Wikipedia != Authoritative?

Frozen North writes "Recently, this article in the Syracuse Post-Standard caused a stir by dismissing Wikipedia as an authoritative source, and even suggesting that it was a little deceptive by looking too much like a "real" encyclopedia. Techdirt suggested an experiment: insert bogus information into Wikipedia, and see how long it takes for the mistake to be removed. Well, I did that experiment, and the results weren't good: five errors inserted over five days, all of which lasted until I removed them myself at the end of the experiment."

Comments

GENERAL DISCLAIMER for your convenience

[FooAtWFU]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

General disclaimer - Use Wikipedia at your own risk! - Wikipedia does not give medical advice - Wikipedia does not give legal opinions - Wikipedia contains spoilers and content you may find objectionable

WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY

Wikipedia is an online open-content encyclopedia, that is, a voluntary association of individuals and groups who are developing a common resource of human knowledge. Its structure allows any individual with an Internet connection and World Wide Web browser to alter the content found here. Therefore, please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by professionals who are knowledgeable in the particular areas of expertise necessary to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information about any subject in Wikipedia.

That's not to say that you won't find much valuable and accurate information at Wikipedia, however please be advised that Wikipedia CANNOT guarantee, in any way whatsoever, the validity of the information found here. It may recently have been changed, vandalized or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the particular area you are interested in learning about. We are working on ways to select and approve more trustable versions of articles, but still without warranty. The closest thing to this that currently exists is the Wikipedia:Featured articles process, but even the articles listed there may have been mercilessly edited shortly before you view them.

None of the authors, contributors, sponsors, administrators, sysops, or anyone else connected with Wikipedia in any way whatsoever can be responsible for the appearance of any inaccurate or libelous information or your use of the information contained in or linked from these web pages.

Please make sure that you understand that the information provided here is being provided free and gratuitously, and that no kind of agreement or contract is created between you and the owners or users of this site, the owners of the servers upon which it is housed, the individual Wikipedia contributors, any project administrators, sysops or anyone else who is in any way connected with this project or sister projects subject to your claims against them directly. You are being granted a limited license to copy anything from this site; it does not create or imply any contractual or extracontractual liability on the part of Wikipedia or any of its agents, members, organizers or other users.

Any of the trademarks, service marks, collective marks, design rights, personality rights or similar rights that are mentioned, used or cited in the articles of the Wikipedia encyclopedia are the property of their respective owners. Their use here does not imply that you may use them for any other purpose other than for the same or a similar informational use as contemplated by the original authors of these Wikipedia articles under the GFDL licensing scheme. Unless otherwise stated Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites are neither endorsed nor affiliated with any of the holders of any such rights and as such Wikipedia can not grant any rights to use any otherwise protected materials. Your use of any such or similar incorporeal property is at your own risk.

Please note that that the information found here may be in violation of the laws of the country or jurisdiction from where you are viewing this information. Wikipedia does not encourage the violation of any laws, but as this infor

Re:Cant be Censorship

[Prior Restraint]

Who modded this crap insightful? To censor is to remove "objectionable" speech, whatever that may be and whoever does it. The only relevant difference is whether it's a kind of censorship permitted by the law/constitution/whatever.

Re:Censorship

[FooAtWFU]

The #1 policy of Wikipedia (let me repeat: the #1 policy) is the neutral point of view. So my guess is you're doing it wrong. If you can couch your statement in neutral language (instead of asserting that God exists, for instance, assert that certain people claim God exists) and your statement isn't completely false or completely boring, uninteresting, and not notable, redundant, misplaced, or otherwise faulty, it ought to stay. There are, of course, a number of ongoing article content disputes at any time, particularly on controversial topics.

You also say you add "perspective". If it's your perspective on the matter rather than some notable perspective, you may have run afoul of the no-original-research policy.

Re:I added an entry about myself

[FooAtWFU]

No, Wikipedia has an extremely strict NPOV article. Besides, the GNAA article is useful for attracting trolls, lest they do damage elsewhere. Wikipedia is not paper. It can live with an article on the GNAA, or 150 articles on Pokemon, and survive just fine.

Re:I added an entry about myself

[FooAtWFU]

I think you violated the No Original Research policy and the "Auto-biography policy.

WikiProject for Fact and Reference Checking

[Famatra]

Wikipedia is currently working to reference all the facts on it. There is a project set up to do it also here Fact and Reference Check. Here is a quote:

Not only can we make Wikipedia a more factual, a more reputable, source of information but perhaps the *most*. Imagine an article in which each *fact* is referenced with many academic text books, journals and websites! Wikipedia has the potential to be the *most* crossreferenced body of knowledge ever created, but to get there it needs help.

There isn't any reason why every fact couldn't be referenced making Wikipedia one of the most authoritative sources of information ever created.

Re:surprising?

[westlake]

The Britannica's essays are signed and historically have included authors like Einstein and Freud. I don't know how you can reconcile these two beliefs:

Wikipedia entries are often entered by experts in that field
there is no verification of expertise of the wiki writers so it's more or less a "use at your own risk".

Re:How about another experiment?

[at_18]

It happened, it still happens, and articles that result from copy&pasted text are deleted. It's anyway an ongoing problem, see Wikipedia:Copyright problems.

oh please

[mnemonic_]

(I'm Xmnemonic on Wikipedia.)

I changed the article to a truthful one and it was beaten down.

Oh please. You changed it to an anti-GNAA editorial sprinkled with slants. Your "truthful" details (as I and the vast majority of concerned Wikipedians believe), damaged that article. They weren't flat-out lies so to speak, but they changed the tone of the article for the worse, altering the version that survived a previous debate.

popularity contest for certain points of view.

I suppose it should be changed to a contest for only SilentCrs's point of view? Mass rule, mob rule, res publica ("rule of the people" i.e. republic, a very broad term): call it what you want. Yes it's a popularity contest of opinions, but does a better way exist? Mutual agreement among users is the best way as it leverages the minds and experiences of multiple people as opposed to those of an individual.

No, it's not perfect; but in the case of the GNAA article, it has worked admirably, and for the second time. Users have put aside their personal objections against the GNAA's activities and agreed upon an informative and unequivocal page. It is only you who has yet again disrupted this, with your personal crusade against the GNAA.

Re:surprising?

[justins]

So if you give Wikipedia just a few more years until there are articles about every major topic and the current topics are just edited again and again, the accuracy of Wikipedia will be comparable with Britannica.

Why?

The problem is that the less mainstream topics, and the little details, aren't being fact checked. The user base can grow astronomically and this problem won't go away.

I suppose it might, arguably, get worse as the potential number of vandals increases. That's not the sort of problem that interests me most when we talk about accuracy. It's the little things that even the educated among us might not remember, little dates in history and minutia, that are likely to be slightly off.

I think this is might be a largely solvable problem by employing volunteer fact checkers - something that could be a really fun job. But it's never going to be 100%, since you're trying to hit a moving target.

The problem is that teachers lie to little kids and brainwash them in thinking that an encyclopedia is an unquestionable source of all truth, when really nothing could be further from the case.

Where did you go to school??!?!? My teacher taught me that:

one should never cite sources in a paper from an encyclopedia

Who taught you this, if not a teacher?

Re:If you repeat a lie often enough...

[GrouchoMarx]

Are some outlets of this trash slanted? Sure...a little. Fox is biased toward conservatives and CNN is biased toward liberals...but not to a HUGE degree on either side.

You're talking about the FOX News that begins broadcasts by counting down the number of days "until you get to re-elect George W. Bush". That's more than a little biased. That's criminal false advertising when they claim to be "fair and impartial".