The real problem with Wikipedia

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

According to many, Wikipedia’s biggest problem is that it can’t be trusted because anybody can edit it. Personally, I feel that the problem is that experts are allowed to edit it.

Hypercholesterolemia
Conditions with elevated concentrations of oxidized LDL particles, especially “small dense LDL” (sdLDL) particles, are associated with atheroma formation in the walls of arteries, a condition known as atherosclerosis, which is the principal cause of coronary heart disease and other forms of cardiovascular disease. In contrast, HDL particles (especially large HDL) have been identified as a mechanism by which cholesterol and inflammatory mediators can be removed from atheroma. Increased concentrations of HDL correlate with lower rates of atheroma progressions and even regression. The relation of cholesterol to CHD, termed the “lipid hypothesis,” is still hotly debated.

This is from the article on Cholesterol – from the ‘clinical significance’ section. I mean, really, is there anybody who hasn’t got a PhD in biology that understands all this? All I want to hear is if/why cholesterol is bad for you. ‘Hypercholesterolemia‘?? Why not just say ‘high blood cholesterol’?

Now, this is one of the easier articles (I picked it because I happened to have it opened in my browser), but there are tons out there that are a million times more complicated. (for instance, check out this section which has no introduction and almost no explanation. Compare it to the section before it, which is much better). That’s the problem with experts: they tend to lose sight of the overview and can only focus on details. But Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a textbook on transfinite recursion.

Then again, Wikipedia hasn’t been an encyclopaedia for a long time. Wikipedia’s is quickly becoming the largest collection of human knowledge there is. It’s got information on traditional encyclopaedic topics, movies, books, comics, everything. I guess having all this information available in one place is better than not having it available at all or having it available in a million different places.

Come to think of it.. Wikipedia is what the Internet should have been: A big collection of information. The Internet, instead, has become something entirely different: A big collection of advertisements. I guess Wikipedia isn’t so bad.