[FFmpeg-cvslog] Wikipedia (was: Re: [ffmpeg.org]: r300 - trunk/src/contact)

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 01:50:32AM +0100, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 01:25:23AM +0100, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 12:44:53AM +0100, Diego Biurrun wrote:
[...]
> > > > i mean if i want to know something about chemistry id ask a chemist or
> > > > read a book/paper writen by a chemist.
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately, in my experience, these books come with a set of errors
> > > of their own and the amount of errors they contain is no less than
> > > Wikipedia, on the contrary.
> > > 
> > > Note that I base my judgement on Wikipedia articles and books about math
> > > and computer science, but quality varies greatly among fields AFAICT.
> > 
> > There are certainly books that are far worse than wikipedia, a book is as
> > good as the author. But one does not (volunteerly) read books that are of
> > poor quality or by incompetent authors, 
> 
> I was not referring to poor quality books, nor to incompetent authors.
> 
> If I look at the documentation you write, then, hmmm, it's soso on a good
> day and poor on a bad one.  That does not make you incompetent.
> 
> I'll give you a good example, take Juraj Hromkovic, an ex-professor of
> mine:
> http://www.ite.ethz.ch/people/host/jhromkov/index
> 
> He wrote a lot of books, mostly about theoretical CS, and one I read in
> great detail is the following:
> http://www.springer.com/computer/hardware/book/978-3-540-44134-2
> 
> It is a great book, but alas, it has bugs, even in its 2.5th edition and
> no errata are available.
> 
> I sent him a list of errors I found, but they never got published.  I'm
> afraid the good man is just too busy.  So some of the proofs remain
> flawed, which is a shame.  And note that I am most definitely not saying
> it is a bad book, on the contrary.
> 
> I found less errors in the proofs I read on Wikipedia and the ones I
> found are now fixed.  Would I take everything I read on Wikipedia as
> gospel?  Of course not.
> 
> Just like with any other source of information, you need to have the
> knowledge and ability to judge its quality and reliability.  If you
> have that, Wikipedia is a godsend.  I honestly cannot imagine what I
> would do without it nowadays...

its sometimes easy to judge the reliability, and i never had much of a
problem to for example judge it for a website (that is written by one
author) but with wikip., information tends to be subtilely wrong, that is
correct things interspaced by subtile errors its a effect of the mix
of authors and lack of any kind of approval or review

on a normal webpage a single serious error in a fundamental area says
alot about the author and the rest of the page, as simple example take
"polysaturated fatty acids" on anything related to oils or fats or chemistry
on a wiki though finding something like that doesnt invalidate the rest
of the article ...
Also wikipedia is not neutral at all, when i read some article about recent
events in georgia or israel the german & english articles felt like placing
the blame strongly on different parties.

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Let us carefully observe those good qualities wherein our enemies excel us
and endeavor to excel them, by avoiding what is faulty, and imitating what
is excellent in them. -- Plutarch
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