Thursday, February 16, 2012

British library Wikipedian

I nearly commented on this but Andrew Orlowski got there first.

2 comments:

William M. Connolley said...

It would probably be better if you'd commented; El Rego is dishonest.

It replaces "in reviewing, improving and creating content on Wikipedia relating to British Library collections and AHRC-funded projects" with ""reviewing, improving and creating content" on the world's biggest collection of trivia". That is fine if your aim is entertaining fiction, but not if you're trying to inform people.

And "Wikipedia's recent role in the SOPA protests destroyed any claims the organisation may have to being an objective source. There are strict rules about donating public resources to political organisations." is just silly.

Edward Ockham said...

>>That is fine if your aim is entertaining fiction, but not if you're trying to inform people.
<<

I think this was de re not de dicto. Of course the Library did not use the words 'world's biggest collection of trivia', so it is false de dicto. But they used the proper name 'Wikipedia' which does indeed refer to the world's biggest collection of trivia, so it is true de re. That's quite a good way of illustrating this important philosophico-linguistic concept.