Thursday, June 23, 2016

'Consensus favors familiar myths': the problem with Wikipedia


"Wikipedia relies on “consensus” as the final arbiter of content, rather than a ruling board of supposedly expert editors, as in, say, the Columbia Encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s continual give-and-take corrections work well for math and science, less well for history and literature where consensus is sometimes ill-informed. Dubious romantic or heroic stories about larger-than-life figures like W.B. Yeats or Ernest Hemingway cannot be dislodged because consensus favors familiar myths."


~ Edward Mendelson, from 'In the Depths of the Digital Age'
The New York Review of Books
June 23 2016

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/06/23/depths-of-the-digital-age/

(Edward Mendelson is, by the way, the literary executor of WH Auden.)

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