j's scratchpad

Do I believe it’s just an innocent coincidence after writing about Wikpedia several times recently that someone randomly sends me an e-mail asking something about Wikiverse’s Harvard University page?

The information, in general, seems okay, but some of the numbers are wrong. It gives two different founding dates for the institution without an explanation about the difference. It doesn’t adequately mention Harvard’s campuses in Boston or Allston. The entry probably should have done more with Radcliffe College’s affiliation with Harvard and its metamorphosis into the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. It’s a good thing I can’t figure out how to edit the page (Hey, isn’t this a wiki? Shouldn’t there be an edit button?) or I could see myself getting stuck there for hours. Pluff mud.

I also have access to a very long list of well-known Harvard graduates, something they’re working on, as well as information about Harvard’s presidents and many other things they might find useful.

I would be tempted to add some links to their page, like to the Harvard University Gazette (the faculty and staff newspaper), the admissions portal (since the entry seems to be geared toward prospective students), and maybe a few other things. They do, at least, link to two of my office’s sites. I suppose that’s really all I can ask for. (One of my day job’s primary tasks is to connect people to information about Harvard University. I suppose a lot of me wanting to push information into the entry is a knowledge of what kinds of things people commonly ask about the institution.)

At least the entry doesn’t perpetuate the horrible myth that Harvard was founded in 1638 by religious Puritans as a Christian school affiliated with a particular denomination. I’ve seen those errors in many books and on many Web sites. I’m not sure where it originated or how it keeps spreading.

I’d also be too tempted to try to fidget with the layout because it looks hideous in Netscape 7 on a Mac with OSX. In fact, when I first went to the page of famous graduates, all I thought was there initially was the list of United States presidents educated at Harvard because I have to scroll way down to get to the rest of the content on the page.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 6th, 2004 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Wikis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.