Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Wikipedia definition

I see the following conclusion nowadays. One of the major problems of Wikipedia is misunderstanding of the Spirit of the Project by large masses. The Spirit is in flexibility and actuality with possible presence of errors. Wikipedia (with Wikinews) is the Unifying kind of journalism (writing about life) with volunteer "civil journalists". Thus Wikipedia (in any language) can be seen as a mass media in an especial format.

It may contain information from any types of sources or comments with no sources (can be requested if needed). It may fail to contain what you want to see. It may contain untruthful information (report it). Information may be altered at any time (some data is altered regularly). Whoever doesn't understand this should bear this in mind next time reading Wikipedia. If you want to treat Wikipedia as an authoritative source and find a "nonsense" instead, maybe also wanting to "punish someone" for this, stop using the project (including using links to it somewhere) or change your approach.

An error in Wikipedia = error in press ≠ error in a sci-book

Traditional encyclopedia format couldn't withstand permanent actualisation. The format now can be merged with mass media format with weakened "authoritativity" featuring freedom of speech (and a right to have errors until they are corrected). Wikipedia is for reading by public what is written by public for free, not "authoritatively" written for basing "serious researches" or commercial reports on. Let scientists and accountants do their own work and find better matching authoritative sources (without rights to have errors). Wikipedia's "popularity" can't necessarily make some article a "serious" stuff.