Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-22/Book review

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"the management attacked the methodology of the study, rather than fixed the problem." - umm, if the methodology was indeed wrong, then that's quite correct. This phrase is almost an inversion of scholarship - they're being accused of serious analytic thought, rather than a marketing/PR quick-fix! -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 00:10, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I read this as "rather than fixing the undeniable errors, the management was mostly concerned about how they were counted in comparison to the competitor". (And as we all know, Nature stood by its study.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:22, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Wait a minute, "rather than fixing" - it can hardly be that they said they WOULD NOT fix errors. That would be absurd. I assume you mean something along the lines of rather than focusing on the errors being fixed in the future. Which is my point, about a marketing/PR approach, contrasted to disputing if the rating of errors was being done reasonably. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 00:39, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand why actually fixing errors (i.e. undeniably improving the product) should be called a "marketing/PR" approach, if that is your point.

As it happens, just two weeks ago I noticed that an error I had posted at WP:EBE in October 2005 - two months before the Nature study came out - is still not corrected in the online Britannica. To be fair, other errors have been fixed much sooner after they appeared on that page; I guess it depends on who needs to be contacted to authorize a fix. But if they have such a process (specific people who wrote an article years ago have to be reached and respond, etc.) that would mean that for Britannica, even fixing clear errors comes at a cost.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:16, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

In both cases -- in 1960, & again in 2005 -- when errors were reported in the Encyclopædia Britannica, instead of admitting to the problems & promising to fix them, its management instead replied that the problem was not in Britannica, but in the study. In 1960, they accused Einbinder of cherry-picking from their thousands of articles & singling out the comparatively few that were missed somehow by editorial review. In 2005, they claimed that where Nature found errors, they were instead differences in opinion or interpretation of facts. Reading about the earlier incident, I could not help but think of the 2005 study. These two identical responses leads me to suspect that EB management believes it is more cost-efficient to treat the inevitable errors in its work as public relations issues than to simply fix them! If my understanding is correct, this reflects sadly on Encyclopædia Britannica. (And as a post script, Einbinder did examine the 1964 release of Britannica to see how they handled his criticisms: some articles were lightly revised, a few were more thoroughly revised, but far more appeared without any changes whatever.) -- llywrch (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The first paragraph mentions "a list of 666 articles in the 1958 edition which were unchanged from the earlier ninth and eleventh editions, completed, respectively, in 1889 and 1911." Is it possible for Wikipedia to have a page listing those 666 articles?
—Wavelength (talk) 01:12, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I no longer have the book. (I borrowed the copy I read through my public library's Interlibrary Loan services.) -- llywrch (talk) 01:37, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

If you wanted to see a list of articles that stay unchanged for a long time on Wikipedia, check out Wikipedia:Dusty articles. Svick (talk) 23:11, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

• interesting review. One small correction right now: stubs don't have to be useless. As a note, where I have fully checked articles copied off old PD sources against modern sources, I haven't found any problems. —innotata 03:14, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for defending good stubs!

How good is the review mechanism, if there is one, for old PD articles? Would be great to know which of those articles have been fact-checked and approved by one or more editors. --Chriswaterguy talk 05:43, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Your guess is as good as mine. :-\ llywrch (talk) 23:11, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography#Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography (permanent link here).
—Wavelength (talk) 17:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm very fond of Einbinder, and use him to make my book to argue how reference works (including Wikipedia) can serve as a flashpoint for larger social anxieties about technological and social change. There's many fascinating parallels one might draw with WP. Here's a quote I like: "When a work is as prominent as the Britannica, it is only natural that it's real and imaginary faults should attract the attention of critics, cranks and querulous eccentrics who have been smitten by a desire to improve this familiar institution of scholarship. As an august symbol of authority, it is an attractive target for critics; and since it is continually cited as a source of information, its treatment of controversial questions has frequently provoked individuals whose ideas and beliefs have been cited." \acite[58]{Einbinder1964mb} -Reagle (talk) 12:55, 29 November 2010 (UTC)