all the world's a sage

Wikipedia is part of the reason why the web is so wonderful. Because anyone can contribute to the encyclopedia, everyone consumes each other's knowledge. Wikipedia has empowered us more than ever before. In the words of Marshall McLuhan, "all the world's a sage."

But, are all the articles accurate? I'm sure some high school kids would love if they were. Certainly many articles are well sourced, but you can't say all the facts are straight. According to wikipedia, there are a total of 9,725 good and featured articles and lists out of a total 2,734,727 articles. Good articles are "good quality but which are not yet, or are unlikely to reach, featured article quality." (Case in point: the good articles page cites 2,734,727 articles in wikipedia while the featured articles page cites 2,733,942.) That means the chances of running into a dandelion are- well, you're probably better at math than I.

However, this is about to change. Technology Review writes that some super smart scientists over at Palo Alto Research Center have created the WikiDashboard that will apparently give more transparency to each article page. The dashboard shows all edits on an article, who's edited, when it was last edited, and even the cat fights between editors. Basically, it means that it should be easier for us readers to catch the suspect dandelions and tell which ones are daisies. I don't know if the dashboard is live yet, but it's about time. After all, it won't just be high school kids breathing a sigh of relief.