Alex Foster

Aunty examines Wikipedia

By | Fri 6th March 2009 - 1:50 pm

An interesting piece on the BBC website examines Wikipedia for accuracy

After a slightly outrageous start, the piece settles down into a reasonably balanced look at the internet’s famous anyone-can-edit encyclopaedia.

And whilst errors remain, by and large the biggest mistakes are corrected reasonably quickly, and intentional vandalism overturned almost immediately.

Of particular note to Liberal Democrats will be bizarre quotes about Nick Clegg – now removed. There’s also a long and intriguing section about Martin Horwood MP’s entry on the site:

Liberal Democrat MP Martin Horwood was alarmed to discover his Wikipedia entry, which in keeping with the conventions of the site was not written by him, had been altered in a way he believed would harm his chances of retaining his seat.

Goodness, whatever was said?

And finally, this article came to our attention because it quotes one of the Team:

Mark Pack, the Liberal Democrats’ internet guru, argues that the site had a much better track record than most newspapers, when it comes to corrections.
“Wikipedia is probably more prone to errors than other sources, but it is also much more prone to correcting errors,” he says.
But he adds: “There is a tendency to only see it as acceptable to remove information if it is factually incorrect or extremely trivial.”

UPDATE: Via the medium of Twitter (naturally) we learn the views of Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales:

@markpack good quote in the bbc story – you are right about the strengths – and weaknesses of wikipedia bios

Read more by .
This entry was posted in News.
Advert

One Comment

  • Cheltenham Robin 6th Mar '09 - 6:20pm

    Martin Horwood’s entry was clearly being changed by tories who kept adding references to the tory PPC.

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • PM
    Lib Dems could be a little bolder by actually discussing what goes on in the EU! Those who are in favour of rejoining should be prepared to do that https:/...
  • Jenny Barnes
    It suits those who benefit from immigrants providing cheap labour in areas like hospitality or the NHS to foreground small boats and asylum seekers, rather than...
  • Jenny Barnes
    NI is income tax by another name, so putting it together with income tax makes sense. NI is not put in a fund to pay future pensions. Today's pensions are paid ...
  • Jana
    @Ruth Bright “… just to be clear, I think we should SUPPORT the siting of the centre at MOD Bicester” I assume from this that you do not live near MOD...
  • Jana
    “ Personally, I’d go even bolder and promise to roll employee national insurance into income tax, scrapping the system where landlords and wealthier pension...