[FFmpeg-cvslog] Wikipedia (was: Re: [ffmpeg.org]: r300 - trunk/src/contact)

[Diego Biurrun]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 01:25:23AM +0100, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 12:44:53AM +0100, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:01:28PM +0100, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > > On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 08:13:26PM +0000, Robert Swain wrote:
> > > > 2009/2/25 Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at>:
> > > > > On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 08:56:57PM +0100, superdump wrote:
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Log:
> > > > >
> > > > >> The thread hijacking article on wikipedia was removed because it didn't contain
> > > > >> any citations.
> > > > >
> > > > > ROTFL
> > > > > next they remove the article on evolution because it doesnt contain a
> > > > > citation of the bible
> > > > 
> > > > That was my thinking too, though worded differently. Why can't
> > > > wikipedia be _the_ point of reference? Why does everything have to be
> > > > cited? 
> > > 
> > > Thats because wiki isnt [...]
> > 
> > Your habit of referring to Wikipedia as "wiki" makes as much sense
> > as referring to ffmpeg as "mpeg" or "software".
> 
> the habit of people refering to sodium chlorid as salt or to kilo gramm
> as kilo also makes no "sense". Still as long as something is commonly
> used and understood in the context used there is no problem.

Still Wikipedia is far from the only wiki, there will always be the
multimedia wiki :)

> > > i mean if i want to know something about chemistry id ask a chemist or
> > > read a book/paper writen by a chemist.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, in my experience, these books come with a set of errors
> > of their own and the amount of errors they contain is no less than
> > Wikipedia, on the contrary.
> > 
> > Note that I base my judgement on Wikipedia articles and books about math
> > and computer science, but quality varies greatly among fields AFAICT.
> 
> There are certainly books that are far worse than wikipedia, a book is as
> good as the author. But one does not (volunteerly) read books that are of
> poor quality or by incompetent authors, 

I was not referring to poor quality books, nor to incompetent authors.

If I look at the documentation you write, then, hmmm, it's soso on a good
day and poor on a bad one.  That does not make you incompetent.

I'll give you a good example, take Juraj Hromkovic, an ex-professor of
mine:
http://www.ite.ethz.ch/people/host/jhromkov/index

He wrote a lot of books, mostly about theoretical CS, and one I read in
great detail is the following:
http://www.springer.com/computer/hardware/book/978-3-540-44134-2

It is a great book, but alas, it has bugs, even in its 2.5th edition and
no errata are available.

I sent him a list of errors I found, but they never got published.  I'm
afraid the good man is just too busy.  So some of the proofs remain
flawed, which is a shame.  And note that I am most definitely not saying
it is a bad book, on the contrary.

I found less errors in the proofs I read on Wikipedia and the ones I
found are now fixed.  Would I take everything I read on Wikipedia as
gospel?  Of course not.

Just like with any other source of information, you need to have the
knowledge and ability to judge its quality and reliability.  If you
have that, Wikipedia is a godsend.  I honestly cannot imagine what I
would do without it nowadays...

> as examples if you want to know about C there is that K&R book and there is
> the ISO spec compare this to what wikipedia says about C.
> Now you surely can pick up some "learn C in X days" book written by someone
> who wrote similar books for 200 other things and no doubt that will be worse
> but the key point is with books you have a choice, with wikipedia you do not.
> you cant (easily) pick the wikipedia ariticle about C that has been written
> 3 years ago by someone who knew C you rather see what the much larger army
> of java propoganda belivers made out of it ...

I never read that article.

Diego