Thoughts on Wikipedia

February 2007

Photo by [email protected]

Wikipedia had the potential to be a great and wonderful resource, perhaps it still owns that possibility. One thing that would benefit it strongly is the exercising is a control of content.

The one real problem that found with Wikipedia is not the information that it provides, rather it is the misinformation presented plainly as fact. When looking up C. A. R. Hoare's quicksort algorithm I found three or more forms of the routine on the Wikipedia page. I decided to refamiliarize myself with the one I would use in a college assignment. In the pseudo code on the wikipedia page one fairly obvious error, probably inserted as an act of vandalism, stuck out like a sore thumb. A second was more subtle and took some time to track down, through hand tracing. My response was to correct the pseudo code, but I am always going to wonder, when I read something on Wikipedia, "How [in]correct is this?"

In fairness I do appreciate the efforts of those who positively contribute to Wikipedia and other internet communities.

While Wikipedia is useful, it is unlike Encyclopaedia Britannica, in as much as it just can't be blindly trusted.

Incidentally,

1. If you are looking for quicksort, you are welcome to my C++ example that is here for download; and
2. It took about a month until the corrections submitted were included in the article.