Scholarpedia.org

Garret sent this along about scholarpedia.org, and I thought I'd passed it on. He writes: "It's a wiki-formatted site called scholarpedia that attempts to address some of the primary criticisms of wikipedia by incorporating a peer-review function as well as what they term a 'curator.' The curator is responsible for the maintanance of individual articles." The link is scholarpedia.org.

I just had a quick look and the content seems to be relatively limited at the moment: that is, if you want to know about "quasiperiodic oscillation," it is a good place to look. It will be interesting to watch what happens with it.

Thinking about our discussion as well, I realized that perhaps there is a difference between defending wikipedia's content per se, and defending it as a social experiment. I happen to think (and there has been some research to back this up) that--without the interventions of hackers (like Thor's students)--the content would be surprisingly reliable, but I am not sure that reliability is the only basis upon which it should be judged. Granted, it is an encyclopedia and not an exercise in self-expression, but my hunch is that for some pages, wikipedia contributors can do a better job than the staff a more "expert" staff. Where wikipedia runs into trouble is with more controversial pages (like those dealing with climate change, for example). I also think the implicit defense of traditional media outlets, as if they were infallible, is ridiculous.

Sorry for the rant; I have been reading Andrew Keen's ghastly book (he has a blog here, though he attacks them mercilessly in his book), and had to vent. For the fairest characterization of the book that is humanly possible, see this New York Times review.