Sin duda alguna, Wikipedia es hoy una fuente de referencia obligada.
Otra cosa es que sus artículos sean fiables en todos y cada uno de los asuntos que trata, y que lo sean en todas y cada una de las lenguas en que lo hace.
Por eso es de agradecer que hoy se haga pública (Who's Messing with Wikipedia? The back-and-forth behind controversial entries could help reveal their true value) la existencia de WikiDashboard.
Se trata de una herramienta desarrollada por Ed Chi en PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), que permite rastrear y discutir quien, cuando y en qué circunstancias ha escrito o modificado lo que aparece en Wikipedia.
Esto dice Ed Chi:
We are pleased to announce the release of our first research prototype of a social dynamic analysis tool for Wikipedia called WikiDashboard.
The idea is that if we provide social transparency and enable attribution of work to individual workers in Wikipedia, then this will eventually result in increased credibility and trust in the page content, and therefore higher levels of trust in Wikipedia.
Wikipedia itself keeps track of these studies and openly discusses them here, which is a form of social transparency itself. However, even Wales himself have been quoted as saying that "while Wikipedia is useful for many things, he would like to make it known that he does not recommend it to college students for serious research." Indeed, the standard complaint I often hear about Wikipedia is that because of its editorial policy (anyone can edit anything), it is an unreliable source of information.
Bienvenida sea esta nueva herramienta, que sin duda ayudará a olvidar algunos detalles menos aceptables del trabajo de Jimmy Wales como fundador de Wikipedia, al trampear él mismo la edición de su biografía, ocultando aspectos que otros publicaron (Stacy Schiff, Know it All. Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?).
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