Wikipedia fails as an encyclopedia, to science’s detriment
The author of the editorial comments, &quot;Disturbingly, all of the worst entries I have ever read have been in the sciences. Wander off the big ideas in the sciences, and you&#x27;re likely to run into entries that are excessively technical and provide almost no context, making them effectively incomprehensible.&quot;<p>I am a Wikipedian. I have been editing various articles since 2010. I have won the Million Award[1] twice for major improvements to high-traffic articles. In the sciences I follow most closely in my own research, the Wikipedia articles are even worse than &quot;excessively technical and provide almost no context,&quot; and are often simply wrong. The worst part is that many Wikipedia articles about science are wrong more because of omission of things that every working scientist in each field knows than because of miscopying of correct statements about science. Most Wikipedia articles are still very thinly sourced, and most are based only on sources that appear online, and many of those sources are not from professionally edited publications.<p>I think it would be a good idea for a rich philanthropist to fund a Free Online Encyclopedia X Prize to see what combination of organizational, technological, and other factors could build a team of encyclopedia-compilers that could put together a better free, online encyclopedia than Wikipedia. Right now, Wikipedia gets a lot of external funding, but it has a surprisingly tiny number of active editors,[2] and the Wikimedia Foundation strategic plan still calls for more improvement of content.[3] I think Wikipedia has exceeded everyone&#x27;s expectations, and I see people who have access to better scholarly resources use it almost every time I&#x27;m with other scholars, but I also think Wikipedia today is like Excite or Lycos in 1998: the best available service in its category, but rather easily displaced by something as good as, say, AltaVista. There is still a lot of space to make a much better free, online encyclopedia, and some friendly competition might make Wikipedia a whole lot better too.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Million_Award" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Million_Award</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number_of_editors" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number_o...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikimediafoundation.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikimediafoundation.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikimedia_Movement_Stra...</a>