@Robert Gentel,
Quote:People also like to sneer about Wikipedia, and the internet as a whole, but I don't share that sentiment at all . . .
I agree with that, however, i do have problems with Wikipedia as regards their articles on history. I will give two examples, but first i would point out that i have tried, without being one of their editors, to point out errors to them many time in the past, literally for years, and nothing has been done.
In one case that i still recall clearly, they had an article about the Antikythera device, which is reasonably considered to be the world's first computer, and is more than 2000 years old. I've not visited that article for about six months, but at that time, it had still not been revised. The article uses almost wholesale the text of the news report i first read on the subject (Reuters, BBC? . . . i don't recall now). It claims that the device was found in the wreck of a ship which was carrying booty back to Rome for a triumph to be celebrated by Julius Caesar. Although i always use Iulius Caesar, because the letter "J" did not exist at that time, that was not what i criticized. The article says that the wreck dated to from 80 BCE to 150 BCE. Iulius Caesar was not alive in 150 BCE. His date of birth is not certain, it was between 102 and 100 BCE. But even if one accepts 80 BCE as the date of the wreck, the story is not plausible. In 80 BCE, Caesar had done nothing for which the Senate would have voted him a triumph, so that part of the story is obviously wrong.
So i wrote a description of my objection to their article on the comments page. I'm never surprised that journalists get things like this wrong, it's very common. I was greatly amused that journalists suddenly became aware of the battle the Serbs fought against the Turks in Kosovo in 1389 (perhaps, the date is disputed). It seemed to be news to them that the Serbs cherish a greivance about Kosovo and have done for more than 600 years.
However, Wikipedia, if it has any claim to being a reliable source, should do better than that. When i last checked, nothing had been done about the gross error in that article, which in fact inferentially contradicts their main article about Iulius Caesar.
The second example regards the Norse in Greenland and North America. Their article on Bjarni Herjolfsson has some serious problems, as do their articles on all of the other main players in the story of the Norse in North America. Bjarni Herjolfsson is the first European to sight North America for which there is a reliable historical record (there are inferential passages in sagas that there might have been one or more who preceded him, but they are dubious and the Bjarni Herjolfsson voyage is not). It is obvious from their article that whoever wrote it did a sloppy job, and just relied upon the Groenlendiga Saga (the Greenlander's Story), which is valuable for providing information which appears in no other saga sources, and a Greenlander's perspective on matters which otherwise have an Icelander prejudice, but it is wholely contradicted on many important points by the three other, very reliable sources--The Short Saga (a fragment of the Erik the Red saga which is derived either from the oldest recension, or even from the very first written version of the saga), the Erik the Red Saga (more or less complete, but from much later recensions than the Short Saga) and the Thorfinn Karlsefni saga. The most glaringly error in the Wikipedia articles on the people involved is that they treat the voyage in about 1000 CE to attempt to find Leif Eriksson's Vinland (it failed to find it) as three separate voyages--and the Groenlendiga Saga is the only source which does that. All of the other sources (and it is mentioned in the Floamanna Saga, the Islendignabok and the Landnammabok) show that the saga skalds knew that it was one voyage by three expeditions pooling their resources, and involving four ships.
Disgusted with the failure of any response to passages i had written on comments pages of other articles, i sent an e-mail to them, hoping to get someone's attention. I cited two scholarly sources on the saga records, both of which were focused on the Norse in Greenland and North America based on the evidence of the saga sources. I got no response, and the last time i looked at any of those articles (about a week ago), they continued to provide erroneous information.
I realize these are not big deals to people who are not interested in history, but they are important to those who are, and in two other forums devoted to history in which i read and occasionally post, it is taken as a matter of course that Wikipedia is a dubious source. I usually only use it for dates and for the spelling of names, or to get an outline from which i can do further research from more reliable sources.
Quote: . . . and in studies Wikipedia is as accurate as any published encyclopedia . . .
That's an alarming thought, and does not inspire confidence in me. It may be only in the area of history that Wikipedia has so many warts, but i doubt it. I am reminded of an anecdote by Carl Sagan. He comments that with regard to Immanuel Velkiovsky (the most notorious modern catastrophist), his astronomy was utter bullshit, but he (Sagan) has always been impressed by his knowledge of ancient literature. Sagan was at a faculty get together and was chatting with a gentleman who was expert in ancient literature, when the subject of Velikovsky's
Worlds in Collision came up. The other professor told Sagan that, of course, Velikovsky's references to ancient literature were utter bullshit, but that he (the other professor) had always been impressed by Velikovsky's knowledge of astronomy.
That's why i find Wikipedia suspect as a source for many subjects, and not just history. If you want to get the geneology of a royal family in European history straight in your mind, by all means, use Wikipedia--but don't rely on their interpretive passages about the history of those royal families.
I was impressed just yesterday, though, to note that they have cleaned up their article about William Bligh and the mutiny on
HMAV Bounty. Then i clicked on a link to Sir John Barrow, whose 1831 book was the basis for the Nordhoff and Hall trilogy of novels about the mutiny, and is the source for the picture of Bligh as an ogre. That article has not been revised, and does not comment on the inaccuracy of Barrow's book. Oh well . . .