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SLG
Born Again..........and still Scottish!
Joined: 16 Sep 2005
Posts: 5515
Location: Dùn Eideann
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 Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 2:43 pm Post subject: Wikipedia |
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Wikipedia is a resource that I've used quite a lot and has been quoted on this forum to back up arguments. This is a report from Nature comparing the accuracy of Wikipedia on a range of scientific subjects to that of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It comes out pretty well. I'm not sure how much of a link you can make with more controversial political subjects, and there will always be some errors, but I would expect the accuracy to hold up. There are also Scots and Gaelic versions of wikipedia which due to the smaller numbers of contributors the accuracy for new articles is much more questionable, but most are copies from the English anyway.
| Quote: | Internet encyclopaedias go head to head
Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds.
Jim Giles
One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a much-used resource. But it is also controversial: if anyone can edit entries, how do users know if Wikipedia is as accurate as established sources such as Encyclopaedia Britannica?
Several recent cases have highlighted the potential problems. One article was revealed as falsely suggesting that a former assistant to US Senator Robert Kennedy may have been involved in his assassination. And podcasting pioneer Adam Curry has been accused of editing the entry on podcasting to remove references to competitors' work. Curry says he merely thought he was making the entry more accurate.
However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.
The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.
Considering how Wikipedia articles are written, that result might seem surprising. A solar physicist could, for example, work on the entry on the Sun, but would have the same status as a contributor without an academic background. Disputes about content are usually resolved by discussion among users.
But Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and president of the encyclopaedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation of St Petersburg, Florida, says the finding shows the potential of Wikipedia. "I'm pleased," he says. "Our goal is to get to Britannica quality, or better."
Wikipedia is growing fast. The encyclopaedia has added 3.7 million articles in 200 languages since it was founded in 2001. The English version has more than 45,000 registered users, and added about 1,500 new articles every day of October 2005. Wikipedia has become the 37th most visited website, according to Alexa, a web ranking service.
But critics have raised concerns about the site's increasing influence, questioning whether multiple, unpaid editors can match paid professionals for accuracy. Writing in the online magazine TCS last year, former Britannica editor Robert McHenry declared one Wikipedia entry — on US founding father Alexander Hamilton — as "what might be expected of a high-school student". Opening up the editing process to all, regardless of expertise, means that reliability can never be ensured, he concluded.
Yet Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.
Editors at Britannica would not discuss the findings, but say their own studies of Wikipedia have uncovered numerous flaws. "We have nothing against Wikipedia," says Tom Panelas, director of corporate communications at the company's headquarters in Chicago. "But it is not the case that errors creep in on an occasional basis or that a couple of articles are poorly written. There are lots of articles in that condition. They need a good editor."
Several Nature reviewers agreed with Panelas' point on readability, commenting that the Wikipedia article they reviewed was poorly structured and confusing. This criticism is common among information scientists, who also point to other problems with article quality, such as undue prominence given to controversial scientific theories. But Michael Twidale, an information scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that Wikipedia's strongest suit is the speed at which it can updated, a factor not considered by Nature's reviewers.
"People will find it shocking to see how many errors there are in Britannica," Twidale adds. "Print encyclopaedias are often set up as the gold standards of information quality against which the failings of faster or cheaper resources can be compared. These findings remind us that we have an 18-carat standard, not a 24-carat one."
The most error-strewn article, that on Dmitry Mendeleev, co-creator of the periodic table, illustrates this. Michael Gordin, a science historian at Princeton University who wrote a 2004 book on Mendeleev, identified 19 errors in Wikipedia and 8 in Britannica. These range from minor mistakes, such as describing Mendeleev as the 14th child in his family when he was the 13th, to more significant inaccuracies. Wikipedia, for example, incorrectly describes how Mendeleev's work relates to that of British chemist John Dalton. "Who wrote this stuff?" asked another reviewer. "Do they bother to check with experts?"
But to improve Wikipedia, Wales is not so much interested in checking articles with experts as getting them to write the articles in the first place.
As well as comparing the two encyclopaedias, Nature surveyed more than 1,000 Nature authors and found that although more than 70% had heard of Wikipedia and 17% of those consulted it on a weekly basis, less than 10% help to update it. The steady trickle of scientists who have contributed to articles describe the experience as rewarding, if occasionally frustrating.
Greater involvement by scientists would lead to a "multiplier effect", says Wales. Most entries are edited by enthusiasts, and the addition of a researcher can boost article quality hugely. "Experts can help write specifics in a nuanced way," he says.
Wales also plans to introduce a 'stable' version of each entry. Once an article reaches a specific quality threshold it will be tagged as stable. Further edits will be made to a separate 'live' version that would replace the stable version when deemed to be a significant improvement. One method for determining that threshold, where users rate article quality, will be trialled early next year.
Additional research by Declan Butler, Jenny Hogan, Michael Hopkin, Mark Peplow and Tom Simonite. |
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azzuri
'Our Scotland' Fossil
Joined: 12 Sep 2005
Posts: 3787
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| Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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my favourite page on wikipedia:
see - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundskeeper_Willie
| Quote: | Groundskeeper Willie is a fictional character in the animated television comedy The Simpsons, voiced by Dan Castellaneta. He is the school groundskeeper for Springfield Elementary School. Willie is easily identifiable by his head of flaming red hair (receding) and beard as well as an exaggerated Scottish accent. He consumes Scotch whisky from a flask he keeps on his person.
His years of heavy work have given him amazing strength and a very muscular physique, which has been observed many times, like when he digs into a well to save Bart Simpson, who had fallen in, and the time he rescues Bart from a marauding timber wolf by wrestling it into submission. On an occasion when he had to crawl through narrow ventilation shafts to retrieve Bart's dog, Santa's Little Helper, Willie turns to Lunchlady Doris and asked "Have you got any grease?" She replies by saying, "Yes, yes we do". Willie (while ripping off his clothes) bellows "Then grease me up, woman!", to which she replies, "Okey-dokey."
Bart is not the most grateful child, however. He is more than willing to make Willie the butt of frequent jokes. One of these pranks, involving creamed corn and a pump, actually destroyed Willie's tarpaper shack on the edge of campus and broke his leg; Willie sought a violent revenge, but Lisa smoothed things over.
Sometimes, Willie wears a kilt, usually due to a formal occasion. As a true Scotsman, he does not wear anything under the kilt. At Scotchtoberfest, Bart attaches a number of balloons to Willie's kilt, which leads to the kilt flying up. The gathered crowd gasps and a woman faints. In response, Willie cried, "Ach! 'Tis no more than what God gave me, you puritan pukes!" In the second part of "Who Shot Mr. Burns?", Willie has his kilt on while being interviewed by the police. During the interview Willie uncrosses and then recrosses his legs. In response, the officers point a gun at Willie with a warning to stop doing that. The scene was a spoof of Sharon Stone's character's interrogation scene in the feature film Basic Instinct.
In the episode "Monty Can't Buy Me Love", Willie is re-united with his mother and father on the banks of Loch Ness in Scotland, where Mr. Burns leads a successful expedition to catch the Loch Ness Monster and bring it to Springfield. Willie tells Homer Simpson that his parents own a pub which still has the same pool table on which he was conceived, born, and educated. However, in the episode "I Love Lisa", Willie says his father was hanged for stealing a pig.
According to Superintendent Chalmers, Willie is an escaped patient from a mental hospital that Principal Skinner hired. According to Willie, he has worked at the school for 20 years, just as long as Principal Skinner, so he was likely hired soon after Skinner began his job.
At one time, Willie was engaged to Shary Bobbins (a parody of Mary Poppins), until she recovered her eyesight—at which point, in Willie's words, "suddenly the ugliest man in Glasgow wasn't good enough for her anymore."
Willie's hobbies include videotaping couples in cars, something which proves to the benefit of Homer Simpson when he is later wrongfully accused of sexual harassment. He says America thinks it's wrong but "every single Scottish person does it!"
Willie often drives a tractor called "Duchess", the make of which is also a Willy. However he also owns a James Bond-esque sports car that runs on high octane fuel and has a built in television transceiver.
Willie's nationality is also hinted to be the cause of his hostility. Example:
Willie: "Brothers and sisters are natural born enemies! Like Englishmen and Scots! And Welshmen and Scots! And Japanese and Scots! And Scots and other Scots! Lousy Scots! They ruin Scotland..."
Skinner: "You Scots sure are a contentious people."
Willie: "You just made an enemy for life!"
Willie has an older cousin named Gravedigger Billy. At the elementary school in the adjacent town of Shelbyville, there is a female groundskeeper who strongly resembles Willie. Willie's personal enemy is Seamus, another groundskeeper that speaks with a heavy Irish accent. The two blame each other for whatever goes wrong with their lives, and engage in fistfights every now and then. Seamus looks a lot like Willie, except that he is taller, thinner, and wears a hat.
In "Lard of the Dance" Homer pretends to be a Scot to distract Willie. When Homer claims to hail from "North Kilttown", Willie responds, "Noo fooling, I'm from North Kilttown! D'ye know Angus McLeod?". This goes on until Homer accuses Willie of not being Scottish. At that point, Willie realizes what Homer is up to and, enraged, physically attacks Homer, accusing him of stealing his "retirement grease". In this episode he is also seen bathing with nothing but Ajax and steel wool.
Willie claims to be deaf from a mishap with a boiler and reads lips (though somewhat unsuccessfully). He has also revealed that he wears contact lenses and has crippling arthritis in his index fingers, which he got "from space invaders" in 1977; however, Willie was not referring to the video game "Space Invaders".
One of his best-known quotes is "There's nary an animal alive that can outrun a greased Scotsman!". He was also responsible for labeling the French as "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys!". This is in a way quite ironic, considering the fact that the French and the Scots have quite a long friendship
Willie was once featured as a Freddy Krueger-like killer in the episode "Treehouse of Horror" . In the episode, he stalked Springfield Elementary students in their dreams. In another episode which parodied The Shining, he was killed by an axe blow to the back by Homer (like Scatman Crothers's character in the film). Later on that very episode, he was axed in the back again in a skit parodizing A Sound of Thunder by a talking Maggie. Finally, in the third segment, Principal Skinner axed Willy in the back, leading him to announce (as his last words) that he's "no good at this."
He is 6 ft 0 in (183 cm) tall. |
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