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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."
why would you keep it surprising? it's a website everyone can submit to, you should treat it like websites you don't trust.
that doesn't mean they're not good for finding information however, you just have to check it from somewhere else as well(which is easier if you know what you should check too).
(real encyclopedias have errors in them too sometimes, encarta as one)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Seriously... do you believe everything you read on the internet?
It's a publicly editable encyclopedia. By now, people should realize that there are many kiddies out there who have nothing better to do than to screw with others.
And how much are people paying to use the site?
Oh ya its free. And not a bad quick referance.
M
What the hell does that mean, "too far"?
"It's weird and scary and dangerous and a threat to my job, so I'm going to condemn it." Cf. Microsoft, MPAA, RIAA, buggy-whip makers.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
..than any other news or reference source?
I read inaccurate news. I read mistakes in references. The only difference here is that it can be malicious.
I'm sure that just like every other reference sourc Wikpedia isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn cool.
At least it doesn't have a political stance like a news source does, by endorsing a point of view, or a candidate. That worries me more than some prankster inserting bad data.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
Wikipedia has proven the concept, and I'm sure we'll see more and more advanced community-managed information sharing projects in the future. For example, adding a moderation system like /.'s would already be a huge step forward.
Peer Pressure
How many people actually looked at your entries before accepting these facts?
Also, if you dont know, you look it up. If I check encyclopedia britannica for info it's cause I dont know the answer. Most people looking for info are not in a position to rate the quality of the answer. And most people who have the answers are not going to go looking for the fun of fact checking.
You are right though. The system does seem to have some fatal flaws and might need some rethinking.
Keep in mind though that many "authoritative sources" often present myths as fact. I can think of three.
1)The NYT claiming that rockets cant work in space
2)History books claiming that the Civil War was fought over slavery
and
3)Newton getting hit in the head with an apple.
And the pages still haven't been updated! There have been no editors arriving at my door to make things right. How is that authoritative?
Wikipedia is an excellent reference... I often use it to get up to speed on a topic. Once I've learned a little, I go off and search other sites for more information. Wikipedia is an absolutely invaluable resource... the fact that some of the data might not be 100% goes with the territory. I use wikipedia almost every single day... our customers are from all over the country, and it's as simple as typing 'Wikipedia ' to bring up almanac information about them... including population, city, climate, ect.
For example, just now (at 10:13 EST) I entered a non-authoritative entry into the Wikipedia under the topic of Authority It's just a note at the bottom that says
"[Note: This comment in brackets is an unauthoritative comment that was added by an individual]"
Now my foolish edit is available to the whole world -- I didn't have to log in or anything. So gradually it gets fixed. Fortuneately I did not say anything that is untrue. However what about the poor student who wanders into the topic before it gets fixed -- at one point in time. I could never use this as a definitive resource until more protection is put in place to help guarantee the accuracy of the information. How do to that? I don't know .. but I'm sure the suggestions are coming in all the discussions here.
And then you made the necessary corrections, right?
Another straw man argument exposed for what it is
How can you call it a "straw man" when it's entirely accurate as an argument? The "stable" Wikipedia you mention does not yet exist, and therefore arguing that the article writer should have used it instead of the "bleeding edge" Wikipedia is silly.
Traditional enclyclopedias have errors as well & users have little option to fix them--they certainly can't change them directly. They must write the publisher & hope their corrections make it into the next edition in a year.
The value of encyclopedias isn't that they are right about everything. It is that they cover so many topics in an easy-to-understand manner. If you need more in depth knowledge or need to ensure correctness, you really should be using some sources which are a little bit more primary--books or journal articles written on the specific subject you are looking into.
Everyone who rights for the wikipedia should therefore cite references where people could look for more info. Also, I don't think that one person entering 5 errors is that harmful--the quality level is still quite high. Either a lot of people would need to make small numbers of errors (which hasn't really happened--most people write on topics they know about) or one person would need to add many more errors. If this happened, it is much more likely that they would get caught--after noting an error, an editor would likely check that person's other contributions.
If you'll grant that there are more honest people than asshats in the world, then over long periods of time, the wiki will tend towards authoritativeness as intentional errors are weeded out. The majority of edits will be valuable.
Or perhaps you're more pessimistic than I am, with regard to human nature.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
A lame article.
This is soo obvious.
Yet Wikipedia is an excelent *part* of a search.
The idea to put some sort of "Unverified" label on an article is just as unreliable.
An indicator by -how many individuals- it has been read / reviewed is probably the best you'll ever get.
And even then it's possible it'll only be a popularity contest.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
How is this different than social, political, and economic philosophy? We have a status quo because the human animal is resistant to changing world views and self-admission of being incorrect. I think this is yet another example where human nature remains unchanged in face of changing technology. The internet is just reflecting the way things have always been.
The tester introduced five subtle errors over five days in a database with over a million entries and because they weren't corrected in time periods of between 20 hours and five days, concludes "it would be very easy for subtle mistakes to sneak into Wikipedia, and go a very long time without being corrected." Wow.
A more accurate test, it would seem to me, would be to take articles of varying importance and, in fact, check the facts. (While you're at it, do the same for analogous articles in, say, Britannica.) The one problem with this is that checking facts is a very intense process, if you're serious about it.
Without having gone through this process, it would appear hard to say whether traditional publishers are any better at it than the volunteers who contribute to Wikipedia, except that over the past few years, I've grown to be as skeptical of traditional "authoritative" sources as I am of the morning newsprint.
I've worked in the publishing industry, and in my opinion, a number of publishers considered "authoritative" are living off the inertia of a time when sharp, intelligent people were cheap to hire, and one could afford to have encyclopedias checked by "armies" of worker bees.
Cheers...
That may well be true; however, it would be equally naive to believe that a print encyclopaedia has perfect authority or presents an unbiased view. Ultimately, every human knowledge source is subject to error and bias, it's just that the academics commissioned by print media might be conveying theirs in a more fashion.
--
Try Nuggets, the question answering service for your mobile phone
I think the analogy of Wikipedia:Britannica::Open-source:Commercial::Linu x:Windows serves here-- if you want to *pay* for information, you can. If you want it free, you're going to get a best-effort, which in most cases, will be good enough.
If you're only using one source for your information, however, then you're not researching correctly.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
You'll find a rather sketchy description, if compared to a traditional ecyclopaedia, like the Britannica.
So, what exactly are you waiting for to improve the article?
Or perhaps you simply didin't care about it that much to begin with?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
from merriam webster online /in-"sI-kl&-'pE-dE-&/
Main Entry: encyclopedia
Variant(s): also encyclopaedia
Function: noun
Etymology: Medieval Latin encyclopaedia course of general education, from Greek enkyklios + paideia education, child rearing, from paid-, pais child -- more at FEW
: a work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge usually in articles arranged alphabetically often by subject
Britannica always knew their (traditional, dead tree) encyclopedia was aimed at kids, which is why it was always sold to parents AS A RESOURCE FOR THEIR CHILDREN.
The real problem here is using the same word, encyclopedia, to describe three utterly different things...
a/ traditional dead tree encyclopedia
b/ electronic (hyperlinked) encyclopedia on read only media
c/ wikipedia
Traditional dead tree stuff was of course read only, and absolute accuracy depended on many things, including cultural background and editorial integrity, as well as actual facts (where said facts were ascertainable) for example the traditional dead tree encyclopedias (that were all there was when I was attending school) would talk about a Christopher Columbus discovering America for our (English) Queen... no mention of him actually hailing from a smelly mediterrenean port or indeed Culumbia (or later New Amsterdam, etc (NY to you young punks)) and any entries about the East India Company will have similar cultural and editorial bias, non mention whatsoever will be made of the facts, that our (English) early trade envoy's gifts and personal manners were treated with richly deserved scorn... the silk brocade wearing maharaji using the proferred gifts of fine english tweed as animal blankets.
Being read only media, and being "authoritative" these complete fallacies presented as impartial facts.
Electronic encyclopedia such as Encarta are similarly read only, and similarly in the throes of cultural and editorial filtering, laid on top of any basic factual errors (such as the location of the normal locker observatory, to quote something close to home)
Wikipedia is completely different, it is not read only, it is not hampered by editorial policies or cultural prejudices.
Sure, this means assholes are free to enter bullshit as fact, but in just the same fashion as we are free to spoof an IP address or send out forged SYN packets, only the pond scum does it. Of course the pond scum will have every exuse in the book ranging from "I'm only doing it to test how good this is." to "Serves them right for not being as leet as me." however the underlying fact is the same, it is pond scum behaviour.
Pond scum behaviour is an inevitable part of the internet, it is never going to be stopped and it never should be attempted, because the co-operation of the sensible majority (especially the sensible majority with some real clout like sysadmins) have enough momentum and enough existing weapons of mass co-operation (eg usenet death threats for maladministered nntp servers) to keep the pond scum in the place that they themselves elect to live.
To blame wikipedia because some pond scum has the ability to make erroneous entries that are uncorrected in five whole days (wow, encarta still has errors that are fucking years old) in a FREE FUCKING RESOURCE is directly akin to blaming Tim B-L, Scott N, and the INN nntp server coding crew for usenet spam.
In short, such accusations are ONLY EVER MADE BY THE POND SCUM THEMSELVES.
There is of course a direct parallel to the rules of spammers (subscribe to the usenet abuse groups nanae etc if you don't know what I mean) which are
http://bruce.pennypacker.org/spamrules.html
No, the real test of the validity of Wikipedia is to choose a hot potato and compare the content with the "respected" outlets such as encarta and britannica, and see which one is actually living up to the TRUE ideal of an ENCYCLOpedia, which is to EDUCATE,
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
The entire Wikipedia model depends on trust and goodwill. If you vandalize wikipedia, then someone will clean up after you. But it's still rude, even for an "experiment".
A Wikipedian put it this way the other day: In my neighborhood, people make a habit of picking up the trash. Please don't come and litter just to see if someone will pick it up.
So you know, like, be cool, huh?
WikiLove,
Jimbo Wales
Wikia
The changes were:
Layzie Bone (biographical page). I inserted "born 1973", but a quick Google search reveals that he was born in 1977.
Magni, from norse mythology. I said that he was commonly depicted wielding an axe or a spear. In fact, Magni was the only person other than Thor himself who could lift Thor's hammer, and Magni is commonly associated with that weapon. Interestingly, the fact about Thor's Hammer is in the Wikipedia entry (though they call it by the proper name, Mjollnir), yet nobody seemed to notice the incongruity that a god whose special power is lifting a hammer would be depicted with an axe or a spear.
Empuries, a Mediterranean town, I made the site of sadly lost Greek ruins. The Greek ruins are true enough, but they aren't lost, sadly or otherwise. This travel site helpfully informs us that Empuries has "lots of free parking close to the ruins" as well as a cafe and a museum at the archeological site.
Philipsburg, PA, became located at the junction of U.S. highway 233 and state route 503. Not U.S. highway 322 and state route 504, as most maps show.
Bernice Johnson Reagon, while apparently a prolific author, never wrote Georgia in Song. In fact, Amazon lists no such book by any author.
I don't see this as a great experiment. Obviously, pages in the Wikipedia that get more traffic will be corrected more quickly. As far as I can tell, none of these are exactly hot topics. A better experiment might include adding mistakes to pages that are more likely to be read by lots of people and then figuring out a relationship between general interest/importance of the entry and time until correction.
Obviously, if you pick an entry that only one person has ever worked on or looked at (I exaggerate slightly), it won't be corrected quickly.
The changes that were made in the experiment were minor. They will eventually be corrected but how many people know and care at which junction lies Phillipsburg, PA?
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
Perhaps NPOV is unattainable. That doesn't mean you should just give up without trying.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The test as it is applied here is not a good test. The items added are obscure enough that the time was too short for them to get caught. The results can only be significative if the wrong information is left there for weeks or months.
The only conclusion is that obscure fake facts are not caught within a couple of hours/days.
Markus
I would lump "honest, but incorrect" individuals in with the "dishonest" and still expect to have a higher number of "honest and correct" contributors to the wiki. Most people don't contribute if they are unsure!
But anyway, try this argument on for size: Individual wiki articles (and even the facts contained within them) evolve, just as organisms do. Good, factual data has a higher fitness quotient than do errrors and misinformation. Over long periods of time, the wiki content will tend towards truth.
Now, we could get into a whole other debate about what is "true", but I think that for the purposes of the wiki, truth can only be defined as that which a majority of editors agree upon.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
Precisely.
In news reporting it's known as the "Enquirer Effect"
The National Enquirer, Matt Drudge, or Faux News reports some half-baked erroneous bullshit.
The 'legitimate' news organizations pick it up and report it from there.
A week later it's common knowledge and accepted as absolute fact that Al Gore said he "invented the Internet."
After all, it's quoted in all those news stories, isn't it?
SilentChris is a kuro5hin.org troll. trying to troll the trolls and failing it hard.
There's a saying in open-source coding that with enough eyes all bugs are visible. The same is true of open-source writing. I think Wikipedia's main problem in terms of authoritativeness is that not enough people are reviewing it yet. I'd actually go further than that and assert that not enough people are writing for it, either. I just started seriously digging into and contributing to Wikipedia in the last few months (so, yes, I've been part of the problem), and I'm amazed at the number of topics that are still missing or just substubs. Not only esoteric humanities subjects that you'd expect to be lagging a bit, but even geek stuff that 1 thousand basement-dwellers must know better than I do. When someone like me can walk in the front door and find no information at all - correct or not - about topics that are common knowledge, it's premature to argue about its authoritativeness.
This assumes (a) that NPOV well-defined, and (b) that it's good.
If you look at their definition, it refers to presenting "all points of view." That doesn't really make sense. For instance, an article on geography doesn't need to present both the point of view that the earth is flat and the point of view that it's round.
I like Wikipedia. I contribute to Wikipedia. But I think it fundamentally fails when it comes to controversial topics. The "all" in "all points of view" really ends up meaning "all Wikipedians who care enough to put the article on their watchlists."
The original Nupedia concept probably would have had an easier time handling controversial topics. The problem was that it was too exclusive, and the process of getting an article put in it was too painful. So we're left with Wikipedia, which was meant to be just a fun project, and has ended up succeeding beyond all expectations. It's achieved that at the cost of not being able to effectively handle controversial topics. It doesn't mean Wikipedia is also a failure, it just means it has limitations. Working within those limitations, it's possible to do things like marking articles with an NPOV dispute warning (like these articles).
It's not a matter of absolute success of absolute failure. On many topics, I find Wikipedia more useful than print encyclopedias. You just have to use the right tool for the job, and use critical thinking skills.
Find free books.
HAHAHA - dude, what about whole countries that distribute history books that are written to conform to the ruling parties doctrines?
This is to be expected.
I only recently started tinkering with the Wikipedia, and in a few places found errors. Naturally, I fixed those. I contend that the experiment was of too brief a duration, or the errors introduced were obscure.
The success of the Wikipedia is that it is possible to correct errors when they are identified by whomever found the error. This is a great strength over closed encyclopedia.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Funny enough, it reasons that the ratio of valid wikis to invalid wikis would be about the same as the ratio of honest people to asshats.
(ceterus parabus)
Fnord.
I would like to see an experiment (with cooperation from Wiki) where:
Chances are: if nobody read it, it can't be fixed. The error never "existed". If it was, how many people were "fooled" before it was fixed? My guess is that the corrector would be one of the people who received the incorrect information would be the same ones to fix it once they found out!
To err is human, but to forgive is beyond the scope of the Operating System...
And this is different from the Encyclopoedia Brittanica how? It's just a question of where you get your biased rubbish. Anyone who relies on one source deserves what they get.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The National Enquirer, Matt Drudge, or Faux News reports some half-baked erroneous bullshit.
The 'legitimate' news organizations pick it up and report it from there.
Yeah, because the liberal news organizations never slant their headlines and quotes, right?
Let me explain, legitimate is not equivalent to liberal. Just because a news organization is not liberal doesn't mean it's biased. Maybe you're used to biased media. Please go to www.foxnews.com, and report back with a biased news article. I'd like to read one of those.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I'm not sure if you can really get a good idea of how self-maintaining Wikipedia is from this experiment. It seems to me that Wikipedia is mostly used by geeks, so the five entries he edited aren't ones that I would think would be read as often, as, say, an article on two's compliment numbers. Who's to say that some of these pages were even viewed by more than one or two people in the time he allowed for them to be fixed?
With that in mind, I'd rather seen an experiment that tries to determine how many times a page is viewed before it gets altered. I bet if one of the edits he had made were to introduce some sort of error into the database normalization page's explanation of third normal form, it would be a lot more likely to be noticed within two days.
Stil, shame on anyone who takes any encyclopedia or other reference book as unquestionable authority. Any collection of information that dense is going to be full of errors like made-up words and the like.
Think of all the damage done by the millions of people reacting to false information.
Then again, if Wikipedia did not exist, think of all the damage done by millions of people lacking information.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
There is no liberal or conservative media...it's a myth.
There is this thing called "The Media". It is like a shark. it feeds on anything and everything...including itself.
Where was the so-called "liberal" media when Clinton was going through all the sex scandal? On every channel, regardless of who it was...they were dragging out every dirty little detail about everything there was. Why? Why, ratings/money/cash.
"we got the bubble-headed bleach-blond who comes on at 5.
She can tell ya 'bout the plane crash with a gleem in her eye".
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. Why? If any of them air huge falsehoods, the OTHER news organizations jump all over it....more blood in the water...gotta feed that shark...gotta keep moving. So both "sides" walk a fine line...but their still both part of the same swimming shark out there.
To get to the bottom of something, you need to look at many different news, see where the "bullshit" is, filter it out and try to determine what is really going on...then double check with Reuters and the AP. But this is a lot of work and most people just sit zombie like in front of the tube waiting to be filled to the brim with fear.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
The way to authenticity is not through "authorities" but through peer review. Freud is a perfect example -- there's a reason why he published most of his stuff in books (which need merely to sell well) rather than in peer reviewed journals -- even in his own time most scientists realized that babblings about "penis envy" by the juvenile-minded Freud weren't science and couldn't have stood up to the peer review process. And the fact is Wikipedia is far closer to the scientific model of peer review than is Britannica.
Heres one:
t ml
Fox likes to link itself to pseudointellectual think tanks. Most doing very little research, most the soapbox for a single individual. Yet, Fox lends them credence as if they were honest to gawd actual organizations that understood polling and research methods. They claim to be the smart guys, while slamming intellectism. Actually, I think a lot of these places do -- they know enough to bend things to their will:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,131174,00.h
Its the war on poverty.
The article makes several claims against the dems in particular as if it were an Us vs. Them article. For instance it talks about the Dems refusing to endorse Welfare Reform. If I seem to remember correctly, the right holds the power these days and could reform it however they want. Secondly, Clinton was the first person to actively push through legislation on either side in a good many years.
Quite a few items were directly picked from talking points memos from the right and a bone is thrown here or there to make it look balanced, but all in all, anyone that wishes to remain balanced would not make it see as if there were sides to begin with that they might be associated with, but a neutral party.
I was once on the right, but much happier on the side of the wrong where the liberal news sources might be a bit tipped as well, but do so asking you to make up your own mind after hearing all the details. Yes, they encourage you to think their way, but at least they can admit there is another side of the story. The right generally shows only one side of the story and tells you to shut up if you even bring up the fact there might be another legitimate school of thought. I've *NEVER* heard the liberal media talk anyone down or tell them to shut up and still ask to be considered a legitimate journalist.
As soon as the Right goes back to being the party of fiscal conservatism, I'll probably rejoin the party.
That says more about your Theology chair than about Wikipedia. No decent professor would accept an encyclopedia as a primary source.
These people are overreacting. The fact is that on average wikipedia IS trustworthy. The point of any encyclopedia is to get an overview of a topic or to find pointers to more authoritative sources, and wikipedia is excellent for this purpose. It's also excellent because readers know very well that they are receiving information that anyone can alter.
Like the others have said, the fact that someone can change minor details in articles is unimportant to the purpose of wikipedia. If you need authoritative information, get a primary source and get over it!
At the time Copernicus discovered that Earth spins around the Sun, it was deffinitely not the popular opinion. I guess he wouldn't be able to turn to wiki for help. An encyclopedia is supposed to tell one accurate facts, not to help the majority of readers validate their own false beliefs. I see horrors ahead for a society where people get their important beliefs from google, slashdot or wiki.
You changed it [..]
That's one point why I don't like Wikipedia and it's also the cause of the problems mentioned in the article as well as in the comments in this thread - it looks too much like a real encyclopedia because there is only one article per keyword/topic, which is not (or shouldn't be) contradictory. You can't express a point of view differing from the opinion of the mass or the "average" opinion. Only one of the reasons why I prefer multiple articles per keyword as well as global moderation like on Everything2.. (Combining the two systems would be the best, but the user system of E2 is probably too oppositional to the open wiki concept (The user system being vital for useful and fair moderation is another point..))
Theists always say this and it is complete and utter tripe. It's in the basic definition: atheism. It's not a belief in 0 gods, it is a lack of belief in gods. Theists have a great difficulty in understanding the difference.
You can't accept that people don't have this belief, so try and make the lack of it a belief in itself which is absurd.
You don't need a belief system to not believe in something. Otherwise you'd need a special religion for each non-existant thing, i.e. the non-tooth fairy believers religion, the non-santa claus believers religion.
Just because lots of theists find it difficult to wrap their heads around the concept of not needing to believe in anything, they find a need to fit everything into a neat little belief box. As though they're embarrassed about having a belief system while an atheist doesn't.
>it's not black and white, you just need to use your own brain
Agreed, but the lack of a formal registration system and dependence on volunteers is going to hurt this project as it becomes more complex and more popular. I don't think the "open wiki" model scales so well as A LOT of wiki articles are full of disinformation and bias. Granted, most aren't, but there is a strong US-centric bias and some of us who have corrected disinformation only to see it reappear because of the citation of false facts makes me, at least, give up on contributing.
That said, the best advice is the line you just gave: always be skeptical about your sources. I think this is a postmodern idea, as this whole debate focuses on the assumption that britanica et al are infailable when in reality they have to deal with the exact same problems the wiki people have to deal with.
>like when reading a newspaper.
I would go as far as saying that people don't use their brain with the media. How many Americans still believe between the fictional connection between Saddam and 9/11?
The problem here is cultural and wikipedia is the symptom. People, in general, are not skeptical enough. There is way too much trust (this also applies to politics, religion, etc). Wiki readers know they are getting into something they can't trust unlike old media. The real catch (the real issue) is that old media is just as untrustworthy, if not more so because of ownership bias and other factors.
> There is no liberal or conservative media...it's a myth.
Oh really?
Pray tell, why are Rupert Murdoch's, Mellon Scaifes's, and Rev Moon's papers/media are so far to the right they make Bob Dole blush?
Ownership bias is quite real. In other countries its very common to have a "liberal" paper and a "conservative" paper all of whom are open with their bias. At least here in the states the alternative weeklies don't shy away from the fact that they have a liberal bent, but Fox News and the Washington Times and others still play the "we're just newsmakers without an agenda" card. Which is highly disingenious and leads to more dangerous beliefs than "al gore invented the internet." How about the millions who believe Saddam had a hand in 9/11?
Every article also has available its complete history -- the first version that was posted, and every subsequent change. You can look at any version, you can compare any two versions, and you can see who made each change. An article that's been edited by many different people is more likely to be reliable than one that's the work of only a few. You access this information by clicking on "Page history", also in the menu to the left of the article.
Incidentally, the next link down under "Page history" is "What links here". If you're not satisfied with the article you found, you may get what you need from other Wikipedia articles that link to that article. Of course, often the first article you reach has useful links to other Wikipedia articles or to external websites. Failing that, you can post a question on the Reference Desk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_d esk.
In fact, unlike traditional encyclopedias, wikipedia has both the manpower (all users, anyone who cares to contribute) and the room to provide exhaustive information.
Traditional encyclopedias are constrained in the amount of writers they can afford, the amount of research they can do and the amount of paper available for a single article. In a time where traditional encyclopedias are losing marketshare (thanks to internet, cdroms and other sources of information), cost savings are likely to put pressure on all three factors.
Wikipedia is a cumulative effort. If an article is not good, it can be fixed. If there are multiple views/interpretations on a topic, there is room to highlight both sides of the debate.
The longer the process goes on the better it becomes. Of course malicious people can insert information but sooner or later people will find out and fix it. You can put screening processes and peer reviews on wikipedia just like you can on a traditional encyclopedia.
Probably wikipedia's largest problem is not the process but the fact that it is accumulating information much faster than all other encyclopedias.
Now this guy has done something clever. He has made some small changes that would pass a first glance unless you already knew the facts. The problem is that he jumped to the wrong conclusion and never actually wondered how many people ever saw the changes. Since he only left the changes for 20 hours to max 5 days (!) and the articles do not exactly qualify as hot information, probably noone or at most a handful of people read the article. The changes obviously passed the vandalism procedures (for e.g. excessive changes in short periods of time) and nobody bothered to verify the information right away. The latter is actually the whole point of criticism. Wikipedia cannot be authorative because not all information is verified right away.
However, he misses the point. If brittanica has a mistake you might be tempted to write to the editor and maybe in a next edition it would be fixed. But most people probably don't. If you spot an error in wikipedia, you can just fix it. The more articles are referred to, the more authorative and informative they become. Especially the 'hot' articles on politics, famous people, etc are likely to be read, scrutinized and edited very often. Messing up 'empuries' is easy but try inserting false data under 'George Bush' and see how quickly that is corrected.
Jilles
The difference is, someone from the middle of nowhere with no qualifications, no references, no experience and barely any knowledge of the language, can't just go and write something in the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
Another thing I thought of w.r.t wikipedia, if it becomes valid as a source of citations like a proper encyclopedia, what's to stop someone writing in what they want to prove, citing the article they've just written, and using it to 'prove' what they asserted? By the time someone has fixed the vandalism, they've already cited it, and it's as valid a citation as any.
Atheism cannot be a "religious" stance by definition:
No god or deity = not religious. It could be a state of belief, as opposed to a state of concept or idea (the chief difference between ideas and beliefs is that ideas change according to new empirical evidence, beliefs do not), but your attempt to equivocate the atheistic stance by purely semantic means does nothing to enhance the debate...it only muddies the waters of the debate.
I fully understand what you're saying here, but the definition I provided above clearly says that the set of deities must include at least one. Therefore your own statement here shows the fallacy of engaging in a semantic argument--you weren't able to write a short post without contradicting yourself.
I point this out because it's so easy to discuss philosohpical topics such as these and descend into an uninteresting semantic debate about what we ought to call things rather than what things are. If you reply to this post and insist that you're going to change the definition of the term religious or atheist to suit your needs, that does nothing to convince others of your point; though they may even choose to adopt your non-standard definitions, there's no way of ascertaining whether they've grasped your underlying point. The hope in most semantic attacks is that the change in wording will simply find its way into the subtext of future conversations and change people's minds that way. Sort of an underhanded approach, which is why I personally detest such attacks by language. Political correctness is a great example of what I'm talking about.
So, I'll address the point underlying all your wordplay...that might get us somewhere. Is it possible, do you think, that atheists might be divided into two categories: those that hold atheism as an idea and those that hold it as a belief? The idea atheists might very well hold that there is no god, but this is not incontrovertible fact...much in the way one "believes" in a scientific theory. For instance, I "believe" in Newton's model of gravity--but only insofar as it has been shown to correspond with nature. Should I need to move into the realm addressed by General Relativity, then I would not "believe" in Newton's model for that purpose. Do I think that Einstein's model is "true"? Well, no, of course not...the model hasn't shown that it corresponds exactly to reality in every situation (I'm not sure how it could meet such a high standard, either).
So, one might be atheistic in this sense. A subtle difference between a scientific theory and holding atheism in the same way, however, exists and must be addressed. And this difference is embodied by your statement:
This statement is absurd. It is silly to judge what someone would do or think in the presence of a condition that is simply impossible. In this case, "if he were given a logical proof that a god must exist" is the impossible condition. No one who has done any study of philosophy or religion would accept this as something that could actually come to pass--in other words, it is not in the set of things that could occur in this universe.
So, pinning your argument that atheism is a belief system much like religion on this statement is a major flaw in your reasoning. I might say your belief that hippogriffs do not exist is flawed because you are so prej
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
My impression is that the Wikipedia is pretty accurate in areas that attract people with real expertise. Even if some contributors have a bias or are ignorant or mistaken on certain points, after a while the article gets to be pretty good through collaborative editing. So it tends to be good on subjects that techies find interesting and are knowledgable about. The problematic areas are ones in which the contributors have an interest but lack real expertise. The collaborative editing process doesn't work very well here because there is no one involved who actually knows the subject, or the real experts are a small minority among the contributors and are not able to have much influence. Topics that are particularly likely to be problematic are those about which some geeks are enthusiastic but not truly knowledgable.
In my own area of linguistics, for example, I find that articles on formal topics, e.g. "context-free grammar", are generally good, while articles on historical linguistics are often pretty bad. This reflects the fact that techies tend to have real knowledge in areas related to formal linguistics, e.g. mathematics and computer science, while historical linguistics is a subject that lots of people find interesting but few really know much about.
Theists always say this and it is complete and utter tripe. It's in the basic definition: atheism. It's not a belief in 0 gods, it is a lack of belief in gods. Theists have a great difficulty in understanding the difference.
Are you being purposely obtuse? I'm an agnostic and I've always thought atheism was a disbelief in the existence of god(s).
Quit trying to reform atheism.
You are also in denial: there is a whole world (i.e., centuries) of thought developed around the notion of atheism. Huxley called it one way (my way) and the Christian Establishment lumped us agnostics in with the atheists. You are following their path, only your intent is different: the reformation of atheism.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
There is no such thing as a "definitive" source of information, for several good reasons:
(1) History is written by the winners, so the only window we have into the past is often from the perspective of the victors. Whether or not history is true as we believe it to be is unproven and unprovable.
(2) Much of our knowledge is incomplete. The gaps are filled in with speculation or theory. New information is discovered and new theories are formed continually.
(3) Everyone is biased. In a very real way, each of us lives in his own world, with his own perspective, biases, and beliefs. So what is intrinsically "true" to one can be just as completely "false" to another.
(4) There are whole areas of knowledge about which we are completely ignorant. For example, before the 20th century, "quantum mechanics" was a completely unknown, completely unanticipated field of inquiry, one which has had totally unexpected consequences in many other areas.
(5) People often lie just to improve their status. There are many examples of accepted biographies (even autobiographies) being turned on their heads by later fact-checking or contradictory accounts.
(6) Experts often disagree about the causes or significance of data, especially experimental data. Contradictory theories may co-exist for decades before a majority agrees on one, and even then a vocal minority holding a completely opposing view may persist for many years, maybe even forever.
In a nutshell, most of what we call "knowledge" is simply a majority consensus about what constitutes "reality". Real, concrete "truths" are few and far between. The best we can sometimes hope for are "rules of thumb" that work well enough to get us through each day without being eaten or run over.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
The underlying idea of wikipedia is TRUST. SHARING comes second.
No harm is done if you know more than you see in an article and you don't share. But if you purposely include false information... that's a Bad Thing[TM].
Experiments like descibed and similar are as UNETHICAL as tests on human subjects who don't know they are being experimented on. As much as they seem needed to prove a point sometimes, they create a precedent that can only cause harm.
Then again, if Wikipedia did not exist, think of all the damage done by millions of people lacking information.
I hope you are joking here? What is worse: not having the information, and looking for it somewhere else, or having wrong info that you trust? No Wikipedia bashing intended, but your statement doesn't hold.
Z
Also, if the media is so biased to the left, how do you explain Fox News, Rush Limbough, Bill O'Reilly, etc. It is a well known fact, for instance, that the radio is dominated by conservatives. This is all described very humourously in Al Franken's book which I highly recommend.
Well Al Franken is an inflammatory imbicile.
Regardless, with the exception of Fox News (which I'll conceded is generally concervative), all of the media venues you speak of openly state that they are opinion pieces.
And that's the real issue here. It's not that people are expected to limit their speech to the point of mediocracy. That's why we have the first amendment. I don't think anybody would have a problem with Dan Rather telling us his political views in an independently published book, but what I would have a problem with is him sneaking said beliefs in what is supposed to be an objective forum like broadcast Journalism.
I think the real problem is large groups of people, on both sides, (but I believe MORE on the liberal side) think that they are enlightened. That they know what's best for the people, even if the people can't see that for themselves. So instead of laying out the facts and letting people decide for themselves, they skew support for their views through what basically amounts to trickery.
-Grym
So if someone has been recently proven wrong but is still a misconception of most people, you would include the old version into Brintannica? Like "Iraq is a country with lots of WMDs".
However, he misses the point.
No, you Wikipedia disciples have missed the point. RANDOM ANONYMOUS INEXPERT people can alter the information in the "encyclopedia" at any time.
There is no Free or Open Source Software project that does this. They all have gatekeepers of some kind. Can you imagine how horrible the Linux kernel would be if random users could check in code without asking? What if random users with barely two weeks into an introductory programming class decided to hack on GNOME or KDE? Of course most errors (but not all) won't be subsequently pushed out to the rest of the users, because the compiler or the testers will throw them out. But Wikipedia isn't software. Mistakes in the information WILL get pushed out to the other users.
I don't expect my authoritative sources to be error free, but I do expect them to be authoritative. You cannot do that without restricting membership to authoritative sources.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
As any philosopher can tell you, proving a negative in most situations is not possible. That is why the burden of proof is generally on those on the positive side of an argument.
For instance, let's say I claim that I can fly. You claim I cannot. I ask you to prove that I can not fly, or else you must accept that I can. There is no way for you to prove I can't fly. You can even push me off a building, and, if I survive (no matter how injured), I can simply claim that I choose not to fly, but I could have.
Of course, just because I choose not to prove that I can fly, does not mean that I cannot, in fact, fly. Its just that for my claim to have merit, I must be prepared to prove it. In other words, those who believe something are free to believe as they wish, proof or no, but those who want others to believe as they do should be prepared to provide proof.
(None of this was, per se, about religion, just addressing the parent and his "prove a negative" request)
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Can you prove there are no gods?
No, I can't.
I also cannot prove:
4 Elephants support the world.
The answer to life the universe and everything is 42.
Issac Asimov cloned himeself.
My TV is alive.
Grass is an alien lifeform.
People do choose to die, so would not prove to a theist that their divine entity lacked omnipotence, let alone the ability to fly. Remember that Christians believe that Jesus died because he choose to, not because he lacked the power to save himself.
The "existance of evil" is often used as a proof of the non-existance of God, but it only "disproves" the existance of a omnipotents and omnibenevolent christian god. It cannot disprove any of the pagan gods who are not omnipotent (and frequently not omnibenevolent either).
In general it *is* very hard to prove a negative. I don't believe in unicorns, but I cannot prove they don't exist. If I checked every inch of earth and did not find them, it is still possible that they are living on mars, or
even another galaxy.