Re: dbdebunk 'Quote of Week' comment

David Cressey wrote:
> "Marshall Spight" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote in message
> >
> > Wikipedia is highly variable...
>
> I looked into this some more, and I find the following surprising
> divergence between two entries in wikipedia.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBMS
>
> and
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database
>
> The second one makes a great deal more sense to me. Who coordinates
> wikipedia? The former chief architect at the tower of Babel?

Everyone coordinates it. This is the same thing as saying that no one coordinates it. :-)

If you want to make changes, you just make them. Someone else might change what you wrote, etc. etc. For example, just yesterday I came across a mistake in this entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra

The Huntington equation and the Robbins equation were both just fragments of the right thing:

  Huntington equation: n(n(x)+y) + n(n(x)+n(y)).   Robbins Equation: n(n(x+y)+n(x+n(y))).

But it should be:

  Huntington equation: n(n(x)+y) + n(n(x)+n(y)) = x.   Robbins Equation: n(n(x+y)+n(x+n(y))) = x.

So I just fixed it.

(I like this example because it makes me sound smart, but in fact I have zero understanding of either equation. I just observed that they weren't, in fact, equations, so I went and looked them up elsewhere. A variety of other trustworthy sources agreed as to what it should be. But I am left with questions about boolean algebra. Maybe another thread.)

Marshall Received on Sun Aug 28 2005 - 22:07:15 CEST