Anti-Wikipedia Links
The community of people who criticize Wikipedia form an interesting culture, as I noted earlier. If you want the links to do the research yourself, here’s some places to start.
- The Onion, “Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence“: The first Onion piece that’s actually made me LOL in years. “Did Betsy Ross, as legend has it, really have the biggest boobies in the New World?”
- ASCII: Jason Scott’s weblog. Jason’s done some amazing work with his BBS Documentary, his collection of text files, and he wrote a great post explaining why his documentary is Creative Commons-licensed, complete with a followup. But that’s not why I mention him…
- Jason Scott’s also written the most definitive critique of Wikipedia policy, here hosted by the Internet Archive.
- I mentioned Stacy Schiff’s New Yorker article on Wikipedia, but this week’s New Yorker features an article on the rise of amateurs that’s really just a gloss on the most recent Pew Report on blogging. Apparently, most people want to use communication tools to communicate, but a few want to do journalism or make money.
- Finally ,Ikkyu2’s Wikipedia user page, complete with a list of what’s wrong with Wikipedia. See also LiveJournal and a phenomenal history of Ask MetaFilter answers.