Towards a Better Wikipedia

Pete writes “Wired has this
on the “Wikimania” event held in Boston. Can Wikipedia ever do enough to be taken seriously? Jimmy Wales also appeared as a guest on the NPR show “On-Point” which can be heard here.

“The founder of Wikipedia on Friday urged contributors to the free internet encyclopedia to put more emphasis on quality instead of quantity.

But even while Wikipedia’s vast scope exceeds that of traditional encyclopedias such as Britannica, Wales said Wikipedia would become even more valuable if entries were written less choppily, for example, or better identified their sources.

“Although we’ve always had this goal of Britannica quality or better, we’re not there yet,” he said. “We can no longer feel satisfied and happy when we see these (article) numbers going up…. We should continue to turn our attention away from growth and towards quality.””