In our house, we have a World Book from the early 60s. The article on television is written by folks from RCA. It barely mentions Farnsworth. Many of the articles on the Roman Catholic Church are written and approved by the Church. You might imagine what is not in those articles. When I was in Junior High (now known as Middle School), students regularly used only one source -- World Book. Were these happier times? This doesn't make up for wikipedia's failings. But I will point out that wikipedia's failing are part of a public debate with attempts to make corrections and to clarify the use of wikipedia as a primary reference. Such was not the case with World Book to my knowledge. See this article on CNet which has not I think been posted to this list: http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5981119.html Growing pains for Wikipedia By Daniel Terdiman Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: December 5, 2005, 4:00 AM PST For Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, last week was a tough one. And he's going to change the ground rules for the popular anyone-can-contribute encyclopedia because of it. First, in a Nov. 29 op-ed piece in USA Today, a former administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy lambasted the free online reference work for an article that suggested he may have been involved in the assassinations of both Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy. Then, on Dec. 1, a new flurry of attention came when former MTV VJ and podcasting pioneer Adam Curry was accused of anonymously editing out references to other people's seminal podcasting work in an article about the hot new digital medium. [...] ========================================================================== Paul Jones "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation." Alasdair Gray http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/ pjones@ibiblio.org voice: (919) 962-7600 fax: (919) 962-8071 ===========================================================================