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0 pointsSteveJS14y ago0 comments

Wikipedia's accidental mission to ensure the stability and propagation of "popular misconceptions" is not very compelling.

I understand it is the current tradeoff for something as great as wikipedia. But that doesn't mean the criticism is invalid.

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tptacek14y ago· 1 in thread

I don't understand the criticism.

Wikipedia is a terrible venue to correct "popular misconceptions". If a misconception about the evidence against the Haymarket Anarchists is indeed embedded into the best known books about the event, the correction of that misconception merits more than a sentence or two in an encyclopedia!

And indeed the author here agrees, because he went on to write an authoritative text about the event, which will be cited by the encyclopedia.

SteveJSOP14y ago

The criticism is that writing an authoritative book or peer reviewed article is demonstrably insufficient in the face of a large body of incorrect secondary material and active editorial control.

I think it uncontroversial to claim Wikipedia is a knowledge base with a bias toward stability of mature articles over correctness. It's a tradeoff.

I believe your argument is that it is the right tradeoff. That may be true, but that opinion fails to be properly cited, and does not have a large body of secondary sources backing it up. :-)

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