Truth versus accuracy

Nicholas Carr on the overhyping of Wikipedia: “They have taken the encyclopedia out of the high school library, where it belongs, and turned it into some kind of totem of ‘human knowledge.’ Who the hell goes to an encyclopedia looking for ‘truth,’ anyway? You go to an encyclopedia when you can’t remember whether it was Cortez or Balboa who killed Montezuma or when you want to find out which countries border Turkey. What normal people want from an encyclopedia is not truth but accuracy.”

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