A Look at the Editorial Changes on Wikipedia 367
prostoalex writes "New York Times Technology section this weekend is running an extensive article on Wikipedia and recent changes to the editorial policy. Due to high level of partisan involvement some political topics like George Bush, Tony Blair and Opus Dei are currently either protected (editorials are allowed only to a selected group of Wikipedia members) or semi-protected (anyone who has had an account for more than four days can edit the article). From the article: 'Protection is a tool for quality control, but it hardly defines Wikipedia,' Mr. Wales said. 'What does define Wikipedia is the volunteer community and the open participation.'"
Vandals (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a shame, but Wikipedia is at fault for trusting human nature to be good, when it isn't. We are a destructive species and Wikipedia is on the tipping point of being a big enough target for utter destruction.
Re:YRO? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Vandals (Score:2, Interesting)
wikipedia ideas? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Reminding users to cite sources every time they make an edit (perhaps require it for non-grammatical edits)
2) Being able to ban IP addresses and ranges from editing wikipedia
3) Allowing banned users, or users under certain IP ranges to request unbans for their accounts
4) Have two versions of articles: 'newest' and an 'approved'
* Active contributers who have been peer-reviewed with quality changes (i.e., changes in which they cite sources, conform to the wikipedia NPOV policy, etc.) should be able to fact-check an article and check it off as 'approved'
* Edits should affect the 'newest' version, and should go into a queue for approved contributers to be able to confirm the changes to the 'approved' version of the article
You could establish a karma score for users as well as editors, a la slashdot (moderating, meta-moderating ideas come into play). If a user makes an approved contribution to an article, +1 point. If a user makes an error, he gets +1 error point. If he reaches 5 error points, he must stop editin garticles. If he reaches +10 points, he may start approving articles. Of course this would need to be tweaked & tested but these are just some ideas...
Semi-protection != Protection (Score:5, Interesting)
Vandals are almost exclusively unregistered editors using only their IP addresses for identification. The semi-protection will block them from editing or moving (renaming) a page. However, vandalism must be VERY persistent in order for any kind of protection to be applied; typically, administrators will refuse most protection and semi-protection requests and reply, "Not enough vandalism, just revert instead."
People are making a big deal of this because they view Wikipedia, being as it is a completely new and unheard-of-before kind of information libre, as hypocritical when they block people or pages from editing. I guess they've never thought of the fact that they're only protecting ~200 articles at any given time. How many articles have Britannica and World Book opened up for editing and review?
Re:wikipedia ideas? (Score:2, Interesting)
I notice this especially because my opinion is in the minority on these particular topics, I'm sure there are others where I'm part of the majority bias (patents for instance).
Font page; damned if they do (Score:3, Interesting)
First, it wasn't just the "technology" section, it was on the front page of the National Edition.
Second, Wikipedia is damned in both directions by the media: They are either too open and so all sorts of loonies can post whatever they want. Or, when the close up a bit, they are abandoning their own principles.
Anyone who hasn't read it needs to read DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism by Jaron Lanier [edge.org] and the spirited reply [edge.org] by Douglas Rushkoff, Quentin Hardy, Yochai Benkler, Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow, Kevin Kelly, Esther Dyson, Larry Sanger, Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg, Jimmy Wales, George Dyson, Dan Gillmor, Howard Rheingold.
Wikipedia is really an ancient curse of some sort. (Score:3, Interesting)
A few years ago, quite unbeknowest to me, a grateful visitor created a Wiki entry for the amateur observatory I and a small group of friends own in New Zealand. It was a mostly innocuous entry, if a little less NPOV than it could have been, but certainly shouldn't have been a cause for concern.
All well-and-good, except that amateur astronomy is riven with the same petty and insane power politics as anything else which involves humans, and one unfortunate astronomical community member with a bipolar disorder, and a long history of causing strife, chose "our" Wiki article as his latest target of opportunity.
And so it began.
The first I knew of any of it was when complete strangers began contacting me, asking what the hell was going on. That's when I discovered we even had a Wiki article. By then of course the article essentially suggested that we were in fact members of the Mafia, and worse.
Being Wiki, it appears that "our" article had become a major first-referrer to our website, mostly via Google and all the Wiki ad-spam clones, so a lot of traffic was moving back and forth, as well as a lot of comments.
In the end it all got so bad that we asked - then begged - the Wiki rulers to delete the article and ban anybody from recreating it, or even mentioning us in other articles. Oh and we shut off access to not only our website but our physical site also, as the whole thing had turned into an extremely unpleasant bunfight involving not just much of the amateur and professional astronomy community within our own country but beyond as well.
With our Wikiprescence history, and after switching to a webhost capable of blocking the DDoS attacks (yes, you read that right...), things began to settle down for us. But never again will we have any involvement with Wikipedia in any shape or form. It's just not worth it.
Wikipedia is a wonderful concept, but I suspect it's mostly unworkable.
Re:No such thing..... (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as the user's experience... looking up an article would bring the user to the normal-branch version (as is done now) and a link would be present if an editor version exists (with 1 million plus articles most won't have an editor version for a while). Maybe the user can specify the branch type when searching.
The main idea here is that good stable copies of an article would be archived seperately from the normal(editable) version.
Re:wikipedia ideas? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is Wikipedia's biggest problem IMHO, far more so than the vandalization trolls. With the latter, you can fix it, but if an expert writes an article and then has it "corrected" by someone who understands the topic at a much lower level, how does this get fixed? Does the expert have to keep going through and removing "helpful" changes? How long will someone like this want to keep going before they just give up and go back to something more rewarding?
Under a /. type mod system for Wikipedia, dozens of idiot mods could effectively ban experts- the experts in a field are always outnumbered by the less well informed.
Re:No such thing..... (Score:1, Interesting)
Wikipedia is the FURTHEST thing from something like Britannica as you can get! You PAY for a copy of Britannica, and they in turn PAY people who are experts in their field to provide REALIABLE information!
are subject to the slings and arrows of political agenda and false facts
I am sure there may be some level of bias in information provided by the people who write things for Britannica, but if there is false facts in a professional publication it is purely because someone didn't do their JOB! Unlike wikipedia, where that is just an accepted way of life. In the professional world people are paid to provide reliable, as un-biased as possible, information. It is there JOB, and their employers expect them to do this job well. If they do not do this job well then they will get fired and that person will no longer be able to suly the quality of the company's product. The end goal is selling reliable information to the customer, so quality control is of the upmost importance. Yes, many experts on various subjects write for wikipedia, but due to it's open nature you cannot trust that each peice of info you are reading has been carefuly researched by an expert. Plus there are many people who THINK they are experts on something but are NOT! These people have ready access to modify wikipedia's content, but would probably not even be able to get their foot in the door at company like Britannica.
Wikipedia is a great pop culture database, I don't think it will ever be useful for any thing beyond that. You cannot just hop on wikipedia and do your research for home work, as you cannot fully trust it's information. Just look at all the students who are getting in trouble for trying to use wikipedia as if it where a legitimet resource. Now even wikipedia is warning them not to trust the info on wikipedia! So if you KNOW you cannot fully trust it, what good is it? Outside of the pop culture info, where obtaining reliable info is less critical. Sure, free info is nice, but if you want good info it's worth paying for some times...
I'm not saying professional encylopedias don't contain some level of error, what I am saying is that error level is MINIMAL compared to something like wikipedia. The bottom line is, if you cannot trust an encylopedia for homework, well, then it's not much of an encylopedia now is it!
Re:wikipedia!=encyclopedia (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:wikipedia!=encyclopedia (Score:5, Interesting)
n.
A comprehensive reference work containing articles on a wide range of subjects or on numerous aspects of a particular field, usually arranged alphabetically
Is there any mention in any definition of encyclopedia that it cannot have the word "fuck" in it, or that it can only be compiled by certain people (or a certain kind of people)? There are as many different kinds of encyclopedias as there are subjects, and they are all compiled, managed, and written differently.
Of course it's an encyclopedia, just as much as Britannica, or World Book. It is just managed differently, and I myself use it regularly just as I would any other encyclopedia, using other sources of information to cross reference and back up information that I find.
Neutral POV (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No such thing..... (Score:1, Interesting)
Wikipedia is the best example of benevolent human cooperation found on the internet. The purpose is noble, and the method by which it has blossomed into what it is to day is inspiring and exciting for the future of information and media flow over the information highway. And it's certainly a bit more useful than just a cache for pop culture tid-bits...
Re:No such thing..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides Boeing and other professional aerospace companies also have a motto of
"Strive to improve, but realise that it's impossible to hit it right every last time"
Just in case you think I'm being facetious, Jimbo Wales has recently cheerfully admitted [theregister.co.uk] that he get 10 e-mails a week from students who complain that they got an F because they cited Wikipedia and the citation turned out to be wrong. And Jimbo says "For God sake, you're in college; don't cite the encyclopedia"
The other remarkable thing about Slashdot is that this army of nerds who will mark down this post, would never accept a wikipedia model for writing software where anyone anywhere can write, edit, delete code at any time.
Re:No such thing..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it web2.1 yet?
8^{
Re:No such thing..... (Score:4, Interesting)
seriously though, that is not a bad idea. I would be very happy to see some sort of 'weighted confidence level' associated with whats contributed to wikipedia, with a lower rating for contribution from most people, which would be the default viewing threshold. Then in your preferences, or at the top of all articles, have a link to allow you to filter to higher level contributions.
Of course this may have problems with lower level contributors trying to update higher level content and such, but 2-3 levels of depth could prove useful.. if slashdot comments have proven anything over the years its that not all contibutions are created equal..
Re:Vandals (Score:2, Interesting)
Not every expert in any field is also a skilled writer. Also, sometimes people do make mistakes when posting things. Some posters are schoolkids with good intentions but lacking the knowledge to deliver a great balanced article. You need to be very much more clear about what is vandalism specifically. Some editors need to be a hell of a lot more tolerant of humanity's failings.
If there was intent was to commit vandalism then fine, but I would seriously doubt that 1/3 of all IP posts had that actual intention regardless of whether that was the outcome. Don't be so cynical, most people are not that distructive.
There are as many pedants and grammar nazis out there as there are vandals - and some of those are active editors. I've seen editors use aggressive, pedantic and sarcastic tones with kids who tried their best to post interesting articles. Children threatened with having their IP blocked because they made a mistake in a posting.
Also, the discussion pages behind many articles are a terrifying glimpse into the nature of the fascist mind at times. Some of these discussions are utterly juvenile and über-pendantic.
I really enjoy Wikipedia and would love to see it grow, but aggressive editing and extremist reactionism will only stifle what is unique and positive about it.
Yes, deliberate acts of vandalism need to be curbed, but a balanace must be struck that allows inexperienced users the ability to learn and grow as worthy Wikipedia contributors.
Re:No such thing..... (Score:3, Interesting)
This won't work because there are many established gnomes (Wikipedia's nick name for trusted users) with well established posting histories that also have an agenda. Their expertise is not in the subject matter but playing the wikipedia system for often for revisionist purposes. They often reguritate popular myth over facts.
What is needed is a method of independent expert review and/or fact checkers.
Re:No such thing..... (Score:3, Interesting)
The question is better for what. Wikipedia has more articles, many of them are fancruft entries on garage bands written by their members.
The problem with applying the open source model of a select mumber of editors to wikipedia is that they need vastly more participants.
There is a problem with vandalism though, the spanish inquisition article is regularly replaced with 'nobody expects'.
The bigger problem is POV peddling and quite often you can tell that an 'editor' is actually a paid flack of some politician. Read the 'Katherine Harris' article to see this, there is a series of edits from an editor who claims not to think that Ed Rolins is not a notable GOP strategist, Jeb Bush's comments that she has no chance of winning should not be included and that the fact she had a $2,800 dinner with a corrupt defense contractor currently waiting sentencing for admitting bribing Cunningham is not a notable political issue.
The Cindy Sheehan article attracted so many opposing POV peddlers that the article itself was protected and thus out of date for most of the time it was relevant.
Re:What's the fuss? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:wikipedia ideas? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No such thing..... (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Vandals (Score:3, Interesting)
I stopped trying to contribute to wikipedia after what I consider their brain dead policy resulted in my work being made to disappear.
I am from the Bahamas and I put up some pages covering topics relating to my home for which I could find no coverage.
Now, I made no attempt to write a scholarly article on the subject. My intention was to put something there with some basic information in the hopes that someone with more knowledge and ability could take the hint and improve it or replace it with a better version.
What do I find when checking back later to see if there is better info available? No information on the subject whatsoever. This is what I thought was brain dead!
The info I had put up was correct to the best of my knowledge. It is my opinion that such info on the subject was better than no info on the subject. It is also my opinion that such info on the subject is a better seed for improved info on the subject than no info on the subject. Plus, having your work "vanished" is discouraging.
So, that is my take on my experience with wikipedia and that is the result in my life when it comes to that experience.
I still like wikipedia and go there for info, but I am not giving them my time with helping on improvements as it seems that the way I work and the way they want work done doesn't mesh. If this is happening in more than isolated cases, they are missing out on a lot.
all the best,
drew
(da idea man)
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/187924 [ourmedia.org]
Bahamian Nonsense
I'm sure it has happened, however . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Why I stopped using Wikipedia for most purposes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:wikipedia!=encyclopedia (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:wikipedia!=encyclopedia (Score:3, Interesting)
With a few exceptions, of course. For example, my Liptak cannot be replaced with the Internet because 99.999% of people wouldn't have the foggiest idea what any of the stuff in it is.