Wikipedia Founder Sees Serious Quality Problems 459
Juha-Matti Laurio writes "The Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has acknowledged there are real quality problems with the online project. From the article: 'Meanwhile, criticism from outside the Wikipedia camp has been rebuffed with a ferocious blend of irrationality and vigor that's almost unprecedented in our experience: if you thought Apple, Amiga, Mozilla or OS/2 fans were er, ... passionate, you haven't met a wiki-fiddler.'"
Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:4, Interesting)
Lately I'm finding more "missing" articles than problem ones. Topics that should be there but aren't. Maybe they could have some sort of bounty system to get people to write these missing articles. Of course, that would require paid editors to approve the entires before a payment can be made.
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:3, Funny)
Well, at 24 articles they have Wikipedia beat.
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:5, Interesting)
What wikipedia needs to do is have both "stable" and "unstable" branches of wikipedia, like the linux kernel does.
Make searches default to the stable page, with the option to add in the more recent changes by clicking a button.
This has a number of advantages:
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:3, Insightful)
You could allow articles to move from unstable to stable, allowing stuff to move when it has been moderated by two people with the wikipedia equivilent of good karma (100 accepted changes, or something like that). You could even be relatively smart about this, pushing moderation of pages in the physics area to people who edited other physics pages. (A
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:5, Insightful)
You can do this anyway. You click 'history', you click the most recent version, and it gives you a capture of the page at time of reading.
Yes, it's two clicks rather than one; but in the same way as citing a normal web page runs the risk of having that page change later. Google's cache is similar to this system but will be lost the next time the crawler crosses the page; in this way citing Wikipedia is more reliable than citing the web.
In response to your last point, it is the fault of the 'hapless individual' if they rely dogmatically on an editable webpage; more so since it's so easy to cross-check facts on the web once you know what they are. If you search for a fact from wikipedia, it should - other than in the most obscure areas - be findable on the web, as simply as googling for the fact. I'm a researcher myself, and I know damn well that if you only get one version it's fairly likely to be biased (whether by simple wording, by author viewpoint, or wherever the author read it from), missing small bits of information, and so on; if you're going to present ANY data as fact then more fool you if you didn't verify it first.
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:5, Informative)
Britannica's various editions are typically the previous year's version, repackaged and slightly updated. Rewriting it all from scratch they typically only do about once in a lifetime. They did it (rewrote it from scratch) in 1911, and they did it again in 1976 --- to my knowledge, 1976 was the last time they completely rewrote it.
Re:not a normal encyclopedia. (Score:3)
I think it's more like a potluck. This guy brought a date to a potluck, didn't bring any food to the potluck, ate a bunch of other people's food, complained about how bad the crab cakes and caviar were, and then took a dump in the punch bowl.
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia will never replace Britannica or Encarta. That's not what it's good at. Its strength is in compiling information from hundreds of opinions to present a (mostly) cohesive article. If the type of information it presents is "trivia" to you, then use a different encyclopedia.
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, Wikipedia reflects the interests of its readership, that's why it needs to attract people from different backgrounds, and I think that this is slowly happening, that's why the quality is improving en other areas.
Featured articles (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think that's true. Wikipedia's featured articles [wikipedia.org] come from all categories. That's certainly not a perfect proof of my point, but an indication.
Trivia (Clarification) (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect that this trend will continue. Wikipedia will continue to expand in geek-friendly and pop-culture areas, while articles one would expect to find in Encyclopedia Britannica will be left mostly empty. If you're looking for the title of a Star Trek episode or a comic book supervillain, check Wikipedia; for articles on Ancient Greece, use Encarta. Most teachers don't accept Wikipedia as a bibliographic source anyway, due to the possibility of students editing a Wikipedia article and then quoting themselves authoritatively. I think that as long as people (including Jimmy Wales, the founder) compare Wikipedia to Britannica and expect it to measure up, they'll continue to be disappointed--they're simply different things with different strengths. That's all there is to it.
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, no kidding.
Point 1. The system doesn't favor true information, it favors whoever can be the most obstinate, anal-retentive, vindictive prick. Take this dipshit [toddverbeek.com], for example. Imagine having a flaming, bitchy drag queen editing your stuff. Not to make it better or more correct-- changing/deleting/removing content just because he didn't like edits to other, unrelated articles you'd done.
Point 2. Then you get the tools that label your factually correct additions as "vandalism". They'll delete whole paragraphs just because they consider the article to be "their" article. This is especially prevalent by the older users towards the newer users.
Point 3. Then there's the "vote for deletion" nazis. See Tverbeek [toddverbeek.com], above. Again, as "revenge" for some perceived past slight, these mental giants will put your stuff up for deletion with the rationale that it belongs on uncyclopedia, this is the typical rationale for deleting topics relating to fiction or pop-culture. Why then, do certain "uncyclopedia-quality" articles (i.e. the Klingon dictionary) stick while others don't? See Point 1.
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:4, Interesting)
i.e. "on one entry, me and several friends have inside sources (one being the entry) and when we try to correct it, or correct misinformation that has been posted, the sites owner locks it down or chooses the misinformation over what is even know as fact. starting to distrust information found on there due to personal experience."
Tverbeek was a good example, because he's a royal prick, but he's got no shortage of equivalents on Wikipedia.
And my points are reiterated by one of the Wiki admins there, as well (so no, I'm not "trolling", unless you're also accusing Wiki admins of trolling as well):
The majority of edits on large topics are decreasing the quality of those articles. This is because, for most people, the quality of the article as a whole is taking a back seat to the desire everyone seemingly has to have their imprint on articles. This is turning many articles into long lists of disparate trivia instead of naturally-flowing, high-quality encyclopedia articles. Efforts to stem this and make the encyclopedia more encyclopedic are criticized as counter to the spirit of "openness."
His User page is here [wikipedia.org].
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:3, Insightful)
Demonstrably false? Did you demonstrate that it was false then?
The same thing happened to me last week. A technical article incorrectly stated that something was introduced in a particular version. I corrected the version. Then somebody "corrected" it back. Instead of complaining about it on Slashdot, I fixed the article again and include
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors (Score:3, Insightful)
That's like giving up driving because someone honked at you.
Check your ego at the door. Wikipedia, like the society around you, suffers from politics, the process of decision making that tries to exclude violence.
That said, perhaps what everyone's bitching at here is that for all the mostly technical progress, we seem to be right where ou
Re:They need to smarten the F up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why on earth would you blame Wikipedia?
Or they could rate... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they should lock a lot more articles that are known to be complete and accurate. The definition of, say, orange juice hasn't changed all that much in the last 10 years and probably won't in the next 10.
Working these two concepts in together, I think they should have the 'modifiability' of the article be based on how high it's rated. For just a stub, or no article at all, then anyone should be able to modify it. But if the article is long (enough) and complete, then say maybe only a register with many high-rated articles can change it.
I think the main idea here is to promote and protect good content, but I seriously think they should not do anything to restrict an average joe from exlpicitly adding content.
Anyone else there think I'm on the right track?
Re:Or they could rate... (Score:4, Informative)
Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia:Deletion_policy [wikipedia.org]
If the problem's a factual error it relies on someone coming along, noticing it and correcting it... that perhaps does not reviewing more as it assumes the reader will spot the error. They probably won't though, as the most likely reason they are reading the page is they don't know about the subject yet.
People *can* also watch articles so that when anyone edits it if they're an expert in the field they can read it over and see if it's correct or not. There's an option to watch it when you edit it, probably so that previous contributors can help maintain it.
I think one good feature to add would be to stop Anonymous users editing (it's a simple policy change in the MediaWiki configuration file so is easily possible)... if you have an account they can at least attempt to track how trustworthy you are. (I'm ignoring the problem of people opening fake accounts just to muck articles up).
Re:Or they could rate... (Score:3, Insightful)
With open moderation it would be too easy for a vocal group to rig the results so their views were pushed and otherwise valid results were trivialised.
Take for example any Creation vs Evolution page! Or maybe a politically motivated page?
I think that moderation WITHIN a closed membership would probably work though.
What's scary is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's scary is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real challenge is finding the volunteers to fix all the obscure articles. I recently stumbled across an article with a typo in its outline structure that had been there for about a year, and no one had noticed it in that entire time. It's kind of like getting someone to do serious UI design or end-user documentation for an open-source project. People work on what they find interesting, and if no contributors find a topic interesting, it's not going to get fixed.
Re:What's scary is... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What's scary is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's scary is... (Score:5, Insightful)
General problems with Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that a lot of the obscure stuff that *is* there is in areas where geek (or rather nerd) types have interests, and it's not always that well-written. In fact, I think this is arguably at the top of the (otherwised unordered) list of problems with Wikipedia:-
(1) The anal-retentive "fact"-adding tendency. Those who'll add obscure/unused abbrevs to a *disambiguation* page. They don't get that some facts are more important than others, or that simply adding information to an article doesn't necessarily make it more helpful. They'll create lots of small stub articles, when they'd be better combined in a single article (placing them in context). If there's one thing I've learned as I get older, it's that leaving stuff out is *hard* but very important. You can't include everything. And you have to order that information well. The self-indulgent factoid geeks don't know or care about this.
(2) Change for change's sake. I'd be interested to see the amount of "churn" that goes on in some articles simply caused by people changing stuff for the sake of it. It's not necessarily a bad thing; it's just pointlessly wasted effort over a minor issue.
(3) *Potential* subversion by those with an agenda, including professionals. I've seen at least one instance of what appeared to be a PR person editing anonymously. This is dangerous, because most zealots with an agenda are transparent; PR and the like are professionals, and more likely to slip under the radar.
(4) Vandalism; annoying, but usually pretty obvious
(5) Lack of citation. This is very rare, and whilst normal encyclopedias don't normally include citations, Wikipedia's credibility would be much enhanced with more of them.
There are probably more, but my brain is full; that's enough to be going on with...
Re:General problems with Wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
6 - The "funny" idiot (Score:4, Funny)
I still remember one article in the German wikipedia... about cloning didgeridoos. Complete with a picture of tiny little digeridoos in test tubes, and a paragraph about how they live longer than the ones born naturally. About a year later, it was still there. (Now it's finally gone, though.)
OK, so it's a sorta the bastard child of your points 3 and 4. Except while the PR professional knows they're subverting and polluting a resource for profit, and the vandal knows they're defacing, the "funny" idiot might actually think he's doing a public service.
What's in a name... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's in a name... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have foudn that encyclopedias are often similarly biased, just as often incorrect, and not nearly as broad.
Re:What's in a name... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's in a name... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's scary is... (Score:2)
However, if I'm looking something up on wikipedia for a presentation or to simply prove my point to a friend I'll double check it with more traditional sources, because I know that I can't really trust the wiki article.
IMO people look at this project the wrong
Re:What's scary is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Whats truly scary is the number of people defending the use of the Wikipedia as a de facto source of information.
Re:What's scary is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Where are all these people? In any conversation about wikipedia the grand majority of the comments are either:
1) wikipedia is useless!, or:
2) wikipedia is a good starting point for research but make sure to follow up!, or:
3) wikipedia is a good collaborative effort that's not finished yet!
These crazy wikipedia zealots that you're afraid of seem to be much exaggerated in your mind.
Yes, Wikipedia has accuracy issues, but..... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_history [wikipedia.org]
Re:Yes, Wikipedia has accuracy issues, but..... (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Sl
Re:Yes, Wikipedia has accuracy issues, but..... (Score:3, Insightful)
True. But you will never get quite the same diversity of smells as you will from rolling around in a pig sty compared to walking down the street. Your point?
Re:Yes, Wikipedia has accuracy issues, but..... (Score:5, Funny)
i'll second that. (Score:5, Interesting)
In a perfect world wikipedia would work, but people aren't perfect, and people have agendas... that is why it will never be taken seriously with anyone outside the community.
Re:i'll second that. (Score:3, Interesting)
That was precisely one of the arguments mentioned in TFA.
That just because other encyclopedias had some errors, the wikipedia shouldn't be criticized. And here lies the problem: Instead of correcting errors, the wikipedia editors indulge them.
And that's very dangerous for an encyclopedia. Because it lets the errors accumulate. Yes, it's a wiki, but that's no excuse for making a defective reference work.
The big difference in my mind is that
Re:i'll second that. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, throughout all my years of education, I can never remember a single instance in which it would have been acceptable to cite, for example, the Encyclopedia Britannica as a reference source.
Anyone who is citing Wikipedia as a source is a fool -- not for citing Wikipedia instead of a more expensive bound volume, but for citing an encyclopedia at all.
To say that Wikipedia is not suitable for citation in a formal argument or research paper is not really a criticism of its quality... that's just something that's common to anything of the "-pedia" persuasion.
Love it or leave it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Still not the top zealot (Score:4, Funny)
These people still can't hold a candle to Jack Thompson.
Of course there's a lack of quality (Score:2, Interesting)
Step 1: Create an account
Step 2: Do whatever the hell you want to the whole place
Maybe a level system ought to be put in place. Create enough new entries and then you can edit other users' work. It's not a perfect solution, but it would cut down on some of the nonsense.
Re:Of course there's a lack of quality (Score:2)
Re:Of course there's a lack of quality (Score:2, Insightful)
Step 2: Do whatever the hell you want to the whole place
True, except for the Step 1 part.
Re:Of course there's a lack of quality (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Of course there's a lack of quality (Score:2)
Re:Of course there's a lack of quality (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia is far from a thousand monkeys pounding on typewriters. Yes, some contributors are not the most experienced, but if many contributors, even those ignorant about a particular aspect of knowledge, try to self edit and get the details right, over time the result will be so positive that conductive breakdown will occur and lightning will happen.
Consider this. When Hardy saw Ramanujan's [wikipedia.org] for the first time, he figured that "a single look at them is enough to show that they could only be written down by a mathematician of the highest class. They must be true, for if they were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them". Similarly, Wikipedia info is no joke - there are so many serious articles that people put enormous effort into. This should encourage anyone who really cares about any shortcoming to put some work into making the marginal improvements that ultimately benefit us all.
A message to people who have poor communications skills - just express yourself. Do not give in to embarrassment. Put in your knowledge and take a look at other articles. Even copying someone else's style will enable you to enhance your input. If someone edits your work, that's supposed to be a good thing, as long as you maintain the attitude of writing with higher and higher quality.
Wikipedia generally works (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wikipedia generally works (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble is that the whacko editors have far more free time on their hands than the sensible ones, and can just keep hammering away at an article until their POV, silly as it may be, is presented on a level with a more reasoned viewpoint.
Re:Wikipedia generally works (Score:3, Informative)
You have it exactly the wrong way around. These articles are some the best of Wikipedia, not the worst.
Re:Wikipedia generally works (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wikipedia generally works (Score:3, Insightful)
Being too busy to meet an imposible standard of references to satisfy a clearly biased wikipedia crowd, I just gave up. I knew that the internet world was la
Re:Wikipedia generally works (Score:5, Insightful)
Easter [wikipedia.org], where far more verbiage than otherwise necessary has been introduced to oppose the views of a tiny minority of ultra-fundamentalists. This is a good example of another problem: much of the writing is substandard, and new substandard text is added faster than the existing work can be corrected.
Nikolai Velimirovi [wikipedia.org], which has been slapped with an NPOV tag because it dares to suggest that a speech made from a window at Dachau [wikipedia.org] while an inmate there just maybe does not express his honest personal opinion.
Religion [wikipedia.org], and indeed any religious topic at all, is a virtual battlefield. It's almost impossible to get a True Believer who is not naturally introspective to realize that his beliefs are not universally accepted and can't be described as objective fact.
These are just some examples I could put my hands on quickly. I run across others very often.
Re:Wikipedia generally works (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia usually doesn't work on popular or controversial articles. Ever heard of edit wars? Those controversies don't go away just because the article remains stable for a week or so. Instead, the losers in an edit war continue to try and white ant the article and you end up with a hollow shell of an article.
Given that your comment is modded informative I'll assume you aren't being sarcastic. But, come on, Wikipedia works because you can work out your differences on the question of which column to put a particular effect of marijuana in? That is about as useful as the movement of a comma in the article.
Care to talk about something controversial? What about the possibility that there are long term problems with mental health? The main article it links to Health issues and the effects of cannibis [wikipedia.org] seems a reasonable article on a quick scan. But the summary in this article is "The findings of earlier studies purporting to demonstrate the effects of the drug are unreliable, as the studies were flawed, with strong bias and poor methodology." This comment has absolutely no references other than a link to 'Junk Science'. Furthermore, it does not reflect the contents of the main article at all. The main article states "There has not currently been enough scientific study of the drug's effects to come to a definite conclusion." (with respect to mental health effects) - it does not state that all the research pointing to negative effects was junk science. Thus, the summary is not a useful statement for a reference work - it is a point of view. Care to try and fix that one and put something reliable in rather than a point of view?
Re:Wikipedia generally works (Score:5, Funny)
What really happened was you all went out to gather empirical evidence and everyone forgot where the article was.
Re:which scientific survey (Score:3, Insightful)
That plus the fact that one can see how entires change over time. Giving insight into controversial aspects and changing views over time that are completely missing in a normal encyclopedia.
Both are good starting points, the wikipedia has the advantage in getting the reader past the starting point to more definitive/authoritative information IMO.
I think we've talked about this before. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I think we've talked about this before. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it has problems (Score:4, Insightful)
It never will. And that's OK.
Wikipedia can be valuable even in mediocrity. I've used it as a "jumping off" point for knowledge about things that aren't covered in more traditional sources. Want to know the origins of "all your base are belong to us"? Wikipedia is great for that sort of trivia. Want an in-depth explanation of Relativity? You probably don't want to necessarily trust Wikipedia for the last word on it, but you might be able to find a few pointers to some good books.
Wikipedia is what it is. As long as everyone understands what it is, it'll do fine.
Re:Of course it has problems (Score:3, Insightful)
The argument that it should be judged by its weakest content is false, and wilfully ignores the fact that Wikipedia actually provides a source of information on many things that simply aren't covered elsewhere - particularly not in traditional reference works. Net culture is one of these, and as far as I'm concerned it's just as important to have a store of knowledge on that as i
Re:Of course it has problems (Score:3, Insightful)
It has on
I'm just sayin'...
-h-
Re:Not as bad as people think (Score:2)
I agree (Score:2)
Now I'm not an expert on everything but there are a few things I've seen that is not so much incorrect as it has a bias to how it is written. There needs to be more control from a professional literary stand point. Proper referencing to original sources, unbiased commentary. It always cracked me up how much detail is put in writing an article about slash culture but yet you look at something like the demographical information of some third world country and it is sparce at best. Now I agree this is an envol
revenge (Score:2, Informative)
Slashdot is often criticized for posting story summaries that are inaccurate and/or misspelled, and for intentionally posting articles that many find highly biased, and/or defamatory and often incite flamewars, while ignoring news or commentary on issues which outsiders may consider more serious or important (see Slashdot subculture). It is also infamous for the Slashdot effect, when thousan
'wikki-fiddler'? (Score:3, Interesting)
Regarding Wikipedia itself, I find it to be pretty useful as a repository of widely-known information (dates, names etc), very useful on computer-related information, and perhaps not so useful or reliable on other things. But that's still a net positive. Why the hostility?
Commercial opportunity? (Score:3, Interesting)
Trend? (Score:4, Insightful)
Another poster suggested a leveling system, and I agree. I think that wikipedia should establish a system whereby articles are ranked, i.e. culture - specialized - mainstream or something. That way, as you start out, you can work on culture articles, then work your way up. Or maybe base it on page views and specialization. People who just joined can make new articles (to fill the missing ones) or can work on general articles that are rarely viewed, then work their way up.
Ah, from a rag with accuracy issues... (Score:4, Funny)
There's bad information, but it still rules. (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about the information you would get by just Googling something. You're just as likely, probably more likely, to come up with garbage information. The difference at Wikipedia is that it's been reviewed by many eyes, and it's not under the sole control of some random dude with who has a web page.
Users should, of course, be aware of the potential for bad information. In fact, I'd recommend to any user who hasn't yet, you should read their What Wikipedia Is Not [wikipedia.org] page.
Serious doubts! (Score:2, Funny)
Some people do have really serious doubts [uncyclopedia.org] about the credibility of wikipedia [wikipedia.org] content.
On the other hand, wikipedia people do have doubts about these other lads [wikipedia.org] as well. Hmmm, looks like circular distrust to me...
Not written like an encyclopedia should be (Score:2)
Though Brooks does not outright say it, he clearly implies in the book that he favors contract workers by suggesting that implementers may only be hired once the architecture of the system has been completed (a step that may take several months, during which time the implementers may have nothing to do). It stands to reason then that if written today, Brooks might have written in favor of outsourcing software jobs in the Unite
Work in Progress (Score:3, Insightful)
Dissatisfaction with the quality of an article in Wikipedia is not a fatal flaw... it's the engine that makes Wikipedia work. If a user needs information on a topic, and the information is incorrect or incomplete or poorly presented, the user will, in some cases, just go out and research what they need to know using other sources...
Wikipedia does not hold to the standards of print references because it's not finished. It's a work constantly in progress, and you get to see the work in progress as well as a finished product.
Bearing that in mind, Wikipedia must not be judged by its worst entries, as those entries will be brought up to par eventually... in a few hours or a few years. Bad entries will be made into good entries as the right editor for the job steps forward.
This requires information filtering abilities on the part of the reader, and these abilities have too long been dormant in most readers... in a polished and professional publication, mistakes aren't acknowleged as such. There's even a sentiment that if it's in print, it's an absolute irrefutable fact, rather than the best information available to the publisher.
In Wikipedia, the reader knows that what they are reading is a collection of the best information available to the writers... and they can modify it if they see a mistake, or have more to add to the topic. That sort of dynamic interaction with the source material is very, very powerful, and can lead to a depth impossible in a regular encyclopedia on obscure topics... everything from Hallucigenia [wikipedia.org] to Indian Clubs. [wikipedia.org] Try getting that info out of your Brittanica.
Wikipedia is great as a point of departure for further study. It will, at the very least, provide the reader with a notion of what the scope and nature of the subject is, and the incompleteness and error of the artivle will be corrected as people who know what they're talking about step forward over time.
SoupIsGood Food
Hitchhiker's Guide to Planet Earth (Score:4, Insightful)
A case in point is the Wikipedia page on the village of Mellor [wikipedia.org], a small village that has languished on the edge of obscurity for 14,000 years and I'd swear it still had some of its original inhabitants walking around. The odds of there being more than two or three on Slashdot who have ever been there is virtually nil.
Because of the limited editing it gets, the accuracy is probably higher than normal. HOWEVER, any inaccuracy probably lasts longer than normal, for the same reason.
Pages that get edited frequently probably lose errors a lot faster, but gain new ones equally fast. In that sense, it is no different from computer programming, where rapid development cycles create as many (or more) bugs than they fix - although, they're usually different bugs the next time round.
I think Wikipedia would benefit from some sort of development cycle, where an "in progress" copy of the article is maintained, then occasionally snapshotted to create the "official" copy. For "non real-time" articles, I would suggest that pages not significantly edited for, say, 36 or 72 hours be treated as a "final revision". (A minor alteration would be the adding/removing of symbols such as commas and apostrophes.)
This would give you the "anyone can edit" freewheeling anarchy of the current system, the live, raw feel that some apparently crave, and yet also provide a version that has some semblance of consent behind it, something that maybe isn't perfect but is good enough for now. It's not exactly QA, in the usual sense, but it's still QA, in that you've got to not find any showstoppers within some deadline.
A "traditional"(!) wikipedia with deliberately de-synchronised mainstream version would probably not be the best solution, but I honestly can't think of a better one while keeping the current approach.
Hey, it's not like "paper" encyclopedias don't hav (Score:5, Insightful)
How to do this story for a newspaper. (Score:5, Funny)
Pots, kettles war over who's the blackest
[Story body here]
I was scolded by Jimmy just yesterday! (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia is straining under the load from a massive increase in traffic. This is due to the buzz from the media, as well as impressive rankings in Yahoo and Google.
Most of the insider administrators are anonymous, and they can use their editing privileges to stomp on any initiatives from the unwashed masses that they find objectionable. The word "cult" comes to mind. Recently there is a move on to require footnote citations for most assertions, in order to make the articles appear neutral. However, in my experience last week with Jimmy and one of his top anonymous admins, SlimVirgin, it seems to me that if the citation itself looks like an opposing opinion, then that's good enough. No one over there actually reads the stuff they cite -- no time for that.
The only defense the unannointed have is to put together their own list of CGI proxies, and give them a hard time for a couple of days. But the admins have many more "rollback" weapons to make it easy to "revert" any changes, which makes this too much trouble for any single unprivileged person.
I predict that before Wikipedia breaks under the traffic load, Jimmy will start running AdSense or Yahoo ads. At that point a lot of editors will probably leave, since their work is volunteer and they might now see Wikipedia as something quite different. Look at what the Google tie-in did for Mozilla Foundation, for example. Potentially millions per year would be generated by ads on Wikipedia.
Then he'll bank most of the money, buy some more bandwidth to keep it going as long as he can, but ultimately let it run down. I don't for a minute believe that Jimmy is motivated by this:
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004
I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
I've noticed a disturbing trend recently (Score:3, Interesting)
I've also noticed a trend whereby people will do stealth vandalism, changing one tiny fact or number. This is far more insidious than the harmless dorks who replace an entire article with "Brent Stevens eats babies". This is clearly an effort by people to discredit the very idea of Wikis.
WIkipedia is the ragedy of the commons in reverse (Score:3, Insightful)
I've heard people say, "Wikipedia is like a public toilet; when you need, you're glad it's there, but you never know who was there before you".
I've been editing Wikipedia for about a year now, and while I find some of the utopian aspects (i.e. allowing anybody, even anonymous users, to edit) to be intellectually appealing, the result is, without a doubt, mostly crap. Instead of spending my time improving quality, I spend my time fighting blatant vandals, well-intentioned idiots, and clueless newbies. And what time is left over gets eaten up in silly beaurocracy.
Like many /.'ers, I do software development for a living. No software development project (or any big project, be it buiding a space ship or digging ditches) would survive with the attitude that anybody can do anything they want. People need to both be educated as to the right way to do things and prove themselves trustworthy.
Wikipedia is a great resource. I turn to it often to get background, or find out interesting facts about almost anything. But I wouldn't trust it for anything important.
Madam, we're merely haggling over price. (Score:5, Interesting)
The "tortured prose" of this Register article is apparent in their lack of details on how the Bill Gates and Jane Fonda Wikipedia entries are "unreadable crap" (in Jimmy Wales' words). We're merely told this repeatedly, but the Register never backs their argument (or Wales'). Also, one sees another instance of the double-standards which are tolerated for judging Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica.
If "[s]omething that aspires to be a reference work ought to be judged by the quality of the worst entry" then why are we only allowed to judge one encyclopedia—Wikipedia—on that basis? With such a ridiculously high bar, it's easy to hand-pick articles one knows a great deal about and see if the encyclopedia in question measures up.
Which brings me to the next problematic criticism of these encyclopedias: drawing conclusions by weighing too small a sample. I recall that EB's former editor used exactly one entry to conclude that Wikipedia is akin to filth one is likely to find in a public bathroom (or words to that effect). The Register article's critique centers on reviews of two Wikipedia articles—Bill Gates and Jane Fonda's entries. The only way to reach the conclusion that EB has a "handful of errors" (as the Register says) is to do a survey; you can't judge articles you've never read. It seems to me that a proper review of a large encyclopedia would require a far larger sample size than a "handful" of articles in order to justify any reasonable conclusions about quality, no matter what those conclusions were.
Finally, the Register article mentions a few "respon[ses] to criticism" but doesn't actually critique these responses with a proper explanation. Just because one is told something like "this is what my critics will tell you" doesn't mean you have reason to dismiss the criticism. If one is interested in learning what's really going on, one has an obligation to think about the critique and weigh it on its merits. I "welcome the candour" as well the Register does, but I certainly want my candour to come with examples to back up points. When I evaluate EB using the guidelines I'm told to evaluate Wikipedia by, I come up with the conclusion that EB is merely different from, not better than, Wikipedia. And this conclusion I arrive at without giving any credit to Wikipedia for being free (as in the freedom to share and modify) which EB most certainly isn't. So, if I happen to be a victim of EB's "HUAC", I can't do anything to improve EB without going through the gatekeepers that registered their unwillingness to examine the above topics at all.
Wikipedia has been succeeded... (Score:3, Funny)
Prob. is article is wrong and useless. (Score:3, Informative)
The real issue here is the repeated attacks by this reporter: Remember Andrew Orlowski is the same reporter who wrote about Wikipedia :
""""It's the Khmer Rouge in diapers,"
Clearly Andrew has found that Wikipedia bashing is an easy meal ticket and that is the actual source of his over-exaggerated headline writing. Orlonski needs to get paid and he needs his editors to view him as a positive asset, drawing lots of eyeballs to the Register website. A quick Google for Orlowski and Wikipedia shows a long, slanted history for our boy Andy.
There is a verb for this: "Dvoraking" "To Dvorak"
"The act of trolling by a supposedly 'professional' journalist in order to draw visitors to a webpage generating hits for the paid advertisements."
In fact, given this background information Andrew Orlowski has less real credibility than, say, your average slashdot poster.
Orlowski isn't a total waste of time however. After all he has noted that: "Segway's brains head for toy robot", "Microsoft FAT patent rejected - again", and the incredible "Police stake out bar, hoping to catch man drunk"
Wow, Andrew! Whats next? I wait in breathless anticipation.
(What, proofread this? not worth the time, Andrew.)
EB, the Register dont' get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
To hear EB talk about it, you would think that the only good encyclopedia entry on Bill Gates would include factual information about his birth, life, finances, etc. That's fine if you are writing a history book for schoolchildren, but what Wikipedia does is actually captures the cultural moment around an issue - the fact that Bill Gates' article is inaccurate is because there is so much contention surrounding him.
To my eyes, Britannica is enforcing a cultural imperialism that the only right information is Politically Correct whitewashed facts. While that certainly is important, for instance, if you are really looking for the best definition of "evolution" or an impartial recounting of facts about Jane Fonda, that's not what Wikipedia does.
It captures the fullest dimension of the issues - the facts (as they are percieved) and all the culturally significant alternate views as well. Imagine what value future anthropologists might glean from a snapshot of Wikipedia - they wouldn't care who Bill Gates was in any kind of factual way - they would want to see what the world thought of him. Or the WTO, the World Bank, Greenpeace - you get the idea.
Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia (Score:3, Insightful)
Experts, including dead-tree encyclopedia authors, are definitely biased despite their voluminous amount of knowledge. They will *refuse* to look into some areas of study any further because they don't want to do so. The "peer reviews" may simply be a group of people patting each other on the back and not seriously attempting to counter the bias. The advantage of Wikipedia is not that it is unbiased, but that, given some time and effort, you can use the diff tool to find out what else each other has written and determine the bias. In other words, authors can't necessarily hide behind their biases.
Wikipedia of course has its stronger areas and weaker areas, but it is one resource among many that can be useful when doing research. As some have mentioned, it is kind of like running a Google search on something.
Why the hype? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedia is instant geek cred (Score:2)
Re:Wikipedia is instant geek cred (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you even bother posting that in the first place? Why go through the trouble of trying to convince the rest of us to consider your view?
People seek to educate and learn because it makes us feel good. If knowledge were merely a matter of cost/benefit, it wouldn't happen.
And stop it with the melodramatic persecution complex.
Re:Wikipedia is instant geek cred (Score:4, Insightful)
Much as I'd like you to simply be a troll, there's a lot of truth in that. I've recently started contributing to Wikipedia myself, and I seriously question my motivations; am I just indulging my anal-retentive geek (or rather less flatteringly, nerd) nature when contributing information about frankly unimportant stuff?
And believe me, I don't think I'm the worst case by a very long shot. There are COUNTLESS contributors out there seemingly editing stuff, and adding stuff or making changes in for ego's sake. I don't want to go on about this, but the vandals aren't the problem. They're easily reverted and usually transparent. The problem is the anal-retentive-and-don't-get-it-or-don't-care fact-adders who will (for example), clutter up abbreviation disambiguation pages (such as 'MC' or whatever) with very poor entries. These are at best obscure uses of 'MC', where those using such an abbrevation would know what it means anyway. At worst, they simply take anything they can think of that consists of an 'M'-word then 'C'-word, and slap it in, even if it's an obscure subject and no-one actually uses that abbreviation.
Just an example, but it's dross. And it has to be said that if there is any particular tendency in such addition of inconsequential garbage, it's most noticeable in the geek/nerd manga/sci-fi/computer-gaming subject areas.
They don't get that slapping down a load of facts *isn't* the same as writing a good article; I'm not sure that they care, they're simply writing for the sake of it- if it's about anything, it's about their pet interest. It's this stuff that justifies (in part at least) the "social onanism" tag given in the parent post.
Re:Wikipedia is the greatest tool in the world... (Score:2, Funny)
How ironic that I find that is the best time to fire up a random page in Wikipedia.
NOTE TO MODS (Score:2)
professional troll. (Score:2)
That's all.
Re:Would you have your average fifth grade class.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In defence of Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_Hate [wikipedia.org]
Led by singer/songwriter Kirk Brandon, the original group also consisted of: guitarist Simon Werner, bassist Jonathan Werner and drummer Jim Walker.
Incorrect, Simon and Jonathan were in a previous band with Kirk Brandon, The Pack.
Theatre of Hate garnered much early attention as a live act and in 1981 made their debut with
Re:Terrible journalism going on here (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't agree with the article (or the other article The Register article refers to) either. In particular I find it slightly cooincidental that the first of two "random articles" he looked up just happened to be one on Bill Gates [wikipedia.org].
Although upon reading it I find the article is pretty much a fair, balanced and informative article. It is undoubtably an article about one of the most despised persons from the point of view of internet people.
The fact that he "just happened to randomly look it up" I find dubious. Its like opening a Jewish Encyclopedia and "randomly" looking up an article about Hitler.