Wikipedia is poisonous because of its many errors and where it is accurate it has simply stripped information out of accredited sources (such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica), in acts of plagiarism and naked piracy. The couple of attempts that I have made to correct errors (e.g. the false assertion that Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch came from Polperro, when he came from Bodmin and was famously associated with Fowey: his grandfather Jonathan Couch lived in Polperro)have been rejected by the editors. As an idea, maybe Wikipedia is a good one but it must have irreducible minimum standards and rigorous threshholds for assessment of accuracy - ah - Jimmy.
Moreover, because of all of the above, Wikipedia does not deserve to be top of the page for every internet search that one makes. Make it accurate and consistent and reliable; otherwise: bin it or ban it.
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I couldn't agree more, Nicholas. I have made quite a few corrections to entries myself, with citations, only to have them altered back to the original inaccuracies. Even worse is that you see on websites everywhere further copies of the Wiki-version, thus promulgating the mistakes and making them more acceptable to readers as "the truth".
ReplyDeletePrecisely, Charles. It's going to become a real problem. They say that the www is the work of the devil and, in respects like this, it is.
ReplyDeleteYet, after a month, your Quiller-Couch problem doesn't exist anymore.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad if you have solved theproblem but my main point remains that there are too many problems in the first place and that the publication lacks discipline, consistency and reliability.
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