> cosmicpenguin.net

Was I too pessimistic in my view of Wikipedia? Nay-nay. New Scientist looks at the possible demise of Wikipedia.

I've always admired British politics - I love how its acceptable to shout things at the Prime Minister while he is talking to parliament. If they did that in the United States, the State of the Union address would be must-see-TV. Anyway, a row over the death date of Titian (the painter) spilled over into Wikipedia, as one politician misstated Titian's age at his death (He had him pegged at 90 years instead of 86), and an "overzealous" staffer changed the Wikipedia entry for Titian accordingly. I see two problems here - first that the staffer thought it was important enough that a trivial sentence in a larger statement about the economy be proven "correct", and secondly that he thought that nobody would notice that he changed the date. There are a million ways to add controversy to the article without resorting to blatant vandalism. Just further proof that you shouldn't take Wikipedia all that seriously.

This is scary stuff. I'm not down with people with an axe to grind on Wikipedia, but I would prefer that they grind it before action gets taken. Searching out groups of people by loose group affiliation and banning them doesn't seem very effective to me.

So, I've been working recently on the Wyoming WikiProject over at Wikipedia - in an effort to improve the Wyoming related pages. We've only categorized a small portion of the possible Wyoming associated articles, and its already an impressive list.