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Different users, editors and rival encyclopedias see several reasons to criticize Wikipedia. A list of these reasons and responses to them is given below.
Criticisms by readers
Readers and rival encyclopedias give several reasons to criticize wikipedia.
Authenticity
Wikipedia's utility as a reference work has been questioned. The lack of authority and accountability are considered disqualifying factors by some people. For example, librarian Philip Bradley acknowledged in an interview with The Guardian that the concept behind the site was in theory a "lovely idea", but that he would not use it in practice and is "not aware of a single librarian who would. The main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data is reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all that goes out the window."
Response: People supporting the idea of Wikipedia counter these arguments by saying that Wikipedia is a more independent source than most traditional encyclopedias and that the reliability is potentially greater than that of a traditional source, since errors can be corrected immediately. However Wikipedia should not be completely relied upon for accuracy, and neither should any other source.
Robert McHenry, former editor in chief of Encyclopedia Britannica said:
- The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him.[1] (http://www.techcentralstation.com)
Systemic bias
Wikipedia's systemic bias of covering some topics in much greater depth than others is also considered significant, something that even the site's proponents admit. In an interview with The Guardian, the executive team of Encyclopædia Britannica noted that "people write of things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair." In reply, a user on the Wikipedia discussion board noted that the Wikipedia entry on Tony Blair still was several times longer than the corresponding entry in Encyclopædia Britannica. It is also noted that Wikipedia tends to cover topics that might not be included at all in a print encyclopedia.
Response : A common Wikipedia maxim is "Out of mediocrity, excellence." The site founder admits that the variation in quality between different articles and topics is significant, but considers the average quality "pretty good", and getting better by the day. The "competing" Encyclopædia Britannica claims it does not feel threatened. "The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection; that premise is completely unproven," said the reference work's executive editor, Ted Pappas, to The Guardian. It should be noted, however, that Wikipedia articles have been referenced in enhanced perspectives provided on-line in the journal Science, one of the most prestigious (and unmercifully selective) scientific publications in the world. The first of these perspectives to provide a hyperlink to Wikipedia was "A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light", by Hartmut Linden, in the August 2, 2002 issue. Since then, dozens of enhanced perspectives have provided hyperlinks to Wikipedia. A search on "Wikipedia" in Science's web site [2] (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/search?volume=&firstpage=&DOI=&author1=&author2=&titleabstract=&fulltext=wikipedia&fmonth=Oct&fyear=1995&tmonth=Dec&tyear=2004&hits=100&sendit.x=0&sendit.y=0) turns up 43 instances as of December 10, 2004, with the perspective "Turning on a Dime", by Ulrike K. Müller and David Lentink, as the latest in that date range.
Google bomb
Finally, by containing a large number of internally linked pages, it receives high rankings from Google. This can also result in high rankings for the often identical Wikipedia mirrors. This makes it more likely that web searches will return identical results.
Criticism by editors
Sometimes the people working on wikipedia themselves feel there are problems.
Flame wars
Some people who are familiar with interactions between individuals on Wikipedia and UseNet predict that
- ”Wikipedia is going to end up like Usenet — just a bunch of flame wars.”
Response: This is a bit more of a problem, but it is dealt with fairly handily by the social mores of Wikipedia, aka Wikiquette.
Usenet lacks at least two features that are absolutely essential to Wikipedia's success: (1) on Usenet, you can't edit other people's work, while we can here on Wikipedia, thereby encouraging creative and collegial collaboration; or more strongly, on Wikipedia, there's no such thing as "other people's work", because there's no ownership of information; (2) Unlike Wikipedia, Usenet does not have the possibility of enforcing community-agreed standards. Moreover, Usenet is a debate forum. Wikipedia is, very self-consciously, an encyclopedia project! This provides at least some agreement on What Wikipedia is not.
Disputes become tedious battles of persistence
Several contributors have complained that editing Wikipedia is very tedious in case of conflicts and that fanatic contributors with idionsyncractic, non-mainstream, non-scientific belief systems can push their point of view because nobody has the time and energy to fight them. Partly in response to his battles with followers of Lyndon LaRouche, one prolific, high profile contributor, Adam Carr Ph.D. (http://www.adam-carr.net/), stated in October 2004 that he would scale down his contributions to Wikipedia considerably (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Adam_Carr) because of, what he considers, the too open nature of Wikipedia.
External links
This article incorporates text from the GFDL Wikipedia article Wikipedia:Replies to common objections (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections).
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