[Air-L] using aoir researchers in non-academic paper on wikipedia

[Samuel Klein]

It's true, it's reflexive - one of the interesting effects of
wikipedia is that it motivates people who have begun editing the site
to take an active role in correcting perceived errors elsewhere in the
world...

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 9:18 AM, Mathieu O'Neil <oneil at homemail.com.au> wrote:

> criticism should respect the cardinal rule - "reliable sources".
> I based my comment on Essjay on a NYT article, which is linked to in the
> piece. If you have a more reliable source, please let me know.

Sure.  The NYT article has the same two problems : an inaccurate
claim, and no way to edit the article or provide effective feedback.
I offered that feedback to the original author back in the day.  It's
a lost cause trying to correct inaccuracies that get embedded into
presumed-reliable sources.  One reason it's not that WP isn't
considered one of those -- more transient information should be viewed
the same way.

> I think you are twisting my words a little when you describe my view as
> saying that "no one knows why WP is ranked so highly" on Google. What I said
> was: no one knows whether it is because of WP's link structure and because
> it is frequently updated, _or_ because Google tips the scales in its favour.

I mean : some people certainly do know.  I'm pretty sure Google does
not tip the scales in its favour, but don't rely on me -- ask someone
at Google.  Of course WP is a large part of the searchable web so some
algorithms have probable been changed as a result (they tried to rank
down mirrors of all sorts at one point, to reduce the *number of
times* copies of the same article showed up in results, including wp
mirrors.  I don't know more than that)

cheers,
SJ