Wikipedia Criticised by Its Co-founder 727
wikinerd writes "Wikipedia is under criticism by its co-founder Larry Sanger who has left the project. He warns of a possible future fork due to Wikipedia's Anti-Elitism and he presents his view on Wikipedia's (lack of) reliability. New wikis on various subjects have already emerged, with some of them being complete forks of Wikipedia. Critical articles on Wikipedia are also being published by other sources."
This is ADS (Score:1, Insightful)
Let's not forget... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe a completely free online encyclopedia is just impossible. There are hundreds if not thousands of revisions done on Wikipedia each day and to have a team sit there to review each update and research it would be monotonous without a paid team of researchers.
As well, having a team of professionals review their particular field on the online encyclopedia surely will not come free. Perhaps Wikipedia has hit a stopping point, if not slowing point?
Re:Fork (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes I think it would be easier to grab the whole damned thing, strip out what isn't in topic...
So do that. Why is forking a bad thing? I thought that was the whole point of open-source.
In Theory, Communism Works (Score:5, Insightful)
The best solution I have seen was someone suggesting "stickyness" -- the longer an entry remains, the sticker and more truthful it is. I think that, combined with academics actually starting to put in information* and some sort of meta-moderating system, could work.
Either way, I think it's neat. I would not rely on it for critical information, but then, I never do that with the internet to begin with.
* I'm sure academics do now -- I guess I meant "Academia" in that a lot of them contribute.
OT: Annoying (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, let's say we're looking at the article on Wikipedia itself. Somewhere within it, it says "Wikipedia has been criticized [wikipedia.com] for being an unreliable source of information."
Now, anywhere else on the web, you'd expect that the link in there would point to further information on that specific criticism of Wikipedia. But, instead it points to a page defining the term "critic"! How useless is that?
I can't count the number of times I've seen a link on Wikipedia that made me say "ooh, I'd like to know more about that" and clicked it, just to find out that it only points to a simple definition of whatever term I clicked. That's not what I wanted, dammit!
What if there isn't an expert? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the time, I use it as a resource for pop culture references (leet, for instance) for which other people, though not experts, know a bit more than I do. I think of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia of the moment.
What is the value of accuracy or truth (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're in school and you're doing one of the 3 million papers you will do in your school career about the Civil War, let's say and you go to Wiki and it's chockful of subtle agendized "Wawr of Northun Aggresshun" revisionism. So what? You will probably get a good grade if you live in the south and you will probably get a pass if you live in the north and all its multicultural tolerance and whatnot.
A few weeks ago for example the entire nationalized abstinence sex ed curriculum was exposed as a fraud, jammed with flat out inaccurate information. So? It wasn't an accident and the fact that it's exposed really doesn't change anyone's mind. So in the end, truth is whatever you can use to further your own aims and accuracy be damned.
Either idiotic response or excellent satire (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a decidedly revisionist, politically correct, liberal, secular humanist bent to the Wikipedia that prevents it from becoming an entirely reliable source. Accuracy isn't nearly as encouraged as non-offensiveness. Anyone who dealt with the flames on the Bush and Kerry campaign can see that easily.
A better approach is needed (Score:2, Insightful)
We don't have this problem with open-source software, because the good stuff bubbles up to the top. Can we possibly set up an informal editorial board? No, I'm not suggesting we pay people to do that. But wouldn't you suppose that the foremost experts will want to have the expanded presence and notability that would come from their presence on a better-audited Wiki?
Nothing wrong with anti-elitism (Score:4, Insightful)
Larry Sanger may be an epistemologist, but his views on knowledge and its justification seem a bit naive. Who determines who the "experts" and "authorities" are? It can't be these same people, that would just beg the question. Or perhaps its the social structures already created that mold and promote expertise. But then why even make wikipedia in the first place? Wikipedia is not a reflection of these social structures, and that was intentional from the very beginning. It's not a mistake to be rectified.
Go ahead, fork the project. It was founded so that those unhappy with its direction could fork it. Just like Linux. Make your own elitist version. Just don't expect any tears from me.
The same criticism applies to democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem that infects Wikipedia is not limited to a few simple trolls. It is a world-wide societal problem. It is the wicked child of the delusional advocates of democracy and egalitarianism, who in their naivete believe that all people are equal in their abilities and judgement.
How else can we explain the sick believe that masters of rhetoric and intrigue make decisions that are affecting the future of the world? How is it a moron with an 8th grade education is allowed to have a legitimate position on highly technical topics like environmental protection and global warming?
The world has become too complex for any one man to have the requisite knowledge to make decisions about anything other than his field of expertise. What we require is a new social order than recognizes the various discplines of each citizen and identifies his expertise. When our electorate is organized along these lines, only then can representative government work. Instead of a mass of rhetoricians ruling over the world, we should have a council of experts, each elected by the members of his respective field. Chemists should elect the most elite chemist. Electrical engineers, the most elite electrical engineer.
With this top down approach, Wikipedia and society at large will work far better. Further, we may prevent the complete destruction of our civilization by ceasing to hand power to the unqualified and depraved.
Watching the Watchers (Score:4, Insightful)
You need a peer rating system where authors and editors can be given points as to the quality of their material and corrections. I think Experts Exchange [experts-exchange.com] and probably others offer something of this kind. This, as always, required community participation to work effectively. But beyond that, for an encyclopedia people should have an overall rating and a rating for subcategories, for example a lot of
Out of curiosity (Score:2, Insightful)
Wikipedia isn't "anti-elitist" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In Theory, Communism Works (Score:2, Insightful)
But most people are just average. It sucks, I know, because I am one of those average people. I don't expect to win the Nobel prize (any of them), I won't all of a sudden become a quarterback in my mid-30's, and I can barely use a powersaw let alone making a piece of furniture.
The problem with wikipedia is that some people don't realize that they aren't the great subject matter experts they think they are. If someone comes along who knows the subject better than you and writes better than you then you just have to accept that what you wrote may be removed.
I've lost track of what my point was. Hopefully somebody else can continue my thread while I go back to my average job.
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:5, Insightful)
In general the "threat of revert wars" you speak of seems more like FUD to me. People always say, "Anyone can edit? That will never work." Yet so far it's been working amazingly well. Sure there are trolls and, perhaps more importantly, changes made in good faith that are of poor quality or plainly wrong. The fact that anyone can edit helps, since you can go in and correct those mistakes.
Don't take a vague threat of a revert war as an excuse. You may need to explain on an article's Talk page why you made certain corrections, but that's a Good Thing. Anti-elitism is something to be embraced: it means not blindly following someone because they have the right credentials as an authority. It's usually good to have those credentials, but it's better to demonstrate that you know what you're doing than to simply assert it. If you really know your stuff, you should be able to explain your position clearly and I shouldn't have to take your word for it.
Ideally, this also means that editors cannot abuse trust based on a history of useful contributions. Here on
Overall, open rational dialog is a successful approach. Sure, there will be trolls who try to abuse this, but you already know how to deal with them from your experience here on Slashdot.
Re:Have 2 versions (Score:2, Insightful)
The OP's point is that goes against the beliefs of Wikipedia - the founder that was the strongest proponent of such a system left, the 'leaders' of the site are very much anti-elitist.
RTFA.
Re:OT: Annoying (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedia needs moderators and editors (Score:5, Insightful)
Niche media (Score:4, Insightful)
In the past 20 years or so, media has become extremely niche (if you're a bicycle rider into tarantulas, there's probably a magazine for you). The benefit of this is that you often get experts and people genuinely interested in the subject writing the articles.
I tried Wikipedia and gave up in disgust (particularly that articles about GNAA trolls, filled with lies and editorials, were kept). I since have spent some time with the (admitally silly) Homestar Wiki at http://www.hrwiki.org, and have found it to be a much different environment. No brass arguments, no format wars -- just people adding bits and pieces of what they like about their favorite web cartoon. I've thought about setting up a similar MST3K wiki.
The point is, all-encompassing media is dead. No one expects CNN/Fox News/etc. to focus on every story available, and no one should expect the same from internet sites. Niche media will continue to thrive.
They're idiots then (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:5, Insightful)
No data sources are reliable. The Encyclopeadia Britanica which keeps being referred to as some sort of gold standard of accuracy was started as a triumphalist celebration of the British Empire.
But even unreliable data can point to data that is more reliable. Police investigations do not begin with firm facts, they begin with a set of evidence which may or may not be contaminated in various ways. The same is actually the case in physics research, there are very few experiments that work really well and repeatedly when they are first done.
In the last election we discovered that the mainstream media are terrebly sloppy and unreliable. The media gave far more attention to the smear boat liars for Bush and TANG memos provided by a highly dubious source than they did to actual policies.
The problem with openness is that it only takes a small proportion of jerks to screw everything up. I don't think anyone would seriously consider running the Linux kernel on wiki lines.
Fortunately there is a very simple way out of the current situation and one that will inevitably be put into practice. Just as slashdot has a reputation mechanism and can be surfed at +1 (mostly good stuff) or -1 (mostly trolls) the same sort of mechanism will eventually be put in place on wikipedia or a branch thereof.
The creative commons license even makes it easy for people to do this, the troll version of wiki is simply the last input to the editor queue.
A deeper problem though is the one that all these knowledge engineering projects suffer from at some point, not everything is physics, in most fields there is no absolute knowledge of the form that fits into a rigid taxonomic structure. There is no definitive opinion of the literary merits of Burroughs or Dickens.
The revert wars are in part reflecting genuine differences of opinion. A bunch of loonies who think they have found absolute truth and attempt to construct a rigid ideology arround it are not going to tolerate dissenting views. And bunches of loonies with a rigid ideology are not going to tollerate any form of epistomological relativism.
Ulterior motives (Score:5, Insightful)
Flaming Wikipedia for inaccuracy is missing the two most important single points about Wikipedia that no other encyclopedia has.
#1 You can reuse, reference and reprocess the content. If you want trusted articles then set up a scheme where experts in the field can GPG sign versions of the article that they believe to be correct.
#2 Unlike every other encyclopedia you can take Wikipedia content under license and "fix it", where fixing means adjusting to your own world view. If you happen to think the Encyclopedia Britannica has its head up its backside you can't fix it. Wikipedia you can. Thats both powerful and dangerous as you can easily imagine groups with an agenda doing things like issuing 'evolution free' wikipedia variants to schools.
What matters for Wikipedia isn't IMHO whether Sanger has an axe to grind but who is going to build the tools to take this kind of distributed public knowledgebase further.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:3, Insightful)
Other media outlets claim to be unbiased, but when something like 85% of them are Democrats, I would expect them to be biased that way anyway. I believe every individual's biases color what they see and what they believe, only a very few people operate in a manner that is truly unbiased.
Encyclopedias and "Facts" (Score:3, Insightful)
This is naive. Encyclopedias aren't just catalogues of facts. The majority of entries involve someone's interpretation of the item being described. In commercial encyclopedias, the issue of objectivity was addressed by a process involving peer review, editors, and other checks and balances that attempt to prevent obvious abuses in which a contributor gets to promote their own points of view over others.
This has its limits, though. Such processes don't usually remove cultural bias -- think of the difference between CNN and Al-Jazeera. If all the editors and contributors share the same basic ideas and cultural context, a bias will be present that they may not even be aware of -- or if they are aware of it, they all think it's "right", and thus OK to perpetuate in the pages of their encyclopedia (or other media). You see this sort of thing in newspapers and on TV news channels all the time -- the famous liberal bias or conservative bias, depending on whether you're talking about e.g. New York Times vs. the New York Post, or CBS vs. Fox, in which even basic terms used to describe people or events are varyingly pejorative or complimentary depending on the bias of the source. Encyclopedias aren't fundamentally any different -- think of them as a type of really slow newspaper.
"All" Wikipedia does is remove some of these controls. Of course, that can result in various kinds of problems, but it's worth keeping in mind that these same problems exist in regular encyclopedias, and although the controls in those encyclopedias may catch the egregious problems, in many other cases the problems are just better hidden. Wikipedia gives an excellent insight into what postmodernists call socially constructed truth, and should remind us that when it comes to the kind of subjective descriptions that encyclopedias are full of, facts and objectivity are not nearly as simple a matter as some like to think.
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:3, Insightful)
That depends whether the article is a normative reference or a background or credit reference. There used to be a time when academics used to claim that there should NEVER EVER be references to URLs in academic papers. Then the engineering journals started to discover that many network standards are only available through the web and the URL is the definitive reference.
The emphemeral nature of wiki does create problems for citation, but these are entirely fixable with a sufficient attention to the problem in the naming scheme.
If I am writing a paper on a Web service and need to provide a background to either the application area or to the general technology wiki may well provide a free description that is at least as good as a background citation to a standard text. It also has the advantage of being at least potentially being updated to reflect changes since.
Re:They need expert Guest Editors (Score:1, Insightful)
Sounds like what I've been saying about desktop Linux for years, yet continue to meet with resistance, even after articles like the recent one on Linux gaming where nVidia and ATI talk about the difficulties in developing for multiple standards and targets that are always moving.
Re:In Theory, Communism Works (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not incorporate moderating into Wikis? (Score:3, Insightful)
Take the example of the "FOX News" entry someone made earlier. Since the subject has somehow become emotionally and politically charged it is clear that people will tend to moderate edits based on which side they are on - not on research and facts.
Groupthink tends to be reinforced by a moderation system by allowing administrators to easily determine which "side" someone is on, the site administrators can then easily identify undesirables (that is people they don't agree with) and strip them of moderation privileges.
Opinionpedia (Score:2, Insightful)
Aww, you guys are just mad because a search for "slashdot" on Wikipedia turns up such gems as the following:
The Slashdot editors are sometimes accused of posting (and even preferring) stories that are, themselves, thinly-disguised trolls, which encourage large numbers of postings in response, and of accepting kickbacks to post certain stories
The site's slogan is "News for nerds, stuff that matters", but Slashdot is sometimes criticized for posting inaccurate, highly biased, and/or inflammatory story summaries that incite heated posting, as opposed to serious news or commentary (see Slashdot subculture).
True or not, this is certainly the most opinionated "encyclopedia" I've ever seen. I don't think it's likely to be taken as seriously (and rightly so) as resources such as Britannica so long as this is the case.
Re:Either idiotic response or excellent satire (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't 100% right IMO. By lumping all that together you make it seem as though "political correctness" is still exclusively a tool of the left, which simply isn't true. The techniques of PC, making your opponent look like a bad guy because of what they've said or the way they said it, appealing to sentiment rather than engaging their arguments, is pretty skillfully used by the right nowadays. All done in the service of the greater good, of course...
Pretty much everything you've mentioned except the "secular humanist" bit are offenses the right are quite frequently guilty of. That's politics, I guess, but it has spread beyond the political campaigns into the "discourse," which is sort of sad.
Distros, not Forks (Score:2, Insightful)
Part of the importance of wikipedia is that it has been one of the best ways of documenting internet culture. It has flourished because it does not define or editorialize about what articles are needed. I feel that elitism at the submission level would be to the detriment to the project. Although an unstable version would be unreliable at times, but I feel its reliability would be overshadowed by its expansive content.
Also, wikipedia is still developing. Encyclopedias have been around for hundreds of years. One should not be so quick to condemn Wikipedia because it has come along way in a short time.
Sincerely,
Fenwick McKelvey
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia has exactly one problem, neatly broken into two (related) main subproblems:
It allows stateless-user modification. This allows untrusted users to completely trash perfectly good entries, and it doesn't allow for the creation of "untrusted" users.
A very, very simple fix for this exists - Force users to register (they don't need to provide any IRL info, as I'll explain in a moment), and implement a Slashdot-like karma and moderation (and metamoderation, if necessary) system.
Limit all users to only creating new entries, and to editing their own entries and those at least one karma-class below themselves (with the highest karma-classes kept in check by a few absolutely-trusted WikiGods (most likely the physical maintainers of the site). Additionally, to address your point about having expert review of topics, allow users to grant other users permission to edit their own created topics.
Thus, a new user will have basically no power, other than to contribute new material. This stops people from making accounts just to trash legit entries. If a new user makes a slew of new entries consisting entirely of mindless drivel, they'll never gain any karma, thus can't cause any real damage. At the same time, this allows the creation of local experts, those who have proven themselves worthy of editing certain topics by higher-karma but less-expert users (if so desired by both) based on personal permission-granting.
I suppose this also sounds a bit like E2's approach, but without the annoying minimum number of nodes per level (the biggest reason I stopped contributing to E2 - A user would do better to write large amounts of barely tolerable crap than to write a small number of well-researched, well-written nodes; Personally, I wrote a dozen or so rather good entries and (two crap ones, I'll admit it), including seven "Cool"s, and never got past level 1) and with the addition of actual editing of entries rather than only creating or appending new ones.
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm curious what is really wrong about the Fox News piece. There are a couple of other replies asking the same question that appear to indicate a bias against Fox News, and I want to make clear that I'm not railing against Fox. I host a highly politically charged mailing list with extremists and moderates from the full spectrum. While there is strong disagreement on whether Fox News presents the views of the majority of the US, those from both the left and the right concur that, overall, it is presented with a neo-conservative perspective. Likewise, members of the list from both the left and right concur that The New York Times presents things from a liberal perspective. I hasten to add that the fact that those people concur does not make the content of the allegations fact, but it does make the allegations themselves worthy of inclusion in a proper analysis of current events.
If the Fox News piece were reflective of some bias in Wikipedia, I would not expect to see reports of left bias allegations in the article on The New York Times - but, indeed, the entry for The New York Times [wikipedia.org] includes a similar section on allegations of bias.
This strikes me as being about stating the facts. There are allegations of bias, and it's not Wikipedia's job to decide that those allegations are correct (and state them as fact) or that they are incorrect (and not state them). The role of an encyclopedia, at least in the context of current events, and where made possible by the technological capabilities of Wikipedia, is to state the facts, and make clear when those facts are allegations (IE: the allegation itself is a fact, the truth of the content of the allegation may be questionable).
Re:They need expert Guest Editors (Score:1, Insightful)
Some time ago administrators of a web forum I occasionally frequent asked about expertise of their users.
A rather large proportion of the user base immediately declared themselves experts in various subjects, most in three or four subjects.
Now, I personally am an expert in one subject area (published ~10 peer reviewed articles). I'm pretty good in several other subjects, but I wouldn't dare to claim that I'm an "expert" in them.
There are people who are experts in more than one area, but they are very rare. I doubt that there are more than a handful of people who are experts in four subjects. I'm pretty certain that the majority of users of a single web forum are among those people. But still, they claimed that they are, and probably even believed that.
So, what is my point? People are very poor in appraising their own skills and are likely to overestimate them. So having an "I'm an expert" button doesn't help a bit.
Re:In Theory, Communism Works (Score:2, Insightful)
As for Democracy - I will let you know when one comes around. Until there is an example of a whole country run as a Democracy then it will be hard to judge. Of course, I guess the same could be said for true Communism.
"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."
You tell me who said that. I will give you a hint. He was one of the founding fathers who made the US a federal republic governed by representative democracy.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. It is commonly known that if you go to prison [msn.com], you're probably [aclu.org] going to be raped [spr.org]. Prison officials have done little to nothing to curb the problem, so the threat remains. Therefore, it has become defacto U.S. policy to rape people.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Maybe you haven't seen it... (Score:4, Insightful)
And that is a perfect illustration of why someone with an agenda (or just ego problems) will always win stupid arguments on the Internet - they care more. Since the very young have a tendency toward fanaticism, more time, more energy and fewer opportunities for rewards in other spheres their views often win out in "easy democracy" like wikis or newsgroups.
Re:In Theory, Communism Works (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right, of course, that direct democracy on a nationwide scale has never been done; ditto for communism. However, practical experience shows that attempts at communism inevitably end in autocracy and horror -- while those nations which, through whatever mechanism they use, attempt to hew closest to democratic ideals tend to be much better places to live. We're never going to achieve the Platonic ideal of anything, not in government, not in an encyclopedia, not anywhere. All we can do is try our best, and it seems to me that's what Wikipedia is doing, with pretty good results overall.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
Get a grip.
Re:Sanger is just a tad biased (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that like how the Slashdot moderation results in a balanced set of views?
Anyway, I'm off to use my KILLER Apple dual G5 (which can totally blow away anything Intel makes) with OS X (the best, prettiest OS ever) to share the latest movies and music with everyone in the world. Then perhaps I'll use my iPod for a while.
Re:anti-elitism? (Score:3, Insightful)
Essentially, he wants there to be a trade - expertise for time. Right now, if you spend a ton of time working on the wiki, even if you aren't an expert, your changes are likely to get through and stick. He wants to allow an expert to spend less time, in exchange for that (somehow proven) expertise, and still have their change get through and stick.
Linux kernel: code changes are, at the highest level, approved or disapproved by 'experts' - Linus, AC, etc. High-quality output.
Re:Ulterior motives (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, and this potential is what makes the project interesting.
However, fixing things requires mindshare and timeshare. If everyone who points out the systematic failings in the current Wikipedia is either, at best, ignored as some poor luddite from the depths of the 20th century (when people exchanged knowledge on bits of dead trees, poor fools) or, at worst, shouted down, nothing will get get fixed because the consensus view (at least among the majority of current contributors) that nothing needs to be fixed will never be overturned.
The two most talked about articles lately regarding the Wikipedia are from a) an ex-editor of EB and b) a co-founder of Wikipedia. Both articles were thoughtful essays from experts that addressed and analysed, albeit from different directions, the same underlying problem: Wikipedia has a credibility and a reliability shortfall. I think it's unfair to dismiss this point of view as simply "flaming Wikipedia for innaccuracy."
In particular, given Sanger explicitly discussed the licensing of Wikipedia and how it allowed for a fork, he can hardly be accused of "missing the two most important single points about Wikipedia that no other encyclopedia has."
Alas, just because the licensing can allow Wikipedia to be fixed, doesn't mean that it will, or that, in the interim, Wikipedia deserves a free pass.
if you sat twenty scientists in a room and gave them one article an academic fight would break out with many subjects.
That's a straw man. It's all a matter of degree. Ask twenty physicists about an article regarding some fine point of string theory, you're going to get 20 answers, because string theory's new and shiny and no-one understands it properly and the maths and the empirical evidence are still coming up to speed. But ask them to comment on, say, an article on Maxwell's Laws and you're going to get a high, if not unanimous, degree of concordance.
Absolute nonbias is probably impossible, true. But that still doesn't mean everything is on a level playing field. Between bias and non-bias is a continuum, and even if the limits are asymptotically unreachable, it's neither ridiculous or a fools errand to demand articles from the non-biased end of the spectrum.
Remember UseNet FAQs? An awesome collection of knowledge, also theoretically forkable and open to all, but practically, very pro-expert.
Until the Wikipedia develops a mechanism for promoting expert viewpoint above that of others, it's credibility and reliability problems will remain, and it will never fulfil its potential.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:1, Insightful)
US Human Right abuses : Other Notble Human Rights abuses
So how many Russian lives does a dog barking at some guys genitals equal? 200? 20,000? The Cultural Revolution? It's called perspective. Have some.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:1, Insightful)
Being a shill, the poster then edited the article to fit it into his simplistic political world-view (US is all good, Saddam is evil, ignore the fact that the US put him in power to begin with)
Of course, both that article and this one are mostly just opinion, but mine has one objective leg-up: I did not lie. It is a known fact, and well documented for anyone who looks, that some prisoners at Abu-Ghraib had broomhandles inserted in their anus by US soldiers, and that this kind of practice was encouraged by the highest levels of the US gov't (to the civilians who control the military). A textbook example of policy-oriented institutionalized rape.
In brief: parent is a Fox-news type shill and should be ignored, To mod it +5 inf. is a travesty.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:They need expert Guest Editors (Score:2, Insightful)
Missing the point... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia was built on the backs of the thousands of users who have contributed to it. Some of these contributors were bona fide academic experts in a specific field, others were just interest amateurs. But in both cases, they contributed because they could, and, most importantly, because the entire philosophy of the project not only allows for, but encourages, that sort of contribution. We've reached the point where we people can start to take Wikipedia seriously enough to ponder questions like the ones Mr. Sanger brings up.
Wikipedia is not anti-elitist. That's a downright silly allegation. It does not specially privilege "elites," but they are likewise no more discriminated against than anyone else. The problem Mr. Sanger is addressing is ultimately not how eliminate anti-elitism, but how to institute pro-elitism. Which is absolutely fine, if your goal is to produce a traditional encyclopedia the likes of Britannica. But to encourage a special privilege for experts conversely discourages the participation of non-experts: if you make it so that average users can no longer edit Wikipedia articles, or make it enough of a chore that they no longer want to, then the entire project isn't Wikipedia anymore. And what's worse is if you appropriate the work they've already contributed in the process. It's the functional equivalent of a software company hosting an open source project which then they turn around and close once it's progressed to a certain point.
But more than that, it's a denial of what's gotten Wikipedia to where it is now in the first place. Without the active participation of all users, expert or not, it's unlikely Wikipedia would have gotten very far to begin with. To change it into something it isn't (and never aspired to be) now is silly. To imply that the contributions of non-experts are no longer desired because otherwise Wikipedia will never occupy the same privileged position as Encyclopedia Britannica is misguided. Wikipedia is not Britannica. It does some things better than Britannica, and it does some things worse than Britannica. While some specific failings can be addressed whilst maintaining the core of the Wikipedia philosophy, the key is to do so without damaging that which Wikipedia does well.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:3, Insightful)
I certainly don't buy into the idea that civilians killed by a legitimate army are less dead then those killed by suicide bombers. From the point of view of surviving family members, there's no difference between these acts.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:3, Insightful)
Concerning CNN, I don't necessarily think that information regarding bias is warranted. How credible are the allegations of bias? How frequent and widespread are the allegations? Are there good sources to cite for these allegations? I would say that for information to be included in an encyclopedia entry, it must meet a certain level of credibility. I am not sure that allegations of bias against CNN have risen to this level. On the other hand, allegations against the Times and Fox News are widespread and easy to cite.
One question: what was your statement insinuating, exactly? That wikipedia (or its contributors) have a bias?
Taft
Re:A Wikipedia Admin's reply (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Another poster argued that the Fox News "allegations of bias" section is unfair because no similar section can be put on CNN's article. This simply shows that *there is less controversy over bias on CNN* which is undoubtedly true. CNN is generally percieved as no more or less biased than the general American media; whose percieved bias is already documented [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia. All Wikipedia can do is be a record of what is generally percieved; it cannot aspire to some higher standard of "genuine truth". Indeed, the nature of "genuine truth" is a philosophical question which can be debated at length. Despite this lack of "genuine truth", Wikipedia (including this "Fox News" article) is still an amazingly valuable resource.
Larry Sanger hasn't been on Wikipedia in years. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
You see you got hung up on the "rape" part exclusively and the article's title was "Rape and SEXUAL TORTURE". Whether rape occurred at Abu Ghraib is open to debate, you dismiss it out of hand though you don't know. What would it take to prove to you rape happened at Abu Ghraib? Well video tapes but video tapes aren't proof either, they tend to just look like porn and its not likely someone would be stupid enough to actually rape someone in front of a camera anyway. Is anecdotal evidence good enough, well that is mostly what you have that Saddam used rape as tool, and that is mostly what you have that it occurred at Abu Ghraib. As in most cases of political propaganda you have anecdotal evidence that you choose to believe(against Saddam) and anecdotal evidence you choose to disregard(against Abu Ghraib) because you predetermined which you wanted to believe.
The rape issue aside, there is a mountain of photo and video evidence of sexual abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib, but you seem to be trying to brush it under the rug because it doesn't conform to what you want to believe.
If you weren't pushing a political agenda here you should have probably added the link to Saddam's use of torture, and not tried to purge the Abu Ghraib link. Abu Ghraib is an undeniable instance of sexual torture, occuring in a U.S. military prison, with indisputable graphic evidence on a scale which is rare. You choose to try to make Abu Ghraib go away because it doesn't conform to what you thought the U.S. stands for. Well the U.S. unfortunately has fallen pretty far from the lofty ideal you seem to think it adheres to. You trying to pretend otherwise isn't going to change it. If you feel bad about it you should hold the Bush administration and the Army responsible for failing to insure humane treatment of prisoners of war.
As for state sponsorship of all this, well that is a tough one. Unfortunately the organization that conducted the investigation was the same organization that perpetrated the offense, the Army. It is an unspoken truth about most militaries that, if they can they will blame everthing on the little fish, the enlisted men, and protect their officer corp and chain of command. It appears they may have done just that at Abu Ghraib so far. Its pretty much undeniable military intelligence officers and the CIA were endorsing the "softening up" that was occuring at Abu Ghraib, though maybe the people doing it got carried away. There have been far to many leaks of of information showing that officers and the civilian leadership in the Bush administration has been sanctioning degrees of torture as a matter of policy. Unfortunately when you santion a little torture you run a pretty high risk of it becoming rampant and abusive as it did at Abu Ghraib. This is a place the U.S. just simply should have never gone. It should have strictly adhered to the Geneva conventions in treatment of all prisoners instead of finding legal justifications in the White House for why people in these wars aren't worthy of this most basic humane treatment. You strictly adhere to the Geneva conventions, if for no other reason, than to help insure your soldiers will get the same humane treatment if they are taken prisoner. It is no assurance of that treatment but at this point the U.S. has no ground to stand on in demanding humane treatment of its POW's because it has chosen to unilaterally withdraw from the Geneva conventions using legalistic hair splitting.
Re:In Theory, Communism Works (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:My argument against Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
I think criticism of Wikipedia generally tends to miss the fact that most contributors recognize that bad data can sneak in, and that it's impossible to ensure 100% reliability. The rationale for Wikipedia merely suggests that the "open" approach offers some benefits not available to traditional encyclopedias (specifically, the breadth of specialized, niche or quickly changing information).
As someone who is an "expert" in at least one field (MLS degree), I tend to think that most criticism of Wikipedia is a bit naive: it overlooks shortcomings of traditional reference sources (print encyclopedias, etc.) simply because most people are familiar with them. We know how to read Encyclopedia Britannica, we know what to expect, and we know what to look out for, even if we often do so unconsciously. Wikipedia is an entirely new approach, and most people are still approaching it as they would traditional sources. Once things settle down and people become used to the idiosyncracies of Wikipedia as they have to other sources, I think it will be recognized for what it is: a valuable reference source that does not replace traditional encyclopedias anymore than traditional encyclopedias replaced research lithographs.
(Not to suggest that there aren't things that can be done to tweak Wikipedia so that, in Mr. Sanger's words, "the general public can regard [it] as reliable." But I think that's really something quite different than the sort of radical departure most such suggestions invariably seem to take.)
Re:OT: Rape in Abu Gharib (Score:2, Insightful)
Show me a reputable organisation claiming this, not one full of entrenched fanatics, and I'll reconsider.
PS, Am I the only one to see the irony of these responses backing up something by saying 'It's true, Google has lots of links..' coming in an story related to online 'authorities'?
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:1, Insightful)
You bring up the New York Times allegations in Wikipedia as "evidence" that Wikipedia is not biased. Let's just forget that the Fox News article and NYT article were likely written by completely different people, each having their own respective axe to grind. Seeing two cases of bias in the encyclopedia doesn't mean everything is A-OK, it means you've got two cases of bias and you fix both them, not let it ride.
Re:Democracy over Expertise (Score:2, Insightful)
Expert editorial is flawed because there is no way of identifying who is an unbiased, true expert. [The pope may be an expert on RC dogma but I wouldn't trust his opinions on Darwin.]
It is human nature to state an opinion as a fact as this is the basis for any argument. [A statement that uses passive wording or introduces self-doubt is always discounted. If evolution is true, man might have evolved from apes.]
It is easier to discount than disprove, which is why any comments must be factual. [The earth is round. No it isn't. Yes it is. Prove it.]
The only way to ensure reliable content is to have the 'benevolent dictator' it the form of a [re]known expert per field with published credentials. And that complete thwarts the ideal of a democracy.
And the whole expert thing is troubling anyway. Most of them are academics, and an academic by definition is a person who specializes in a field to the extent that they are narrow minded and no longer useful in most contexts. An evolutionist would argue that specialization may allow explotation of a niche, but over specialization is the key to extinction as there is slow adaptation to change.
Democracy does not yield a good genetic ranking. It assumes the voters aren't idiots.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
If I, rd_syringe, do not personally believe that something is true, no reference to it should be made.
This is clearly the case in the "Fisher Price" incident. This is a well-known criticism of Windows XP. The "hardcore guy" you are criticizing did the correct thing by citing the references and showing that yes, this is a criticism that's out there. You did the wrong thing by declaring 'Well, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia unless it's the majority view!' Is that what you think Wikipedia's purpose and policy is, to report only the "majority" view and pretend those other 'minority' views don't exist?
On the issue of the "Rape" article, you fail to mention several things.
One is that when you claimed that the wording only applied to "countries where torture is tolerated or accepted as part of the normal behaviour of police or security", the wording was changed to eliminate that artificial restriction on discussion of the subject. (It wouldn't make sense to create separate sections for "Rape and sexual torture in countries that tolerate it" and "Rape and sexual torture in countries that don't officially tolerate it", since they'd say pretty much the same thing.) Funny that you mention that "based strictly on the wording of the section, the link didn't apply," but fail to mention how that technicality disappeared.
Another is that you're bringing in your misconception again that the majority view (your view) is the truth and there's no need to discuss any others. First you say "there were no cases of rape involved" at Abu Ghraib. Then you mention "except that one prisoner is claiming it without proof." If you had joined Wikipedia earlier, instead of just joining around the same time that you started repeatedly removing the link to "Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse", I wouldn't have been surprised to see you editing out any reference to coercive interrogation techniques being used there because, hey, it's only one person claiming it without proof! Then it's only two people claiming it without proof, only five people claiming it with a photo of Lynndie England smirking at hooded naked prisoners simulating fellatio as proof...
Thirdly, you offer up as your proof that you were the thoughtful considerate party in the right, and that it was the other side, the "hardcore guy", who was "politically motivated", who "snuck in" his restoration of the link you removed ("snuck in"? are you suggesting I had a webcam on you and was carefully watching and waiting until you were looking the other way?) the fact that you offered The Rape of Nanjing as an alternate. Which you are claiming now is "more pertinent to that section than either of the links we had" and "just a given".
You fail to mention that it was explained to you why that was not a suitable alternative: the Rape of Nanjing was a famous military atrocity where there is no question that rapes were committed, as well as murders, as well as wholesale destruction. However, the entire reason that the Rape article has a section on Rape and Sexual Torture is to discuss rape when it occurs not as an act of self-gratification committed at another's expense (as it usually does), but as a method of torture to advance policy. No historical evidence has ever suggested that the Japanese commanders said to the soldiers who did the raping, "Hey, we're gonna want to get information out of those civilians later, so why don't you torture them by raping a bunch?" There's no suggestion that it was anything other than "They're the enemy anyways; whatever you feel like doing to them, go ahead and do it." To quote someone whose name I can't recall, "based strictly on the wording of the section, the link didn't apply."
Re:OT: Rape in Abu Gharib (Score:2, Insightful)
You seem to be taking a position that rape definitely did NOT happen. While a Google search does not prove anything, a quick read through of most of the articles found there should be sufficient to warrant further investigation before asserting with certainty that rape did not happen.
Disclaimers (Score:2, Insightful)
Would you trust a car with a disclaimer that says "this car has been put together by people who don't necessarily know anything about mechanics or safety"?
Would you trust food with a disclaimer that says "this food has been prepared by people who know nothing about cooking or sanitary conditions"?
Well then, would you trust an encyclopedia with a disclaimer [wikipedia.org] that says "please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by professionals with the expertise necessary to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information"
I think any information source with a disclaimer that says "this is not a reliable source of information" should be taken very lightly.
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
The article's title is "Rape [wikipedia.org]." There is a section in this article on "Rape and Sexual Torture." Since this is a section of the article on rape, I think the parent is correct in getting "hung up on the rape part."
Re:open source for code but not information? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, no, this is nothing like open source.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
K. That implies that they don't have the moral obligation to protect prisoners from that level of harm. If that's the case, would it not be more economical to simply put all prisoners on islands with the means to grow food, and shoot anyone who tries to leave before their time is up? That's a similar level of duty of care to what a justified disinterest in prison rape implies.
In this supposedly more enlightened age, where we generally disapprove of practices such as marooning, these things are in fact not tolerated. We recognize that prisoners have certain basic rights, and I think the right not to be raped is one of them. Prison officials have chosen to take responsibility for that, along with their responsibilities to the rest of us such as keeping prisoners locked up.
As to an agenda, it shouldn't stop anyone looking at the factual basis for the argument, facts which you have not rejected but rather attempted to excuse.
success within limits (Score:5, Insightful)
I also feel that Larry's criticism about "antielitism" is a little weird, because I actually tried to contribute a physics article to Nupedia, and the reason I gave up on the process was exactly because I felt that it was the kind of "antielitist" atmosphere he seems to be imputing to Wikipedia. I have a PhD in physics, I teach physics at a community college, and I've written some free physics textbooks. I don't expect other people to fall down on their knees and worship my erudition, but I think I qualify as an expert within my field. My experience with Nupedia was that I was being endlessly nitpicked by people who had no particular expertise in physics. On Wikipedia, OTOH, I've generally found that people tend to contribute at their level of ability, and it works great. People who know a lot do the biggest, most important edits, and people who know less generally exercise a lot of self-restraint. I'm an amateur musician, but not an expert by any means. If I'm editing a music article, I'll typically restrict myself to correcting typos, or contributing factual information that I'm very sure of (or, if it's something more substantial, I'll typically post on the article's talk page).
Wikipedia is a huge success, within certain limits. The main limitation is simply that it doesn't work well on controversial topics. I find it really odd that Larry's critique talked all about rudeness, trolling, etc., but never talked about the situation that, in my experience, is what leads to people getting upset. It comes from arguments about controversial topics: Ronald Reagan, astrology, ... And the problem with these topics is not that people ignorant about Ronald Reagan fail to defer to people who are experts on Ronald Reagan. The problem with those topics is that there is intense disagreement. That's the way Wikipedia is. It can't handle controvesial topics, and I don't see any way to modify it so that it can. The NPOV (neutral point of view) policy works fine on noncontroversial articles, and doesn't work at all on controversial ones. Wikipedia is a tool that works for some jobs, but not for others.
Re:Sanger is just a tad biased (Score:3, Insightful)
Heheh, just like when someone gets modded "Flaimbait" for simply suggesting trying OpenBSD instead of Debian for a server (as seen in the recent 3.0r4 article). Given enough people and you'll likely see patterns in views. For lots of topics there can't really be a "balanced" view since everyone is going to have a different definition of "balance". Slashddot moderation isn't going for "balance" anyways, it's purely a populist/circlejerk tool.
Idiotic response here, from the look of it. (Score:1, Insightful)
Science is a process of arriving at reliable conclusions based on the best data from the best-concieved experiments we can devise. It most certainly does NOT require a foray into the particular brand metaphysics favored by you--namely secular humanism; it's strength is that it doesn't *matter* what biases you have, so long as you do the experiments properly, the *data* will come out right and bear out only the proper conclusion.
Now go away, troll, and spare us your insipid cheerleading. Science doesn't need cheerleaders, it needs solid research, and this "more scientific than thou" attitude I see bandied about is quite tiresome. Speaking of research, I'd best be getting back to mine.
Compounding the Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Which would only further erode the influence of experts who would, by definition, post their own knowledge of the subject.
Instead, you would have people simply regurgitate what they read somewhere else, without any way to validate whether or not they correctly interpreted the information.
Science and politics (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as pages pertaining to say Israel and Palestine, I think quality control is hopeless. I am perfectly happy to get into flame (or revert) wars on Wikipedia, but even I'm scared to go into that section. Different people have very different views on certain historical and political issues. I do not mind the idea of some kind of peer review for scientific articles, but I would be very suspicious of such a process related to say the Israel and Palestine pages, or the Northern Ireland pages, or the George W. Bush and John Kerry pages and so forth. Wikipedia already have administrators who are ideological fanatics. I'm thinking of four of them right now - two are hard-core right-wingers, one is a social democrat (Americans would say liberal) who is nonetheless fanatically anti-communist, and the other is far-left.
I don't believe objectivity exists in historical and political matters. Wikipedia incorporates the now public domain 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, and some of the material in there would appear biased, racist, sexist and so forth to our modern eyes. English Wikipedia is mostly comprised of citizens of England and its former colonies, including the US. Relative to the half of the world living on less than $2 a day and whom have never made a phone call, these are relatively privileged people, and Wikipedia is a subset of even these people since Internet users and Wikipedians are more likely to be college-educated than from some ghetto or even a blue-collar household. This alone makes for a very elitist and skewed view of the world. For example, in the 1950's, there were lots of accusations in the US that the Bandung Conference was some kind of communist ploy, which in my opinion is far removed from reality. A person from India or some other third world country would have had a more realistic view of this I think. Then again, the rest of the world has some odd ideas about the US, perhaps they watch Baywatch, Friends, and shows like that and think that is what life in the US is really like.
The link in the article to Wikinfo [wikinfo.org] is a fork of Wikipedia, one run by a right-wing Wikipedia user who thinks Wikipedia is too left-wing. There are forks by left-wing people who think Wikipedia is too right-wing by left-wing users as well - the "liberal Democrat" DKosopedia [dkosopedia.com] and the anarchist English Anarchopedia [anarchopedia.org] and Infoshop's OpenWiki [infoshop.org]. Wikipedia articles are GFDL so forks are easy.
Wikipedia should be able to handle science articles on biology and so forth, although speciality forks might appear by people who realize the Man's conspiracy to cover up the reality of orgone energy [wikipedia.org] (please consult Robert A. Wilson). More likely, people will realize Wikipedia pages on the Israel/Palestine conflict will always be in flux depending on the time of day, and will go off and start wikis pertaining to primarily politics and history and other social science types topics. But outside of what touches upon the social world, Wikipedia should be able to handle it.
Re:OT: Rape in Abu Gharib (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, here's the small print from the top of that page:
This is not exactly the page you want to cite to debunk the suspicion that inauthentic photographs are being circulated out there by fanatics.
Re:Ulterior motives (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a misleading statement. Certainly the potential for disagreement exisits at the periphery of the field, but on the core tenents relevant to their expertise - the part relevant to an encyclopedia - there's far more likely to be complete agreement. It's hard to see how any science could proceed without.
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot is not the best model to emulate. Whenever the topic discussed is one in which I'm well versed I always cringe at the high moderation given, for lack of a better term, 'feel good' posts full of factual errors. Moderators have a strong prediliction to assign points based on social criteria - is the post from an everyman perspective? does it ridicule elitism? - rather than factual content, ironically the exact problem facing Wikipedia.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't think you actually know the full extent of the abuse there to make such a bold and absolute statement. The photo's that were publicly released didn't include the most graphic ones which apparently sickened most of the people that saw them behind closed doors.
I'm thinking maybe you would like to do a stint as a prisoner in a place like Abu Graib and maybe you wouldn't be so willing to downplay what happened there.
You also sound a lot like you work in the Bush administration. They try to split hairs on what constitutes torture too which is why all this ugliness happened in the first place. There is no sharp division between abuse and torture, its just gradations. I imagine you are more likely if to call it torture if you are on the receiving end and less likely if you are administering it(personally or by supporting a government which does it).
Are you saying including the link on Saddam was objective and not hyperbole? On this particular topic I think we have established that a moderator is most likely going to include links that cites torture by people he disapproves of and suppress ones that hit to close to home.
Unfortunately state sanctioned rape and torture is pretty much inevitably be the subject of innuendo, objectivity and hyperbole because it usually comes down to one persons word against anothers. What makes Abu Ghraib unique is they were stupid enough to produce reams of indisputable evidence which is why it IS such a good case study on the topic.
Trust (Score:3, Insightful)
And so facts, like opinions, largely become either trusted or untrusted, rather than verified. Wikipedia should implement a ratings system somewhat like that of slashdot, with these features:
- Everyone can rate any entry at any time, rather than by dint of being granted mod points
- More than one entry can exist for a given topic in Wikipedia, potentially conflicting directly with other entries on the same subject
- In addition to being able to rate entries, everyone can rate everyone else in terms of how much a given person trusts another person
The above leads to a situation where each person viewing wikipedia can mark various entries as trusted or not, and various people as trustworthy or not, and get a filtered view of wikipedia (or at least a per-entry score) individually tailored to the trust instincts of the individual viewer.For an example of a trust metric, check out Advogato [advogato.org].
I do not mean to say that there is no such thing as objective truth or reality, there indeed is such a thing. But geographical distance, time passed, lack of measuring equipment, and other factors mean that in a very practical and real sense, "knowing" truth in many cases is reduced to a matter of trust and intuition. There is such a thing as expertise, but qualifying expertise is, in the end, a matter of trust.
Debating this point is worthwhile, because it can be difficult to grasp and should not be accepted lightly. But neither should we go around in circles never acknowledging this point or moving past it. In the end, filtering reality through a sytem of trust, tailored to the individual, is something that should be reflected in entities such as wikipedia.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the whole point. The photo's that were NOT publicly released are irrelevant because we do NOT know what they are. You cannot claim them as valid wikipedia references for torture because you do NOT know that they are.
It is NOT objective to claim sexual torture at Abu Ghraib. Period. Whether or not you believe differently is entirely irrelevant, because it is NOT objective. Please look up the word "objective" if you are having intellectual difficulty with this.
That's the whole point of this thread, if you ever bothered reading the original post. The link to Abu Ghraib was *subjective*. It was *biased*. It was *inappropriate* for an encyclopedia. I don't know how much more plain you can get than that.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)
Excepting we know they exist and they are worse than the ones that were publicly released which were REALLY bad, so only someone in a severe state of denail would call them irrelevent. Like I said many Japanese are in the same state of denial about Nanking more than 60 years later.
As a reminder you said:
"Except that there was no sexual torture at that prison"
That was an absolute statement which you simply can't support and the weight of the evidence leans against you. You have zero evidence that there was no sexual torture, in fact that is an unprovable statement. Sexual torture happens in nearly every prison whether it be inmate on inmate or guard on inmate.
So I'm at a loss how you think you can get away with saying absolutely it didn't happen when you have no evidence to support that, and you have to deny a large body of photographic evidence showing severe abuse, and we know there is more evidence that has been concealed showing even worse abuse, and a there is a presumption that if they did stuff that awful on camera that they may well have done things far worse off camera.
"The link to Abu Ghraib was *subjective*. It was *biased*. It was *inappropriate* for an encyclopedia."
And so was the link to Saddam and Nanking. They are all subjective charges. Unfortunately EVERY link on this subject is going to be subjective and inflammatory. It is the nature of the subject. I guess you can either deny it exists because it is never absolutely provable, or you can include links to instances with some substantiation and Abu Graib is hands down the best documented case there is. Most torturers are smarter than American torturers because the usually strive to not leave an evidence trail, its a reason electic shock, drowning and rubber hoses are popular, no marks to take pictures of later.
Bottom line is you either include all the links or none of them. The people who were fighting over this at Wikipedia were just trying to replace ones that that offended their political view with ones that were inline with what they want to believe. The original poster was acting like he was being objective and fair when he obviously wasn't, he was replacing an anti American link with a pro American propaganda link.
Re:Statistical Fully Democratic Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, I'm sure that if one solicited calls for 'balance' on Adolf Hitler, one could get LOTS of claims from his proponents suggesting all sorts of positives about him, blaming everybody but the Germans for the Second World War due to the Versaille Treaty, denying the Final Solution, attributing the Nazi defeat to Jewish Bolshevik traitors, or whatever. Personally, I'm inclined to think that any properly balanced view of him in terms of history should be profoundly negative... and fanatics will be inclined to frequently and loudly tilt the balance the other way.
In addition, the selection of facts -- even when true -- can be quite biased. A previous poster noted that an article on rape linked to the Abu Ghraib scandal. One might wonder if the same person who added that link would consent to linking an article about rampant sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in the Congo [timesonline.co.uk], including the running of prostitution rings and the creation of child pornography involving rape, or perhaps listing articles on the French use of torture and extrajudicial execution [hrw.org] during the war in Algiers in an article on torture or state terrorism. Somebody who has a bias specifically against the United States or its government, for instance, might constantly point to Abu Ghraib while ignoring far larger scandals.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
That entirely depends on how you choose to subjectively define torture. You are obviously setting a higher bar than most people would. If Saddam had done that shit and the same photos were realeased you and most of America would be screamy bloody TORTURE at the top of your lungs. You are just applying a double standard because you can't cope with the fact that your beloved country got caught redhanded doing something you don't want to admit your country does.
Again, just answer my question, would it be OK if we subject you to the treatment the inmates suffered just in the publicly released photos. OK, then if we can get our hand on all the really gruesome photos that have been withheld can we subject you to that to? Also remember you are being held against your will and once your captors start doing this stuff to you, you don't know where or if they draw the line and stop. even
I didn't think so.
Even if it didn't rise to your high bar for physical torture it was obviously pegging the meter on the psychological scale and the main component of sexual torture is psychological. Its not like you are necessarily going to be physically harmed by being raped, unless its particulary brutal, most of the damage is psychological.
Is it OK if we take photos of you in homosexual poses and show them to your family and friends or maybe show them to the whole world? Didn't think so.
If we are going to use your bar you simply can't put anything on this subject in Wikipedia. There is no irrefutable evidence its ever occurred anywhere. Only people that know for sure are either the people who were a victim of it, or who inflicted or who watched it being inflicted. Its really easy to dismiss the first and last groups as liars. The middle group is usually not talking.
"But do not heap upon it crimes that did not occur there."
Once again you are making a statement you can't support. You said yourself you have no clue what is in the photos that weren't released and for all you no they do show those crimes occuring there. If you don't like me saying things I can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt why don't you stop doing it.
Re:Maybe you haven't seen it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikian: That's not right. I have a book that clearly states XYZ.
True--but sometimes a bit of give and take is necessary, too. Even when there is a new study (or more than one, for that matter) which reinterprets a historical event, there are often many people in the real world who may not want to change world views. You often have the same problem even if you ask an older expert. (Heck, if the old guy writes the Britannica article, the dead tree version is going to be stuck with the old theory, too.) It takes time to change minds, in Wikipedia as much as in the real world.
Sometimes diplomatic phrasing of the change helps quite a bit, so that people don't feel utterly snubbed. Something like
If there is a current dispute, address all of the reasonable points of view. If there has been a genuine shift in opinion, present the new view, but mention the old one for historical interest. Try not to delete anything unless absolutely necessary; just move it around to an appropriate section of the article. Heck, sometimes further new evidence will revive a deprecated theory, and it's handy to have the text around when that happens.Of course, sometimes some people on the Internet are just jerks, and there's not a lot you can do about them--if you meet one of those, you have my sympathy.
Re:At the risk of being drowned out (Score:4, Insightful)
The dates of her birth and death check out, as is her appearance on the 5000-yen note. The year of her father's death is also right. I'm wondering about her siblings...? Beyond that, I haven't the time to fact check, and it's not in my field.
Luckily I ran it by my professor before handing it in, but I will never use Wikipedia as a source on a paper again.
Glad to hear it. I'm kind of surprised that a university professor wouldn't bite your head off for using an encyclopedia as a reference in an academic paper anyway--there should be better sources than a three-paragraph Wikipedia article.
I do still visit wikipedia when I need general information but I even take that with a major grain of salt.
Great! That's what encyclopedias are for.
Am I alone in thinking wikipedia should A) have experts come in and run a "stable" version of the encyclopedia
Perfect. And at twenty-five edits per minute, with one minute to review each edit, you'll just need a full-time team of a hundred highly-qualified fact checkers. That will cost, what, five million or so per year? This assumes that the rate of growth of Wikipedia does not increase, and that existing articles are not also reviewed.
Re:Ulterior motives (Score:3, Insightful)
Legitimacy is one of the primary quests for any asshole. Without legitimacy an asshole is just an asshole, and most of us will ignore him unless he makes it impossible for us to do so (e.g., by bombing a Planned Parenthood clinic or convincing other assholes to pass laws banning gay marriage). Wikipedia provides an avenue to achieving some form of legitimacy, and doing so "under the radar" by *appearing* to be an objective source of information.
It's good that an ex-editor of EB and a co-founder of Wikipedia have made public the flaws of Wikipedia. People shouldn't put too much credence into a source of information so obviously open to manipulation. It is NOT an encyclopedia nor does it endeavor to be accurate above all other things. As you pointed out, it isn't even held to the standards that most FAQs endeavor to achieve.
Max