March 28th, 2006
Die Wikipedia, Die?
As an occasional contributor I had wondered about posting on the news that the Encyclopaedia Brittanica is
challenging the results of a Nature study that revealed Wikipedia is as accurate as their weighty tome.
Sure, Wikipedia is written by the man in the street and should always be viewed with Jim Pooley (or was it John O’Malleys?) affirmation borne in mind that the internet only contains the information they want you to know. But at least it’s free. As a paid service I’m not sure that the Encyclopaedia Brittanica’s motives in dissing the Nature study are entirely altruistic.
Where is the money?
But I thought all this way to off topic, even for me, until someone referred me to the Die Wikipedia, Die! article by Mike Ferrentino, Bike magazines Random Juggernaut, about his own Wikipedia entry.
He’s obviously not impressed by what he saw:
Really, who wrote that? I have my suspicions. An Englishman wrote it. And judging from the history of the article viewed in “The Free Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit,” I’m going to assume that another Englishman had a whack at editing it. Two Englishmen, who if I’m correct, really ought to have more productive things to do with their time, have just electronically immortalized me as some sort of knee-sock wearing luddite.
Quite apart from missing the irony in ranting about the biog that he narcissitically checked out I laughed out loud that Mike is implicating me in this. For a start ‘Flowery Wank’ is ™ & © Deano, STW #26, not my style at all. And as for the idea of me as an editor!
No, the flowery wank was there from the off. Investigating the IP address and contributions of the original authour I can see it was written anonymously by a guy from the United States, and he’s written about other Northern California mountain bikers.
You need to look a little closer to home Mr Ferrentino.
I reckon Mike got bored of the sales pitch, fine wines, dancing girls, and latest designed in the US cloned in Taiwan same old same old story on some industry junket to Dullsville, New Hampshire, and wrote about himself on Wikipedia just to give himself something to write about in Bike when he got back home to California.
;-)
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April 5th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
[…] Nick Wallis has been running a Wordpress-driven blog for a long time and I like what he’s done with the right hand side links. There are also some classic posts on their including the classic Die Wikipedia, Die! 32:16 also links to Sentenced to Life a BMX movie trailer. It looks fantastic and there are some subtly outrageous tricks and fast riding in there. […]