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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
I tend to find that the more academic or obscure a topic the higher the quality of the page is.
"Wikipedia, she explains, takes the idea of open source one step too far for most of us."
What the hell does that mean, "too far"?
WBG Links
www.wbglinks.net
WBG Links
www.wbglinks.net
Worse, it's subject to the biases of whoever writes the article. I've seen some pretty bad stuff, horribly biased, passed off as a real encyclopedia author. It also sucks that people around here tend to insert Wikipedia links, thus inferring that they're somehow authoritative in any way. They're not.
Wikipedia != encyclopedia.
Wikipedia == blog
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Ok, I can imagine this post will be redundant in about 5 seconds, but why on earth would you consider a publicly editable web encyclopedia to be authorative in the first place? This is the Internet, not all you read is true.
Grab an article out of a "real" encyclopedia, and compare it to the Wikipedia article. Do they factually match?
I would be very interested in the results.
Oftentimes, Wikipedia articles are updates the same day that events happen. This is one advantage over *any* "real" encyclopedia.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
If you try looking for something that isn't directly related to technology the information is sparse. Try, for instance, "permian period". You'll find a rather sketchy description, if compared to a traditional ecyclopaedia, like the Britannica.
I remember seeing this story originally on Boing Boing, and the author, Frozen North, leaves some facts out that his site covers. However, his submission is a bit of flamebait.
Alex Halavais did the same experiment, changing 13 things, and all of those were changed. He did most of them over the course of the same day from the same IP, so they got caught.
Wikipedia is a tool, nothing more. If you believe everything you read on the internet, well, you get it.
... I was taught by teachers and librarians not to rely on the printed encyclopedia (the only we kind we had back then, you young whippersnappers!) as an authoritative source, since all it contained, by its nature, was summary data which was easily outdated. I remember one teacher in high school even telling the class that anyone who cited an encyclopedia article in a paper would get an F. A bit drastic, maybe, but it got the point across: an encyclopedia is not supposed to be the be-all and end-all of research. It's a place to get a quick idea of a subject and ideas on how to learn more, a starting point for research in depth. In this role, Wikipedia performs admirably.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
You should not post such information here!
With amount of people reading slashdot there's a possibility of many pranksters who didn't have any motivation to deface etc sites now have such motivation...
Be careful slashdit! May as well introduce the new slashdot effect.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
Wikipedia got the Ars Electronica price for best initiative to share information in between communities. Oh man, i know some people here that will be pissed. http://www.aec.at
Hanging meat lasts longer !
You mean just because it's published on the internet doesn't mean it true?
Where am I gonna get the cold hard facts about the presidential campaign now?
..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!!
The scientific philosopher Thomas Kuhn put forth a model of "scientific progress" where-- simply put-- once you get enough people to accept a theory as "true", it becomes the baseline for truth. The most common example of this is the slow progressive adaption of Newtonian Physics, and then of Einstein's Relativity: doubters are in abundance, until they are won over to the new paradigm.
WIkipedia, IMHO, is the epitomy of that concept: if you get enough people on the Internet to write a common text, and go to great lengths to democratize the process, then you will get the generally accepted "truth". Even scam busters like Snopes often resort to the line of reasoning "this sounds too much like an urban myth, therefore it's an urbam myth" variant on the same theme.
Don't get me wrong-- I love the WIkipedia. In my book, it's enough truth to get you through the day, and that's all I really need 98% of the time.
davejenkins.com |
Ok so I'm not daft enough to cite wikipedia in a paper, or make an important decision based on it's content. . .
. . . but the same applies to slashdot - and how many smart and knowledgeable people post here? how much do I learn even each week from reading posts on here
wikipedia is a messageboard, which means you can't cite from it, or use it as an authority. that doesn't mean it's not one of the most valuable learning tools on the net.
i'm trying to give up sigs.
I find Wikipedia to be most useful in the field in which traditional encyclopedias are weakest; pop culture.
There's thousands of pages in Wikipedia dealing with up-to-the-minute descriptions of cultural phenomena that won't make it into the Britannica for years, if ever.
Does Wikipedia claim to be "authoritative" anywhere? The Internet has led to a variety of totally new media over the last couple of decades. Perhaps we should treat an "open content encyclopedia" as something conceptually different from a "traditional encyclopedia", in the same way a blog is different from a paper diary or an e-mail is different from a "snail mail".
Each of these evolved from older print-based media, but each of them have a slightly different "dynamic".
It's blindingly obvious to anyone who has clicked the numerous "Edit" links on a Wikipedia page that Wikipedia is fundamentally different to a print-based Encyclopedia Britannica or Encarta. What this doesn't mean is that it's useless or pointless or should be discounted as a source. It should just be treated in an appropriate way given what it is.
Wikipedia is not alone in this. here is another one you should avoid if you wish to seek accurate information.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Oh?
Please give an example 'cause this needs to be adressed.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Wikipedia is taking a leaf out of Debian's book. There going to create a "stable" version of the wikipedia that isn't editable by everyone and only factual errors will be corrected in this stable version.
:)
Then users will have a choice between the bleeding edge and possibly factually incorrect or the stable
version that's had some kinda of audit done on it. Another straw man argument exposed for what it is
Simon.
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.
No, you're still there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_Coward
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
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.
Despite the fact that Al writes newspaper articles which are reviewed by one or two other people and thinks these are unbiased truth, he thinks that wikipedia articles written and then reviewed by one or two other people are full of lies. Sure, if someone tries to sneak errors into wikipedia they can do it, just as someone could sneak errors into the newspaper or britannica if they wanted to.
The is a common misconception about what an encyclopedia is. It is not a place to cite as a source in a research paper, rather a place to get an overview of a subject. everything you find in an encyclopedia you need a source for before you can quote it in a paper, so in that sense it really doesn't matter if there are a couple of innacuracies because then you just can't find them in a primary source so that's it, end of story. The funny thing is Britannica and every other major encyclopedia has a huge disclaimer about how there is no guarantee of the accuracy of the information contained, yet Al continues to insist on it being gospel truth.
Lastly, for those who don't know, September 15th-20th is going to be one of the biggest moments in the history of Freedom. Wikipedia will hit 1 million articles, firefox 1.0 will be released, Adbusters starts their blackspot sneaker marketing blitz (which I don't necessarily agree with). In our country if you take a rich man, strip him ass naked and throw him in the middle of the woods, then in a week or two he will be relatively well off again. If you take a poor ignorant man and do the same then in a week or two he will be just as poor. Knowledge and social savvy is what separates the classes in the United States, not money itself. Information is a key foundation of knowledge. Wikipedia aims to bridge the information gap between the rich and poor, and if this Al Fasoldt guy can't see the good in that then there really isn't anything more that can be said for Wikipedia.
That's happened to me several times. I've removed my submissions and won't bother to make any more.
funny munging
Most people probably aren't looking at articles about subjects where they'd recognize errors. An encyclopedia is for looking up things you don't know.
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.
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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
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
Anytime you have something that is both useful and free, and where it is competing with a paid product, you will always have the force of that paid product felt upon the free product.
Personally, I love Wikipedia. But this article is good in that it forces us to pay attention to the problem and try to fix it.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I tried this with the Internet once! I put up 5 pages containing bogus information over 5 days. I waited to see how long they would stay there. They weren't removed . . . EVER.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I also did this a while ago. I made a bogus change, and let it sit, intending to go back and fix it in a couple of days. Whoops! I forgot, and came back a few months later, and sure enough, the wrong information was still there.
The problem is that the quality of a reference is not derived from the number of people working on it, but on the expertise of those people. A single person can make a better encyclopedia than a million monkeys banging on keyboards.
This guy made some subtle changes and left them for a relatively short period of time... I'm unsurprised they weren't picked up. But over the long haul, SOMEONE would eventually notice and repair the errors.
:)
And the fact that only subtle errors can survive is a testament to the power of the wiki. Major errors will be noticed immediately and corrected, subtle errors may persist for a while, but really, by their very subtlety they are less damaging to wiki users.
Although, I run a wiki myself so perhaps I am biased
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
I don't see why any of the Internet advertisers haven't jumped on this "band-wageon" yet by inserting their own textual advertisements amongst the materials. This would be a great way to make quick/easy advertising dollars.
Sure, the advertisements would eventually be erased, but as long as they are seen by some people, they server their purpose.... and they can always be re-inserted
I just cannot see how this Wikipedia thing is secure. I cannot see how the "trust" option works in this scenario. You cannot even trust me (a Slashdot poster commenting on this story), to not insert random content into the Wikipedia for fun.
If there's something I don't understand about the safety of the Wikipedia technology then somebody please tell me. Maybe I'm getting all worked up over nothing. Thanks.
However, I read several dozen articles yesterday, mostly for topics I know a fair amount about, and found the site surprisingly accurate and informative and well written.
I wouldn't want to trust anything that is too far off the beaten path though ...
What is authoritative?
The opening line in the article says "... a few weeks ago ... my companion Dr. Gizmo ... urged [readers] to go to the Wikipedia Web site ... an online encyclopedia, for more information on computer history. The doctor and I had figured Wikipedia was a good independent source. "
Yet later in the article the author states: "From the home page:
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers. The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can also edit any article right now by clicking on the edit this page link that appears at the top of every Wikipedia article."
"
The quote was sent to them by a school librarian. So these journalist were incapable of reading the front page to determine the source of the information in the Wiki.
So my question is, who's validity is in question? The Wiki's or this paper's staff writer?
I see wikipedia as not just a dictionary, but a social experiment. One could place false information, but what is to gain? "Ooh, i'm so l33t I can put in anything I want just like anyone else." As great as it is I think it would better to follow this model: When people submit/edit a "definition", it shouldn't be updated right away, It should be looked at by a group of moderators. When you do a good job, you will be offered to moderate as well. In other words you build up your reputation. One can use public key authentication to do this.
With policy in mind, wikipedia is not authoritative in any sense - obviously. Who would think otherwise? Anyone can edit it. So, policy-wise, it is poor; but in "fact" it is extremely useful.
That said, it is one of the most useful web sites out there, so long as the reader keeps this in mind. There are some excellent articles that outshine commercial encyclopedias by orders of magnitude, and there are some crummy ones. Just what I expected. It's one of the most interesting and successful "open" projects out there; but no, I would not list it as a source on a serious research paper - but I would definitely use it as a starting point for learning about anything.
Wikipedia is pretty good for topics that are prominent and well-known, and decent for technical topics. For stuff that's more obscure, though...it's interesting to browse around but you definitely don't want to take it too seriously!
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
An article approval mechanism is under development and in testing at the test Wikipedia (you'll need to get an account to see it, mind you, and much of the user interface is currently in Finnish, but... :)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
the system works because statistically, people don't try to be misleading for fun too often... and when they are it is usually on a subject that is highly debated and will be re-read/verified shortly...
i dont believe he said anything about refusing to post the information
I would like to see it too though but he didn't "refuse" to post it.
Worse than that, they keep articles they really shouldn't. I'm all for encyclopedic integrity but come on. I changed the article to a truthful one and it was beaten down. It's not a matter of what's "correct" encyclopedic-wise, but which a popularity contest for certain points of view.
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!
There is a trade-off here.
Wikipedia allows more bogus information in but corrects it faster than does a typical "authoritative" encyclopedia.
Moreover, if a topic is particularly controversial, with conflicts of interest tainting the entry, you frequently have no indication of this fact in a normal encyclopedia. With Wikipedia the worst that happens is you get a lot of conflicting revisions in the history of edits which, itself, is meta-information that this entry requires more scrutiny from a variety of sources.
The unfortunate thing about Wikipedia is that it doesn't provide a clear metric of this meta-information as part of the presentation of the current article -- you have to go look for it.
Seastead this.
Do you mean not comprehensive as in having more entries than Britannia?
br/>Thinking before typing usually works.
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
Nothing should be considered to be completely authoritative. Wikipedia, like anything else is compiled by people who have their own agendas and prejudices. Whilst I accept that there is more room for error in Wikipedia than conventional texts, I can easily imagine a situation where I could be found pointing out at great length to anyone who will listen that Britannica has got it wrong, and what do these idiots know anyway... (probably late at night)
:wq
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.
Nupedia was an attempt at an online, 'open source', peer-reviewed encyclopedia. It closed down last year, and much of its content went into wikipedia.
More details at, you guessed it, wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia
From the article:
Nupedia was an online encyclopedia project founded in March 2000 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Its articles were licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, and were peer reviewed by experts. As of June 2003, it had 23 "complete" articles and 68 more in progress. Nupedia shut down on September 26, 2003, and much of its content has since been assimilated by Wikipedia.
The editorial process
Nupedia had a seven step editorial process, consisting of:
Assignment
Finding a lead reviewer
Lead review
Open review
Lead copyediting
Open copyediting
Final approval and markup
The bar to become a Nupedia contributor was relatively high, with the policy stating, "We wish editors to be true experts in their fields and (with few exceptions) possess Ph.D.'s."
Demonstrating that a malicious person can make errors that are not caught within a few days is a long, long way from demonstrating that there are substantially more errors than a paper encyclopedia. And since when is a paper encyclopedia supposed to be authoritative? Maybe for sixth-grade reports, but...
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."
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.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
As an annoyed Wikipedian, I'd try to slashdot slashdot, but someone would just edit the page with the link and coralize it. :-(
Well... what do you know? Sheer genius. Mod the parent up, wouldya?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
...the problem is, if websites start using Wikipedia as their source, you suddenly have bogus information backed up by "semi-legitimate" websites. Suddenly it starts seeming rather plausible, particularly if it is the kind of information you wouldn't normally expect to find in a standard encyclopedia. Basicly, while not verified by a proper source, it would go unquestioned. And then often taken for truth.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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...
A few days ago I inserted this line in the Zell Miller's wiki bio: "In 2004 he sold his soul to the devil". I don't understand why it got changed to: On September 1, 2004, Miller gave the keynote address at the 2004 Republican National Convention ... do you?
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.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
You gave it only 5 days!? are you crazy? Print ecyclopedias can't change AT ALL! They have to send off correct material separetly, and that happens ONCE A YEAR!
Give it a year and then let me know what happens.
:T:R:A:N:S:
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
when they announce that Bush has won the elections? How can we be sure that *any* information is true?
perception is reality
Should it not be possible to include bibliographies in entries? The entire Wiki might not be deemed authoritative in this way, but an entry with a decent bibliography might be considered valid on its own.
Of course, I'm not sure anyone has tried doing bibliographies in Wiki markup before; it may take some extension to the standard. Still, I don't think it would be a bad idea.
However, these problems are growing pains. Wikipedia is cool enough to attract a core of devotees who will counteract the worst trolls and vandals. The articles will slowly build up comprehensiveness (go add a few details to the 'permian' entry etc. if things are too sparse). Some articles have all the authority of a Brittania article, as they're written by an equivalent expert (or better, team). Some are just pure malarky and need help. It isn't always obvious, so cross-check. There is a reason encyclopedias are not acceptable for academic citations. They always need cross-references if being right is critical.
Most of us are simply looking for 'good enough' when we go to an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is shaping up nicely in this respect--give it a few more years and it will approach a commercial encyclopedia in comprehensiveness and accuracy. Its dynamic, public nature is its strength and weakness, you merely have to take it into account the same way you would consider how much CNN is fomenting propaganda or making a play for "balance" in any article they offer. Evaluating the veracity of anything is just life in the 21st C--an essential skill, a fundamental part of media literacy.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I think you violated the No Original Research policy and the "Auto-biography policy.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I was looking for the rough chemical composition of petroleum jelly: Something like "CnH(2n+2) where n ~= 15." Instead, the article on Wikpedia discussed its medical applications and its use in anal sex. Its author was a medical professional whose primary interest was sex. I wanted an article written by a chemist with a primary interest in mixing deflagrants. I found the descrepency between what I sought and what I found amusing.
Maybe he should have tried changing this article.
I bet he would have been caught within the day.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
it has to be true...
The fact that an openly editable system can have false information put into it, doesn't really tell us anything we didn't know before. Of course false information CAN be added.
Also, 5 days is not a particularly long time for the errors to be caught. Anyone using the Wiki as a reference can expect the information is more likely to be accurate, the longer it has been in place. e.g., edited less than a year ago: could be right or wrong. 1-3 years: probably accurate. 3 years+: almost certainly accurate. (Depending on the popularity of the topic as well, of course.)
A better experiment would be to look up 5 topics that haven't been edited for at least a year and research all the statements made within. What percentage of false information existed within those 5 entries? THAT would be a relevant experiment.
-Colin.
The point being that the Wikipedia is pretty much organic in its structure - at any point in time it is changing in response to external input. The "immune system" itself is evolving as the editors encounter new infections and find ways to fight them. At the same time, the immune system fights poisoned data that found its way into the system - sometimes the response is sluggish - possibly because the immune system does not recognize it as an infection. My guess is that the immune system is overloaded and there arent enough corectly programmed phagocytes circulating around in the system (bet the editors over at Wikipedia never thpought they'd ever be called phagocytes!).
As an interesting aside, I noticed that as the complexity and interconnect between the articles in the wiki grows, so does the damage that a bad germ can do, on account of being linked back to from many places.
Does that mean the Wikipedia is worthless? Certainly not. As a quick and convenient starting point for starting a search, it is amazingly useful. Remember, most of us who do use the wiki today actually know a little about the subject we are looking up - we are usually looking for more detailed information. The kind that's hard to manufacture.
Sure, you need to cross-check the information in there with an independent source befiore betting your butt on it, but it tells you what to look for. Sure, it is almost worthless when the search term doesnt belong in a glossary of computing, gaming and communications terms, but I believe that will change. Everyone loves to be published! And those of us who contribute to it will keep a neighbourhood watch on the corpus of the wiki, if only to protect our sex-appeal...err...pride in having contributed to a reference work.
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
I posted some information about a certian political party, with proper documentation from multiple sources, and it was deleted. Not edited, deleted.
Do you honestly believe that members of other political parties wouldn't do the same thing?
I have no idea which party you are refering to, but *every* political party has a few rabid members.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Before stating something is authoritative or not, you should definitely understand what authoritative means. It comes from authority, which involves a relation between two parties. Apart from the laws of nature, there is no such thing like a universal authority that applies to you and me.
So this story is all about Al Fasoldt who is reporting that some librerians do not consider Wikipedia as an authoritative source. Fine. What's the point? What's the surprise in there?
AFAIK, the Pravda newspaper hasn't been recongnized as an authoritative source by the US government and CNN isn't recognized as an authoritative source by the French government. Or Slashdot, or Rael website, or [North|South] Korea governement web site...No encyclopedy is authoritative to everybody. Does Kurdistan belongs to a country, which country rules over Kashmir, which country started the Mexico-USA war in the mid 1800s'? Take any place in the world where some people disagree about any topic and you can multiply examples. I personally think this is good that people do not recognize the same source as an authoritative source. I has to do with the freedom of thinking...
That's why different religions, languages, cultures and opinions exist.
I'd say that the harm done by small, intentionally introduced errors is overshadowed by the gigabytes of valuable content Wikipedia has to offer.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
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
http://www.syracuse.com/corrections/
Sure, my IP# is under suspicion right about now on Wikipedia, but there are a lot of IPs to go around. If my whole IP block gets blocked then I cannot edit anymore, however also many other innocent individuals are blocked from the service too.
What if an advertiser put an HTML link around his banners (or around his button [Click here to get XXX] ) that actually formulated a query string that wrote an advertising blurb into a Wikipedia page. The Wikipedia change would come from the unsuspecting user's IP# instead of the advertiser's IP range. (I haven't tried it, but between a querystring and data in a post operation, it may work). This would be almost impossible to stop by blocking IPs, because gradually most IP blocks would be banned and the Wikipedia would not be accessible anymore (for the most part).
I'm surprised I haven't heard about mal-ware that posts advertisements to Wikipedia pages yet, from the user's computer. Maybe it exists. Maybe it's coming.
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:
There isn't any reason why every fact couldn't be referenced making Wikipedia one of the most authoritative sources of information ever created.
Hell, only a fool would accept a single source as authoritative. Wikipedia is great as a starting point, but then Googling is required to authoritatively ensure you're not passing along bogus info.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
Nothing like editors trolling by proxy, posting an obviously stupid article.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
That's a copypaste job, by the way, from the page source... so all the URLs in the links are relative and point back to Slashdot. =b
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Regarding your sig, I think it would be nice if we could all agree on our definitions of atheism and agnosticism. I could fall into either category depending on which of the various definitions are used, but I prefer to call myself an atheist in its weak (and literal) definition: one who lacks a belief in a god or gods. Confusion in the definitions of those words is a pet peeve of mine.
Wikipedia != Authoritative?
Recently, this article caused a bit of a stir from its casual dismissal of the wiki model, and even the implication that Wikipedia was perhaps being deceptive by appearing too authoritative. Some suggested an experiment: insert some mistakes into Wikipedia, and see how long it lasts. Alex Halavais actually performed the experiment, and found that all his errors were removed within hours.
Still, this doesn't bode well. I suppose the only thing worse than a slashdotting would be suggeting to a wide range of people that they go to Wikipedia and insert mistakes.
I have a better idea. Call up 5 local newspapers and report some stories, inserting 5 details that are provably false. I'll bet they do far worse than wikipedia in catching them.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
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
Al Fasoldt is right in part. We do need to critically analyze everything we read. He is, however, clearly fear-mongering when he singles out the Web, and Wikipedia in particular as especially untrustworthy.
As an american (I can't speak for anyone else), I am continually exposed to false information in TV and radio programs, books, magazines, casual conversation, and, yes, Al, on the Internet, and in the Wikipedia.
The ratio of fact to fiction in the Wikipedia will be higher than some sources of information, and lower than others. Likely, Al's readers are already familiar with the process of selecting one news source over another, as they chose his newspaper over his competitor's this morning, they must choose some TV and radio programs over others, etc.
The real discussion to be had here is on how, specifically, the Wikipedia process compares to the processes used to create and disseminate information by other sources. I'm not sure I can add much to that discussion, but I will say this -- When I see an error on the Wikipedia, I can amend it with a few mouse clicks and some typing. When I see an error in a textbook or in a newspaper or on TV, however, I can only send a letter to the editor, and hope that he sees fit to fix/acknowledge the error.
> No little nazi with a 'delete' button is going to come to my webpage.
*cough* godwin's law *cough cough*
(I'm not part of this discussion, so meh!)
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
I Didn't trust what I found the local BBS scene
I Didn't trust what I found the national BBS scene
I Didn't trust what I found on FidoNet
I Didn't trust what I found on UseNet
I Didn't trust what I found on Gopher
What I found on the Internet must be True!!!
Yes, on the Internet no one knows your a dog,
take this as a blow to critical thinking.
Libraries and Universities are not about dumping volumes of information inside. There are about dedicated and trained professionals with proven critical thinking skills and dedication to preserving true knowledge; keeping bad facts, poor quality books and outright fallicies and lies from entering the public body of knowledge.
Now as P.T. Barnum said "Now this way to the egress..."
You can never have a completely neutral point of view. On almost any topic, you can spin it to what you want to say. I've read a number of articles on Wikipedia that, while not specifically stating an opinion as fact, clearly had a definite persuasive intent conveyed in the tone of the article. In some cases important facts that are relevant to the topic but opposite to the clearly obvious opinion of the author are simply omitted.
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!
I've contributed to a few wikis (including my own, of course), and I can tell you from experience that people who author pages tend to watch them like hawks for edits. That's why Mediawiki provides the "Watch Pages" feature, afterall.
But I agree with what you said... if the wiki is considered unauthoritative, then it is more likely that people will scrutinize and correct the content. But the problem is that eventually this behaviour will result in the belief that the wiki is authoritative. I guess the best thing to do is to continuously raise this issue in order to provoke people to be discerning with respect to the wiki content.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
Please report any additional copyright infringments to [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]] (WP:CP for short), and give thanks to OCILLA (the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
Hi,
/. post and one of your thoughts was "Hmm, let me try this", please come to the discussion into wikipedia and try to find/create an experimental situation which leads to results with any value.
I'm a wikipedian from de.wikipedia.org and I was very busy reading all the comments on various blogs during the last week. I emailed to the Syracuse Post-Standard guy (without reply) and to Sue Stagnitta, the librarian who started the whole debate. I read the comment from Alex and his experiment and the new one.
Well, my first reaction is to say "nonono, don't do this." but this is more complex.
Have you read Ed Felten's great blog entry on quality check on wikipedia?
Inserting errors is one part but I certainly prefer Felten's way: Take articles about topics you really know and look for errors. Collect these, feel free to correct them.
The next step would be to think of means of more sophisticated quality checks (hint: try to use the category scheme for a well distributed set of articles).
Wikipedia has to deal with various kinds of vandalism, ranging from people who can't believe that this wiki-thing lets them edit the articles to people who try to make wikipedia unusable.
However, I think that people who take time to make these experiments are everything but evil. It should be important to point out that this way might not be the best one to prove or disprove something.
If you read this
OHH COME ON!!
This guy makes some really trivial changes - a 233 to a 322, etc. And he's "dissapointed" that they weren't picked up in 48 hours. Give me a break!!
He changed five small tid-bits of information, five changes amongst the millions of words, and hundreds of thousands of articles. What does he expect? Does he think that there's a million people milling around checking every single little number or word, 24 hours a day?
Given a few months, chances are someone would have been looking for that information, cross-referenced it somewhere else, and then made the corrections.
What an idiot.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Look, think of this:
Every single Russian in the world believes (incorrectly, as it happens) that Russia has never attempted to wipe out the Ingushes (who live in Ingushetia, north of Chechnya, not like anyone cares).
Every single Ingush believes (correctly, as it happens) that the Russians have indeed done this repeatedly, which is why there are now only about 220,000 Ingushes alive.
There are at least 1,000 times as many Russians as Ingushes.
Now do you see why information in a publically editable repository tends to wind up inaccurate?
If the answer to the above question is 'no', you have difficulty with analytical thought.
PS I do not give a good gosh damn about either Russians or Ingushes, that's why I picked them as an example.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
If you'll grant that there are more honest people than asshats in the world,
I do.
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.
I disagree. The reason is that unbiased people have much less reason to care. Who'd like to try to be the voice of "reason" negotiating between two biased sides, in a case where you by definition have no preference or inclination? Both sides are likely to claim you're taking sides, and neither is willing to accept anyone else's understanding of the truth. Why on earth would I want to stick my hand in such a hornet's nest?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No rebuttles are ever needed to anything Al says; all one need do is show some of his past statements to discredit him. He has the perfect combination of stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance that makes for an inflamatory read every time he writes... and his phone-in radio show is even worse (reformat. Yep, reformat. Oh yeah, you probably need to reformat. Sure, defrag first, then reformat.) The phrase "The definition of an expert is any jerk who drops one more buzzword than you" was coined to describe this guy. Totally clueless, and won't admit it.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
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 think that people are missing the point of the original article. Wikipedia fanboys need to calm down and consider what was written
The author was not trying to slander wikipedia.
He was doing some informal Q&A and the wikipedia came up wanting.
He then made some suggestions on how such errors may be avoided, or at least lessened in severity in the future. Wikipedia is good at cleaning up outright fraus and gross errors, but minor mistakes creep in easier. Procedures need to be modified to ward against such occurrences.
Saying wikipedia could be better is not the same as saying it is bad.
evanchik.net
Parent poster founded Wikipedia.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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!
Actually... I think that Wikipedia is pretty adamant that Wikipedia is not a message board, and is an encyclopedia. Continue to take citation precautions, however.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Authority? Sure, it's bound to have spam posted to it and honest mistakes, but who cares?
I love Wikipedia and have become an author there. But the true beauty is the fact that it is a wiki. If you are reading something about Hindu gods you can go through 20 articles, following the links, and get a really good understanding of the subject.
It's the coolest. The in-line links work for it. At the very least it can turn you on to topics that you'd never dream of being interested in. Then you go out and get a book on the subject, an authoritative one, and edit the mistakes.
It's being community supported isn't it's weakness, it is the strength of Wikipedia. If you put in that Pete Rose is from Seattle, someone who knows better will fix it. It will only get better by bringing in more experts. Plus, it isn't that hard to fact check these days.
For instance the article on Lou Rawls is a stub. Lou, thankfully, has his own website with a full biography. I'd assume that his own bio is authoritative and the Wikipeida article can be fleshed out thanks to his page.
If you just want a listing of the American presidents, it's there. If you want to know something about a dead religion it's there (I love comparative religios studies personally).
But let's not forget the real beauty... it's all released under the GNU FDL. This way, if you want to copy it word for word you can. I use this often on my wiki to put articles in quickly that provide people's backgrounds etc.... It's a nice, free, quick (wiki=quick) reference.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I agree: most editors try their best to practice a NPOV policy but Wikipedia still contains many articles of dubious nature, inlcuding the GNAA, and one rather spitefully entitled "Gay Disease". As already stated, it does not in fact have a "democratic" process, but a rather despotic one where those who revert the most without attracting the attention of more moderate editors win. Editing an essay to increase its "neutrality" can often involve becomming embroiled in a pointless edit/flame war and I for one have too little time in my life to be bothered trying to reason with "article kings" who refuse to accept any other version of the "truth" than their own. It's easy to be neutral, but with Wikipedia whose definition of "neutral" are we talking about?
In this experiment, the errors were only left in the encyclopedia for 5 days. I wonder how many people actually looked at the modified articles in those 5 days. Ten? A hundred? How many of them read with enough attention for the subtle facts that were changed to even register with them. I wouldn't expect these subtle changes to be noticed within such a short time span. I think it would be interesting to do a much longer experiment in which the debugging process would have a chance to occur. How long would it take for those errors to be found? A month? A year? Forover?
See the entry's talk page and you'll see that the entry is perfectly valid and SilentChris' edits devalued its encyclopaedic integrity.
This is a stupid article really. The "experiment" (and I use the term loosly) that was carried out was fundimentally flawed.
Firstly, the nature of an encyclopedia is that you go to a page to find out information. By adding details only, he made the information less likely to be casually confirmed by people who go there to find information, as the information would have to be quite rare, else they would have already been added.
Secondly, the amount of time that the misinformation was held up was quite small. Even the supposedly infallable brittania testers would be lucky to find one of the five deliberately planted "facts" in such a short time.
Thirdly, Wikipedia gets plenty of hits, but not that many! It's very possible that none of those pages were even looked at! Assuming hits were spread evenly amoung pages, an average page (which these certainly weren't, as I'll get to next) would get approx. 50 hits. Hits are obviously not spread evenly amoung pages, so we don't actually know how many times the pages were looked at! Also, since four out of the five articles are stubs, it's not very likely that they were read.
Forthly, none of the pages chosen had even been updated in the previous week, with the single exception of Bernice Johnson Reagon, which was updated two days beforehand. However, this article was given a mere 20 hours before the "fact" was removed!
Finally, the facts are all plausable, and close to the truth. Even someone who knows enough to dispute those facts would quite probably not pick them up on reading.
I hope I have projected the extreme rediculousness of this experiment. The article should go into the trash bin where it belongs.
(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.
Just remember that Wikipedia is like any other site on the Internet and that you should keep these things in mind:
#1 Wikipedia is a Wiki that anyone can edit. You may find almost anything in it.
#2 Don't believe anything you read on the Internet, even this post.
#3 Some people may Astroturf Wikipedia.
#4 Don't rely on Wikipedia for 100% accuracy, use other sources as well.
#5 Wikipedia usually has links to other sources at the end of each article, so you can use it like a search engine to find out other web sites related to the Wikipedia subject.
#6 Slashdot is just as accurate as Wikipedia.
#7 Unlike an Encyclopedia, if you find an error in Wikipedia, you can become an editor and change/fix it. I wonder why the people who complain about Wikipedia don't try and do this?
#8 Anything written by humans will be inaccurate and not authoritive, esp if too many humans have a chance to add to or edit it.
#9 Some people edit the Wikipedia articles and then reference them from a forum to prove their points in a debate. If the mistakes or errors are found later, the Wikipedia article is changed, if not, well the astroturfer wins.
#10 Wikipedia generally gives you an idea of what other people think about the subject. It may or may not be accurate, but at least it gives you a general idea.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
SilentChris is a kuro5hin.org troll. trying to troll the trolls and failing it hard.
A wiki is editable by anyone. It is a communal effort to produce something.
By its nature, a wiki cannot be authoritative.
If you're looking for an authoritative answer for your question, you have to hire a licensed (source of authority) consultant.
That still does not guarantee that the answer you're going to get will be correct.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
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.
I gather there have been attempts to add adverts to wikipedia, but the higher the exposure of the advert, the more likely other wikipeadians are to notice, either through randomly trawling, looking at subjects of interest, or by watching particular articles. Every user has a watchlist, a list articles they can see the latest edits of. Once adverts get noticed, it seems likely that they will get deleted fairly quickly, if they are clear-cut ads. Sure, the advertiser can put the advert back, but that can get revert back as well. Also, there are pages for persistent vandals, so advertisers would have to be fairly cunning and subtle to avoid getting spotted. The more persistent ones get blocked, or banned eventually. Edits can get missed, and do in some cases, but they are likely to be on more obscure articles, that fewer people see, which aren't really likely to be worth much to advertisers. Also, advertisers would presumedly need to guarantee a certain level of exposure, which they can't do very well when there is a community of people trying to stop them.
That way all intentionally false statements about Darl McBride's mom can still stay up there and be modded +5 Funny!
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
Since you asked (or at least, you appeared to)...
Atheism: An explicit belief in the lack of existence of any god or supernatural power.
Agnosicism: To be in a position of uncertainty over the existence or lack thereof of any god or supernatural power.
And also relevant...
Secularism: An avoidance of the question of the existence of any god, in the belief that it is easier and/or better to live life without reference to religion.
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.
"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."
So after 5 days 100% of the errors was detected and removed?
...people perceive it with more respect than the rest of the pseudo-info on the WWW? How naive.
The meme police, They live inside of my head
Now EVERYONE will be performing that little experiment but some of them will forget to remove the mistakes or will leave them in intentionaly. So the Wikipedia will slowly turn into a piece of junk Just like the rest of the blog littered web.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
I wrote a fair sized paper last year comparing the majority of Christian religions and how they formed and how they differ on key issues. Frankly, it was hard to find concise, usable information anywhere else, but Wikipedia was more than helpful and by having half of my sources be from Wikipedia I pulled of an A with the Theology chair at a Catholic university. Go figure.
I am feeling fat and sassy
So, what part of this is untrue? That they forgot to name you as a founder member?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
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...
Of course, for all their fact checking, formal encyclopedias aren't immune to the deliberate indertion of false information, as an editorial policy to use in evidence in plagiarism suits. If a rival encyclopedia also has that information, they've been plagiarising, and they'll be fscked when it gets to court and they have to explain where they got the inforamtion...
I believe the SF author Fred Saberhagen at some time had a day job working for the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and one of his Berserker stories has a man (an encyclopedia editor) on trial for his life for revealing the name and location of a colony world to a Berserker... but at his trial he reveals that the obscure colony world was one of the fictitious encyclopedia entries. ("The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron", published ca. 1973)
Did anyone else notice the irony of the librarian's statement about developing critical thinking skills and her statement that students are very surprised about the Wikipedia not being authoritative. Now, on a charitable read, she may be saying that she has her students check the authority of all sources in order to determine bias, etc., but I think she means that she only wants them to use "authoritative" sources.
Well, accepting authority as truth is actually the first impediment to critical thinking. Maybe the students should be learning critical thinking skills in a logic class instead of from a librarian? If she said she teaches them research skills, then fine, but that's not the same thing as critical thinking.
I never use the wikipedia as a final word on anything. It's just a nice, *free* place to *start* my research. Sometimes the content is totally useless and other times it's very helpful.
Odd...I do all my edits anonymously. I don't get messages about my account being deleted, because I don't have one. If they allow anonymous posts, they can't really censor *you*, because they don't knw who *you* are...they just evaluate the changes based on what they say, rather than who made them.
When I was growing up in the Syracuse area we used to call it the "Sub-Standard". Ah, good times.
Anyway, I'm sure "real" encyclopedias never contain any errors.
Here's the text from an old Onion article which seems relevant here http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/TheOnion /FactualErrorFound.html
Factual Error Found On Internet
LONGMONT, CO--The Information Age was dealt a stunning blow Monday, when a factual error was discovered on the Internet. The error was found on TedsUltimateBradyBunch.com, a Brady Bunch fan site that incorrectly listed the show's debut year as 1968, not 1969.
Caryn Wisniewski, a Pueblo, CO, legal secretary and diehard Brady Bunch fan, came across the mistake while searching for information about the show's first-season cast.
"When I first saw 1968 on the web page, I thought, 'Wow, apparently, all those Brady Bunch books I've read listing 1969 as the show's first year were wrong,'" Wisniewski told reporters at a press conference. "But even though I obviously trusted the Internet, I was still kind of puzzled. So I checked other Brady Bunch fan sites, and all of them said 1969. After a while, it slowly began to sink in that the World Wide Web might be tainted with unreliable information."
Following up on her suspicion, Wisniewski phoned her public library, the ABC television network, and the office of Brady Bunch producer Sherwood Schwartz--all of whom confirmed that "Ted's Ultimate Brady Bunch Site" was in error.
Attempts to contact the webmaster of "Ted's Ultimate Brady Bunch Site," identified as Ted Crewes of Naugatuck, CT, were unsuccessful. The page has been taken offline by its host, Cheaphost.net, which released a statement Tuesday.
"We at Cheaphost were deeply saddened and disturbed to learn that one of the millions of pages we host contained a factual discrepancy," the web-posted statement read. "Please be assured that we are doing everything within our power to ensure that nothing of the sort happens again. We will not rest until the Internet's once-sterling reputation as the world's leading source for 100 percent reliable information is restored."
Paul Boutin, senior editor of Wired, said the error is likely to have a profound effect on how the Internet is perceived.
"Will we ever fully trust the Web again?" Boutin asked. "We may well be witnessing the dawn of a new era of skepticism in which we no longer accept everything we read online at face value. But regardless of what the future holds, one thing is clear: The Internet's status as the world's definitive repository of incontrovertible fact has been jeopardized."
Peter Luyck, 30, a Dallas-area graphic designer and frequent Internet user, was crestfallen.
"If it happens once, it can happen again," Luyck said. "I shudder to think that, one dark day in the future, misinformation could again make its way online. In fact, it may already have. How do we know that trusted sites like the Drudge Report and Fucked Company are as accurate as we instinctively trust them to be? Can we blindly trust that SpideyRulez.com is correct in its reportage that the upcoming Spider-Man sequel will feature Christopher Walken as Dr. Octopus? Pandora is out of the box."
Though the Brady Bunch error is the first confirmed instance of false information on the Internet, scares have occurred in the past. In 1998, an e-mail sent to a woman in Warner Robins, GA, made an unverifiable claim that she could earn thousands of dollars from an initial $5 investment. The claim was never conclusively proven false, and no charges were filed.
- book: years
- article: months
- webpage: days
- weblog: hours
- forum post: minutes
- wiki: seconds
Go figure about the quality.Still, I think wikipedia is a great melting pot for a reliable encyclopedia.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Good point.
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.
That's because the NPOV rule is combined with the rule of verifiability and the rule of no original research. No one today seriously claims that the earth is flat, so presenting such a point of view would violate both of these rules.
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 problem here tends to be that the rule against original research is commonly broken. People insert their opinions, claiming that "Some people believe [whatever]" without citing an academic source which backs up that belief. In theory these statements will eventually be removed, if Wikipedia manages to come up with a system to enforce these basic rules.
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.
In this sense Wikipedia is really a microcosm of the web itself. Just better organized, and without all the poetry.
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.
Do you know of any countries that distribute history books that don't conform to the ruling party doctrines?
My second reaction was: have you heard of regimes that teach Physics, Chemistry, and Biology that don't correspond to reality?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
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.
Wikipedia has already proved that encyclopedias can be created by the unwashed masses of the Bazaar.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Wikipedia is not paper.
Wikipedia is not a product.
Compare the article to its previous versions. It makes it so easy.
The discussions also contain a great deal of additional information about the article.
Certain people claim censors exist. Certain censors claim people exist.
Now you might assert that certain censors claim God exists.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
The article you referenced is in Wikipedia:Votes for Deletion
The Syracuse article was very poorly reasoned and presented. Nonetheless, it is true that allowing anyone to edit leads to a _certain_ kind of credibility degradation. The point of Wikipedia is that it allows a _certain_ kind of credibility enhancement that formal sources cannot offer. The credibility comes from the concept of many hands and eyeballs doing the work. You know, cathedral vs. bazaar--it's amazing how the analogy extends.
"My second reaction was: have you heard of regimes that teach Physics, Chemistry, and Biology that don't correspond to reality?"
Yes, I do. Marietta, Georgia. The school board passed a resolution that allows them to teach "creation science" along side evolution in their science classes. They want the young people to decide for themselves which "science" they wish to follow....but they don't certainly don't go as far as saying "they have a right to choose". lol
Read a little about it here at CBS News
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I regard atheism as a religious belief that there is no god. Someone who will disregard any possibility of there being a god, even if he were given a logical proof that a god must exist. That is what Wikipedia would call strong atheism, or what I would call religious atheism.
As for agnosticism, it would require the agnostic not to start with any preconceptions but he can have leanings toward the $RELIGION that he believes most likely.
I would also argue against those who say atheism is not a religion. It is a religion, and has the set of gods {} (the empty set), whereas agnosticism does not define the set of gods.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I've always used various websites for reference material when writing papers, but I won't do it anymore. I just got an F on my paper on ninjas.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
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.
But what is it when one *chooses* not to worship the gods, but does not deny their existance?
Sig
Yah, I made a change to a page three times over as many days, making it more accomodating each time, and it got backed out within 15 minutes each time. It was too much work to come up with a wording that didn't upset whoever the "entry despot" was, so I gave up.
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!
That's a good solution for half of the problem.
There's still the situation where people of good will can still disagree about facts. There are cases where the facts are subject to interpretation. How does one deal with these in a "Wikipedia-Stable"?
What we really need is a "Wikipedia-Stable-Annotated", where the "main text" of the document can not be changed, but a certain amount of commentary (in a sidebar, or in another typeface) can be added and edited. Of course there may still be cases where the commentary is itself controversial (It's not TomAHto, it's TomAYto! SEZ YOU!), but since it is presented commentary rather than primary content there should be less of a problem. For the cases where it remains an issue, a new page (eg, "ToAHto-TomAYto Controversy") can be created.
For that matter, this could be applied to Wikipedia as it is today. No need to wait for the New Wiki Order.
I thinks it interesting to see how too much un-constrained freedom can create a power vacuum all-to-easily filled by those who seek to force their own views on others.
Tthe "entry despots" you talk about get away with it mainly because the entirety of Wikipedia is now too large for any single group of individuals to police, so they can enforce their will by making multiple reversions, thereby making the cost of altering "their" page so much more higher. Everyone else finds the exercise so annoying they can no longer be bothered.
In which case, the process becomes less of a dialogue to reach a mutual agreement and more of a battle of wills to see who is the most rabid.
I'm sorry but "googling it" doesn't count as "good research" Google can be as wrong as any Wikipedia article.
"However in a scientific paper this doesn't work because you would actually have to duplicate the experiment yourself, which many times isn't feasible."
"Google" for "scientific method" while your at it.
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.
Things are better since Guttenberg, but the problem of control of the means of publishing granting undue "authority" still exists.
No, my argument is sound -- particularly given the nature of the Internet as the new Guttenberg revolution.
Seastead this.
He's been listed as vandalising the entry he talks about for some time now, several days.
>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.
It's in the basic definition: atheism. It's not a belief in 0 gods, it is a lack of belief in gods.
So, what is the definition of agnosticism? I was pretty sure that agnostics have not formed an opinion as to what gods there are, whereas atheists quite clearly believe that there are no gods. (Or if you prefer, atheists have a lack of belief in gods but not a lack of belief in the absence of gods).
You can't accept that people don't have this belief
What I can't accept is scientist-wanabes that decide how the world is before going out to look.
You don't need a belief system to not believe in something.
Oh yea, then if I don't believe a word you said, I don't need to justify myself? Because disbelieving something is in fact a belief that requires justification. You don't seem to make a distinction between not believing and disbelieving. Look at it this way, you can convert disbelief in $BELIEF into belief in (NOT $BELIEF), whereas undecidedness is not a belief.
Now that I am done ranting, it seems to me that we are saying the same thing, except that I call undecidedness about gods agnosticism while you call it atheism.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
interesting...something like philistinism but applied to religion instead of intellectual pursuits. paganism? from the definitions at dictionary.com, "not acknowledging" the gods would seem to allow for belief in them yet not worshiping them.
what's your point? are you agreeing with what i'm saying?
And Wikipedia provides a set of rules and guidelines for posting on theirs. If you break them, go cry to your momma. If you didn't (and you should provide an example, instead of heresay), then they did.
Got an example?
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.
"Threatens you with all sorts of things."
Like what, exactly? Seems like an anonymous libel you gots going there.
One word: Lysenkoism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
--I am Sun Tzu of the Borg. Resistance is feudal.
The question is this? How frequently do users who notice an error repair it - no often to be sure. The secondary issue is that the articles which were submitted were so obscure that they would likely not be of any use to the general public. Needless to say, if we're trying to create a FACTbook, we need people that will go and verify the information.
undecidedness about gods IS agnosticism.
Atheists don't believe in gods just like you don't believe that you are a part of the Matrix (TM) even though you can't prove that the Matrix doesn't exist.
I mentioned this in another thread.
If you have two kinds of material on the page, entry and commentary, then the kinds of material that tends to be subject to these reversions can go in the commentary. I would think that the commentary would need to be closely associated with the material (that is, not hidden behind a link), but clearly distinguished by being in footnotes, sidebars, or in a subordinate typeface. There would be a definite limit to the size of the commantary (eg, 10 lines for small entries, no more than 10% of the lines for large eentries), larger comments would clearly need their own page with a link in the comments on the original page.
A lot of this can probably be done now, but it really should be done in a uniform manner and managed in the software.
Particularly in the social sciences -- such as economics -- peer review has been a poor maintainer of quality. In the social sciences, pro-Statist ideas dominate, while free-market ideas are systematically selected against (this is not a conspiracy, but it is simply a natural outcome of the way the system is set up, with State-funding etc). However, the problem isn't so severe in the natural sciences, where the issue of pro-State vs. free-market is marginal.
I agree, however, that Wikipedia has a better model.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
That's why we're having this discussion. If it weren't authoritative, we wouldn't be sitting here arguing about it.
The question is: should it be authoritative?
(And I think: Hell yes. It's done great, and will do even better. The Internet is primitive right now, and it's growing stronger. Wikipedia will follow suit.)
Webopedia is a real IT dictionary. I always wondered if it was related to wikipedia.com.
Take exactly the same article from Britannica and reword it. There's no violation of copyright there. Copyright only covers the expression of an idea, not the idea itself.
PS: Copyright, patents, trademarks, tradesecrets are bullshit; costs of protecting some companies business models are socialized.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
than a regular encyclopedia? If there were an error in a traditional encyclopedia, I would bet it would take more than a few days for them to discover it, and they have people paid full time to do so.
Webopedia sorry about that.
Of course you can't trust it. Anything with such a lame and stupid sounding name as wiki can't be trusted. ;)
Seriously, though, you should never trust anything you read in any encyclopedia. Get the source of the information, and don't trust that either. See how well the info syncs up with various other sources on the subject. After that you might show some degree of trust in the statements.
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.
Related to the fact that "anyone" can change an article -- if you are having an argument, er discussion, with an idiot and cite a wikipedia article as supporting evidence, the idiot can go edit the wikipedia article and make it say the opposite, here's an example of exactly that (only gets good at the end):
Latest Blu-Ray News
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Wikipedia has a "Neutral Point of View" whereas most enclyclopedias has a "Scientific Point of View".
This means that if you wanted to post an article on the creation of the universe according to the Big Bang theory, you SHOULD also include information saying that it's just a theory and maybe instead the universe was created by God's Word (Ancient Hebrew myth of creation) or perhaps it also sprung from the bodies of Titans (Ancient Greek myth of creation).
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.
I have been amazed with the wealth of knowledge stored in Wikipedia. Even useful information about vintage computers, which I though I can only find on specialized/club sites, can be found there.
And chemistry, physics and mathematics, there are a incredibly large number of topics in these areas. In fact, if I had to chose which part of the Internet I want to preserve, I would opt for Wikipedia any day.
Sigged!
My question is how would it's error rate compare to texts compiled by historians? History books contain many errors. I'm sure encyclopedias do too.
In the history books, two of the biggest errors is that Columbus discovered America and that everyone thought the world was flat before Columbus's arrival in the Americas.
The sad thing is that many of those texts contain intentional errors. History is written by the victors and screwed up by the politicians.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Here's the Britannica Online's discussion of libertarianism. Here's the Wikipedia discussion of libertarianism. Both encylopedia's mention Ayn Rand -- which is appropriate, given that her ideas overlap very much with libertarianism -- but do not mention that Rand was not and did not consider herself a libertarian. Wikipedia has a lengthy discussion of the topic, which I would consider a good introduction for a college-student; Britannica's introduction to the topic might suffice for a five-year old. In fact, Britannica's "discussion" of libertarianism is barely more informative than a dictionary-definition of libertarianism.
I have an old collection of Britannica's in my closet, collecting dust. I consider them a depricated tool that are only of use to children. To adults, they are barely more useful than dictionary-definitions, and one will find more comprehensive information from Wikipedia, or simply a well-informed web-search.
One individual, in a debate with me online, even claimed that since an economist (Murray Rothbard) wasn't mentioned in the Britannica, his work wasn't worth reading. This is the kind of idiocy that these biased depricated encylopedia's furnish. Childish thinking among adults. Encylopedia's, including Wikipedia, are a useful introduction to ideas. They do not cover all important ideas, and -- even Wikipedia, certainly Britannica -- offer depricated and flawed overviews of ideas, masking the complexity in a field.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Correct, and the link shows why it's not being deleted, for the OP's reference.
I think it would be nice if we could all agree on our definitions of atheism and agnosticism.
I'm coming in pretty late to this discussion, I know, and others have already made very good points in an effort to distinguish the essential difference between agnosticism and atheism, but let me just add my $0.02 to the kitty:
atheism has long been held as a stance in opposition to theism and is definable as a belief system. As someone already pointed out, it is a simple negation of the belief.
Agnosticism takes a neutral stance and, as Huxley has so adequately described, abjures from statements that are unknowable.
The "weak atheism" is, to me, a revisionist effort of atheists that have over time become aware of the weakness inherent to a strong stance against the existence of god but are too stubborn minded to simply change adjectives. Who knows, maybe they just don't want to give up a nice domain name or something.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
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!
A common technique in AI to deal with learning is called simulated annealing. The idea is that early on, you want basics of a problem to be learned, and once those fundamentals are learned, the AI can start working on the fine points. If you "change" the AI too much, cause it to "learn" too strongly every time it makes a guess, it throws out a lot of what it has already learned. If it learns too slowly, it will take forever to solve a problem.
The solution is to make it learn quickly at the beginning and then slow down the rate of learning.
When Wikipedia was new, it had no data, and a tremendous amount of content that needed to be added. A "free add at any time to anything" policy was reasonable. Now, however, it has a large amount of existing good content that can be screwed up. It might be possible to force changes to long-standing entries in it be reviewed before the changes hit the page, for instance, or use some other mechanism to slow down the rate of change to portions of Wikipedia that are already in place.
May we never see th
Can you prove there are no gods? Then you simply believe there is no god. Atheism is a belief system ad a religion with the self at the center. Everyone believes in something.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I suggest you read about it in Wikipedia and see for yourself. Same for atheism.
> Are you being purposely obtuse?
I hate to but in here, but it seems to me that you're the one that's being obtuse.
> I'm an agnostic and I've always thought atheism
> was a disbelief in the existence of god(s).
How does what you say differ from what he says? Disbelief in the existance of God(s) and a lack of belief in the existance of God(s) amounts to precisely the same thing, ie, no belief in supernatural or divine forces.
Agnostics are people who are uncertain whether God exists, but acknowledge the possibility. Atheists are people who take the view that there is no compelling reason to hold a supernatural belief and see no valid basis for the possibility. The intellectual route at which that position is arrived at may be an active one or a passive one (as described above), but the outcome is still the same -- atheism.
I have heard these positions (below) hotly debated, but just for the sake of popularizing them (because I think they make sense), here they are.
Agnosticism is the idea that there may or may not be a metaphysical realm existing outside the physical universe in which supernatural forces such as gods, angels, and demons can exist. Agnostics generally believe that, if this metaphysical realm does exist, it exists orthogonally to the physical universe and the two cannot interact at all, or only can interact in a very limited set of non-testable circumstances (death and migration of the "soul" from one to the other, for instance). Therefore, since no testing of such interactions is possible, it is not possible to verify or deny the existence of such a realm. Based on this, agnostics generally hold that it is of little value to choose one way or another regarding a belief in such a metaphysical realm...it's instead better to keep one's beliefs about such a thing open-ended.
Strong agnostics hold that this particular feature of orthogonality between the metaphysical and the physical universes is fundamental; it cannot change or be circumvented, and therefore not only is the issue open, but it always will be.
Weak agnostics hold that the metaphysical and physical universes are not fundamentally orthogonal--only based on our current state of awareness and knowledge. Weak atheists believe that someday, some particular confluence of events could occur that could allow enough testable interaction to decide the issue...it's that currently we lack the information necessary, but it will not necessarily always be so.
An analogy is often presented alongside agnosticism to better understand it. Given a sealed box, one is asked to form a judgment about whether the box is empty, containing only its own interior, or if there is something in the box (air, a ball, whatever). An agnostic is akin to someone that believes it is worthless to form an opinion regarding the interior of the box without any further information. If humanity has not yet developed the means to test the box (by shaking it, spinning it, opening it, etc), but the weak agnostic believes that someday we will be able to run these tests and perhaps make a determination. If there is something about the box that makes it fundamentally untestable, it will not yield any information to us about its interior no matter how advanced our technology gets, then the person is a strong agnostic. (It is worth pointing out that this box analogy is simply that--an analogy--and is only useful in this discussion insofar as these impossible states of existence for that box hold up. In other words, it would be silly to start discussing this box as if other features of boxes in general were relevant to understanding agnosticism...the other features of such a box are irrationally not relevant, as in the case of every analogy having only one salient feature worth drawing parallels to.)
Atheists believe that there is no metaphysical realm beyond the physical universe, and therefore no gods, demons, angels, and the like.
A weak atheist agrees that there is nothing fundamental that prohibits the existence of such a metaphysical realm, and that, while it could exist, it doesn't. This argument usually adheres to the idea that such a realm could not exist orthogonally to our physical universe, and therefore it would be testably present in some way if it did.
A strong atheist believes that such a metaphysical realm not only does not exist, but is fundamentally prohibited. This position is often philosophically intertwined with a belief that if something is fundamentally unobservable, then it effectively does not exist. This variant of this viewpoint is also often intertwined with a kind of relativity.
For example, if at the moment of our big bang 16 billion years ago, there was another big bang 32 billion light years away, the edges of these two universes would just now begin to interact. Before that interac
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
I suggest *you* read the article.
Wikipedia is *not* authoritative.
And this is where all the non-fanatics roll their eyes and walk away to go have a beer.
Slashdot culture. Now I'm keeping up with the Natalie Portmans of this world, covered as they may be in hot grits, you insensitive clod. PS, *Portman is dying! Latest Netcraft survey...
The kind of people who trust wikipedia are basement-dwelling unwashed gnu hippies. If they get their information from wikipedia, its hardly surprising that they are so ill-informed
>> you just have to check it from somewhere else ...
And if I check wikipedia and find it is wrong, why should I trust it enough to ever come back?
More worrisome than the simple factual mistakes is the probability that people will deliberately inject biased and bigoted information into wikipedia to further their agenda, and that no one with the required skills, knowledge and judgment will notice and/or edit it.
Just because it touts itself as "open", there's no reason to use it if it can't be trusted. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for...
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
And once again, the strength of Wikipedia shines on. In the linked article, the word "subpoena" was misspelled. It is no longer misspelled.
This is why I have been advocating a publication system for wikipedia for some time. To be fair many other people also are behind a publication system but many of them don't see the need for a complex peer-review process.
Wikipedia is an *extremely* valuable resource, in my opinion much better than any commercial encyclopedia (wikipedia has informative articles even in *very* obscure areas of mathematics), however, this puts the project at risk. Regardless of it's accuracy and review problems wikipedia will become a standard resource the same way a google search has become authoritative despite the many things it misses. This unfortunatly presents a huge risk to wikipedia.
So long as it is a small project frequented by a bunch of like minded people simple community checking is enough to deter vandals. At this level the only real vandalism is people trying to up their google rank, or posting insane creeds, and maybe one or two people making weird slashdot experiments. However, as it becomes a general resource very large interest groups (political parties, companies etc..) have a great deal to gain just by slanting the articles a certain way or cleverly removing small tidbits.
The only reasonable way to deal with this is to create a several tiered system, unvalidated pages, validated pages, and published pages. This would be supported by a user reputation system like karma on slashdot but more sophisticated. I realize that a system like this offends many wikipedian's notions that everything should be editable by anyone but I'm afraid that model simply DOESN'T WORK to bring wikipedia up to the next level. This solution tries to deviate the least from the normal paradigm and those who want can always browse the unvalidated pages.
So how would this work? Every time an anonymous user or a user with insufficent reputation submits an edit or article it enters a validation queue. Similar to the slashdot meta-moderation system any logged in user with sufficent reputation (or maybe selected randomly if we have a short queue and many users) is presented with a link on their screens asking them to validate the contribution. Contributions would NOT be fact checked on validation this is just a quick measure to defend against vandalism and other obvious screw ups. Since pages could be validated quite quickly there should *very rarely* be an difference between the validated and unvalidated pages so individuals could freely browse the validated version and edit these pages easily.
Any disagreements over validation could be sent up for more votes on the issue. Users gain reputation by having their edits validated (this can't increase your reputation over a small number to prevent spell-checking scripts). Users also gain reputation if they validate other pages correctly (their validation is supported by other votes on the matter). Long or significant components could also be rated by users if this was needed to further work the reputation system. Everyone sees where this is going of course. Now when the validated page gets to the point where it should replace the current published version a reputable user submits it for publication. This submission of course needs to be voted on by some number of sufficently reputable users to be published.
I know many people will object to such a heavy-handed system and accuse me of wanting to undo all that is good about a wiki. However, I think it is simply an unpleasent fact of life that we can't govern a large extensive community the way you can a small close community. It isn't an accident that small villages can get by on tacit consent and agreement but a nation needs a legal system. Wikipedia is making the transition from village to nation and if they want to maintain the quality of their product they need to transition themselves.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I don't get it ...
... published in 1998 and 2001, respectively).
I have found wikipedia to be profoundly useful. I'm not exaggerating; I use it almost daily, and it has proven to be immensely valuable. One of the neat things about it is that most pages have a list of references at the bottom, where you can go to learn more and/or to verify the facts presented in the article. If the purpose for which you are using the information is that important and/or sensitive, wold you trust a single dead tree source either? Or would you get a supporting reference?
The quantity, quality, and accessibility of the information that wikipedia provides is, as far as I know, unmatched; and appears to me to be at least as good as any dead tree reference, on average.
It also serves to aggregate information that is not collected together elsewhere; For example, this information is generally hard to find all in one place (the only other source that I know of that has as good an aggregation of this info is this book, or perhaps, this one
Which brings me to another point: wikipedia is more likely to be up-to-date; if you buy a book on, say, complexity theory, right now, going forward (from its publication date) it will lack information on current research; which is why wikipedia is an excellent supplement to many dead tree works (esp. technical ones).
religious - 1. Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity.
Yada yada yada. Boo hoo hoo. I did not like what you said so I will bash you with a different definition than the one you used. For your information, religion also means
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.
and "religious" means having to do with religion.
Note particularly that the link is to reference.com, just like yours. Please read all the definitions before you choose one for me.
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.
Point taken
This statement is absurd.
Which is exactly why I said scientists shouldn't hold this position.
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[snip]
Actually I have studied philosophy and learned a logical system where such arguments are valid. It's called implication and is quite often what people mean when they say "if". A implies B would mean, breifly, that in every possible world where A is true, B would also be true. I did not use the type of if where "if the moon is made of geen cheese, then you are stupid" would be true regardless of your intelligince level.
An as for saying that a proof for god's existance is impossible, you are totally wrong. God could, for example decide to prove his own existance (to a certain probability, like any other scientific proof). The thing that is impossible to proove is that $ITEM does not exist (unless $ITEM causes a contradition); this is called universal negation.
Finally, I will bitch about whatever mods modded me troll, even modding up people who are insulting me. My posts should be there given the context.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Yeah, because modern encyclopedias aren't rife with errors.
The main advantages of Wikipedia lie in having more eyes and a certain "fruitcake balance" factor, if you will -- fruitcakes are likely to counter each other out until the post becomes reasonably balanced. Whereas, with print materials, there are ideological chokepoints, in a fashion.
-----------------------
You are what you think.
Information for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Novices might say "anyone can edit", but it's not that simple - Jimbo Wales, who runs Wikipedia (and is an Ayn Rand fanatic) chose who the administrators are. They're people like Ed Poor, a Moonie who does nothing but change every article to a very right wing point of view when he's not removing any negative information about the Moonies.
It just presents a very upper middle class American view of the world. Muslims/Arabs/Middle Easterners are always in the wrong, the US and Israel is always right. All socialist countries, from the Eastern Europeans to the Chinese to Latin American ones and so forth, are all bad, while the US was spreading freedom and democracy around the world, from Vietnam to Chile. In fact, most of the history of countries comes from the US State Department's web page, or even the Overseas Private Investment Corporation like the history of Colombia article.
Anyhow, it's become apparent to me and other people that this is just the way it is, and will be as long as Jimbo Wales runs it and his cabal controls it. There are alternative wiki's out there such as InfoshopWiki which is a wiki where a "people's history" of the world is beginning to be written. There are also other good wiki's like Disinfopedia which deal with lobbyists, PACs, PR firms and so forth.
Anyhow, I think this is just something I learned after a long time on Wikipedia seeing how it was this way, and despite anyone supposedly being able to edit and a supposed neutral point of view policy, the inability of that to exist since there is a cabal of administrators trying to keep their point of view on top. If you want to read a history of the world not written by the US State Department, I suggest looking at the nascent efforts of InfoshopWiki.
I suggest *you* use your brain. This article is *no more* authoritative than Wikipedia.
religious - 1. Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity.
You left out what I believe is the original meaning.
religious - 3. Extremely scrupulous or conscientious
I think the language has evolved so that the word now applies most often to beliefs in deities, but in the original meaning, it could apply to a staunch belief in no deity, which some would describe as atheism.
At the risk of agreeing with someone twice modded Troll, I also believe that most atheists are making a belief of the nonexistence of God. I'm an agnostic, because I take a scientific view. There is no evidence of God, so I can't believe in that, and no evidence that God doesn't exist so I can't bellieve in that either. It's a theory that can not yet be proven or disproven. We could argue about the many "proofs". Feel free to believe what you like. There are no right or wrong answers in philosophy. Here's an old joke:
Dean of Arts & Sciences: I appreciate the cuts the math department has made, but finances are tight and you'll need to cut back some more.
Dean of the Math Department: But we've already cut back to the point we only have paper, pencils and erasers.
Dean of Arts & Sciences: Yes, that's good, but your colleagues in the Philosophy Department are doing very well without erasers.
My working definitions:
Atheism - A belief in the nonexistence of God.
Agnosticism - A nonbelief in the existence of God.
It's a subtle distinction, but I bet most agnostics would think it's an important distinction.
I believe we are arguing semantics. I get along just fine with most atheists, even the ones who preach and try to convert me to atheism.
It's been humorously said that an agnostic is just an atheist who lacks conviction in his beliefs. I think that's essentially true.
Repent! Accept secular humanism as your personal savior or be cast into the pit and forever perish in the lake of fire and eternal... oh, nevermind.
I've got karma to burn, and I fully expect to waste some on this post. I'd be goofy to expect otherwise. That's the price to be paid for participating in a /. discussion of God.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
Thats the whole beauty of wiki. You don't need to trust the latest version and rarely (or never?) does poisoning the article from the beginning occur.
Firefox &
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.
Yes, I've seen right-wing bias on Wikipedia, but it's always subject to correction.
At the Infoshop project you mention, I see from their guidelines (http://www.infoshop.org/wiki/index.php/Guidelines ) that "liberal, ... pro-government, pro-hierarchy speech is prohibited" and "Anti-anarchist speech is prohibited." Interesting -- it seems there's a hierarchy in that someone has the power to prohibit me from saying things I might want to say. Do these guidelines constitute pro-hierarchy speech? If so, where do I file my complaint?
authoritative either. I have no doubt that Big Soviet Encyclopedia for example says Lenin was the best thing since sliced bread, and America is pure proletariate-oppressing evil. Would be interesting to see articles on Capitalism and Socialism there, too.
I'm finding Wikipedia authoritative enough. They also aren't afraid of dumping ALL of the facts at you, not just the politically "safe" part.
Wikipedia is a website editable by anyone with an internet connection. An encyclopedia is a printed book that is sold and created by a relatively small group of people who are paid to produce it. Given enough ink pens and white-out, an encyclopedia is just as editable, but who goes to the trouble?
Everybody's making the same basic mistake here in comparing one to the other.
It's a very dark ride.
not true
Just as there are people who believe the earth is flat, there are also people who believe in astrology. The only difference is that among the people who believe in astrology, there are some who are wikipedians, and have the astrology-related articles on their watch lists.
Find free books.
Oddly Wikipedia would Disagree.
A blog about stuff.
It is doubtful whether Encyclopedia Britannica foreign versions maintain the same exacting standard. I also remember a curious incident of the Kerala consumer court banning the Malayalam translation of Encyclopaedia Britannica because of the profuse number of errors.
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.
No one today seriously claims that the earth is flat, so presenting such a point of view would violate both of these rules.
No, people seriously do.
I want my Cowboyneal
Like others have stated, good luck finding non-traditional subjects in the Britannica. For example, the Britannica has nothing about the Millennium Falcon, but Wikipedia has about ten paragraphs on it. Therefore, with Wiki, someone's interests and knowledge and can be published and viewed by someone wanting to explore their knowledge on a niche subject.
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
Copyright does not cover facts and ideas. Historical data on Lincoln's presidency is simply a bunch of facts, which cannot be covered by copyright. What libertarianism is is an idea, which is also a bunch of facts. You cannot copyright facts.
If I take an article from Britannica on Lincoln and list the ideas and facts that it's communicating, then write them in my own words, it is not in any way copyright violation (hence, re-writing what someone else wrote isn't copyright violation). Any assertion to the contrary is simply bullshit, made by someone who doesn't know wtf he is talking about. How you could assert the contrary is beyond me. It would make all research, books, and such impossible, as all works rely on previous works.
Typical idiotic lawyers, wanting to make a process wasteful and inefficient.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Obviously, what is researched is heavily influenced by State (as opposed to voluntary free-market) funding. State-funding cannot rationally allocate resources, due to the inability to perform economic calculation.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Dude, lay off the thesaurus for a while. I'm serious.
And yes, IAAEM (English Major.)
I think referrer filtering would block that attack.
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100% pure freak
"The scientific view of religion is not atheism."
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
(Or: you sound like a wanker, but I cannot be sure.)
I think my particular type of atheism can be summed up with the four following words: I Do Not Care (what's outside the box).
(Ironically, that might make me, the atheist, a better Christian than all the Christians who know there is a God. Proof denies faith.)
But it's not authoritative -- how could it be? There is by definition no authority associated with it, and that is Wikipedia's main feature.
Wikipedia is extremely useful, but one must always keep in mind that you're dealing with information that is not vouched for by any authoritative or semiauthoritative source -- just like the rest of the general Web pages you'll find. That doesn't mean it's wrong, that doesn't mean it's right, but it means that you need to keep your wits about you.
I've encountered people, for instance, who have stated that one of their hobbies is writing Wikipedia articles -- they'll do it on whatever subjects they wish. I've encountered people that asked other people questions so that they could write a Wikipedia article simply for the sake of doing it. I suppose that's fine, but it's hard to hear that out of one corner of someone's mouth and then have them tell me how authoritative it is with the other.
Wikipedia is good. It is not authoritative. It never was meant to be.
I just read through the wikipedia article on Slashdot Culture and I find the Slashdot stereotypes section to be highly accurate!
* That Slashdotters are male
* That Slashdotters are single
* That male Slashdotters have poor social skills, particularly in relating to women
* That female Slashdotters are rare, non-existent, or in reality males hiding behind a feminine name
* That Slashdotters spend inordinate amounts of time in front of computers
* That Slashdotters have poor hygiene
* Most Slashdotters usually live with their parents (often expressed as "living in their mothers' basements")
I fit all seven of these, so it is obvious that Wikipedia is accurate!
What's hit Wikipedia now isn't a matter of technology or impartiality, it's simply a matter of how to run an online government. Any community has some organizing principles: mainstream information sources use a bureacracy/aristocracy of editors, fact-checkers, and writers. Scientific journals use limited democracy -- a few selected peers review articles for accuracy. Now, we have true democracy, in Wikipedia, where EVERYONE can review an article. All of this argument comes down to one thing: which system works best?
Right. Faith, or the "leap of faith," is the logical disconnect that nearly every religion employs to break with rationality. You may choose to rely on faith, but to say that we "have to" rely on faith is kind of silly.
Why do I have to? The answer is, I don't. I can adopt any stance on the box that I want to, whether faith-based about what's in it or otherwise. Also, what you said was that faith has something to do with believing in something "higher than [yourself]"...this is not true either. Faith is simply the belief in something in absence of evidence. It doesn't have to be "higher than" me to qualify as faith.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Try driving in the wrong lane five times in a week, and see if there's an accident. Sound dumb? Of course; but our traffic system is based on the idea that everybody do as good as they can, and don't intentionally try to fuck things up.
The same applies to wikipedia. Fix errors you see, watch the changelogs, and don't deliberately insert errors.
I know of a (proprietary) dictionary service that costs $50 a year - if people would spend time according to that amount on helping wikipedia, since they benefit from it, maybe quality would improve even more.
I view Wikipedia as a basic research tool; it's easier to doublecheck info after I read it, than it is to find it the first time.
But maybe it's time to revive the project that wikipedia spun off; but using wikipedia as a source. An "audited" wikipedia. (I'd still just use wikipedia.)
Wikipedia != Authoritative?
Duh!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The differences, there were a couple. Obviously, I didn't conduct the same identical experiment, but I did try to look like a legitimate contributor. The main difference I believe is that I made those changes in high traffic areas. It stands to reason, that the accuracy of wiki content will be directly proportional to the number of eyeballs looking at it. And obviously, if you introduce mistakes in an area that noone looks at (or that noone cares about), chances are -- it won't be corrected right away.
4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.
How exactly does one pursue atheism?
That aside, I do think that strong atheism gets fairly close to religion, in that it's a firmly held belief with no factual base - just like theism. But weak atheism is nowhere near that, it's as much a religion as baldness is a hairstyle. You should at least make a distinction between them.
As usual, Wikipedia gives good information.
I'm christian! Hear me roar!
"And so the Trekkies were executed in the mannor most befitting virgins - thrown into volcanoes" - Futurama
Anselm's argument for the existence of god, in the philosophy course I took (and every one I've ever heard of), is immediately followed by several arguments to the contrary that poke one giant hole after another in it. That's largely the point of the religious subject in philosophy courses--that it's not possible to prove, logically, the existence of god.
I can only assume you posted this AC because of your next statement...the reference to Godel's Theorem, which is either a troll, or you have no understanding of what the heck Godel's Theorem says, because it indisputably supports my argument.
And just because you say "suffice it to say" does not mean that what you said suffices.
If you really believe that there can be a logical argument that proves the existence of god, then you are in opposition to nearly every great philosopher, professor, rabbi, priest, theological scholar, etc...they all say that a leap of faith is necessary for the big 3 religions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity).
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Proof denies faith.
Proof strengthens faith. It is much easier to trust in God if you have proof of his existence than if you don't.
...it's learnt, not learned. :o)
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
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
Well, there's a good reason why Wikipedia articles usually have hyperlinks to related web pages. You can have a look at these if you bother to check whether the article is accurate.
Score: i, Imaginary
I've experience deja vu. That feeling is associated with the Matrix. Therefore, the Matrix is real.
No, I'm not being cute, I'm making a point. Many religious leaders claim there belief comes from an internal feeling. Research has been done, and those feelings are, indeed, real, and Cat Scans and MRIs show certain activity. The origin of those feelings is a matter of some debate, but people really do feel uplifted, enlightened, happy, etc. The studies have advanced far enough that researches can use stimulus to induce the religious feeling in people on a fairly repeatable basis. Looks to be some chemical release triggered by situational settings.
Anyway, facsinating stuff. Imagine learning that Deja Vu isn't proof of the Matrix, but just some chemical reaction in the brain. Then what would happen to organized religion?
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
I had never heard of GNAA before (although I had seen the reference to the movie that apparently inspired the name on an earlier Slashdot discussion), but having now read the article I'm curious as to why exactly do you think it's of dubious nature? I mean, what exactly was so bad about it? That it uses a Bad Word, Nigger, in it? Or just that it's about a subject that is a rather niche thing? But if latter, isn't 90%+ of material encyclopedias have mostly of interest to rather small groups of specialists?
Or maybe you just made assumptions based on the title of the article and assumed it's some kind of hate speech?
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Everything you read online must be true.
/ index.html
By the way, here's the talk page of the guy who did the later experiment:
"User talk:65.27.75.56
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
See http://www.frozennorth.org/C2011481421/E652809545
Yeah, you must be really proud of your vandalism, aren't you? RickK 21:50, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)"
It couldn't possibly be because he thinks Wikipedia could actually USE any of the results of his experiment, could it? No, it must be because he's proud of his trickery. After all, he even brags about how he went back and corrected his inaccurate revisions. The gall of some people!
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
For many places there are more than one version of the history.
Afghanistan is a nice example. Ask different ethnic groups about afghanistan, the answers are radically diverse. who will you believe? Theyll just keep deleting their articles forever.
For really conflicting facts, there should be a way to enter two different versions. Readers could then either choose or read both, knowing that thats conflicting information. That way the Wikipedia can be a source of information from BOTH sides. I'd take such an encyclopaedia over Britannica anyday.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Misinformation is worse than no information. Even if the rate of mistakes in Wikipedia were comparable to Britannica (and where's the studies on this? where are the attempts to measure it?), if Wikipedia has more articles, it will have more misinformation in absolute terms, on more topics, and the more topics it has, the wider the number of people that will be misinformed by it.
Are you adequate?
Fine, you can neither prove nor disprove that there is no god. Either way, an atheist believes that there is no god.
Incidentally your 'throw me off a bridge' test could be made to ensure that you would die if you did not fly, and since no one in their right mind would choose to die for no reason when they have the ability to prevent it, your death would point to the fact you were out of your mind, so any assertation about your abilities would be suspect, and we would be able to conclude that no, you can not fly despite what you say.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Wikipedia is 1 source and anyone who uses it exclusively is a moron as all people who only take 1 source into account are either morons or very trusting. Let's take Hatshepsut for example.
The published historian Gardner claims that she was an overbearing mother who Thutmose III hated. For his proof he states the fact a lot of Hatshepsut's reliefs have been destroyed and replaced with other people and that this is obviously indicative of his pent up frustration and anger at her.
Gae Callendar (another published historian) says that this is completely false and that there's proof that the relief's were destroyed long after Thutmose III and that even if he DID do it, this was common practise amongst the Egyptian Pharoahs so it isn't indicative that he hated her, but was just following Egyptian tradition.
Gardner says that Hatshepsut wasn't a true Pharaoh because she didn't have enough military campaigns, Callendar says she was and that Gardner is just comparing her to the people that had the MOST military campaigns which is unfair and that she had more campaigns then other pharaohs and Gardner admits they're true Pharaohs.
Now I never read a book that laid out the information just as I did. I learnt all that by reading SEVERAL books. If I had only read 1 book I would have had an unbalanced viewpoint, such as the one evident in this page with the quote
I would say Wikiepdia is more authoritive on this subject as it says(Sidenote: I'm happy to say I helped start the correction of Hatshepsut's and Thutmose III's relationship. It originally said that Thutmose III did it, whereas I replaced that with some people believe he did it, others believe otherwise and then other people came along and fleshed out what I said with much more detail, this is NOT possible in encyclopedias, and often published books will contain one point of view, so I would say the fact anyone can edit it, IS a good thing. I personally believe in Callender's theories, but wikipedia has both).
non-practicing?
Pagan? isn't a pagan someone who worships more then one god? Or at least one who says so in order to piss off their parents.
Encyclopedias are nothing like authoritative. It's not hard to find dubious
or even erroneous information in print encyclopedias, so I don't know why
Wikipedia would be any different. Encyclopedias are by their very nature
tertiary sources at best. You don't use them for in-depth research. That's
not what they're for. Encyclopedias give you an introduction to a topic, a
sweeping overview. They acquaint you with the basic themes and ideas of a
topic so that you know what you're looking for when you do further research.
Some of the worst articles in Wikipedia come from the 1911 Encylopedia
Britannica. For example, until a few months ago the Wikipedia article on
Abraham came from the 1911 EB, and it was a horrible mishmash of irrelevant
speculative non-NPOV drivel about the authorship of Genesis and sundry other
nonsense, with almost nothing about Abraham's relevance to Judaism,
Christianity, or Islam, and the information about the Genesis account was a
very poor synopsis indeed, nitpicking fine points in some sections and
glossing over major events and whole chapters in other places. The current
article on Wikipedia is imperfect, of course, but *much* better.
Also, I really don't see how the "experiment" is remotely fair, inserting
one error a day for five days and concluding the experiment on the sixth day.
Print encyclopedias aren't expected to find their errors in under two weeks
after the author first submits the article, are they?
I will readily concede that Wikipedia surely contains many errors and cannot
be considered really authoritative, but I would say that goes with the
territory of being an encyclopedia, and I don't see how it diminishes the
value of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, a tertiary source very useful for
quickly finding a general overview of almost any topic.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Last time I checked, you do what you would ordinarily do without bothering with religion. It's relaxing.
That aside, I do think that strong atheism gets fairly close to religion, in that it's a firmly held belief with no factual base - just like theism. But weak atheism is nowhere near that, it's as much a religion as baldness is a hairstyle. You should at least make a distinction between them.
There is a sort of middle position which, while at its core is weak atheism, dismisses the existance of god(s) as so improbable as not to be worthy of serious consideration. See Invisible Pink Unicorn for a good example of this kind of thinking.
As usual, Wikipedia gives good information.
And that, friends, is how this conversation is somehow vaguely on topic. I was starting to wonder.
States encourage the tragedy of the commons. Because nobody owns the resource -- whatever it may be -- over-use is encouraged. The only way in which States can use prices is because there is a partial free-market elsewhere (this is what the USSR did). It is rather like "playing house". You clearly don't understand our current mess of a medical system, which is no-longer insurance but rather pre-payment, which encourages constantly escalating prices. I'd suggest you search Mises.org for "medicare". For a solution, to the current mess, see A Four-Step Health-Care Solution by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. As for your hogwash about the State being more far-sighted than the free-market, see what the USSR and other States with lots of intervention did to their environment. When resources are not privately owned, they are not preserved and are not put to their best use. Regarding your confusion on economic calculation, I would suggest you read THE SPHERE OF ECONOMIC CALCULATION by Ludwig von Mises, and the chapter after it (page-by-page viewing of each chapter-section).
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Someone who thinks that free-market economics is dominant among econimists is completely ignorant of reality. Free-market economics dominated more than a hundred years ago, when there was Carl Menger. Today, the Keynesians and supply-siders -- both serious interventionist schools -- dominate.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I believe I'm hungry.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
In light of this new "research" The US Dept. of Homeland Security has announced Wikipedia will be shut down until such time as it can be made secure from false information terrorists.
Regards,
~Joshua Norton
I'm agnostic because I have no opinion on if there is a God. It just really makes no difference to me whatsoever. I admit there could be a God but I've seen no evidence to convince me of such. Likewise I've seen no evidence to convince me that there is no God. Therefore I take a detached wait and see stance until some facts come to me that will push me one way or the other. For that matter I'm not even sure what the definition of 'God' would be. Lacking a definitive definition for 'God' I see no way I can really prove if 'God' exists or not. My cat thinks it's a god fit to be worshipped. Does that mean God exists? Beats me. :)
An atheist is convinced that there is no God. Clearly the two are not the same thing.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
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.
Bah. There are far more than 150 Pokemon, so 150 articles wouldn't come close to covering the range of topics in that area.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Anselm's argument for the existence of god, in the philosophy course I took (and every one I've ever heard of), is immediately followed by several arguments to the contrary that poke one giant hole after another in it.
I was aware that Anselm's argument was quite often side-stepped and berated but I wasn't aware there were any holes in it. (Hence the whole lasting for 900 years thing.)
To me, Anselm winds up showing that to properly conceive of God you have to conceive of God as existing, because otherwise you're leaving out a very major and obvious piece of the puzzle before you even start. Whether this "conception" and reality have anything to do with each other or if "God" is even a coherent notion is entirely another matter. Nevertheless, Anselm's argument seems to lend perspective to a lot of theist vs atheist debate. (disagreements at the level of presupposition are pretty hard to work out...)
If you really believe that there can be a logical argument that proves the existence of god, then you are in opposition to nearly every great philosopher, professor, rabbi, priest, theological scholar, etc...they all say that a leap of faith is necessary for the big 3 religions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity).
Yes. Of course, many would also argue that leaps of faith are required for normal day to day life, active science, and the like. The disagreements are about which leaps make sense and whose are smaller.
I think your getting lost on a semantic difference.
Belief in 0 gods is different than 0 belief in gods. The first is a specific belief, the second a lack of belief.
Consider amoral vs immoral the two are often confused yet amoral means without consideration for morals wereas immoral means in violation of morals.
It's the difference between without a thing and against a thing.
Many religeous types decide if you don't explicitly support a god you must therefore be against god, this failure of understanding (often deliberate) is what he assumed in your case.
Agnostic, IIRC, implies a lack of sufficient knowledge/understanding know/believe for or against theism in specific or general. Which logicaly is where all interested parties (those that care about theism) should place themselves given that the premis usually put forth require far more capability than a human mind is capable of. Personaly given what the major religeons state about thier gods and doctrines I find it all a bit silly to claim to have THE answer moreso than any other religeon when no-one is capable of evaluating the claim.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
But Belief in no gods is very different from no belief in gods. One is a specific belief and the other is no belief at all.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
The actual definition of "strong atheism" given by Wikipedia is "the lack of belief in any god or gods with the strong conviction that no gods exist". There is no requirement that the conviction be stronger than their belief in logic. In fact Wikipedia notes that many atheists conviction derives from The Problem of Evil, an apparent logical flaw in the theists position.
It is all to common that a poster will misstate a opponents position to strenthen their own (the strawman fallacy), but given that the penguinoid gave a obviously phony reference I can only assume it is a troll. I am just surprised so many people took it at face value.
Additionally, you are equating things that aren't equal. I'm saying something equivalent to:whereas you are equating them in your false contention that "Disbelief in the existance of God(s) and a lack of belief in the existance of God(s) amounts to precisely the same thing". They are not at all the same thing logically, and until you can recognize that you will be unable to either see the truth behind my assertion or call yourself fit to converse on the topic.
Atheists believe there is no god. That's it, end of discussion. Any additional sophistry, any hemming and hawing, puts into the argument puts it into the realm of our wishy-washy agnosticism.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
...and the question won't earn you credit either.
Here's Google's thoughts on the meaning.
I askded if he was being obtuse because he lumped me, agnostic, in with the Theists when he said, no declared, "Theists always say this and it is complete and utter tripe."
So in addition to "what he says" differing from what I say in the ways I have describe in the previous post, they also differ in that I'm NOT a "Theist" but I'm one of those people that does have a problem understanding the "difference" he proposes.
I have been maligned by this pinhead.
You have the definition of agnostic and atheist wrong, as well (and don't use Wikipedia for your defs because some jackass has spoiled it on this issue.)
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
The example of Freud is particularly apt. Despite his widely accepted expertise at the time, his work and his opinions have since been roundly repudiated, and there is little of merit left to his name. Similar examples are legion. There would not even have been an entry in an "authoritative" encyclopedia for plate tectonics, the Cretaceous meteorite, or McClintock's transposons for many years after the important work has been done. Often progress waits for the incumbent authorities of the field to die.
Fields where current orthodoxy impedes progress include Alzheimer's research, biological interactions with varying electromagnetic fields and tiny currents, and fusion using electrically-accelerated nuclei producing energetic charged particles.
Authority is no guarantee of validity, although it may be promoted as, and easily be mistaken for one.
So the practice of not worshipping a god is chauvahnism.
And if the god is male, it's male chauvahnism.
(Yes, I know that it's spelled "chauvinism"; it's a joke.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I think you are suffering from logical problems.
Your definition of atheism is false because it fails to exclude or distinguish itself from agnosticism (which is the lack of belief in the existence of gods).
You must say "atheists do not believe in the existence of god(s)". You may not say "atheists lack the belief in god(s)" because that definition would include agnostics.
Your definition would require that we provide the same convenience to the theists, whereupon agnosticism will disappear entirely.
Please stop trying to reform Atheism. It's as dead as Theism.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
More use of watching topics could help with this problem. There's a watchlist, but adding RSS/Email notification when an article you're written/contributed to is changed would allow authors to keep stupid bugs out. More importantly, it would allow authors to keep more insidious false information out.
-Lars
"In this experiment, I painted graffiti on the walls of the local school. It's not plain vandalism, though, because I'm blogging about it. It was just to test the response times of the janitorial staff. I suggest you all try what I did to prove it for yourself."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
others have already answered your "argument" so I'll just log in with my me too.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Or possibly the unicorns are following you around so they're always behind you ;)
Sorry - I just get this funny picture of a guy looking over the entire world for some unicorns - and there's this huge heard of them tiptoeing around behind him and hiding behind the curtains each time he looks around...
Sorry... I think I'm over it now... Yes doctor I'll take my medication now...
my sig could kick your sig's arse...
I was explaining the conceptual difference between belief in a negative vs. lack of belief in a positive.
Atheist: without (a) god
Agnostic: without knowledge (of god)
Antitheist: against belief in (a) god
Althogh general usuage would place all atheist as antithiest, I generaly try to keep all three seperate.
Though how you came to the conclusion I was even trying to define athiest in atempting to help the above spot the conceptual confusion he apeared to have is uncertain, but these things happen in text only conversations.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
What about a couple of rules for Wikipedia content (dunno which are already in affect but the combination might stop the problem)...
* Each page must have at least one primary contact, who gets notified when changes are made (perhaps digests, each day/week).
* Check usage patterns for a page: if a page remains unchanged for a long period, and then a change is made, notify the primary contact. The theory being, that if it has remained unchanged for a long period, it's probably accurate.
Manta
Contrary to the article and links mentioned, I have found the editing is usually( and surprisingly) quick at Wikipedia. All its depends is the type of article you wish to edit. If you have edited an article about your great grandmother who once fed Hitler some russian bear at her German Inn,no one would bother to edit it. If the information is not appropriate, it will usually be deleted. But editing information about Computer Science! Gosh!try the experiement and come for a bet! There are new things which have come up, wherein Wikipedia is having Featured Article( you can have it via email as well), which is carefully assembled/edited by the wikipedian community collaboratively. Check out the community portal as how the collaboration usually takes place. Wikipedia is a very good source to get started on any topic you wish. If you dont find it there,google for it and would you believe links which are returned as Authoritative, unless otherwise they are from NEC Citeseer or uspto.gov!!! :)
Senthil
As a result, most articles, including (I'd guess) every article of any importance, has at least one person watching it. Instead of the single "primary contact" that you suggested, there can be several people who are automatically notified of any change. I don't need to keep checking each article that I care about. If it sits there for months unchanged, then someone edits it, I'll know about it.
For a prominent and controversial article, you can bet that several Wikipedians of sharply conflicting views are ready to pounce on any change that biases the article against their side. For example, we get the occasional stupid insult inserted into the articles on Bush or Kerry. They're gone within minutes. (No, this is not a suggestion that you should do something stupid yourself, just to see if I'm right.)
Nir, see my reply to Munra. There's no option for an email report that I know of. You have to log in to Wikipedia to view your Watchlist. That's no imposition, because once you get hooked, you'll be logging in every day anyway.
Though how you came to the conclusion I was even trying to define athiest in atempting to help the above spot the conceptual confusion he apeared to have is uncertain, but these things happen in text only conversations.
:)
Ah. So you were using "You" in the collective sense, meaning "Him" (or the post I was responding to initially.)
In that case, I suggest your response would have been better served had you attached it to his post, not mine.
Because I am not "getting lost on semantic differences", I was sketching out the logic problem within the original poster's contention.
I only wish the mods were using their heads like you appear to be.
Thank you.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
of course laws prohibiting censorship are not applicable - none exist that are drawn as applicable to anything other than the federal government [and, with the 14th amendment, to the states] - that doesn't mean that it's not censorship.. it's just legal censorship.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
I wasn't responding to your post. Mine is sibling to yours and responding to the same post. :(
Not that I coudn't have done so, I had to check to be shure as I posted on 5 hours sleep and 20+ hours awake
I've occasionaly had slashdot (or firefox) scramble the indenting a few times, re-load always fixed it though.
But these things do happen in text only forums, been running into all sorts of who said what to whom confusion since I started on the local bbs's in '84. No harm done.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Hey, moron, copyright doesn't cover facts. Period. End of discussion. Facts cannot be copyrighted. You can't copyright some historical data, or fact, such as the fact that Abraham Lincoln was a mercantalist, in the footsteps of Clay and Hamilton; or any other facts for that matter. I thought I was very clear on this. Maybe you should Google "copyright" to see what it covers. Only the expression of an idea can be copyrighted, not the idea itself. I'm sorry that you're so stupid. You've plainly invalidated your claims to be a lawyer.
The actual intangible idea may not be copyrighted.
Facts cannot be the basis for "derivative works". End of discussion. Going back to the original discussion of encyclopedias, reading one encylopedia entry on a topic, listing the facts, and writing them in your own words is not a "derivative work", you moron. Perhaps you are too stupid to understand this, but those "facts" werent' created by the person who wrote the encylopedia article. That person had to find them from somewhere else. If they can put those facts in an article, then so can anyone else. Your idiotic idea of what a "derivative work" is would make the original encylopedia articles impossible in the first place. Stupid fuck.
To be clear, the sequel to Gone with the Wind is a derivative work. Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State was not a derivative work of Human Action. Rothbard restated and reviewed many of the same economic facts. However, MES is not a derivative work of HA, as facts (nor ideas) cannot be copyrighted.
What a fucking moron. Next time, think before you talk, or shut the fuck up.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
While the Wikipedia effort may fall subject to criticism, you have to admit that they're certainly working hard for it
Check out my PHP Url Validator
We don't have to argue philosophically if Wikipedia can possibly be accurate. Pick an esoteric subject (or 20) you know a lot about, and check the entries. If there's anything there, you are almost guaranteed to learn more than you knew before and I defy you to find four factual errors, or two important factual errors, in your arbitrary selection of 20 articles.
You guys argue as long as you like about whether or not it's good - I've seen it, and it's good.
When you're ready to start arguing about how to make it better, let me know.
Wrong.
They can claim all they want.
That sounds reasonable and that seems to explain this otherwise incomprehensible need to believe in God, gods and god like beings. OTOH, IANA brain surgeon.
First, Déjà vu is NOT proof of the Matrix.
Second, unfortunatly, reason doesn't seem to play a role with their beliefs so I am certain that it wouldn't change a thing.
That from the beginning, I was referring to taking the ideas and facts in another Encylopedia, and writing them in your own work, while (if appropriate) omitting ones you deemed to be wrong, and adding other relevant facts (if the article was incomplete).
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
That they call them "homicide bombers" when they are unsuccessful and only kill themselves.
Everybody understands what a suicide bomber is. They strap a bomb to themselves and blow themselves up, and it's clear that their attempt is to kill or injure others.
On the other hand, "homicide bomber" is a more vague term. Is the Unabomber a homicide bomber? He sent mail bombs that were meant to kill or injure. It sure sounds like one to me. But it's very different in that he didn't kill himself in the process.
Fox is pushing a political agenda by choosing an uncommonly used term instead of the accepted one, and the fact that their new term is more vague is a sign that they are hot aiming for accuracy but for a certain bias.
If you truly believe that Fox is less biased than the average news source, you're seriously misinformed. Think about it, if everybody but you seems to be a liberal... couldn't it be that you're actually a conservative?
Which of these definitions are you claiming fits atheism? In the case of 3, there is no "spiritual leader" (spiritual itself having to do with god, religion, the soul, etc). In the case of 4, this definition of the word was added to include such usages as: Golf is Bob's religion. Atheism is not a cause, a principle, or an activity. It is simply an idea regarding the way things are...a philosophical position. So, I did read all the definitions before I chose one.
We are lead to the inescapable conclusion that words mean things. In order to have a discussion, we must have some common ground in terms of language. Now the point of your post is that atheism is a religion just like, say, Christianity (that was your point, was it not?). So, let me ask you, which definition of the term applies to Christianity? The one I used, or one of the two you proposed?
If you didn't mean that atheism is a religion in the way that Christianity is a religion, then what was the point of saying it? If what you meant was that atheism is a religion in the way that golf is a religion to some people, I would say that's an interesting way of looking at things, but totally irrelevant to the discussion. Assuming that what you said was relevant, though, I'd have to return to my earlier point that you are arguing semantics.
You're saying that scientists shouldn't believe in atheism because your argument supporting your viewpoint uses absurd statements? Huh!?
Let us review. Your argument is: a scientist should not hold a viewpoint where, given evidence to the contrary, he still would not change his mind. I agree with that. But then you went on to say that atheism is such an irrational belief of this theoretical person; if one were able to somehow prove the existence of god to this atheistic scientist, you posit he would not change his mind.
It is your argument I'm calling absurd, because your proof that atheism is irrational relies on your doing the impossible. Your own argument requires you to prove god's existence to relegate atheism to this category. Even you imply you couldn't do this--later, you seem to be saying god himself would have to perform this feat.
So let me turn your own argument against you, and the logic problem will come clear, I'm sure... You, sir, hold an irrational position because, were I to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that god does not exist, you would still cling to your current views about atheism being irrational.
Now, let me crystallize for you why the above is a silly statement.
Now, simply replace that silly argument above with your silly argument, and I'm sure you'll see the parallels. On the other hand, if you think my silly argument above holds water logically, then you must believe in its conclusion.
But now I am assuming that showing a proof of god's existence is impossible, which you apparently have a problem with.
This statement assumes that god exists, which is what we're arguing about in the first place. Logic fallacy #1. (Still, I very much like that your opinion of god, a supposedly all-powerful being, would have to limit his proof to "a certain probability, like"...you know..."any other scientific proof." Why couldn't he prove it with 100% probability!? He is G
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
That's a good point, sir. Where is the cut-off between the "authoritative" and the "non-authoritative"?
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
That's what they said about lemmings--they would not choose to die, so it must be in their nature!
As it turns out, all the lemmings were jumping off the cliffs because they were being chased by the National Geographic helicopter filming them.
In any case, more to the point, your argument above is just stupid (not to cause a flame war). But it is, I'm sorry. Burden of proof is a known logic fallacy that you're employing in your argument. Go ahead, click the link.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
I generally get your point here, but you're wrong about your TV. It is alive. When you turn it on, does it not look just like people? Does it not talk and have feelings just like other living things, such as the sea sponge?
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
All I did was test that statement by applying the same definition of religion. It didn't work.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
900 years? The "whole thing" didn't last 6 months. Logicians and scholars almost immediately poked holes in his argument.
Let's review Anselm's argument. He says:
Now, there are several problems with this argument, all of which have been pointed out before. For a good argument that addresses the most popular of these points, read William L. Rowe's The Ontological Argument from Reason & Responsibility, Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy, 8th Ed., by Joel Feinberg.
The first problem: does "god" refer to the greatest possible thing? Or, to put it in a slightly different way...is it possible to conceive of a "greatest possible thing" in a non-vague, absolute sort of way? I believe not. I believe that one of the powers of human language over that of other beasts is that human language can deal in abstraction. As language evolved, we carried this idea of representing the abstract to its ultimate extreme with words like god and soul. These two terms are so abstract that no one can really define either term in any meaningful concrete (as opposed to abstract) way. All such definitions include other superlative words like omnipotent, omniscient, etc. Again, these words are abstract to the highest degree...no one knows what omniscience means, or if it is even possible to "know all knowledge". Is potential knowledge infinite? Maybe. What would it mean to "know everything"? I don't know. No one does.
A discussion of aspects becomes important here. I don't think that there can be a "greatest possible thing," full stop. There can be a greatest possible thing with respect to one particular aspect. There can be a greatest possible thing given a qualifications, and these qualifications can set up the context in which this thing is the greatest possible. But, free of all context and in a concrete sense, I don't think the concept of a "greatest possible thing" can exist.
So, that's the first problem. I would argue that Anselm's assumption that the concept of god exists is incorrect.
Problem #2. Anselm believes that things that exist are somehow greater than things that do not exist. This is never explained in the argument, and furthermore, directly flies in the face of Platonic forms. According to Rowe (and this is backed by research into the language of Anselm's other writings), when Anselm says "does not exist" he actually means "exists in the understanding but not in reality". Plato argued that Platonic forms only existed in the understanding, and not in reality, but that these forms were the representation of perfection. There could be nothing in reality better than that thing's corresponding form; if the real thing matched the form in every way, it would be perfect, the greatest possible for that thing.
I tend to go with Plato on this one, and not just in opposition to Anselm's argument...there are lots of reasons that Plato's ideas have stood the test of time, and fared far better than Anselm's (see Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a compelling argument for using a Platonic foundation).
Problem #3. Once we overlook the previous two problems, we discover the turning of the key in Anselm's argument: the greatest possible thing must exist because if it didn't, it wouldn't be the greatest possible
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
The point is that it is still interesting and worth debate, and has been for 900 years...
For a good argument that addresses the most popular of these points, read William L. Rowe's The Ontological Argument from Reason & Responsibility, Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy, 8th Ed., by Joel Feinberg.
Um... Got anything just a wee bit shorter? Or maybe some useful excerpts?
So, that's the first problem. I would argue that Anselm's assumption that the concept of god exists is incorrect.
Okay, so you've just argued that the notion of "God", or in this case Anselm's "That than which nothing greater can be conceived" is incoherent. In doing so you've decided to disagree at the level of presupposition, and can now never have any meaningful argument with someone who considers the notion of "God" (and/or "that than which...") coherent, or even possibly so. Have fun.
I tend to go with Plato on this one, and not just in opposition to Anselm's argument...
Okay, that's fine. I happen to go with Sir Whilhelm Henry of Okham (or Occam whatever) and avoid multiplying entities unnecessarily. Of course, that has little to do with what Anselm is arguing about...
The problem in this case is that God is essentially a giant "do gooder" and a "do gooder" that doesn't "do good" isn't much "good". How much good can a do gooder do if a do gooder doesn't exist? You might argue that "good" is also an incoherent concept. That's fine, but you'd be missing my point. Try "woodchuck" instead of "do gooder" if that helps. Note: The woodchuck that exists is more woodchuck than any ideal, the woodchuck that doesn't exist is more ideal than any woodchuck, but a woodchuck that doesn't exist is only an ideal, not really a woodchuck at all.
Anselm argues that, no, there is one yet greater thing possible--that the concept of god itself exists. But this assumes that such an existence is possible...perhaps existence in our understanding is the greatest possible thing because to exist in reality would be not be possible.
I'm not sure I follow your whole argument in #3... Perhaps you're merely agreeing with what I said originally? To properly conceive of Anselm's notion of "God" one must conceive of him/her as existing. This is true WHETHER OR NOT "God exists" "in reality".
It wasn't until Kant that this line of thought was well-established... a bit more than 6 months.
Yes, we all make tiny leaps of faith every day for practical reasons, just to get things done.
...
You are arguing here, it seems, that since we often make leaps of faith, some correct, some not, that making leaps of faith is generally an acceptable practice in determining what to believe.
I'm just pointing out that leaps of faith are not always bad. In fact they are necessary as a basis for knowledge and understanding.
Here's an article apologetic to the use of methodological naturalism in science. The author makes the following statement: "[Methodological Naturalism] is what science employs, the belief that natural events have natural causes and that the physical world is logical and understandable." He goes on to make another statement: "Science itself, which uses methodological and not metaphysical naturalism, assumes that all events it can observe and study are natural in origin."
This seems a rather large and singular leap in a world of Heisenberg's uncertainty, chaos theory and quantum fluctuation (not to mention free-will).
If a leap of faith in this case is justified for some other reason, I am at a loss to see it. Can you tell me?
Objective knowledge requires leaps of faith, is it so strange to think subjective knowledge (or spirituality whatever your preference) also requires leaps of faith?
Atheism cannot be a "religious" stance by definition:
religious - 1. Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity.
Hmmm... but it could be considered a religion.
religion - 4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.
Many people I have met that consider themselves athiest are as interested in actively pursuing their principle as many christians, hence this whole thread. Many atheists consider teaching christian topics in schools, or mentioning God in the pledge of allegiance immoral and dedicate a significant amount of time, effort and money to stopping the outrage.
Sounds like a religion to me.
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I think atheism is usually associated with I do not know. Your belief system might be called apathetism. :)
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
I don't understand how, if you concede that your conception of god is that he's not of this physical universe but some metaphysical one, how "proof" enters into the discussion. There can be no proof of a metaphysical being...the very concept of proof is bound to our physical plane of existence.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Well, I'll concede that it's interesting, but it's not worth debating from a serious epistemological standpoint. It is worth debating for sheer academics, just to understand Anselm's points and why they're no longer taken seriously as an argument for the existence of god.
Well, that was for reference--the rest of my post is the wee bit shorter version. :-) To be fair to Rowe, though, it's about as short as philosophical tracts get...just over 9 pages in my text.
You've got me just right, except that my argument is yet more sweeping than just addressing Anselm's definition of god. This is my semantic argument against god, and it applies to all such arguments for or against the existence of such a being. I usually hate arguing semantics, but in this case I feel it is justified because all such religious terminology is shrouded in mystery. What are the definitions of the following terms: god, heaven, hell, soul...does anyone agree? Is each religious person free to have their own conception of each of these terms? It seems so, to a great extent. Why is this not the case for other words? Why is it less acceptable when I apply the same standard of definition to a word like apple?
The point is, I may go around saying I believe in foo, but if I never define what foo is, all arguments regarding the existence of foo are rendered moot. If I provide a definition of foo that is vague beyond a certain limit, the definition ceases to be useful.
To throw this point into sharp relief with a somewhat contrived example, consider a similar context that highlights the extremes. If I were to go on speaking about a mathematical entity like force, let's call it faz, I could attribute all sorts of properties to it. Whereas force is a function of mass and acceleration, I could insist that faz is a function of time and charge. But, if I were unwilling to provide an actual formula that defines this entity explicitly in terms of these things, such as F=m*a, all such discussions about theories based on calculations involving faz would be nonsense.
To my way of thinking, religions that use words like god and soul are like physics theories that invoke faz in calculations but don't ever define it, or if they do define it, they define it mathematically in terms of other vague quantities, like "baz" and "shaz". It's all just circular nonsense that doesn't nail the thing down to anything concrete.
Like I said, I usually don't like engaging semantic arguments, but in this case I feel that what I'm up against requires it. The terms at issue, as far as I can tell, are literally meaningless...no one has yet been able to tell me or show me quite what they mean when they say soul or god, so there isn't much point in arguing about whether they exist or not. (Note that this doesn't even allow the argument to progress to whether they exist or not...it simply poses the question: what is it exactly that you are arguing exists? I think this is a valid question.)
Oh, but my point had everything to do with Anselm. I was simp
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
If you prove there's a god, then you know there's a god. You cannot believe in that god's existence anymore, even when the god requests you do so (as the Christian god seems to do), because you know he or she exists.
Well, that was for reference--the rest of my post is the wee bit shorter version. :-) To be fair to Rowe, though, it's about as short as philosophical tracts get...just over 9 pages in my text.
My bad, I thought you were refering to the entire text.
You've got me just right, except that my argument is yet more sweeping than just addressing Anselm's definition of god. This is my semantic argument against god, and it applies to all such arguments for or against the existence of such a being.
This is all fine and dandy, and prefectly rational, but it doesn't gain you any persuasive traction, it merely moves you almost immediately to the "agree to disagree" point where meaningful discussion ends. Being more sweeping in this matter just makes you more disagreeable... (Though hopefully agreeably so. Err, i think.)
If you want me to put forward definitions of God and soul for you I can certainly try, but you're as free to deny them credibility as I am to deny realism as a basic assumption. (Also, you're the one who brought "soul" up, I never mentioned it... It is a word I prefer not to use because it is so non-specific and often abused.)
I understand your woodchuck argument. However, I must point out that the possibility to do something must exist before that something can actually be done. The existence of the form provides the possibility, while imperfect implementations of that form that exist in reality attempt to meet that full potential...but always fall short to some extent.
I guess a question would be can anything "real" ever avoid falling short of "ideal". I'm not convinced that question has been answered in the positive or negative, and I certainly am not going to accept it one way or the other just based on considering "great" as Anselm used it to be equivalent to "ideal" as Plato used it.
If it is possible that something "real" can meet "ideal standards" then it is possible that God exists (ie: the concept of God exists/is rational/what have you), and Anselm's argument holds, at least in this regard.
Note: If pressed, I'd argue that any Platonic Ideal is every bit as nebulous as God or soul, at least to my way of thinking... (Can't be nailed down, can be different to different folks etc.)
This may be true for the referent line of thought, but there are other lines of thought that posed serious problems for Anselm shortly after the publication of his argument. For instance, Gaunilo argued that Anselm's argument could be applied to all sorts of things that we know do not exist...simply replace "god" with "island," and we can prove that the island than which none greater is possible exists in reality.
This is a great argument, although in my opinion it goes too far. You see, according to Anselm, the concept "God" contains, in definition, this notion of "greatest" as a necessary component. "island" does not have such a connection with the concept of "greatest" (we can conceive of the greatest island, but there is no requirement for island to be tied to greatest). That said, the only way this argument can defeat Anselm is by attacking his definition of God...
So, you've got 3 successful attacks on Anselm's definition of God, but all more or less indirect. (meaning you can't just say: "No Anselm's got it wrong, God might exist and is this other way..." Therefore someone convinced God *might* exist and persuaded by Anselm's language is still going to be unsatisfied. As many were.)
I think this is where we begin to disagree... I will say this, though: I do think that everyone, no matter what the basis for their worldview, that set of ideas/beliefs is ultimately based on some set of fundamental, axiomatic beliefs from which their understanding and personal philosophy derives. However, everyone's set of axiomatic beliefs are not created equal...some are demonstrably better than others. One person's set of axiomatic beliefs may result in a system of thought that i
If you know a god exists, you can't believe the god exists. I'm afraid I don't understand the reasoning behind this.
I have reasonable proof that there is a computer monitor in front of me. Therefore, I believe that there is a computer monitor in front of me. Not believing because you have proof seems absurd.
If you hold to deism, this might make sense. However, if you allow that God can affect the physical universe (and even enter it), then it can be possible to make observations and then extrapolate the existance of God. And what is your justification that "the very concept of proof is bound to our physical plane of existence"?
"Quit trying to reform atheism."
/religion/. I'm fond of saying that I reject religion on principal, but it God popped up and shook my hand, I'd obviously have to believe that God is real. However, I'd STILL consider myself an atheist, beccause I'd still reject all religion. My belief in god would be materialist.
I don't think he's trying to reform atheism and I think his definition is very apt.
Atheism isn't so much a rejection of god(s) as it is a rejection of
Property is theft.
And, to clarify myself, my belief is very different from agnosticism. An agnostic is one who thinks that there may realistically be a god. An atheist is one who says there obviously isn't, but would be happy to be proven wrong.
Property is theft.
"An atheist is one who says there obviously isn't, but would be happy to be proven wrong."
And your problem is that you're missing your own use of the word "obvious." It's a sign of bias, a belief that the outcome has already been determined.
An agnostic doesn't think the word "obvious" applies, to either case.
"And your problem is that you're missing your own use of the word "obvious." It's a sign of bias, a belief that the outcome has already been determined."
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by my "missing my own use of the term "obvious," but I don't think we disagree too much. Yes, atheism is a _belief_ that there aren't any gods. Yes, to an atheist, that belief is self-explanitory. I can't imagine how anybody could do it, but if one could come up with a logical argument for the existance of dieties, they probably wouldn't call themselves an atheist. None of this is contrary to what I was saying.
Property is theft.
Now, mainstream economists have committed many fallacies here, among them assuming that only actions pursuing profit-maximization are rational. This is such worthless non-sense that I won't discuss it any further.
On the necessarily rational nature of action, see Ludwig von Mises:
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen