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Wikipedia != Authoritative? 783
Frozen North writes "Recently, this article in the Syracuse Post-Standard caused a stir by dismissing Wikipedia as an authoritative source, and even suggesting that it was a little deceptive by looking too much like a "real" encyclopedia. Techdirt suggested an experiment: insert bogus information into Wikipedia, and see how long it takes for the mistake to be removed. Well, I did that experiment, and the results weren't good: five errors inserted over five days, all of which lasted until I removed them myself at the end of the experiment."
surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
that doesn't mean they're not good for finding information however, you just have to check it from somewhere else as well(which is easier if you know what you should check too).
(real encyclopedias have errors in them too sometimes, encarta as one)
Re:surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Horror (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, if Wikipedia did not exist, think of all the damage done by millions of people lacking information.
Re:The Horror (Score:3, Insightful)
More than the timespan of a mistake, IMO the bigger problem is the sheer number of mistakes there can be at any one given moment. Making the whole thing lose credibility.
Re:The Horror (Score:5, Insightful)
" Think of all the damage done by the millions of people reacting to false information."
I have found Encyclopedia Brittanica to be extremely and subtly destructive. The short entry for Nobel prize winner Barbara McClintock [nobel.se] gave no idea that her scientific articles spanned a width of 80 feet when put together. I discovered that only after a web search. Her work is still important to molecular biologists. Reading EB gave no impression of her importance.
The paper version of Encyclopedia Brittanica is limited by how much the executives of the company want to spend on paper. They probably say something like this to writers: "Give us 500 words on Barbara McClintock."
Wikipedia has the advantage of being written by enthusiasts.
--
24 wars [hevanet.com] since WW2: Creating fear so rich [hevanet.com] people [hevanet.com] can profit.
Re:surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
The ironic thing is that the wikipedia might actually be more correct more often than normal encyclopedias. Wikipedia entries are often entered by experts in that field who have the best understanding of the subject. "Real" encyclopedia enties are written (as I understand it) by information researchers who are experts at researching information, not in the subjects of the fields they're writing about. The tradeoff is, of
Re:surprising? (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia entries are often entered by experts in that field
there is no verification of expertise of the wiki writers so it's more or less a "use at your own risk".
Re:surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
often != always
Re:surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Peer Review (Score:5, Insightful)
peer review doesn't always work (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree, however, that Wikipedia has a better model.
Re:surprising? (Score:4, Interesting)
Freud was not correct on most of his major theories, that is a fact that most research oriented psychologists will agree on. By most, I should say, somewhere in the neighborhood of 90%. Many therapists will agree that Freud's methods of psychotherapy were not useful in facilitating a lasting recovery.
That said, he was a very intelligent man. He was a brilliant physiologist, and had a lot of very insightful things to say regarding the human condition. I cannot emphasize enough that he was very competent and intelligent.
Now, what is the real problem with Freud? The fact that so many people mistook him for a psychologist. He was, as I said, trained as physiologist, primarily studying brain disease. His pre-therapy work was wonderful. He was not a psychologist, and his later delvings into human behavior should have been treated as philosophy, not psychology.
Unfortunately, this was at a time when psychology was in its infancy, and still had a long ways to go. Today Freud would be considered a philosopher, but certainly not a research psychologist.
As for Jung, he was a student of Freud, and although he agreed on many points, he did not on others. Still, the same applies to him (in general), and his philosophy has not stood up to scrutiny.
Re:surprising? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, you're not entirely correct. While researchers may write some articles for "real" encyclopedias, I know a few professors who have been contacted by Brittanica to write articles specifically related to th
Re:surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
Once they print an edition it's out there
This is really crappy. He only let it sit for a short time
Wikipedia operates with under $40,000 per year. Their funding needs to be $2 or $3 million a year
Re:surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
it's not black and white, you just need to use your own brain, like when reading a newspaper.
encarta has mistakes in it. britannica has mistakes in it. probably cia world factbook has mistakes in it. if you just use one of them on basis of very important decisions you're stupid.
people arent skeptical enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, but the lack of a formal registration system and dependence on volunteers is going to hurt this project as it becomes more complex and more popular. I don't think the "open wiki" model scales so well as A LOT of wiki articles are full of disinformation and bias. Granted, most aren't, but there is a strong US-centric bias and some of us who have corrected disinformation only to see it reappear because of the citation of false facts makes me, at least, give up on contributing.
That said, the best advice is the line you just gave: always be skeptical about your sources. I think this is a postmodern idea, as this whole debate focuses on the assumption that britanica et al are infailable when in reality they have to deal with the exact same problems the wiki people have to deal with.
>like when reading a newspaper.
I would go as far as saying that people don't use their brain with the media. How many Americans still believe between the fictional connection between Saddam and 9/11?
The problem here is cultural and wikipedia is the symptom. People, in general, are not skeptical enough. There is way too much trust (this also applies to politics, religion, etc). Wiki readers know they are getting into something they can't trust unlike old media. The real catch (the real issue) is that old media is just as untrustworthy, if not more so because of ownership bias and other factors.
Re:people arent skeptical enough (Score:4, Insightful)
The following are my personal positions and (mostly) the positions of the left and the democratic party as a whole.
1 - Saddam Hussein is a bad man.
2 - The world is likely a better place now that Saddam is out of power.
3 - Iraq did not, at the time of invasion, present any form of clear and present danger to the United States.
4 - Iraq did not, at time of invasion, possess weapons of mass destruction
5 - The United States invaded Iraq under the pretext that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction and that these weapons constituted a clear and present danger to the United States.
6 - Since these weapons did not exist and the threat was therefore not present, the invasion was under false pretexts.
7 - Taking your country to war on false pretexts is a bad thing
8 - George W. Bush took the country to war on false pretexts.
Now.... make sure you read and understand all of the above points. I'm a liberal, I support our troops. I know we can't just leave Iraq right now. I think the world is a better place now that Saddam is behind bars. I'm glad (after the fact) that we removed him from power. I'd have been a lot happier about it if the President hadn't deceived the public to get there.
Re:surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Using that logic, very little on the web can ever be trusted.
Hackers often change websites, accounts get hacked (Gabe Newell?), people lie in posts all the time, whole websites can be designed to mislead you...
But this shows one important thing: you don't have to be able to trust a source for it to be useful. I don't trust most of the web, but if I do research and 15 websites agree on a fact, even though I don't trust each individual website, I can trust the consensus of 15 independent websites.
This phenomenon is present in Wikipedia because there are so many folks contributing. The liklihood is that errors will be corrected over time, and that even though you cannot trust it as infalliable, it proves to be an extremely useful tool. Further, it at least has a policy on accuracy and NPOV, whereas most other internet-based sources do not, or at least do not publish one publicly.
Re:surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
But, in this heated ditcussion, who gives a shit, his guard has dropped, slip the knife in:
(I wonder how many typo's and spealing misteaks I'm going to spot after hitting submit?)Re:surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd imagine it's a little more difficult to get a job at Britannica or Encarta and try that experiment, than it is to do the same thing with Wikipedia articles. Why don't you give it a shot, lemme know how it works out? I'll wait.
People keep pointing out that anyone can contribute to Wiki articles as though it's a good thing. To me, that's its primary fault.
It's also started contaminating other sites anyway. My main interest is histor
Re:surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also it is worth pointing out that one should never cite sources in a paper from an encyclopedia, rather you should find the sources the encyclopedia gets its facts from and cite those. Anyone who has ever failed a paper for getting all of their facts from the encyclopedia, be it Britannica or Wikipedia, will know what I mean by this. So in this sense it doesn't even matter so much because if a Wikipedia fact isn't true then one just won't be able to find it in a primary source so citing it in a paper incorrectly won't be an issue. The problem is that teachers lie to little kids and brainwash them in thinking that an encyclopedia is an unquestionable source of all truth, when really nothing could be further from the case.
Re:surprising? (Score:5, Informative)
Why?
The problem is that the less mainstream topics, and the little details, aren't being fact checked. The user base can grow astronomically and this problem won't go away.
I suppose it might, arguably, get worse as the potential number of vandals increases. That's not the sort of problem that interests me most when we talk about accuracy. It's the little things that even the educated among us might not remember, little dates in history and minutia, that are likely to be slightly off.
I think this is might be a largely solvable problem by employing volunteer fact checkers - something that could be a really fun job. But it's never going to be 100%, since you're trying to hit a moving target.
Where did you go to school??!?!? My teacher taught me that:
one should never cite sources in a paper from an encyclopedia
Who taught you this, if not a teacher?
Re:surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)
From an academic perspective, Wikipedia suffers the same problem that most of the Internet suffers: the information provided has no pedigree. There is a loud debate going on these days about the high costs of publishing academic papers. One of the points that is seldom made is that printed journals provide a pedigree for the articles that is hard to forge: the article was authored by a certain person, published on a certain date, said whatever it said. Far too much of the content that is quoted from the Internet is simply untraceable. It cannot be reliably attributed to anyone, it can often be changed at will, often by someone other than the original author.
Re:surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
Some would argue that, if anything, as the number of mistakes relative to the whole shrinks, the source of information becomes less useful because you're relying on it more and maintaining less of a cautious attitude. When you bump into one of those rare mistakes it could be more costly than an encyclopedia you used with a jaundiced eye. You integrate that faulty information without having checked it because so many times in the past accurate information you've veted has passed muster, so you no longer bother.
If you repeat a lie often enough... (Score:4, Interesting)
Kjella
Re:If you repeat a lie often enough... (Score:5, Insightful)
In news reporting it's known as the "Enquirer Effect"
The National Enquirer, Matt Drudge, or Faux News reports some half-baked erroneous bullshit.
The 'legitimate' news organizations pick it up and report it from there.
A week later it's common knowledge and accepted as absolute fact that Al Gore said he "invented the Internet."
After all, it's quoted in all those news stories, isn't it?
Re:If you repeat a lie often enough... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is this thing called "The Media". It is like a shark. it feeds on anything and everything...including itself.
Where was the so-called "liberal" media when Clinton was going through all the sex scandal? On every channel, regardless of who it was...they were dragging out every dirty little detail about everything there was. Why? Why, ratings/money/cash.
"we got the bubble-headed bleach-blond who comes on at 5.
She can tell ya 'bout the plane crash with a gleem in her eye".
Are some outlets of this trash slanted? Sure...a little. Fox is biased toward conservatives and CNN is biased toward liberals...but not to a HUGE degree on either side. Why? If any of them air huge falsehoods, the OTHER news organizations jump all over it....more blood in the water...gotta feed that shark...gotta keep moving. So both "sides" walk a fine line...but their still both part of the same swimming shark out there.
To get to the bottom of something, you need to look at many different news, see where the "bullshit" is, filter it out and try to determine what is really going on...then double check with Reuters and the AP. But this is a lot of work and most people just sit zombie like in front of the tube waiting to be filled to the brim with fear.
Re:If you repeat a lie often enough... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh really?
Pray tell, why are Rupert Murdoch's, Mellon Scaifes's, and Rev Moon's papers/media [arizona.edu] are so far to the right they make Bob Dole blush?
Ownership bias is quite real. In other countries its very common to have a "liberal" paper and a "conservative" paper all of whom are open with their bias. At least here in the states the alternative weeklies don't shy away from the fact that they have a liberal bent, but Fox News and the Washington Times and others still play the "we're just newsmakers without an agenda" card. Which is highly disingenious and leads to more dangerous beliefs than "al gore invented the internet." How about the millions who believe Saddam had a hand in 9/11?
Re:If you repeat a lie often enough... (Score:5, Informative)
You're talking about the FOX News that begins broadcasts by counting down the number of days "until you get to re-elect George W. Bush". That's more than a little biased. That's criminal false advertising when they claim to be "fair and impartial".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
WikiProject for Fact and Reference Checking (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia is currently working to reference all the facts on it. There is a project set up to do it also here Fact and Reference Check [wikipedia.org]. Here is a quote:
There isn't any reason why every fact couldn't be referenced making Wikipedia one of the most authoritative sources of information ever created.
Re:WikiProject for Fact and Reference Checking (Score:4, Insightful)
Traditional encyclopedias are constrained in the amount of writers they can afford, the amount of research they can do and the amount of paper available for a single article. In a time where traditional encyclopedias are losing marketshare (thanks to internet, cdroms and other sources of information), cost savings are likely to put pressure on all three factors.
Wikipedia is a cumulative effort. If an article is not good, it can be fixed. If there are multiple views/interpretations on a topic, there is room to highlight both sides of the debate.
The longer the process goes on the better it becomes. Of course malicious people can insert information but sooner or later people will find out and fix it. You can put screening processes and peer reviews on wikipedia just like you can on a traditional encyclopedia.
Probably wikipedia's largest problem is not the process but the fact that it is accumulating information much faster than all other encyclopedias.
Now this guy has done something clever. He has made some small changes that would pass a first glance unless you already knew the facts. The problem is that he jumped to the wrong conclusion and never actually wondered how many people ever saw the changes. Since he only left the changes for 20 hours to max 5 days (!) and the articles do not exactly qualify as hot information, probably noone or at most a handful of people read the article. The changes obviously passed the vandalism procedures (for e.g. excessive changes in short periods of time) and nobody bothered to verify the information right away. The latter is actually the whole point of criticism. Wikipedia cannot be authorative because not all information is verified right away.
However, he misses the point. If brittanica has a mistake you might be tempted to write to the editor and maybe in a next edition it would be fixed. But most people probably don't. If you spot an error in wikipedia, you can just fix it. The more articles are referred to, the more authorative and informative they become. Especially the 'hot' articles on politics, famous people, etc are likely to be read, scrutinized and edited very often. Messing up 'empuries' is easy but try inserting false data under 'George Bush' and see how quickly that is corrected.
Re:WikiProject for Fact and Reference Checking (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you Wikipedia disciples have missed the point. RANDOM ANONYMOUS INEXPERT people can alter the information in the "encyclopedia" at any time.
There is no Free or Open Source Software project that does this. They all have gatekeepers of some kind. Can you imagine how horrible the Linux kernel would be if random users could check in code without asking? What if random users with barely two weeks into an introductory programming class decided to hack on GNOME or KDE? Of course most errors (but not all) won't be subsequently pushed out to the rest of the users, because the compiler or the testers will throw them out. But Wikipedia isn't software. Mistakes in the information WILL get pushed out to the other users.
I don't expect my authoritative sources to be error free, but I do expect them to be authoritative. You cannot do that without restricting membership to authoritative sources.
Duh. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a publicly editable encyclopedia. By now, people should realize that there are many kiddies out there who have nothing better to do than to screw with others.
Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh ya its free. And not a bad quick referance.
M
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone is complaining that the Wikipedia isn't useful. But how many times on Slashdot to you see somebody say "Nope, you're wrong. Look- it's in Wikipedia!" Wikipedia is being used as an authoritative source of information, and I think it's valid to at least ask the question, "Does the lack of an formal editorial process compromise the trustworthiness of the information posted on Wikipedia?"
Honestly, I think it's the first question that came to my mind when I first heard about how Wikipedia worked. I think there are arguments for both sides, but it doesn't help to say "Oh, well, it's free, so you can't complain if it contains inaccuracies." To say you can't complain about open source products (which I'll lump Wiki in with) because "it's free" only seems to confirm that free things are of poorer quality than expensive things, which I believe is the wrong message to send. Plus, the statement seems to be aimed at quashing valuable debate. Wouldn't it be better to talk about perceived failings in the submission process in order to see if they can be fixed/improved?
bleh (Score:3, Interesting)
Worse, it's subject to the biases of whoever writes the article. I've seen some pretty bad stuff, horribly biased, passed off as a real encyclopedia author. It also sucks that people around here tend to insert Wikipedia links, thus inferring that they're somehow authoritative in any way. They're not.
Wikipedia != encyclopedia.
Wikipedia == blog
I'd disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps you're more pessimistic than I am, with regard to human nature.
Re:I'd disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'll grant that there are more honest people than asshats in the world, then over long periods of time, the wiki will tend towards authoritativeness as intentional errors are weeded out.
There are a lot of problems with that. For one thing, not everyone in the world will ever use Wikipedia. So we're only talking about the proportion of people who use Wikipedia. Another problem is that it's much easier to introduce intentional errors than it is to introduce true facts. So people inserting errors have a basic advantage there. Finally, you assume that merely being honest is enough, but it's not. You have to not only be honest, but you have to be correct.
A lot of the errors on Wikipedia fall under that last category. This is especially true in the more technical categories, where there are a lot of amateurs who think they know things but are just completely wrong. It's a similar situation to a lot of the problems with Slashdot and its moderation system. The majority is not always right.
Try this, then (Score:3, Insightful)
But anyway, try this argument on for size: Individual wiki articles (and even the facts contained within them) evolve, just as organisms do. Good, factual data has a higher fitness quotient than do errrors and misinformation. Over long periods of time, the wiki content will tend towards truth
Watched like a hawk... (Score:5, Interesting)
But I agree with what you said... if the wiki is considered unauthoritative, then it is more likely that people will scrutinize and correct the content. But the problem is that eventually this behaviour will result in the belief that the wiki is authoritative. I guess the best thing to do is to continuously raise this issue in order to provoke people to be discerning with respect to the wiki content.
Encyclopaedia bias (Score:3, Insightful)
That may well be true; however, it would be equally naive to believe that a print encyclopaedia has perfect authority or presents an unbiased view. Ultimately, every human knowledge source is subject to error
not very surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
How about another experiment? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would be very interested in the results.
Oftentimes, Wikipedia articles are updates the same day that events happen. This is one advantage over *any* "real" encyclopedia.
Re:How about another experiment? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, sometimes it's even word-for-word....
Re:How about another experiment? (Score:3, Interesting)
From Wikipedia:Copyrights. . . (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How about another experiment? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How about another experiment? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How about another experiment? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're only using one source for your information, however, then you're not researching correctly.
And not in-depth either (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And not in-depth either (Score:3, Insightful)
So, what exactly are you waiting for to improve the article?
Or perhaps you simply didin't care about it that much to begin with?
Wikipedia Errors (Score:4, Interesting)
Alex Halavais did the same experiment [halavais.net], changing 13 things, and all of those were changed. He did most of them over the course of the same day from the same IP, so they got caught.
Wikipedia is a tool, nothing more. If you believe everything you read on the internet, well, you get it.
You know, when I was in school ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
With amount of people reading slashdot there's a possibility of many pranksters who didn't have any motivation to deface etc sites now have such motivation...
Be careful slashdit! May as well introduce the new slashdot effect.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this different.. (Score:5, Insightful)
p
Re:How is this different.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this different.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything you read, be it on the Internet, in the newspapers, books etc. contains factual errors, mistakes by sloppiness and bias in many forms.
Wikipedia doesn't claim to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's a springboard into any subject, giving you a quick overview and perhaps some links to take you further. Encyclopedias can't be used as references for anything beyond grade school anyway, so why hold wikipedia to a higher standard? What it is however, is completely fascinating and the closest thing to a real hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy we're likely to get. Just don't take it too seriously.
Kuhn model of science (Score:5, Interesting)
WIkipedia, IMHO, is the epitomy of that concept: if you get enough people on the Internet to write a common text, and go to great lengths to democratize the process, then you will get the generally accepted "truth". Even scam busters like Snopes often resort to the line of reasoning "this sounds too much like an urban myth, therefore it's an urbam myth" variant on the same theme.
Don't get me wrong-- I love the WIkipedia. In my book, it's enough truth to get you through the day, and that's all I really need 98% of the time.
Actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's thousands of pages in Wikipedia dealing with up-to-the-minute descriptions of cultural phenomena that won't make it into the Britannica for years, if ever.
Exaggerated Antihype (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia has proven the concept, and I'm sure we'll see more and more advanced community-managed information sharing projects in the future. For example, adding a moderation system like /.'s would already be a huge step forward.
Case in point. (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, just now (at 10:13 EST) I entered a non-authoritative entry into the Wikipedia under the topic of Authority [wikipedia.org] It's just a note at the bottom that says
"[Note: This comment in brackets is an unauthoritative comment that was added by an individual]"
Now my foolish edit is available to the whole world -- I didn't have to log in or anything. So gradually it gets fixed. Fortuneately I did not say anything that is untrue. However what about the poor student who wanders into the topic before it gets fixed -- at one point in time. I could never use this as a definitive resource until more protection is put in place to help guarantee the accuracy of the information. How do to that? I don't know .. but I'm sure the suggestions are coming in all the discussions here.
Re:Case in point. (Score:4, Interesting)
GENERAL DISCLAIMER for your convenience (Score:4, Informative)
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the free encyclopedia.
General disclaimer - Use Wikipedia at your own risk! [slashdot.org] - Wikipedia does not give medical advice [slashdot.org] - Wikipedia does not give legal opinions [slashdot.org] - Wikipedia contains spoilers and content you may find objectionable [slashdot.org]
WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY
Wikipedia is an online open-content encyclopedia, that is, a voluntary association of individuals and groups who are developing a common resource of human knowledge. Its structure allows any individual with an Internet connection and World Wide Web browser to alter the content found here. Therefore, please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by professionals who are knowledgeable in the particular areas of expertise necessary to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information about any subject in Wikipedia.
That's not to say that you won't find much valuable and accurate information at Wikipedia, however please be advised that Wikipedia CANNOT guarantee, in any way whatsoever, the validity of the information found here. It may recently have been changed, vandalized or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the particular area you are interested in learning about. We are working on ways to select and approve more trustable versions of articles, but still without warranty. The closest thing to this that currently exists is the Wikipedia:Featured articles [slashdot.org] process, but even the articles listed there may have been mercilessly edited shortly before you view them.
Please make sure that you understand that the information provided here is being provided free and gratuitously, and that no kind of agreement or contract is created between you and the owners or users of this site, the owners of the servers upon which it is housed, the individual Wikipedia contributors, any project administrators, sysops or anyone else who is in any way connected with this project or sister projects subject to your claims against them directly. You are being granted a limited license to copy anything from this site; it does not create or imply any contractual or extracontractual liability on the part of Wikipedia or any of its agents, members, organizers or other users.
Any of the trademarks, service marks, collective marks, design rights, personality rights or similar rights that are mentioned, used or cited in the articles of the Wikipedia encyclopedia are the property of their respective owners. Their use here does not imply that you may use them for any other purpose other than for the same or a similar informational use as contemplated by the original authors of these Wikipedia articles under the GFDL licensing scheme. Unless otherwise stated Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites are neither endorsed nor affiliated with any of the holders of any such rights and as such Wikipedia can not grant any rights to use any otherwise protected materials. Your use of any such or similar incorporeal property is at your own risk.
Please note that that the information found here may be in violation of the laws of the country or jurisdiction from where you are viewing this information. Wikipedia does not encourage the violation of any laws, but as this infor
Mistakes in Encyclopedic References (Score:3, Insightful)
The value of encyclopedias isn't that they are right about everything. It is that they cover so many topics in an easy-to-understand manner. If you need more in depth knowledge or need to ensure correctness, you really should be using some sources which are a little bit more primary--books or journal articles written on the specific subject you are looking into.
Everyone who rights for the wikipedia should therefore cite references where people could look for more info. Also, I don't think that one person entering 5 errors is that harmful--the quality level is still quite high. Either a lot of people would need to make small numbers of errors (which hasn't really happened--most people write on topics they know about) or one person would need to add many more errors. If this happened, it is much more likely that they would get caught--after noting an error, an editor would likely check that person's other contributions.
"Money Vector" is always felt upon Free Stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
Anytime you have something that is both useful and free, and where it is competing with a paid product, you will always have the force of that paid product felt upon the free product.
Personally, I love Wikipedia. But this article is good in that it forces us to pay attention to the problem and try to fix it.
The source of all Wikipedia's problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
An article approval mechanism is under development and in testing at the test Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] (you'll need to get an account to see it, mind you, and much of the user interface is currently in Finnish, but... :)
How surpising, not. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is soo obvious.
Yet Wikipedia is an excelent *part* of a search.
The idea to put some sort of "Unverified" label on an article is just as unreliable.
An indicator by -how many individuals- it has been read / reviewed is probably the best you'll ever get.
And even then it's possible it'll only be a popularity contest.
What a methodology! (Score:3, Insightful)
A more accurate test, it would seem to me, would be to take articles of varying importance and, in fact, check the facts. (While you're at it, do the same for analogous articles in, say, Britannica.) The one problem with this is that checking facts is a very intense process, if you're serious about it.
Without having gone through this process, it would appear hard to say whether traditional publishers are any better at it than the volunteers who contribute to Wikipedia, except that over the past few years, I've grown to be as skeptical of traditional "authoritative" sources as I am of the morning newsprint.
I've worked in the publishing industry, and in my opinion, a number of publishers considered "authoritative" are living off the inertia of a time when sharp, intelligent people were cheap to hire, and one could afford to have encyclopedias checked by "armies" of worker bees.
Cheers...
And a tomato makes a bad hammer..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Main Entry: encyclopedia
Variant(s): also encyclopaedia
Function: noun
Etymology: Medieval Latin encyclopaedia course of general education, from Greek enkyklios + paideia education, child rearing, from paid-, pais child -- more at FEW
: a work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge usually in articles arranged alphabetically often by subject
Britannica always knew their (traditional, dead tree) encyclopedia was aimed at kids, which is why it was always sold to parents AS A RESOURCE FOR THEIR CHILDREN.
The real problem here is using the same word, encyclopedia, to describe three utterly different things...
a/ traditional dead tree encyclopedia
b/ electronic (hyperlinked) encyclopedia on read only media
c/ wikipedia
Traditional dead tree stuff was of course read only, and absolute accuracy depended on many things, including cultural background and editorial integrity, as well as actual facts (where said facts were ascertainable) for example the traditional dead tree encyclopedias (that were all there was when I was attending school) would talk about a Christopher Columbus discovering America for our (English) Queen... no mention of him actually hailing from a smelly mediterrenean port or indeed Culumbia (or later New Amsterdam, etc (NY to you young punks)) and any entries about the East India Company will have similar cultural and editorial bias, non mention whatsoever will be made of the facts, that our (English) early trade envoy's gifts and personal manners were treated with richly deserved scorn... the silk brocade wearing maharaji using the proferred gifts of fine english tweed as animal blankets.
Being read only media, and being "authoritative" these complete fallacies presented as impartial facts.
Electronic encyclopedia such as Encarta are similarly read only, and similarly in the throes of cultural and editorial filtering, laid on top of any basic factual errors (such as the location of the normal locker observatory, to quote something close to home)
Wikipedia is completely different, it is not read only, it is not hampered by editorial policies or cultural prejudices.
Sure, this means assholes are free to enter bullshit as fact, but in just the same fashion as we are free to spoof an IP address or send out forged SYN packets, only the pond scum does it. Of course the pond scum will have every exuse in the book ranging from "I'm only doing it to test how good this is." to "Serves them right for not being as leet as me." however the underlying fact is the same, it is pond scum behaviour.
Pond scum behaviour is an inevitable part of the internet, it is never going to be stopped and it never should be attempted, because the co-operation of the sensible majority (especially the sensible majority with some real clout like sysadmins) have enough momentum and enough existing weapons of mass co-operation (eg usenet death threats for maladministered nntp servers) to keep the pond scum in the place that they themselves elect to live.
To blame wikipedia because some pond scum has the ability to make erroneous entries that are uncorrected in five whole days (wow, encarta still has errors that are fucking years old) in a FREE FUCKING RESOURCE is directly akin to blaming Tim B-L, Scott N, and the INN nntp server coding crew for usenet spam.
In short, such accusations are ONLY EVER MADE BY THE POND SCUM THEMSELVES.
There is of course a direct parallel to the rules of spammers (subscribe to the usenet abuse groups nanae etc if you don't know what I mean) which are
http://bruce.pennypacker.org/spamrules.html
No, the real test of the validity of Wikipedia is to choose a hot potato and compare the content with the "respected" outlets such as encarta and britannica, and see which one is actually living up to the TRUE ideal of an ENCYCLOpedia, which is to EDUCATE,
Please be kind - message from Jimbo (Score:5, Insightful)
A Wikipedian put it this way the other day: In my neighborhood, people make a habit of picking up the trash. Please don't come and litter just to see if someone will pick it up.
So you know, like, be cool, huh?
WikiLove,
Jimbo Wales
Conjecture: time to correct = 1/severity (Score:3, Insightful)
It needs more eyes... and hands (Score:3, Insightful)
Experiment Not Long Enough . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
The success of the Wikipedia is that it is possible to correct errors when they are identified by whomever found the error. This is a great strength over closed encyclopedia.
Part of the Problem (Score:3, Informative)
I wrote a fair sized paper last year comparing the majority of Christian religions and how they formed and how they differ on key issues. Frankly, it was hard to find concise, usable information anywhere else, but Wikipedia was more than helpful and by having half of my sources be from Wikipedia I pulled of an A with the Theology chair at a Catholic university. Go figure.
Appeal to Authority Fallacy (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, accepting authority as truth is actually the first impediment to critical thinking. Maybe the students should be learning critical thinking skills in a logic class instead of from a librarian? If she said she teaches them research skills, then fine, but that's not the same thing as critical thinking.
I never use the wikipedia as a final word on anything. It's just a nice, *free* place to *start* my research. Sometimes the content is totally useless and other times it's very helpful.
Bad experiment (Score:3, Insightful)
With that in mind, I'd rather seen an experiment that tries to determine how many times a page is viewed before it gets altered. I bet if one of the edits he had made were to introduce some sort of error into the database normalization page's explanation of third normal form, it would be a lot more likely to be noticed within two days.
Stil, shame on anyone who takes any encyclopedia or other reference book as unquestionable authority. Any collection of information that dense is going to be full of errors like made-up words [fun-with-words.com] and the like.
accuracy depends on field (Score:3, Insightful)
My impression is that the Wikipedia is pretty accurate in areas that attract people with real expertise. Even if some contributors have a bias or are ignorant or mistaken on certain points, after a while the article gets to be pretty good through collaborative editing. So it tends to be good on subjects that techies find interesting and are knowledgable about. The problematic areas are ones in which the contributors have an interest but lack real expertise. The collaborative editing process doesn't work very well here because there is no one involved who actually knows the subject, or the real experts are a small minority among the contributors and are not able to have much influence. Topics that are particularly likely to be problematic are those about which some geeks are enthusiastic but not truly knowledgable.
In my own area of linguistics, for example, I find that articles on formal topics, e.g. "context-free grammar", are generally good, while articles on historical linguistics are often pretty bad. This reflects the fact that techies tend to have real knowledge in areas related to formal linguistics, e.g. mathematics and computer science, while historical linguistics is a subject that lots of people find interesting but few really know much about.
Re:Oh crap (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's weird and scary and dangerous and a threat to my job, so I'm going to condemn it." Cf. Microsoft, MPAA, RIAA, buggy-whip makers.
Re:I added an entry about myself (Score:5, Funny)
No, you're still there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_Coward [wikipedia.org]
Re:Your sig (Score:3, Interesting)
As for agnosticism, it would require the agnostic not to start with any preconceptions but he can have leanings toward the $RELIGION that he believes most likely.
I would also argue against those who say atheism is not a religion. I
Re:Your sig (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't accept that people don't have this belief, so try and make the lack of it a belief in itself which is absurd.
You don't need a belief system to not believe in something. Otherwise you'd need a special religion for each non-existant thing, i.e. the non-tooth fairy believers religion, the non-santa claus believers religion.
Just because lots of theists find it difficult to wrap their heads around the concept of not needing to believe in anything, they find a need to fit everything into a neat little belief box. As though they're embarrassed about having a belief system while an atheist doesn't.
Re:Your sig (Score:4, Insightful)
Atheism cannot be a "religious" stance by definition:
No god or deity = not religious. It could be a state of belief, as opposed to a state of concept or idea (the chief difference between ideas and beliefs is that ideas change according to new empirical evidence, beliefs do not), but your attempt to equivocate the atheistic stance by purely semantic means does nothing to enhance the debate...it only muddies the waters of the debate.
I fully understand what you're saying here, but the definition I provided above clearly says that the set of deities must include at least one. Therefore your own statement here shows the fallacy of engaging in a semantic argument--you weren't able to write a short post without contradicting yourself.
I point this out because it's so easy to discuss philosohpical topics such as these and descend into an uninteresting semantic debate about what we ought to call things rather than what things are. If you reply to this post and insist that you're going to change the definition of the term religious or atheist to suit your needs, that does nothing to convince others of your point; though they may even choose to adopt your non-standard definitions, there's no way of ascertaining whether they've grasped your underlying point. The hope in most semantic attacks is that the change in wording will simply find its way into the subtext of future conversations and change people's minds that way. Sort of an underhanded approach, which is why I personally detest such attacks by language. Political correctness is a great example of what I'm talking about.
So, I'll address the point underlying all your wordplay...that might get us somewhere. Is it possible, do you think, that atheists might be divided into two categories: those that hold atheism as an idea and those that hold it as a belief? The idea atheists might very well hold that there is no god, but this is not incontrovertible fact...much in the way one "believes" in a scientific theory. For instance, I "believe" in Newton's model of gravity--but only insofar as it has been shown to correspond with nature. Should I need to move into the realm addressed by General Relativity, then I would not "believe" in Newton's model for that purpose. Do I think that Einstein's model is "true"? Well, no, of course not...the model hasn't shown that it corresponds exactly to reality in every situation (I'm not sure how it could meet such a high standard, either).
So, one might be atheistic in this sense. A subtle difference between a scientific theory and holding atheism in the same way, however, exists and must be addressed. And this difference is embodied by your statement:
This statement is absurd. It is silly to judge what someone would do or think in the presence of a condition that is simply impossible. In this case, "if he were given a logical proof that a god must exist" is the impossible condition. No one who has done any study of philosophy or religion would accept this as something that could actually come to pass--in other words, it is not in the set of things that could occur in this universe.
So, pinning your argument that atheism is a belief system much like religion on this statement is a major flaw in your reasoning. I might say your belief that hippogriffs do not exist is flawed because you are so prej
Re:I added an entry about myself (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I added an entry about myself (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I added an entry about myself (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Democratic, and you get as many votes as you wa (Score:4, Interesting)
Tthe "entry despots" you talk about get away with it mainly because the entirety of Wikipedia is now too large for any single group of individuals to police, so they can enforce their will by making multiple reversions, thereby making the cost of altering "their" page so much more higher. Everyone else finds the exercise so annoying they can no longer be bothered.
In which case, the process becomes less of a dialogue to reach a mutual agreement and more of a battle of wills to see who is the most rabid.
oh please (Score:5, Informative)
I changed the article to a truthful one and it was beaten down.
Oh please. You changed it to an anti-GNAA editorial sprinkled with slants. Your "truthful" details (as I and the vast majority of concerned Wikipedians believe), damaged that article. They weren't flat-out lies so to speak, but they changed the tone of the article for the worse, altering the version that survived a previous debate.
popularity contest for certain points of view.
I suppose it should be changed to a contest for only SilentCrs [wikipedia.org]'s point of view? Mass rule, mob rule, res publica ("rule of the people" i.e. republic, a very broad term): call it what you want. Yes it's a popularity contest of opinions, but does a better way exist? Mutual agreement among users is the best way as it leverages the minds and experiences of multiple people as opposed to those of an individual.
No, it's not perfect; but in the case of the GNAA article, it has worked admirably, and for the second time. Users have put aside their personal objections against the GNAA's activities and agreed upon an informative and unequivocal page. It is only you who has yet again disrupted this, with your personal crusade against the GNAA.
Re:oh please (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oh please (Score:3, Insightful)
Another thing I thought of w.r.t wikipedia, if it becomes valid as a source of citations like a proper encyclopedia, what's to stop someone writing in what they want to prove, citing the article they've just written, and using it to 'prove' what they asserted? By the time someone has fixed the va
Re:I added an entry about myself (Score:4, Insightful)
This is to be expected.
Re:But.. (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you call it a "straw man" when it's entirely accurate as an argument? The "stable" Wikipedia you mention does not yet exist, and therefore arguing that the article writer should have used it instead of the "bleeding edge" Wikipedia is silly.
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Informative)
You also say you add "perspective". If it's your perspective on the matter rather than some notable perspective, you may have run afoul of the no-original-research [wikipedia.org] policy.
Re:Censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
This assumes (a) that NPOV well-defined, and (b) that it's good.
If you look at their definition [wikipedia.org], it refers to presenting "all points of view." That doesn't really make sense. For instance, an article on geography doesn't need to present both the point of view that the earth is flat and the point of view that it's round.
I like Wikipedia. I contribute to Wikipedia. But I think it fundamentally fails when it comes to co
Re:Cant be Censorship (Score:4, Informative)
Who modded this crap insightful? To censor is to remove "objectionable" speech, whatever that may be and whoever does it. The only relevant difference is whether it's a kind of censorship permitted by the law/constitution/whatever.
Re:You forgot to measure page hits.... (Score:3, Insightful)
and then (emphasis mine):
How is five days "a week"? How are twenty hours "a week"? It looks like this guy had a nice idea, but was so impatient to tell the world that he ruined the experiment.