My WIfe Was Right
Darling dear, please accept my humble apology.
Dear readers, you may wonder why the public declaration. Remember my post about the ad hominem arguments tossed about by boingboing and others? Thought not, but check that link and I'll continue.
I was checking my referrer logs and found that a Wikipedia entry was referring a small number of persons to this humble site. I followed it back and discovered, to my chagrin, that I had been cited in the article on Xeni Jardin.
Oh no. That wouldn't do. It was an editorial castigating the work of Jardin and others and not the stuff to be placed in an encyclopedia. I went to Wikipedia and said so.
And was sucked into a maelstrom. It was like watching a soap opera -- The Young and the Restless for a summer in the 80s. A sad story I'll relate another day -- where you can participate. And I did. Oh I did until I realized I was living in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and I was the Fireman's Wife.
I said my last piece. Just a shout into the emptiness about identity. Read it if you can find it in this mess. Then I closed the link. Never to return.
And came here to admit my error. My wife, a well respected scholar, had warned me long ago about Wikipedia. She knew the content wasn't peer reviewed or fact checked by disinterested parties. I gave her the usual netnerd geekspeek about the wonders of multitudes of experts keeping the entries on the straight-and-narrow.
I forgot Sturgeon's Law: "90% of everything is crud." In this case, I have to say I got down and rolled in the mud. I am sure I even carted in a couple of boatloads of fine Florida sand to make the mud extra irritating.
Wikipedia is only as good as its editors. The editors are only as good as they are willing to share their expertise for free. After "volunteering" for awhile today I realized most experts will have neither the time or desire to put up with every netnerd claiming equal status. Sooner or later we'll end up with only Sturgeon's lower 90%.
Wikipedia could improve by eliminating all entries for living persons. Maybe even allow entries only for those dead for more than 50 years. But that won't fix the core problem: any idiot can claim expertise at Wikipedia.
