Wikipedia interview with me on BBC Radio 4 "PM", this afternoon around 5:40pm.

[reddragdiva]

I've been grabbed to be a last-second plug-in media whore for Wikipedia this afternoon — BBC Radio 4 PM, around 5:40pm or so. (That'll be one late lunch!) It'll be on the subject of recent changes to Wikipedia and the current storm in a teacup. If someone could please record it (or grab the RealAudio or MPEG2 stream), I would be most grateful.

Update: I'm now on at 5:35pm (ish). Better practice my soundbites!

Update 2: Well, that was surprisingly fluffy, and I actually managed to correct the common factual errors — (a) we're not blocking all anonymous contribution, only creating new articles and (b) it wasn't because of Siegenthaler. (Who Jimbo says, by the way, is a very good fellow and has worked hard for free speech, but just needs to get up to speed on the Information Super-Sewer.) It's roughly from 36'37" to 41'00" in today's programme. Copy here (1.7 MB Ogg).

Comments

Re: devil's advocacy ahoy

[reddragdiva]

It's not disingenuous; Wikipedia is clearly useful to someone, or it wouldn't be top 40, but it's also clearly beta (fully-featured, usable and testable, bugs as far as the eye can see, needs a lot of work). What it really needs is big black and yellow 1995-style UNDER CONSTRUCTION GIFs on most articles.

"Are you saying that the Wikipedia system only works for stuff that's well-covered elsewhere, and that less popular entries might as well be regarded as fiction?"

As less reliable; certainly no more fictitious than any other Internet or printed source you don't check up on yourself, signed or not. The readers are editors and the editors are readers; so stuff people are interested in will get a lot of eyes, and stuff they aren't interested in won't get a lot of eyes.

For citation, always cite the particular revision you're citing. In an ideal world, this will have a pile of references attached. For serious work, cite originals, not a predigested secondary or tertiary source.

Wikipedia is not here to think for the reader. The scary thing is it shows by example how unreliable other sources can be, polished surface or no.