Thursday, January 25, 2007

Writing a wrong

I noticed this Courant article about Wikipedia and couldn't resist mentioning it here.

The story is about Microsoft offering to pay someone to change the text in Wikipedia. And while that may not mean much to you, the whole concept of Wikipedia is a

free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, (but) requires articles to have a "neutral point of view"
So to offer someone money to change it, at minimum, looks bad. Anyway, I'm not particularly concerned about Microsoft's public image. They have plenty of money to deal with that. Rather, I just wanted to point out a problem with Wikipedia. Imagine this...

I've visited Wikipedia before, including the Cheshire homepage. While there, I had noticed that there were only five Council members (all at large) listed there. Obviously listing only "at large" members was wrong. So tonight I looked around the page a bit more and figured out how to edit "the box" which lists the names of Council members.

Having found how to edit "the box," I took the liberty to write a wrong... I added the names of the four District Council Members. And I listed our names above the names of the mere "at large council members."

Why?

I did it because everyone knows that District Council Members Rule! We're just cooler than "at large council members." It's that simple.

Tim White
Town Council, 4th District!!!

p.s. OK, OK... obviously I'm kidding about this post. It is a bit ridiculous. The real purpose of this post was just to let you know that you can go into Wikipedia and edit it as you like. People will read it. That's really important. It's a wonderful demonstration of the power of the internet.

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