Long-Term Wikipedia Vandalism Exposed

Daveydweeb writes, "The accuracy of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, came into question again when a long-standing article on 'NPA personality theory' was confirmed to be a hoax. Not only had the article survived at Wikipedia for the better part of a year, but it had even been listed as a 'Good Article,' supposedly placing it in the top 0.2-0.3% of all Wikipedia articles — despite being almost entirely written by the creator of the theory himself."

This is why you need multiple sources

[nukem996]

Personally I think wikipedia should be treated as any other source, you should have at least one other, independent, source that backs up the first. I've found mistakes in the college text books that I pay hundreds of dollars for, so if your only going by one source your bound to get screwed. What I really like about wikipedia is that it gives you great sources that you can use, check up on those sources as well.

How many times...

[KeiserSoze]

... does Wikipedia have to be written off as a be-all-end-all 100% accurate encyclopedia? With just short of one and a half million entries, I'm sure there's at least 10,000 partial or even complete fictional articles. Does it affect the encyclopedia as a whole? Not at all. The only people it affects clearly believe *everything* they read on the internet, irregardless of source.

Saying that a certain percentage of articles undermines the whole encyclopedia is likening everybody to criminals just because some of us are.

I just can't believe people are still beating this drum - when will individual cases like this stop making /. news?

Not a Hoax

[sangreal66]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I just read the AfD page and it doesn't appear that this was a hoax or vandalism at all. What it was, was a well written article on a theory that did not meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. It was also written by the creator of the theory which is against Wikipedia's policies on original research.

Proof the system works

[theLOUDroom]

I'd say it's more like proof that the system works.

Sure you can create a false article. It's not like scientists have never falsified their research and published it in a journal, for example.

The proof is whether they're caught and the mistakes are corrected. In an obscure subject this may take a while in ANY format.

People need to learn to apply good research skills across the board, not just to wikis.
Considering the source is one of these.

Irregardless is not a fucking word

[WillerZ]

Irrespective and regardless are words.

Wikipedia should NEVER be cited

[Pavan_Gupta]

nukem996, you are not wrong in suggesting that people should use multiple sources when writing things, but the truth is people should never cite wikipedia as a source. It's not because the information is wrong, but it's because the information has not been vetted in a process that can be methodically demonstrated. Even peer-reviewed journals can fail, and they do, but the truth is the information contained in those journals is being vetted by people with backgrounds in related fields and the information is being analyzed in a way that is methodically laid out. If Wikipedia was designed in that way -- where the process was highly moderated, then it would be a legitimate source, not unlike how a book or a journal is a legitimate source. (Although old books and journals are wrong in the worst kinds of ways... sometimes)

I've written several articles on Wikipedia on obscure things (Phosphatidylmyo-inositol_mannosides [wikipedia.org]) which was just an exercise in me understanding my own research, but the stuff I've written, even if heavily sourced on Wikipedia is so obscure I could just make up anything about that and it would likely fly. And the truth is, if I write anything that seems correct, for the most part it will last because it seems correct And therein lies the problem that an unmoderated system cannot solve for. Wikipedia assumes honorable and intelligent users and gives enormous privileges to these users, when just one bad apple can go around slowly obscuring fact with fiction.

Anyway, I've ranted here which is not what I really wanted, but my point is simple: Wikipedia is a good starting point, but should never ever be used as a cited source. Find the information you discover in Wikipedia in another source and use that. And, because you should be a good wikipedia user, put that source into the article.

Misleading Summary

[BeeBeard]

Now I'm just convinced that even the people who submit articles don't read them first. This wasn't "vandalism" per se so much as it was shameless self-promotion by Anthony M. Benis, who invented the same psychological theory that he would later write about on Wikipedia. While his knowledge and authority on the theory are not in question (what with his being the creator of it), the notability of the theory in the field of psychology is in question.

It seems that the true nature of the article is far, far more boring than what the summary leads you to believe.

Re:Really? Unconfirmed info on wikipedia?!?

[vadim_t]

Newsflash: You aren't supposed to use ANY sort of encyclopedia as a source of anything. Encyclopedias are there to provide a starting point about a topic, not to be used themselves as part of the school work or whatever.

If you ever cite any sort of encyclopedia in your work, any decent teacher should give you a big fat 0. Only valid use of an encyclopedia is checking an entry for something you're unfamiliar with, to learn a general overview and get leads about what you should research.

Re:Proof the system works (not)

[catbutt]

I think a more meaningful metric for how much harm was done was how many people were exposed to the article. If only 500 people visited it in that year, that's pretty much equivalent to a more prominent "bad article" that was only up for 10 minutes, if 500 people visited it during those 10 minutes.

Re:Really? Unconfirmed info on wikipedia?!?

[TheRaven64]

I completely agree. I have found a few articles vanish without a trace recently. Wikipedia used to have some great content on the Swansea University Computer Society (where Alan Cox began his kernel hacking career), but it was marked for deletion because the society was not notable, despite being the largest university computer society in the UK. It was marked for deletion once, and the verdict was keep. Then, a month later, deletion was proposed again, with the same reasons, and passed. Now there is no record of the page having existed.

I was under the impression that one of the good things about Wikipedia was that you could always see versions from old edits, but this seems not to be the case. I would much rather see a procedure where 'non-notable' pages are replaced with a page stating that they have been deleted, but the revision history retained. Then, if enough people look at version n-1 it should be automatically re-instated. The real test of whether a page is interesting is not whether half a dozen wikipedians think it is, but whether people actually look at it.

Re:Commercial fork of wikipedia?

[mdwh2]

or should I cite an encyclopaedia article written in English by one of the world's foremost experts

Of course, the encyclopaedia in this scenario couldn't be Wikipedia, as Wikipedia policy prohibits the kind of article I describe

Good point, but I think you've answered yourself here - yes, it would be fine I think to cite an article that's been written by one of the world's foremost experts, whether that article appears in an encyclopedia or elsewhere, but the reason one cannot cite Wikipedia is nothing to do with reliability, but because they do not allow such original research.

When it comes to encyclopedia articles that are comparable to what Wikipedia has (i.e., editors collecting from existing sources), then I'd disagree that the encyclopedias should be cited directly in either case.