Sunday, January 15, 2006

Bruce Schneier on Wikipedia accuracy

An astute observarion on the accuracy of information in Wikipedia:

Wired News quoting Bruce Schneier : "Similarly, Wikipedia's veracity problems are not a result of anonymous authors adding fabrications to entries. They're an inherent property of an information system with distributed accountability. People think of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, but it's not. We all trust Britannica entries to be correct because we know the reputation of that company, and by extension its editors and writers. On the other hand, we all should know that Wikipedia will contain a small amount of false information because no particular person is accountable for accuracy -- and that would be true even if you could mouse over each sentence and see the name of the person who wrote it."

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Dr Anton Chuvakin