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I am just an enthusiast. Don't feel too bad if my unprofessional comments make you angry.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

My experiment at the Wikipedia

I have loved Wikipedia since I learned about it. The Wiki concept allows broad readers to contribute and to review the submitted articles. I know the information is not as credible as Encyclopedia Britannica, but Wikipedia can be updated much faster. Furthermore, for popular topics, I hypothesize that the contents will be reviewed by many people including knowledgeable elites. The accuracy will very likely converge to an acceptable level.

As an experimentalist, I decided to test my hypothesis. I just put a new article titled "Mungo Lady" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mungo_Lady), a remain of a 26k-year-old female Homo sapiens discovered in Australia. Although I try to be an amateur historian, I am not familiar with this topic at all. The accuracy must be !@*^$#. Let's wait and see how fast this article can be modified. It will be too bad if some Australian high school students cite my mistakes for their homework assignments.

I have tried my best for an hour or so on this article. I briefly surveyed the literature to verify the information. Yes, one hour was too short for me to make it perfect. However, it is the responsibility of all the Wikipedia users to make it better, right?

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