wikipedia

The other night I gave a speech at the John Siegenthaler Center at Vanderbilt University in which I urged the new-media workshop students to look something up on Wikipedia, which is, of course, infallible. That drew a good laugh. Siegenthaler, unfortunately, wasn't appearing until later in the week, so I couldn't tease directly.

While working on a presentation today I was looking for some dates and stumbled across Wikipedia's Online Newspapers entry, which may be the worst page in the entire collection. What little information it has is riddled with inaccuracy. This probably is an illustration of the Cobbler's Children principle. Perhaps some J-prof could armtwist an undergrad into fixing it.

Fortunately we have Dave Carlson's Online Timeline, which is thorough and accurate.