Re: Please help with wikipedia's article on Arabic Numerals that's falling victim to vandalism

In article <1134520860.915762.209620@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"david petry" <david_lawrence_petry@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> casioculture@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > I'm becoming convinced that unless it has strict editorial control then
> > Wikipedia is destined to perpetual failure. It's one thing devoting a
> > little of my time to a public cause, it's another to be wasting it in
> > "dispute" with unreasonable idiots who won't admit to their
> > demonstrable errors and won't back up their claims with evidence.
> >
> > You spend a considerable amount of your valuable time researching the
> > literature, citing soruces, and so on, and what happens after a couple
> > of days? The idiots have been at it again and it's a mess.
> >
> > I'm sure that anyone whose time is worth anything won't want to waste
> > it on Wikipedia.
> >
> > But it's a dilemma, Wikipedia is becoming quite popular, on many topics
> > it's the first Google result returned. Do you leave it to the idiots to
> > spread their nonsense uncontested?! But again, if you do, they won't
> > admit to error, and given their evident idiocies they probably have
> > nothing better to do.
>
> You bring up some really good points. I guess the Wikipedia eventually
> will be seen as a really interesting experiment that was,
> unfortunately, doomed to failure without changes in the rules.
>
> Maybe the solution is to allow numerous different versions of articles
> (which are archived by Wikipedia anyway), and then have people
> "endorse" their favorite variant of the article. Then when you go to
> the encyclopedia, you just pick out the article with the endorsements
> you respect. Or something like that.
>
> The Wikipedia contains way too much valuable information to just
> dismiss its worth.

There's recently been a public Wiki scandal. Clearly it's a good
experiment but subject to abuse.

Perhaps in this age of disintermediation, we're finding out that there
is an important role to be played by professional writers, reporters and
editors.
.

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