Wikipedia's perfection (was Re: Discussion of the relativeadvantages/disadvantages of PAE (was Re: Memory >3.5GB not used?))

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of
> illoai at gmail.com
> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 3:11 PM
> To: Bart Silverstrim
> Cc: Paul Schmehl; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: Wikipedia's perfection (was Re: Discussion of the
> relativeadvantages/disadvantages of PAE (was Re: Memory >3.5GB not
> used?))
> 
> 
> On 27/04/07, Bart Silverstrim <bsilver at chrononomicon.com> wrote:
> >
> > We don't devote time and
> > resources into being "renaissance people".
> 
> Human intelligence is hardly limited in that regard.
> While I do not subscribe to the Colin Wilson theory,
> the vast majority of people contain so little information
> it is quite shameful, and the less you learn the harder
> it is to learn.
> 
> These arguments about ethics show how truly shallow
> ethicists bother to think.  Wikipedia is a daycare centre
> which has given out a nearly unlimited number of crayons
> and is now complaining about children drawing on the
> walls.  It is also a fairly plain example of the cliche of the
> inmates running the asylum.  To assign scholarly status
> and impute scholarly ethics on such a nonsensical rubbish
> pile is as silly as taking my arguments here as more than
> the ranting of a deranged keyboard jockey.
> 
> What that purported professor did is no more unethical
> than crapping in somone else's toilet, and to claim other-
> wise is to elevate it to a king's throne.
> 
> Once wikipedia (and its ilk) begin to systematically vet
> contributors for expertise and seriously review articles
> against fact we can nail them to the wall for political bias.
> 

Wikipedia won't, mainly because there's another competing web
encyclopedia out there that is taking this approach.

However, you sound like you have a case of sour grapes, and you
definitely don't sound like you have read much on Wikipedia.

The true value of Wikipedia is that it can deal with controversial
subjects.  Take abortion, for example.  Reading
about it in a "peer reviewed" encyclopedia, if you didn't know
dick about it, you would wonder what all the controversy was about -
because those entries are completely stripped out of all loaded
phrases and emotion.

The same goes with the 2000 US Presidential election.  A huge number
of people, possibly the majority in the country, believe that there
were dirty tricks and that the election was stolen.  But, you won't
get any sense of that at all reading about it in the Encyclopedia
Britannica.

I couldn't read the online entries about either of those topics in
a peer-reviewed encyclopedia and even end up knowing where to go to
find each sides wacko-rediculous statements, and without reading any
of that stuff there's no way anyone can understand how unsolvable
that issues like that are.

Wikipedia is one of the best starting platforms out there on subjects.
Naturally, you don't take it as canonical.  But, it is going to suggest
avenues of research that the official stuff won't.  For example, look
up "operation freakout" and "operation snow white" in Wikipedia, and
look them up in an official encyclopedia.  Quite an amazing difference,
there.

Ted