality of anybody who uncritically quotes it. How can an error-count be an indicator of the quality of encyclopedia entries? Of two entries, one containing a long description of a scientist's appearance, the other of his scientific life and work, the first may well contain fewer errors. So what? Errors that can be spotted in a casual "study" are easily correctable. Wikipedia's other problems are not. For example, in spite of its much-touted "Neutral Point of View" policy, Wikipedia has a systemic bias, obvious in entries dealing with intellectual pursuits that oppose official science or medicine. The reason is that Wikipedia's de-facto arbiters of "neutrality" are Internet technobureaucrats representing a certain type of mainstream opinion. Wikipedia may be a repository of the 70th-percentile technobureaucratic consensus. But not a repository of knowledge.

Date reviewed: Dec 19, 2005 4:26 AM

Nickname: Shawn

Review: I actually go to Wikipedia at least three to four times a day. It is an awesome source of information and I rarely have a problem finding information. I mean I even found an article on white holes which was actually very surprising to me.

Date reviewed: Dec 15, 2005 2:09 PM

Nickname: dady.com

Review: My daily consultation on Wikipedia confirms your commentary. That's a real innovative tool.

Date reviewed: Dec 15, 2005 12:05 PM

Nickname: hun

Review: Aggregating the "wisdom of the crowds," Wikipdia has created a useful research tool for everyone. For free. I first heard about Wikipdia when the NKF scandal broke in Singapore this year. I found it most useful in summarizng the various developments and providing an overview to the story. Indeed, it is controversies that highlight the usefulness of Wikipdia. Many issues are shrouded in various shades of grey, which conventional encyclopedias may not convey. In any case, we should all be skptical when reading any source of information. Human errors and biases are inevitable.

Date reviewed: Dec 15, 2005 8:33 AM

Nickname: havoc

Review: This is a great article, I am going to use this to further argue my point to my Enlish teacher at university who insists that Wkipedia cannot be considered a valid source for information as it does not come from a ".edu" domain name.

Date reviewed: Dec 15, 2005 1:31 AM

Nickname: Nicholas Moreau

Review: I'm glad to see that BusinessWeek's columnists understand Wikipedia. While things can go wrong, our development process generally polishes things to become accurate, fair, and equal content in the end. If anyone would like to pose questions about the project, I'd be more than happy to answer them here or on my talk page at Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user_talk:zanimum). Nick Moreau user:zanimum on Wikipedia English Canadian press contact for the Wikimedia Foundation

Date reviewed: Dec 14, 2005 10:30 PM