Nathan Kaiser, fact-checker
There’s a brief interview with Jimmy Wales at nPost.com that has this entertaining little tidbit:
Interviewer: Back to the accuracy of the Wikipedia postings. Because it is much more dynamic than other encyclopedias that are out there, it could be more accurate in some areas.
Wales: That is absolutely true. There are quite a few good examples of that. There is a small scandal going on in Germany. One of the questions on the German version of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ was wrong. The show had referenced an answer on the German version of Brittanica, which was wrong. It was wrong on Wikipedia as well, but we were able to update it immediately.
Piercing insight aside embedded in the “question” aside (it could be more accurate, it could also be less accurate, for the very same reason), one should point out that (a) Britannica is spelled B-r-i-t-a-n-n-i-c-a–it’s just not hard to get it right and that (b) while there are versions of Britannica in Korean, French, Chinese, Japanese and a large number of print translations, there is no “German version of Britannica”. Wales no doubt was refering to Brockhaus.
Shame on you, Nathan Kaiser, for failing to do the least bit of copy-editing or fact checking.