Citizens’ Encyclopædia

Wikipedia was said to be an utopia and that it shouldn’t have worked. The early critics said that it would succumb in vandalism, but they were wrong. The major issues with the quality of Wikipedia have little to do with vandalism. In fact, with the new “approval” method of anonymous edits (which would soon be used), it would be even less visible vandalism.

The major quality problems of Wikipedia stem from other issues:

First of all, the need of professional copy-editing. Wikipedia is full of clumsy editing and a mishmash of trivia and valid information, all scotch taped together in a Frankenstein-like monster article. The number of well-written articles has increased a lot in the last year, but in the same time, the number of articles has exploded and most of the new ones are written by ‘new’ editors who don’t know the style or the standards of Wikipedia.

Then, for some articles, the nationalists (both trolls or non-trolls) are a real nuisance. This is especially true for the articles concerning Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Basically, for hundreds of years, the people of those countries had their own version of the “truth” and now those truths are confronted. Perhaphs having one set of NPOV articles would help the nations understand each other, but this would take time.

The factual accuracy is also a problem, which was widely reported in the press, especially after the Siegenthaler scandal, but the press exaggerated its importance. Any non-trivial work of any nature is inherently inaccurate. The problem of Wikipedia is not citing sources: Wikipedia should emphasise the citing sources part more than it does now.

Digital Universe is supposed to be an encyclopedia project started by the dot-com entrepreneur Joe Firmage with the help of Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger. The wikipedia article on it says that:

On the basis of interviews given by the founders, the Digital Universe concept appears to be undergoing rapid evolution, so it may be difficult to give a fully self-consistent explanation of the goals of the founders.

So, basically, they haven’t decided yet how it should be, despite starting the project more than a year ago. On the other hand, they worked on their interface, which is complicated enough, so, it confuses the visitors and it won’t work in some browsers, such as Opera:

There has been an error.

You will be redirected to the page where you can contact our support and give us your feedback.

The interface software is a good example of what happens when programmers try to impress the PHBs instead of the users. The Digital Universe bureaucratic way of doing business, which includes meetings, secretaries, workflows, etc., is very different from the informal way of Wikipedia’s IRC leadership.

In fact, this appears to have pissed off Larry Sanger and hence his idea of starting his own expert-based fork right away. Sanger wanted that his project would be included in the Digital Universe Foundation, but it seems that no decision was taken yet.