Wikipedia is a great resource for info on lots of topics including ballet. Miami city Ballet's listing is in need of some attention by experts on this company. Click here to see the Wikipededia entry for Miami City Ballet

iwatchthecorps, What is wrong with the information posted on Wikipedia concerning Miami City Ballet's description?

What's wrong? There's just not enough information in this, even for a "stub." And it contains a phrase, "helming the company" which needs to be consigned to immediate oblivion.

This is a rather dismal Wikipedia entry. Someone looking up MCB for real information would find very little. Out of curiosity, I looked up Wikipedia's entry for a company of similar size and scope: Pacific Northwest. It's better -- but only marginally so.

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

I don't know much about how Wikipedia works, nor do I really use it except for occasional jogs to the memory. I would think that this is something a publicity department would want to get involved with (subtely, of course).

P.S. I don't think I've ever actually seen "helm" used as a verb before! Fascinating!

I don't really know that much about Wikipedia and its sources, but i've noticed mistakes and incorrect information in many of its entries...

I see no problem with a company's in-house publicity person posting and fleshing out an entry. Wikipedia is a respository of facts, and, for reasons noted by Cristian
who better to correct the record than someone who has the facts?

Wkipedia is a voluntary, community encyclopedia. In the last few years, rules have changed to require citations (online or from physical print media), even for the most basic info -- ex: "Ballet Society gave its first performance at High School of Needle Trades in 1946"-- which can be tedious, and these aren't always easy to find these for dance companies.

Anyone who is interested in a subject may write or edit, anonymously or through a username/password. If someone doesn't like what's in an article, s/he may edit it or delete information. There's a "talk page" mechanism by which one can negotiate what is in an article, but it takes patience if there's someone else who has a vested interest in the subject, and when contributing, it can take a strong stomach to know that info won't necessarily stand as written.

The admins are very careful to delete anything they know comes from a publicity/PR/marketing source, unless it is completely factual and backed up by citations that are unbiased. For example, calling a regional company "America's best company" would not be considered unbiased and backed by critical consensus.

Unless you have some pre-existing knowledge of the subject it is wise to tread carefully when looking up things on Wikipedia. Glaring factual errors are thinner on the ground than they used to be but an unhealthy degree of bias, overt and not so overt, is common. I’m glad it’s there, though.

I have seen 'helm' used as a verb before, usually in journalese. I don't care for it myself but it could wind up as standard usage one of these days.

Only could? I myself have abandoned all hope.

Thanks, Helene, for that explanation. It sounds like a sensible set of controls. I gather that there were problems on certain hot topics before these rules were put into effect. On the whole, it's astonishing how well the system seems to work. I recall reading a study which involved a number of point-by-point comparisons of a range of entries found on the on-lline Britannica and on Wikipedia. Wikipedia's accuracy was greater -- and by a significant margin.

That's bad news for both of them, depending on how old that study is and what subjects it covered.....

a link to an article about the Nature study comparing Britannica and Wikipedia : The Nitpicking of the Masses vs. the Authority of the Experts by George Johnson, The New York Times, January 3, 2006

Great article, innopac. Thank you. This was not the article I was thinking of, which I think was in The New Yorker, but the details have faded away.

For science, at least, this accuracy study is rather mixed and ambiguous. Britannica's advantage comes from hiring experts; Wikipedia's from having an ongoing process of correction and rewrite. (There's a downside to Wikipedia's use of sources. this. As I said, I have looked carefully at several Wikipedia articles that I actually know something about. Some of the really bad pieces have suffered from writers who have little skill in evaluating sources. Good good and bad sources, accurate and fanciful, fair and prejudiced, are sometimes appealed to without discrimination.)

I love the Darwinian slant taken by the Times author:It reminds me of the old story about a roomful of monkeys pecking away randomly on typewriters. Given an eternity, one of them is bound to type a complete and accurate text of Hamlet.

Helm can be used as a verb. The meaning of helm in this context would be "to steer or direct an object or vessel", in essence the ballet company, thus making Edward Villella the captain of a very unique vessel. In the past I have had the honor and privilege of knowing Mr. Villella. I would most definitely consider Eddie a great captain successfully leading Miami City Ballet into the 21st Century during both stormy and calm seas. I recall during a past conversation with one of the company's employees that MCB was once referred to as "a gem in the ocean" by an outside source. What a great description for a wonderful company.

If I wanted to do research on a ballet company I would not solely rely on Wikipedia as a full resource of information. This webpage is only meant to be a general reference at best.

Wikipedia does allow individuals to provide additional information on any topic presented as long as it is referenced with factual supporting documentation. So go to it if you feel the need to update/correct the current information regarding MCB on Wikipedia.

Yes. The essential difference being that Bill Shakespeare knew what he was doing and had done and, presumably, the monkey or monkeys won't.