A hoax article about a war that never happened stayed up on Wikipedia for five years.
Why I don’t use Wikipedia: A hoax article about a war that never happened stayed up on Wikipedia for five years.
Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.
All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from me (hardback $24.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $5.00). Just email me at zimmerman @ nasw dot org.
Why I don’t use Wikipedia: A hoax article about a war that never happened stayed up on Wikipedia for five years.
Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.
All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from me (hardback $24.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $5.00). Just email me at zimmerman @ nasw dot org.
Do you object to the idea of a crowdsourced encyclopedia?
Or just using it as a discovery mechanism for new knowledge?
It isn’t so much that object to a crowd-sourced encyclopedia as I treat it with a great amount of skepticism. I have found Wikipedia, the most well known, to be exceedingly unreliable, especially in areas where there is political controversy.
I also find it better to go to original sources for my information, which is another reason I do not trust Wikipedia. The rare times I have used it I have found that it provides no direct links to anything outside of Wikipedia itself. I would trust it more if the articles there instead included direct links to their sources.
Perhaps I am just not skeptical enough, but I have found it to be a useful entry point when researching a new topic. The wikipedia articles usually provide plenty of links to original sources.
I will admit that I don’t use it for current events or particularly controversial topics, mostly being focused on some new area of science or technology I’m interested in.
This page on SpaceX is a good example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
As of today (1/8/2013) it has 94 external sources cited, including the original COTS contract between SpaceX and NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/189228main_setc_nnj06ta26a.pdf
If you’re really interested in what the Wiki article writers thoughts were you can also read the talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SpaceX