Know It All

Stacy Schiff’s main point in the article “Know It All” was how “Nupedia” became “Wikipedia”, its achievement, and people’s views about it. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia said he is on a mission to distribute a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet in their own language. So anyone who has Internet can create a Wikipedia entry or edit one that already exists. Some people take this to their advantage and change things. For example, senators from House Representatives are now banned from visiting Wikipedia, because many of them tried changing facts about them and what they do. Others also tried making false statements and insulting certain people like the president. Actions were taken to stop abuse and vandalism.

“Even Eric Raymond, the open-source pioneer whose work inspired Wales, argues that “ ‘disaster’ is not too strong a word” for Wikipedia. In his view, the site is “infested with moonbats.” (Think hobgoblins of little minds, varsity division.) He has found his corrections to entries on science fiction dismantled by users who evidently felt that he was trespassing on their terrain. “The more you look at what some of the Wikipedia contributors have done, the better Britannica looks,” Raymond said. He believes that the open-source model is simply inapplicable to an encyclopedia. For software, there is an objective standard: either it works or it doesn’t. There is no such test for truth.”

I think that this passage gives a good insight on how people write inappropriate things that make Wikipedia seem unprofessional, and makes Britannica a better encyclopedia. Schiff said that some entries look like they were written by a seventh grader, and people don’t really want to rely on information from Wikipedia. So Wales, idea of letting anyone create an entry in Wikipedia was not a good idea, but the idea of having rules and a mediation committee to block certain people and be aware of editing any entries that have misspelled words or bad grammar, is a good idea to make the Wikipedia more presentable and have people want to use it instead of Britannica.

Britannica gives pictures, advertisement, and it gives options of shopping browsing, blogs, and log in place. Wikipedia’s homepage has no pictures or advertisements. It gives the user a choice of languages any user would want when they look up information. And then it just has a search bar at the bottom. Once you enter what information you need, then it pops up in paragraphs. In Britannica, when you enter a topic, they give you many choices that has to do with what you entered, but it might not be exactly what you are looking for. For example: I typed in Frelon Dance and it just gave me every type of dance except frelon. When I typed it into Wikipedia, it gave me no entries, but it gave suggestions. It gave me the link about Kalamazoo College and what they offer. Britannica also gives very little information about any topic you ask for. Wikipedia expands and tells you everything you need to know.