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."
Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sanger's an epistomologist? (Score:5, Interesting)
The first encyclopedists [utm.edu] had at least ulterior motives. Anybody have any other ideas what this is really all about? Then there's always the parallels to the world of Asimov's Foundation series, which started off as an Encyclopedia project!
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's about where I am on it. I used to actively contribute, write (small, out of the way) articles, but I got tired of my work being molested for someone's agenda, and threatened for not pandering to the trolls.
Sanger's Dead-On (Score:3, Interesting)
Every once in a while I may go look something up on there for general interest purposes, but never for anything for my classes.
Larrys History (Score:5, Interesting)
2002 was the last time he edited a page *not* related to himself
why "wiki"? (Score:1, Interesting)
once i bothered to go to wikipedia and realized that it is an encyclopedia composed entirely of user-contributed articles, i kinda had a feeling it wouldn't work. i didn't think it would work for the same reason that IRC and message boards are now all but useless. the same goes for everything2.com.
The fact that they're forking makes them even more useless. If they were based on facts, there would be no need to fork anything. Even if one of the forks is designed to be the truth wiki, how the hell do i know which one it is? They all claim to be encyclopedic, which one is actually a reference and not a site full of opinion?
Wikipedia and Everything2 are both full of opinion, rhetoric and useless data someone feels that they should shove down my optic nerve at the expense of some other information i've learned somewhere else. They're venues for flamewars disguised as articles, and if you can't trust one article on a particular wiki, you can't trust any.
i've visited both only a handful of times each, and i hope to limit my exposure to both to little more than that.
(and by the way, forking isn't bad. forking for stupid reasons is only bad because of the stupid reasons, not because something forked)
They need expert Guest Editors (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not incorporate moderating into Wikis? (Score:5, Interesting)
anti-elitism? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, "Anti-elitism"? No, it's "pro-community," and while I agree that it's out of place for mediating some rather silly disputes, the community-driven atmosphere has survived. Sanger is rightly second-guessing the community's ability to make Wikipedia a fully credible source, but while Wikipedia has been one of the internet/open source community's greatest achievements, it should also be allowed to highlight its limitations.
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:3, Interesting)
If it is reliable for the 'most part', then it is not reliable at all. If I am looking for information on a topic, I can't rely on a source that is mostly correct. This is the reason that you always check your facts with other sources. Using an unreliable source as a primary source or to verify information is essentially a waste of time.
I use Wikipedia only for casual information. I would never cite it.
Wikipedia needs moderators and editors (Score:4, Interesting)
Another option is
But the idea behind Wikipedia is great, and shouldn't be allowed to die. Despite its warts, I do consider it a valuble reference, and keep a quick link to it on my Mozilla toolbar.
Have 2 versions (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:3, Interesting)
You shouldn't cite any encyclopaedia in your own work - use them as a jumping board towards new lines of research.
This is why it's so important for encyclopaedia (and Wikipedia) articles to give references. Treat them as brief introductions and overviews of particular areas, and then do your own reading and work from the references. An encyclopaedia should never be the primary source of a particular piece of information. [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia leans more towards the 'interesting general knowledge' use for me as well, and while I'd probably not use it for anything particularly serious, I do trust its content a bit more than that from some random web page turned up by Google. Still, remember the old adage - never believe anything you read on the Intarweb.
Re:Anti-elitism is what the net is all about (Score:3, Interesting)
The bottom line is that I am an elitist, and I think its a good idea. Shouldn't the smartest people be in charge? Wasn't America founded a meritocracy?
Many associate elitism with getting rid of the un-elite. I put forth that most intellectual elite do not see the "average" man as something to be gotten rid of, but rather something to learn to live with and to take care of. The interests of the intellectual elite and the average need not be in conflict. If you think they are, you misunderstand the problems faced by both groups.
and techcentralstation (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps I'm a cynic.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think a large part of it has to do with the culture at large. Look at the movies. Intuition, guessing correctly, is more highly prized than being able to prove something beyond doubt. It is more complicated than The Matrix vs Lemoney Snickets, but I don't think it's a completely horrible metaphore.
There is no such thing as an "expert" (Score:5, Interesting)
The fool who wrote this critique of Wikipedia is attempting to defend the exclusivity of who can be considered to be informed and who can't. One of the worst things in the world you can do to any information resource is to make it exclusive. When you make it exclusive, you make it useless and inaccessible to the average person. It might be nice to have someone who has a deep knowledge of philosphy share their knowledge on Wikipedia, but if they can't speak in terms that others can understand, what good is it? Even with it's warts, Wikipedia provides people with better access to knowledge on various subjects than they previously had access to. That's the point. If one wishes to expand their knowledge on that subject, then they can feel free to delve deeper into it from more authoritative sources. The Wikipedia is not meant to be ultimately authoritative. The set of Encyclopedia Britanica Year books I have at home prove that to me. In the early 50s, their music reviewer (a supposed expert) claimed that rock and roll was a fad of insanity where children wanted to play and listen to tribal rhythms. Apparently, he was wrong since rock and roll had a long life beyond the 1950s. By the 1957 edition, he had been replaced by someone who was a little more flexible in their thinking. By the previous expert's opinions, I'm sure that the new reviewer was one the "rabble" or the "hoi polloi" who didn't understand the value of real music vs. those tribal jungle rhythms. (Note: the older reviewer did refer to rock music in increasingly racial terms between 1955 and 1956 editions, I believe)
My point is that there can be no experts because information is not immutable. It always changes and updates are required. Homosexuality used to be considered a psychological disorder that could be "cured". Blacks used to be considered sub-human as they didn't possess souls. These views are quite obviously wrong. But if you would have checked with an expert of the past, those are the answers you would have gotten. If Wikipedia never reaches a point where the information is 100% reliable at all times, it doesn't matter because it still does the job of opening minds to new subjects and areas of knowledge. I say, kick this guy in the bollocks and charge forward. If we want people to be armed with knowledge, Wikipedia is a pretty darn good tool.
Re:Nothing wrong with anti-elitism (Score:3, Interesting)
What most of us call "facts" are the very things which are independent of social structures, cultural contexts and other biases. As such, anyone is in the position to determine who is an expert and who is not.
An expert is a person who has a more detailed knowledge of facts than someone else.
Scientific expertise is not some secret society of self-prepetuating illuminati. That's what sets Science apart from its predecessors Alchemy and Magic. It may be a meritocracy to an extent, but it is an open system. You don't need a degree to practice science.
It may be difficult in practice, but there are still plenty of people making contributions without any academic background. And even more academics making contributions within fields in which they have no formal schooling.
(The physicist Richard Feynman for instance, helped decypher Maya hieroglyphs)
The Open Source movement is very similar in that respect. Anyone can contribute, but naturally a major contributor will have an easier time getting his patches into the Linux kernel than someone who never contributed anything before.
Wikipedia is different. It is far more difficult for the readers/reviewers to determine who is right and who is wrong, especially in highly specialized areas.
Instead you risk ending up with the very thing you are accusing peer-review of. You create a social structure where the 'facts' are determined by the authority the person holds within the Wikipedia community rather than a consensus on what actually matches reality best.
Sites and sources (Score:3, Interesting)
This is one of the reasons why I love the Snopes Urban Legends site [snopes.com]. Not only do the stories tend to be well-researched, they list references at the bottom and the writers tend to admit when they're unsure about their sources of information and/or conclusions. ^_^ The wacky humor and illustrations are nice too.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:0, Interesting)
The solution - direct democracy &delegated vot (Score:2, Interesting)
Now you would say that on first viewing this makes things worse as we have obvious non-experts making decisions in various areas. This is where the concept of delegated voting comes in.
I can delegate my vote on any area to someone else. If I vote on a topic my vote is counted if I do not bother to vote and I have delegated votes on that topic to someone else then my vote is added to their tally.
Some examples:
- My mother runs a recruitment firm and recently did her PHD in industrial psychoology on unemployment. I trust her judgement in this area therefore any votes on employment she can cast mine along with hers.
- My friend Chris knows a lot about markets and I think has a good balance between social justice and economic growth. I would delegate my economy votes to hiom in most instances. I don't trust him as much as I trust my mother though so in some key insances I may decide to vote myself.
- If friends decided to delegate their votes to me on certain areas where I feel confident (community, education, religion) I would be honored to vote on their behalf.
I think something like this could work for wikipedia. If you are a trusted member of the community you can give your votes for deletion in an area to a certain trusted person.
REmembr you can alwats still vote yourself and you can always move your vote from one person if you feel they no longer adequately rtepresent you.
Re:Wikipedia informs me and scares me. (Score:3, Interesting)
As you say, they acknowledge the nature of the debate and present both sides. Furthermore, they present them well, with a great deal of supporting evidence. They don't simply state that there are multiple opinions without giving you information and references to judge for yourself their validity. ("We report, you decide," right?)
Yes, there is a lot more evidence there to support the claim that FOX News is has a conservative bias. Frankly, I believe this is because contrary evidence does not exist. If you know better, fix it! I just skimmed the most recent of the history section for this article. While I did see conservative statements removed, they were horribly-written, unsubstantiated opinions [wikipedia.org], rather than descriptions of and references to supporting facts like the liberal side had - such as the information about the bovine growth hormone court case.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:1, Interesting)
Your logic is astounding. You could also use the same logic to show that: Since the mass killings in Africa have been called "genocide" by the UN and the UN has done little to nothing to curb the problem (pretty much as it always does, just issue some letters saying that it is a "bad thing" and that they should stop or they'll pass another "resolution" to tell them to stop again... maybe 15 more such "resolutions" would get their attention, and hope the United States of America does something about it), it has become defacto UN policy to commit genocide.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:-1, Interesting)
The link simply was not relevant to the section on the rape page. Abu Ghraib is a case of humiliation and social torture, not rape. The section talked about rape and torture as a social policy of the government and society, and then linked to Abu Ghraib. It was too much of a potential political statement, aside from being irrelevant, as though it was saying rape is a common social and government policy of the US.
Worse yet, when I put up the link to Saddam's Iraq, it was removed and its relevance was argued. To deny the relevance of Saddam's Iraq in a section on government rape and torture, when the Wiki page on Saddam's Iraq itself describes it, further solidified my guess that there was a POV being interjected, whether intentionally or not.
Lightweight editors, article-level forks (Score:1, Interesting)
At the same time, heavy-handed attempts to appoint "privileged" editors, and/or only allow them to modify, can quickly mire down a project in inertia (cf. Nupedia) or social infighting for control (cf. lots of MUDs).
So, why not keep it simple? Allow any registered user to become "Editor" of an article, simply by declaring they're doing so.
Once an article has an Editor, they can designate 'releases' of the article (like the stable releases of a software program). People can still see the bleeding edge (the "CVS nightlies" if you will) if they want, but by default, they'll see an Editor's version. Editors can decide periodically whether they want new 'bleeding-edge' edits included or not (and if so, which ones).
Don't like the job the Editor is doing? Then you can decide to be an Editor yourself on the article. When you do, the article forks, so you have have your stream and other Editor's streams.
The vast majority of articles would have 0 or 1 Editors, I'd expect. If there are multiple Editor forks for a given article, you can decide which fork(s) to trust by looking at a quick summary of the edit history and the Editor (including whether particular voluntary associations endorse the Editor). You could even have a client decide to just view the fork(s) maintained by Editors who are endorsed by voluntary associations you trust.
What if Editors get busy or lose interest in an article? Perhaps there could be a way of declaring a fork "up for grabs" for a new Editor, with the proposed edits to date automatically
folded in at that point, if an Editor does not touch an article for a certain time period.
Perhaps Editors who are happy with "benign neglect" could also set a flag that automatically incorporates edits into the release after a certain time period if the Editor hasn't said yea or nay on them.
With something like this, you could introduce quality control without a lot of hoops to jump through, or factions to appease. And you can have multiple points of view and editorial standards incorporated into the same encyclopedia, but still with some ways of letting users determine which ones are more trustworthy or useful. Editors would still have to come back to articles now and again to keep them in good repair, but at least they wouldn't have to do it *every* time someone messes it up.
Have there been any proposals along these lines?
Re:In Theory, Communism Works (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean, once people started seriously thinking about it? Not very long at all, actually. It took a while for the idea to percolate throughout all levels of society, but that was mostly because the vast majority of people would have no reason to even consider the question.
Re:They need expert Guest Editors (Score:5, Interesting)
"Wikipedia has the right basic structure but they need..."
Like the original article and most posts here everyone says Wikipedia has "the right basic structure" but we need to change it in a really fundamental way so it completely stops being what it is. Wikipedia is inherently "Antielitism" and it should stay that way. If you want it to be written and edited by vetted experts in their field, tell you what, READ AN ENCYCLOPEDIA, instead of trying to make Wikipedia something its not. Wikipedia is a people's encyclopedia written by people, with all the brilliance and flaws you find in people. It is a creation of the collective web consciousness of all the people that choose to contribute to it and fight over it.
As soon as you put a bunch of "expert" editors in charge of it chances are the only people who are going to contribute to it, or at least get their contributions included, are the "expert" editors. Amazingly enough they probably all have agendas too and a bunch of them are going to troll if anyone challenges their "expert" opinions.
Knowledge is unfortunately subjective, in most arenas there is no absolute truth. There are nuggets of pretty much absolute truth embedded in it like when an historical event occured, but all the interesting stuff around the edges is not so cut and dried. Wikipedia is a collection of views of what is true which tend to be be different which each set of beholder's eyes. It is interesting precisely because it is a collection of eclectic views by ordinary people. Wikipedia is one collective view of truth, so is Britannica, so is Encarta, so is most of the propaganda nation states put out as their history and news. If you are a good researcher, tell you what, read them all and form your own opinion on what is "right". One thing don't do, don't try to homogenize all information sources so they tell the same story, and all of the alternative views are silenced.
If you want a wikipedia with "expert" editors please fork it and see if you can make it fly. Not sure you will because there is already Encarta and Britannica in that niche. JUST LEAVE WIKIPEDIA ALONE.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
"For instance, the page on rape had a section called "Rape and Sexual Torture""
Excuse me, but if the article has a section on "Sexual Torture" it is obviously on topic to include Abu Graib, even if you choose to believe there wasn't rape there when there is at least a 50/50 chance there was.
Both of you are splitting the same semantic hairs the original parent did.
Bottomline here is they should have included links to all of the exmples, instead of trying to suppress the links each of the various moderators found offensive to their particular political perspective. There is a pretty high chance a Japanese moderator would have taken offense to the link to the rape of Nanking since Japan has been more than a little reluctant to officially acknowledge that it occurred as described.
Fact is their is a tendency to lay the most war crimes and atrocities claims against the country that loses a war. The moral high ground almost always goes to the winner, whether it deserves it or not, simply because it controls all the "evidence" and it controls the government and court that runs the trial after the war which decides guilt.
RDF to the rescue! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Your a perfect example of bias. (Score:3, Interesting)
The smear boat liars have been proven to be liars numerous times. The fact that you attempt to repeat their baseless claims shows that you are the partisan hack here. I note that you claim that I am unable to support my claims with facts when in fact you provide absolutely no facts to back your argument, moreover the burden of proof is squarely on the accusers which in this case is the smear boat liars for Bush.
The leader of the smear boat liars operated a smear campaign against Kerry on behalf of Richard Nixon. In a taped interview with Nixon he is heard to claim that he was personally in Cambodia, yet one of the 'lies' he accuses Kerry of is of falsely claiming the be in Cambodia. Similarly the claims that Kerry was not under fire during the engagement for which he won a bronze star are disproved by the citation of another award to the very 'eyewitness' claiming that there was no fire.
When all contemporary sources refute the claims of cowardice being made and the claims come from a clearly partisan source the claims can have absolutely no credibility.
If CBS had been doing real journalism they would never have published the alleged TANG reports on Bush. Not because of the specious allegations that they were produced using Word or that typewriters did not exist in those days as the blogosphere pundits would have it. The documents are very clearly produced on a typewriter, the baseline moves up and down, other documents released by the WH and accepted as genuine are in the same proportional font. But no journalist should be accepting that type of material from a single source that has already claimed to be an eyewitness. If he had the material he would have released it when he made the first allegation.
The irony of the situation is that CBS could easily have stitched up Bush completely by simply pulling out a 1970s era IBM Director typewriter and showing a memo being produced on it. The blogosphere almost ended up causing the bogus to be certified as genuine because they were latching onto the wrong test for authenticity.
The Wikipedia "passion" filter (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ulterior motives (Score:3, Interesting)
Take a look for example at Egyptology and at Geology on the subject of the Sphinx. It's a nice simple question "Who built the Sphinx and when", its a rather complex non-answer.
Actually the fact Wikipedia can encompass both wel l is nice - also that it is rapidly updated. My paper encyclopedia still says in learned style that the Titanic had a huge hole ripped in it by an Iceberg. Of course we now know thats wrong, but these books change so slowly they are still teaching rubbish nd will do so for many years.
Re:My experience on Wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:success within limits (Score:4, Interesting)
That in and of itself is a very good reason not to put too much trust into Wikipedia.
Max