Thursday 3 March 2011

MTU on wikipedia

Wikipedia is a fantastic website. So fantastic that I made a donation to it once and would encourage anyone else to do the same. Thanks to Druryfire and others, there's a wealth of information on Thai football all over it, too However, when it comes to MTU, I'd advise readers to double and triple check any information read on the MTU Wiki page.

Information on the page is frequently wrong, incorrectly cited and sometimes just plain made-up. A couple of days ago, wiki stated Winnie Schaefer (irony of that link intended) was our coach. We even acquired (according to the wiki) Diego Maradonna as our coach for thirteen minutes today! In reality, that was someone sharing a joke, but that joke also serves as a reminder.

There's a couple of reasons for the poor reliability of the MTU page. The language barrier is one of them. With so many fans of the team, it's natural that many well-intentioned Thais will want to share information, but on many occasions cited articles are misunderstood or, more often, mistranslated. Another issue is that Thai football fans often employ a playful or imaginative approach to the game and state things as they would like to see them rather than how they are. An example of all of these issues is the 'affiliated clubs' section on the wiki page. These lists are often updated to include all kinds of clubs without apparent reason. It's often a misunderstanding of the word 'affiliated' or a playful take on the idea of football clubs acting as professional wrestling style cliques.

Finally of course, information on Thai footie can be scarce or obfuscated. Nowhere near as scarce as it used to be, so Dale tells us, but still not ideal. Sometimes wiki updates may come from over-keen fans who couldn't wait to check.

In short then, information on wikipedia's MTU page can be useful providing it's verified. If you want to check something, feel free to ask your blogger. I get things wrong too of course, but when it matters, I can try to check with the club.

1 comment:

  1. I would love to have seen how Maradona dealt with Worawi and Vichit! ;)

    ReplyDelete