Wikipedia != Authoritative?

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

Comments

surprising?

[gl4ss]

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)

Re:surprising?

[a3217055]

yes I agree, there are always going to be errors, but when there is an error in an encuclopedia it is usually fixed the next year or through a set of books that have additional information. All the information in the world is not always correct. Some of it is correct some of the time. And also it is good that people can add and remove. It is like sharing a document online, so people can read from it. So if you ever make changes and somebody used your wikki entry as a source then they can check back and see what the changes have taken place.

Re:surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm .. get a job at brittanica or encarta and try that experiment.

Once they print an edition it's out there .. never to be fixed.

This is really crappy. He only let it sit for a short time .. that's not enough time to get it fixed. Also, and this is significant.. HE TRIED TOPICS THAT WERE SHITTY. Seriously .. read his article .. it's not like he vandalized the page on current events or something .. the pages he vandalized were boring !! Topics nobody is interested in or has ever heard of. What do you expect the results to be?

Wikipedia operates with under $40,000 per year. Their funding needs to be $2 or $3 million a year ..how come foundations are not stepping up to the plate? Or, give these guys a government grant (not just US govt. other govts should help out) ..instead of funding stupid stuff.

Re:surprising?

[Directrix1]

So give them a year and not 5 days.

Re:surprising?

[Dashing Leech]

...there are always going to be errors... Some of it is correct some of the time.

The ironic thing is that the wikipedia might actually be more correct more often than normal encyclopedias. Wikipedia entries are often entered by experts in that field who have the best understanding of the subject. "Real" encyclopedia enties are written (as I understand it) by information researchers who are experts at researching information, not in the subjects of the fields they're writing about. The tradeoff is, of course, that there is no verification of expertise of the wiki writers so it's more or less a "use at your own risk".

Re:surprising?

[pHatidic]

Yes, specifically if you go to the Wikipedia page Making Fun of Britannica they have a whole list of britannica errors. Furthermore, if you look at the disclaimer on Britannica you notice that they do not guarantee any of the validity of their article contents. It is true that there are less errors per sentence in Britannica than in Wikipedia, but Britannica has been around hundreds of years. In the last month alone, according to Wikistats the English version of Wikipedia has grown from 99 million words to 107 million words, 8 million words in a single month. Wikipedia as a whole will hit the 1 million article mark between september 15th and 20th. So if you give Wikipedia just a few more years until there are articles about every major topic and the current topics are just edited again and again, the accuracy of Wikipedia will be comparable with Britannica.

Also it is worth pointing out that one should never cite sources in a paper from an encyclopedia, rather you should find the sources the encyclopedia gets its facts from and cite those. Anyone who has ever failed a paper for getting all of their facts from the encyclopedia, be it Britannica or Wikipedia, will know what I mean by this. So in this sense it doesn't even matter so much because if a Wikipedia fact isn't true then one just won't be able to find it in a primary source so citing it in a paper incorrectly won't be an issue. The problem is that teachers lie to little kids and brainwash them in thinking that an encyclopedia is an unquestionable source of all truth, when really nothing could be further from the case.

Re:surprising?

[aardvarkjoe]

Your arguing a point that the article doesn't address. His point isn't "look, I can get mistakes into wikipedia, so wikipedia is stupid!" His point is that you can't treat the wikipedia as an authoritative source, because it's far too easy to insert the mistakes. The amount of funding that wikipedia gets, how "boring" the topics are, and how long he left them up are all completely irrelevant. Either a source can be trusted, or it can't -- and wikipedia cannot.

Re:surprising?

[gl4ss]

*Either a source can be trusted, or it can't -- and wikipedia cannot.*

it's not black and white, you just need to use your own brain, like when reading a newspaper.
encarta has mistakes in it. britannica has mistakes in it. probably cia world factbook has mistakes in it. if you just use one of them on basis of very important decisions you're stupid.

Re:surprising?

[westlake]

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

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

Re:surprising?

[Grant_Watson]

I don't know how you can reconcile these two beliefs:

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

often != always

Re:surprising?

[justins]

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

one should never cite sources in a paper from an encyclopedia

Who taught you this, if not a teacher?

Re:surprising?

[rpdillon]

Using that logic, very little on the web can ever be trusted.

Hackers often change websites, accounts get hacked (Gabe Newell?), people lie in posts all the time, whole websites can be designed to mislead you...

But this shows one important thing: you don't have to be able to trust a source for it to be useful. I don't trust most of the web, but if I do research and 15 websites agree on a fact, even though I don't trust each individual website, I can trust the consensus of 15 independent websites.

This phenomenon is present in Wikipedia because there are so many folks contributing. The liklihood is that errors will be corrected over time, and that even though you cannot trust it as infalliable, it proves to be an extremely useful tool. Further, it at least has a policy on accuracy and NPOV, whereas most other internet-based sources do not, or at least do not publish one publicly.

Re:surprising?

[michael_cain]

Also it is worth pointing out that one should never cite sources in a paper from an encyclopedia, rather you should find the sources the encyclopedia gets its facts from and cite those.

From an academic perspective, Wikipedia suffers the same problem that most of the Internet suffers: the information provided has no pedigree. There is a loud debate going on these days about the high costs of publishing academic papers. One of the points that is seldom made is that printed journals provide a pedigree for the articles that is hard to forge: the article was authored by a certain person, published on a certain date, said whatever it said. Far too much of the content that is quoted from the Internet is simply untraceable. It cannot be reliably attributed to anyone, it can often be changed at will, often by someone other than the original author.

Re:surprising?

[Jester99]

Wikipedia entries are often entered by experts in that field who have the best understanding of the subject. "Real" encyclopedia enties are written (as I understand it) by information researchers who are experts at researching information, not in the subjects of the fields they're writing about.

Actually, you're not entirely correct. While researchers may write some articles for "real" encyclopedias, I know a few professors who have been contacted by Brittanica to write articles specifically related to the domain of their work/knowledge.

Re:surprising?

[LinuxInDallas]

I think the point is how do you know they are experts if there is no verification. You can't say entries are often entered by experts without some verification. Or maybe you can, depending on what your definition of "is" is. LOL.

Re:surprising?

[Eunuchswear]

Mistaking your and you're usually indicates a native speaker who never learned proper grammar.

Or, just maybe, a typo?

But, in this heated ditcussion, who gives a shit, his guard has dropped, slip the knife in:

Die, uncultured shit: you missed a character, I don't have to respond to your arguments.

(I wonder how many typo's and spealing misteaks I'm going to spot after hitting submit?)

Re:surprising?

[Zibblsnrt]

Hmm .. get a job at brittanica or encarta and try that experiment.

I'd imagine it's a little more difficult to get a job at Britannica or Encarta and try that experiment, than it is to do the same thing with Wikipedia articles. Why don't you give it a shot, lemme know how it works out? I'll wait.

People keep pointing out that anyone can contribute to Wiki articles as though it's a good thing. To me, that's its primary fault.

It's also started contaminating other sites anyway. My main interest is history, and I poke around for historical stuff online as a hobby, much as I do it offline for academic purposes. One thing I've noticed in the past year or so is that a whole lot of history info, especially for classical history, has been replaced on other sites with word-for-word copies from Wikipedia articles, some of which are absolute, total bullshit (compare with the pre-broken version.

Because of the idiot who decided to insert the incorrect information into this article, dozens of other sites not on Wiki are now carrying incorrect information that can't simply be fixed by anyone with an Internet connection. As well, that scale of error throws pretty much the rest of that section of the site into significant doubt.

-PS

Re:surprising?

[DarkSarin]

Okay, so you got one flame for this already, so I will try a more informed approach.

Freud was not correct on most of his major theories, that is a fact that most research oriented psychologists will agree on. By most, I should say, somewhere in the neighborhood of 90%. Many therapists will agree that Freud's methods of psychotherapy were not useful in facilitating a lasting recovery.

That said, he was a very intelligent man. He was a brilliant physiologist, and had a lot of very insightful things to say regarding the human condition. I cannot emphasize enough that he was very competent and intelligent.

Now, what is the real problem with Freud? The fact that so many people mistook him for a psychologist. He was, as I said, trained as physiologist, primarily studying brain disease. His pre-therapy work was wonderful. He was not a psychologist, and his later delvings into human behavior should have been treated as philosophy, not psychology.

Unfortunately, this was at a time when psychology was in its infancy, and still had a long ways to go. Today Freud would be considered a philosopher, but certainly not a research psychologist.

As for Jung, he was a student of Freud, and although he agreed on many points, he did not on others. Still, the same applies to him (in general), and his philosophy has not stood up to scrutiny.

Re:surprising?

[gordgekko]

Interesting argument. But perhaps what is more important than the absolute number of mistakes is the ratio of good content to mistakes. As long as more good content is being created per unit time than mistakes the ratio will in the limit become quite large. If some of those mistakes are fixed too, then so much the better.

Some would argue that, if anything, as the number of mistakes relative to the whole shrinks, the source of information becomes less useful because you're relying on it more and maintaining less of a cautious attitude. When you bump into one of those rare mistakes it could be more costly than an encyclopedia you used with a jaundiced eye. You integrate that faulty information without having checked it because so many times in the past accurate information you've veted has passed muster, so you no longer bother.

Re:surprising?

[Saucepan]

So why didn't you insert {{dubious}} or {{disputed}} tags after the material, note the problem on the talk page, and/or request peer review, rather than letting the information sit unchallenged until now?

I've been watching for a few months now, and Wikipedia does remarkably well once problems are brought to the attention of the community. But there are hundreds of thousands of articles, so the project relies readers like you to report when you encounter obscure pages with non-obvious accuracy problems.

Duh.

[keiferb]

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.

Sigh

[ReTay]

And how much are people paying to use the site?

Oh ya its free. And not a bad quick referance.
M

Re:Sigh

[nine-times]

Oh ya its free. And not a bad quick referance.

I don't think anyone is complaining that the Wikipedia isn't useful. But how many times on Slashdot to you see somebody say "Nope, you're wrong. Look- it's in Wikipedia!" Wikipedia is being used as an authoritative source of information, and I think it's valid to at least ask the question, "Does the lack of an formal editorial process compromise the trustworthiness of the information posted on Wikipedia?"

Honestly, I think it's the first question that came to my mind when I first heard about how Wikipedia worked. I think there are arguments for both sides, but it doesn't help to say "Oh, well, it's free, so you can't complain if it contains inaccuracies." To say you can't complain about open source products (which I'll lump Wiki in with) because "it's free" only seems to confirm that free things are of poorer quality than expensive things, which I believe is the wrong message to send. Plus, the statement seems to be aimed at quashing valuable debate. Wouldn't it be better to talk about perceived failings in the submission process in order to see if they can be fixed/improved?

Re:Sigh

[Net Spinner]

But how many times on Slashdot to you see somebody say "Nope, you're wrong. Look- it's in Wikipedia!"

Damn Skippy! There have been many times on the good ol' /. where I've said to myself: "You know, I have nothing important to say, but since I'm a karma whore, I'm going to go invent a wikipedia link to back up my unfounded, erroneous point of view and get modded insightful!"

And there you have it. I solve all my arguments here by changing wikipedia to agree with me. And don't argue, I'm always right.

Favourite funny wikipedia pages

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine is the 2pac entry by some fan boy. A sample paragraph:

Shakur had minor beef with LL Cool J, who he thought was a wannabe thug, as well as having an album produced by Puff Daddy. Shakur was a little miffed at Mobb Deep for snubbing him at a concert, but Mobb Deep apparently showed respect for Pac after his death. For some reason, Jay-Z dissed Shakur on his first album, Reasonable Doubt, and Shakur responded in kind.

I tend to find that the more academic or obscure a topic the higher the quality of the page is.

bleh

[DNS-and-BIND]

Wikipedia isn't that great. It's not comprehensive like a real dictionary, and anyone can insert bogus data and garbage up the system.

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

Re:bleh

[tntguy]

And then you made the necessary corrections, right?

not very surprising

[tero]

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.

How about another experiment?

[scovetta]

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.

Re:How about another experiment?

[mblase]

Grab an article out of a "real" encyclopedia, and compare it to the Wikipedia article. Do they factually match?

Yes, sometimes it's even word-for-word....

Re:How about another experiment?

[leonbev]

Yeah, it's only a matter of time until Wikipedia gets sued for infinging on some copyrighted materials. If someone can just cut and paste bogus information into the system, there isn't much stopping someone from cutting and pasting verbatim text from some other refrence source into it as well.

Re:How about another experiment?

[pHatidic]

"Neither Britannica, its affiliates, nor any third-party content providers or licensors makes any warranty whatsoever, including without limitation that the operation of the Site will be uninterrupted or error-free; that defects will be corrected... or as to the accuracy, reliability, availability, suitability, quality, or operation of any information, software, or service provided on or accessible from the Site or as to any information, products, or services on the Internet in any way. In addition, Britannica does not assume any responsibility or risk for your use of the Internet.

THE SITE AND ALL INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND OTHER CONTENT (INCLUDING THIRD-PARTY INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND CONTENT) INCLUDED IN OR ACCESSIBLE FROM THIS SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND (EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF TITLE AND NONINFRINGEMENT AND THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE), ALL OF WHICH BRITANNICA EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. YOUR USE OF BRITANNICA.COM IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK."

This is from the disclaimer on the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Re:How about another experiment?

[scovetta]

I think the analogy of Wikipedia:Britannica::Open-source:Commercial::Linu x:Windows serves here-- if you want to *pay* for information, you can. If you want it free, you're going to get a best-effort, which in most cases, will be good enough.

If you're only using one source for your information, however, then you're not researching correctly.

Re:How about another experiment?

[at_18]

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

Re:How about another experiment?

[jrincayc]

I have on the article Supply and demand. It is more complete and more accurate than Columbia Encyclopedia and World Book. It was roughly equivelent to Encyclopedia Britannica. Columbia Encyclopedia especially seem to be less accurate for economics articles than Wikipedia. I would recommend this experiment to anyone in an area that you are personally very knowledgeable.

And not in-depth either

[mangu]

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.

Re:And not in-depth either

[penguinoid]

You'll find a rather sketchy description, if compared to a traditional ecyclopaedia, like the Britannica.

So, what exactly are you waiting for to improve the article?
Or perhaps you simply didin't care about it that much to begin with?

Wikipedia Errors

[Silwenae]

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.

You know, when I was in school ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

... 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.

Actually...

[sw155kn1f3]

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.

Re:Oh crap

[Daniel Dvorkin]

What the hell does that mean, "too far"?

"It's weird and scary and dangerous and a threat to my job, so I'm going to condemn it." Cf. Microsoft, MPAA, RIAA, buggy-whip makers.

How is this different..

[starphish]

..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.

Re:How is this different..

[Karzz1]

The only difference here is that it can be malicious.

Articles in newspapers can be malisciously incorrect as well. One name: Jayson Blair

Re:How is this different..

[the pickle]

I read inaccurate news. I read mistakes in references. The only difference here is that it can be malicious.

...and mistakes can be corrected by anyone who knows better. This, to me, is why something like Wikipedia is so great. I don't do a lot of factual editing there, but I certainly won't hesitate to do copyediting, which I must say is rather lacking in a lot of so-called "mainstream" Internet news outlets.

p

Re:How is this different..

[pHatidic]

Actually in scientific papers there can be malicious mistakes too. If you read this Wikipedia article on Peer Review you would see that peer review can only be used to correct small mistakes, but can't actually detect outright fraud. This is why there have been so many completely falsified scientific papers that weren't found out until years later even though they were peer reviewed. In many cases wikipedia articles have more accuracy than scientific papers because of their policy of "no original research", whereby if someone posts a fact you aren't sure about then all you have to do is google it. 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.

Re:How is this different..

[Sunspire]

Take any one subject you know really really well. Look up some news articles on it in the papers, on Google News etc. You'll likely find that the news reporter gets things wrong about as often as he gets them right. Now extrapolate that to the rest of the news, to the subjects you do not know so in depth. Right...

Everything you read, be it on the Internet, in the newspapers, books etc. contains factual errors, mistakes by sloppiness and bias in many forms.

Wikipedia doesn't claim to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's a springboard into any subject, giving you a quick overview and perhaps some links to take you further. Encyclopedias can't be used as references for anything beyond grade school anyway, so why hold wikipedia to a higher standard? What it is however, is completely fascinating and the closest thing to a real hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy we're likely to get. Just don't take it too seriously.

Kuhn model of science

[davejenkins]

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.

Actually...

[BJH]

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.

But..

[Ckwop]

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.

Re:But..

[mblase]

Another straw man argument exposed for what it is

How can you call it a "straw man" when it's entirely accurate as an argument? The "stable" Wikipedia you mention does not yet exist, and therefore arguing that the article writer should have used it instead of the "bleeding edge" Wikipedia is silly.

Re:But..

[mdecarle]

I always thought Wikipedia got started when Larry at Nupedia noticed how lengthy the process of writing and evaluating an article was, and he wanted to have some results sooner than later. In the general mailing lists, he got bugged because of the non-existence of articles, when the site was already active for several months. Then the idea for an encyclopedia that everyone could write was brought up (but I'm not so sure this did result in Wikipedia). Or did I forget something?

I notice now that Nupedia no longer exists, sadly.

Exaggerated Antihype

[plasticmillion]

To me this is just another example of the "antihype" that anything popular and successful is exposed to (and not just in technology). Wikipedia is amazingly good compared to what I (and probably most people) would have expected. Is it perfect? Of course not, but the nice thing about an internet-based encyclopedia is that it's easy to double check stuff (and most important articles have plenty of external links).

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.

Re:I added an entry about myself

[BetterThanCaesar]

No, you're still there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_Coward

This whole topic is one big troll

[mentatchris]

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.

Case in point.

[jdkane]

Wikipedia has always scared me because of the trust level I cannot put into a resource that can be widely edited (even just for kicks).
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.

Re:Case in point.

[arose]

At least in Wikipedia errors can get fixed by everyone noticing them. Look at my sig (Linux Torvaldes) and say if you would like to be able to fix that page or not. Do you consider IBM to be authoritive?

Yeah

[pHatidic]

I wrote a diary with my letter to the guy who wrote this when it first came out. It is posted on kuro5hin.org, and you can read it here. Also, a good thread to read about this saga is the August wiki-list.

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.

GENERAL DISCLAIMER for your convenience

[FooAtWFU]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Mistakes in Encyclopedic References

[Noksagt]

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.

"Money Vector" is always felt upon Free Stuff

[Cryofan]

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.

The source of all Wikipedia's problem...

[FooAtWFU]

... is that it's just three years old, and people keep expecting it to be a veritable Britannica. It's not. But what I personally find quite interesting is that it's sufficiently good that people would expect it to be reliable in the first place.

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... :)

I'd disagree...

[theluckyleper]

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.

Re:I'd disagree...

[anthony_dipierro]

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.

There are a lot of problems with that. For one thing, not everyone in the world will ever use Wikipedia. So we're only talking about the proportion of people who use Wikipedia. Another problem is that it's much easier to introduce intentional errors than it is to introduce true facts. So people inserting errors have a basic advantage there. Finally, you assume that merely being honest is enough, but it's not. You have to not only be honest, but you have to be correct.

A lot of the errors on Wikipedia fall under that last category. This is especially true in the more technical categories, where there are a lot of amateurs who think they know things but are just completely wrong. It's a similar situation to a lot of the problems with Slashdot and its moderation system. The majority is not always right.

Re:Cant be Censorship

[Prior Restraint]

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

Nupedia tried to address this problem

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

How surpising, not.

[Teun]

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.

Re:Censorship

[FooAtWFU]

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

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

If you repeat a lie often enough...

[Kjella]

...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

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

[bjohnson]

Precisely.

In news reporting it's known as the "Enquirer Effect"

The National Enquirer, Matt Drudge, or Faux News reports some half-baked erroneous bullshit.

The 'legitimate' news organizations pick it up and report it from there.

A week later it's common knowledge and accepted as absolute fact that Al Gore said he "invented the Internet."

After all, it's quoted in all those news stories, isn't it?

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

[ScottGant]

There is no liberal or conservative media...it's a myth.

There is this thing called "The Media". It is like a shark. it feeds on anything and everything...including itself.

Where was the so-called "liberal" media when Clinton was going through all the sex scandal? On every channel, regardless of who it was...they were dragging out every dirty little detail about everything there was. Why? Why, ratings/money/cash.

"we got the bubble-headed bleach-blond who comes on at 5.
She can tell ya 'bout the plane crash with a gleem in her eye".

Are some outlets of this trash slanted? Sure...a little. Fox is biased toward conservatives and CNN is biased toward liberals...but not to a HUGE degree on either side. Why? If any of them air huge falsehoods, the OTHER news organizations jump all over it....more blood in the water...gotta feed that shark...gotta keep moving. So both "sides" walk a fine line...but their still both part of the same swimming shark out there.

To get to the bottom of something, you need to look at many different news, see where the "bullshit" is, filter it out and try to determine what is really going on...then double check with Reuters and the AP. But this is a lot of work and most people just sit zombie like in front of the tube waiting to be filled to the brim with fear.

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

[clifyt]

Heres one:

Fox likes to link itself to pseudointellectual think tanks. Most doing very little research, most the soapbox for a single individual. Yet, Fox lends them credence as if they were honest to gawd actual organizations that understood polling and research methods. They claim to be the smart guys, while slamming intellectism. Actually, I think a lot of these places do -- they know enough to bend things to their will:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,131174,00.ht ml

Its the war on poverty.

The article makes several claims against the dems in particular as if it were an Us vs. Them article. For instance it talks about the Dems refusing to endorse Welfare Reform. If I seem to remember correctly, the right holds the power these days and could reform it however they want. Secondly, Clinton was the first person to actively push through legislation on either side in a good many years.

Quite a few items were directly picked from talking points memos from the right and a bone is thrown here or there to make it look balanced, but all in all, anyone that wishes to remain balanced would not make it see as if there were sides to begin with that they might be associated with, but a neutral party.

I was once on the right, but much happier on the side of the wrong where the liberal news sources might be a bit tipped as well, but do so asking you to make up your own mind after hearing all the details. Yes, they encourage you to think their way, but at least they can admit there is another side of the story. The right generally shows only one side of the story and tells you to shut up if you even bring up the fact there might be another legitimate school of thought. I've *NEVER* heard the liberal media talk anyone down or tell them to shut up and still ask to be considered a legitimate journalist.

As soon as the Right goes back to being the party of fiscal conservatism, I'll probably rejoin the party.

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

[gad_zuki!]

> There is no liberal or conservative media...it's a myth.

Oh really?

Pray tell, why are Rupert Murdoch's, Mellon Scaifes's, and Rev Moon's papers/media are so far to the right they make Bob Dole blush?

Ownership bias is quite real. In other countries its very common to have a "liberal" paper and a "conservative" paper all of whom are open with their bias. At least here in the states the alternative weeklies don't shy away from the fact that they have a liberal bent, but Fox News and the Washington Times and others still play the "we're just newsmakers without an agenda" card. Which is highly disingenious and leads to more dangerous beliefs than "al gore invented the internet." How about the millions who believe Saddam had a hand in 9/11?

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

[GrouchoMarx]

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

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

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

[Grym]

Also, if the media is so biased to the left, how do you explain Fox News, Rush Limbough, Bill O'Reilly, etc. It is a well known fact, for instance, that the radio is dominated by conservatives. This is all described very humourously in Al Franken's book which I highly recommend.

Well Al Franken is an inflammatory imbicile.

Regardless, with the exception of Fox News (which I'll conceded is generally concervative), all of the media venues you speak of openly state that they are opinion pieces.

And that's the real issue here. It's not that people are expected to limit their speech to the point of mediocracy. That's why we have the first amendment. I don't think anybody would have a problem with Dan Rather telling us his political views in an independently published book, but what I would have a problem with is him sneaking said beliefs in what is supposed to be an objective forum like broadcast Journalism.

I think the real problem is large groups of people, on both sides, (but I believe MORE on the liberal side) think that they are enlightened. That they know what's best for the people, even if the people can't see that for themselves. So instead of laying out the facts and letting people decide for themselves, they skew support for their views through what basically amounts to trickery.

-Grym

What a methodology!

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:I added an entry about myself

[FooAtWFU]

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

Re:You forgot to measure page hits....

[boa13]

Worse than that, he writes:

Every change was in Wikipedia for at least 20 hours, and the longest was in for five days.

and then (emphasis mine):

I was disappointed that all my changes in Wikipedia went unchallenged. Surely a week was plenty of time, especially since fresh changes tend to get more scrutiny than old ones.

How is five days "a week"? How are twenty hours "a week"? It looks like this guy had a nice idea, but was so impatient to tell the world that he ruined the experiment.

Encyclopaedia bias

[j.leidner]

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.

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

Re:I added an entry about myself

[FooAtWFU]

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

And a tomato makes a bad hammer.....

[GuyFawkes]

from merriam webster online
Main Entry: encyclopedia
Variant(s): also encyclopaedia /in-"sI-kl&-'pE-dE-&/
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,

WikiProject for Fact and Reference Checking

[Famatra]

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

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

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

Re:WikiProject for Fact and Reference Checking

[jilles]

In fact, unlike traditional encyclopedias, wikipedia has both the manpower (all users, anyone who cares to contribute) and the room to provide exhaustive information.

Traditional encyclopedias are constrained in the amount of writers they can afford, the amount of research they can do and the amount of paper available for a single article. In a time where traditional encyclopedias are losing marketshare (thanks to internet, cdroms and other sources of information), cost savings are likely to put pressure on all three factors.

Wikipedia is a cumulative effort. If an article is not good, it can be fixed. If there are multiple views/interpretations on a topic, there is room to highlight both sides of the debate.

The longer the process goes on the better it becomes. Of course malicious people can insert information but sooner or later people will find out and fix it. You can put screening processes and peer reviews on wikipedia just like you can on a traditional encyclopedia.

Probably wikipedia's largest problem is not the process but the fact that it is accumulating information much faster than all other encyclopedias.

Now this guy has done something clever. He has made some small changes that would pass a first glance unless you already knew the facts. The problem is that he jumped to the wrong conclusion and never actually wondered how many people ever saw the changes. Since he only left the changes for 20 hours to max 5 days (!) and the articles do not exactly qualify as hot information, probably noone or at most a handful of people read the article. The changes obviously passed the vandalism procedures (for e.g. excessive changes in short periods of time) and nobody bothered to verify the information right away. The latter is actually the whole point of criticism. Wikipedia cannot be authorative because not all information is verified right away.

However, he misses the point. If brittanica has a mistake you might be tempted to write to the editor and maybe in a next edition it would be fixed. But most people probably don't. If you spot an error in wikipedia, you can just fix it. The more articles are referred to, the more authorative and informative they become. Especially the 'hot' articles on politics, famous people, etc are likely to be read, scrutinized and edited very often. Messing up 'empuries' is easy but try inserting false data under 'George Bush' and see how quickly that is corrected.

Re:WikiProject for Fact and Reference Checking

[Brandybuck]

However, he misses the point.

No, you Wikipedia disciples have missed the point. RANDOM ANONYMOUS INEXPERT people can alter the information in the "encyclopedia" at any time.

There is no Free or Open Source Software project that does this. They all have gatekeepers of some kind. Can you imagine how horrible the Linux kernel would be if random users could check in code without asking? What if random users with barely two weeks into an introductory programming class decided to hack on GNOME or KDE? Of course most errors (but not all) won't be subsequently pushed out to the rest of the users, because the compiler or the testers will throw them out. But Wikipedia isn't software. Mistakes in the information WILL get pushed out to the other users.

I don't expect my authoritative sources to be error free, but I do expect them to be authoritative. You cannot do that without restricting membership to authoritative sources.

Please be kind - message from Jimbo

[jwales]

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

Re:Censorship

[ravenspear]

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.

Not exactly a fair experiment...

[petra13]

Not to troll, I'm not going to argue that one needn't verify any information that one gets from Wikipedia, but here I quote from the procedure of the "experiment":

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.

Conjecture: time to correct = 1/severity

[poszi]

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?

Watched like a hawk...

[theluckyleper]

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.

From Wikipedia:Copyrights. . .

[FooAtWFU]

(links removed for your inconvenience): If you are the owner of content that is being used on Wikipedia without your permission, then you may request the page be immediately removed from Wikipedia by following this link [link]. You can also contact our Designated agent [link] to have it permanently removed, but it may take up to a week for the page to be deleted that way (you may also blank the page but the text will still be in the page history). Either way, we will, of course, need some evidence to support your claim of ownership.

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).

Re:Censorship

[FooAtWFU]

Perhaps NPOV is unattainable. That doesn't mean you should just give up without trying.

Not a good test

[markus_baertschi]

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

Try this, then

[theluckyleper]

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.

Re:I added an entry about myself

[Crick]

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?

False; SilentChris' edits were PoV and bad.

[Rolloffle]

See the entry's talk page and you'll see that the entry is perfectly valid and SilentChris' edits devalued its encyclopaedic integrity.

oh please

[mnemonic_]

(I'm Xmnemonic on Wikipedia.)

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

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

popularity contest for certain points of view.

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

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

Re:oh please

[Eunuchswear]

if someone's vandalized a page, and someone else needs the page for research of some sort, and is utterly ignorant about the topic at hand, he'll write down what's on the screen

And this is different from the Encyclopoedia Brittanica how? It's just a question of where you get your biased rubbish. Anyone who relies on one source deserves what they get.

Re:oh please

[iamacat]

At the time Copernicus discovered that Earth spins around the Sun, it was deffinitely not the popular opinion. I guess he wouldn't be able to turn to wiki for help. An encyclopedia is supposed to tell one accurate facts, not to help the majority of readers validate their own false beliefs. I see horrors ahead for a society where people get their important beliefs from google, slashdot or wiki.

Re:oh please

[diesterne]

You changed it [..]

That's one point why I don't like Wikipedia and it's also the cause of the problems mentioned in the article as well as in the comments in this thread - it looks too much like a real encyclopedia because there is only one article per keyword/topic, which is not (or shouldn't be) contradictory. You can't express a point of view differing from the opinion of the mass or the "average" opinion. Only one of the reasons why I prefer multiple articles per keyword as well as global moderation like on Everything2.. (Combining the two systems would be the best, but the user system of E2 is probably too oppositional to the open wiki concept (The user system being vital for useful and fair moderation is another point..))

Re:oh please

[drsquare]

The difference is, someone from the middle of nowhere with no qualifications, no references, no experience and barely any knowledge of the language, can't just go and write something in the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Another thing I thought of w.r.t wikipedia, if it becomes valid as a source of citations like a proper encyclopedia, what's to stop someone writing in what they want to prove, citing the article they've just written, and using it to 'prove' what they asserted? By the time someone has fixed the vandalism, they've already cited it, and it's as valid a citation as any.

Re:oh please

[swillden]

At the time Copernicus discovered that Earth spins around the Sun, it was deffinitely not the popular opinion. I guess he wouldn't be able to turn to wiki for help

Absolutely not. Copernicus would have been completely out of luck if he'd tried to get his ideas into Wikipedia, or Brittanica, or any encyclopedia.

The purpose of an encyclopedia is to publish a comprehensive summary of widely-accepted facts, not new theory or new results. Research journals are the right place for that. This is exactly why WP has a policy against the inclusion of any original work.

Re:oh please

[iamacat]

So if someone has been recently proven wrong but is still a misconception of most people, you would include the old version into Brintannica? Like "Iraq is a country with lots of WMDs".

MOD PARENT SIDEWAYS

[Anonymous Coward]

SilentChris is a kuro5hin.org troll. trying to troll the trolls and failing it hard.

It needs more eyes... and hands

[ScottSpeaks!]

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.

Re:Censorship

[bcrowell]

Perhaps NPOV is unattainable. That doesn't mean you should just give up without trying.
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.

Re:I added an entry about myself

[Zebra_X]

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.

Experiment Not Long Enough . . .

[Dausha]

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.

Math Nerd Arise!

[mazarin5]

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)

Part of the Problem

[nial-in-a-box]

I think a big part of the problem has to do with the diversity and obscurity of the information available. Yes, you might spend some time reading about things you already know something about, but often the idea behind research is to learn new things. Therefore, it's hard for bogus material to be found, especially if it at least sounds reasonable.

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.

Re:Part of the Problem

[multimed]

And maybe that's why many of us have a great deal of contempt for some of academia. The fact that there is such snobbery as to what is an "accepted source" and what is not is tiresome. You can't on the one hand say that you're placing value on critical thinking and on the other categorically reject a certain source. If you're talking about factual information, the sort of things where an encyclopedia type of source applies, then the only issue is whether they're correct or not. If some one chooses to use Wikipedia as a reference, and the facts references are wrong, then that's the issue. If the facts referencing Wikipedia (or whatever) are indeed correct then the prof should not be able to downgrade on that portion of the paper. But to presuppose that either the student didn't verify with other sources as well (which may or may not be true) or that there are certain other references that are beyond reproach is just arrogant.

Not a good experiment...

[crazy blade]

I would like to see an experiment (with cooperation from Wiki) where:

1. The number of times the incorrect article was viewed is logged.
2. The area (based on IP?) from which potential corrections came from.

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!

Appeal to Authority Fallacy

[divisionbyzero]

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.

The Syracuse Post-Standard

[daveho]

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.

Bad experiment

[Bastian]

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.

The Horror

[PingPongBoy]

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.

Re:The Horror

[pVoid]

You could say the same thing about the 'millions' of people reading the printed version of Encarta's mistake. Imagine also the millions upon millions of people who will continue reading that because nobody buys a new encarta every year.

More than the timespan of a mistake, IMO the bigger problem is the sheer number of mistakes there can be at any one given moment. Making the whole thing lose credibility.

Re:The Horror

[Futurepower(R)]

" Think of all the damage done by the millions of people reacting to false information."

I have found Encyclopedia Brittanica to be extremely and subtly destructive. The short entry for Nobel prize winner Barbara McClintock gave no idea that her scientific articles spanned a width of 80 feet when put together. I discovered that only after a web search. Her work is still important to molecular biologists. Reading EB gave no impression of her importance.

The paper version of Encyclopedia Brittanica is limited by how much the executives of the company want to spend on paper. They probably say something like this to writers: "Give us 500 words on Barbara McClintock."

Wikipedia has the advantage of being written by enthusiasts.

--
24 wars since WW2: Creating fear so rich people can profit.

Re:The Horror

[shellbeach]

I have found Encyclopedia Brittanica to be extremely and subtly destructive. The short entry for Nobel prize winner Barbara McClintock gave no idea that her scientific articles spanned a width of 80 feet when put together.

So all encyclopaedia articles on famous scientists should include a note as to how many papers they've published, measured in feet-when-put-together (that well known SI unit)??

I'll give you a hint: (volume of papers == importance of author) only where university administrators are concerned. Generally, quantity != quality. (Not that I'm deriding McClintock, mind you, only your method for judging her scientific impact :)

Wikipedia has the advantage of being written by enthusiasts.

And enthusiasts are always highly impartial and never indulge in polemics, so they're by far the best qualified ...

Re:The Horror

[Guppy06]

"Wikipedia has the advantage of being written by enthusiasts."

That can be a disadvantage. Whoever wrote most of the "History" section of the article on the Federal Reserve was certainly enthusiastic, but I wouldn't exactly call it useful or informative.

Re:Your sig

[penguinoid]

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.

Peer Review

[Jonathan]

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.

Re:Peer Review

[westlake]

Freud by no means confined his writing to books. Sigmund Freud Bibliography

Average Trustworthiness

[invisintl]

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!

Re:Democratic, and you get as many votes as you wa

[Crick]

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.

Re:Your sig

[unapersson]

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.

people arent skeptical enough

[gad_zuki!]

>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.

Re:people arent skeptical enough

[bencvt]

The problem here is cultural and wikipedia is the symptom. People, in general, are not skeptical enough.

Not quite. Wikipedia is not the symptom, it's an attempt at a cure. An increasing number of Wikipedians -- especially among the frequent contributors -- insist on citing verifiable sources in all articles. It is true that the average Joe visiting Wikipedia is not be skeptical enough. However, the average Wikipedian (i.e., a long-term contributor) possesses a healthy skepticism and respect for the truth.

Article writers who, desperately wanting to appear clever to their readers, encourage "experimenting" by intentionally making bad edits aren't helping matters. Instead of advocating vandalism, why not encourage readers to become full-fledged, healthily skeptical Wikipedians?

Re:people arent skeptical enough

[TGK]

This is obviously getting off the path of enlightened discussion of Wikipedia, but since we're on the topic let me respond. I'll put this as simply as possible so there can be no possible misunderstanding.

The following are my personal positions and (mostly) the positions of the left and the democratic party as a whole.

1 - Saddam Hussein is a bad man.
2 - The world is likely a better place now that Saddam is out of power.
3 - Iraq did not, at the time of invasion, present any form of clear and present danger to the United States.
4 - Iraq did not, at time of invasion, possess weapons of mass destruction
5 - The United States invaded Iraq under the pretext that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction and that these weapons constituted a clear and present danger to the United States.
6 - Since these weapons did not exist and the threat was therefore not present, the invasion was under false pretexts.
7 - Taking your country to war on false pretexts is a bad thing
8 - George W. Bush took the country to war on false pretexts.

Now.... make sure you read and understand all of the above points. I'm a liberal, I support our troops. I know we can't just leave Iraq right now. I think the world is a better place now that Saddam is behind bars. I'm glad (after the fact) that we removed him from power. I'd have been a lot happier about it if the President hadn't deceived the public to get there.

Aids to judging the trustworthiness of an article

[JimLane]

Every article on Wikipedia has an associated Talk page. To go there, click on "Discuss this page" to the left of the article (blue link if someone has discussed the article, red if you'll be the first). You can post your own comments or queries. More to the point, you can see what others have said. There may be a debate raging about a particular assertion, and you can read both sides.

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.

Re:Your sig

[agbinfo]

..., except that I call undecidedness about gods agnosticism while you call it atheism.

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.

peer review doesn't always work

[dh003i]

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.

Re:Your sig

[severoon]

I regard atheism as a religious belief that there is no god.

Atheism cannot be a "religious" stance by definition:

religious - 1. Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity.

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 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.

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:

Someone who will disregard any possibility of there being a god, even if he were given a logical proof that a god must exist.

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

accuracy depends on field

[belmolis]

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.

Re:One way around it...

[Crick]

I think that's a good idea... the commentary I imagine would act as a let-off valve for the sort of opinionated discourse that doesn't really belong in the "factual" part of the document and by limited the size you constrain its influence. However, I can see two problems with this:

a) People would then begin to focus on the controversial commentary rather than the content and this could simply turn Wikipedia into another rant site.

b) The arguments would simply shift to what constitutes commentary and real content. After all, the "entry despots" already consider their biased opinions to be fact, not commentary.

c) What happens when you use up the quota in the commentary space? Does new commentary simply "bump" the old commentary, or does the first contributor get first say? I can see problems with both approaches.

Re:Your sig

[mefus]

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.

Re:Your sig

[severoon]

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

Re:I added an entry about myself

[chickenmonger]

And once again, the strength of Wikipedia shines on. In the linked article, the word "subpoena" was misspelled. It is no longer misspelled.

Many Sources of Error

[airship]

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.

DON'T!!!

[4Lorn]

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.

Better not to know than to have wrong info

[elgatozorbas]

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

um... what?

[foreverdisillusioned]

Dude, lay off the thesaurus for a while. I'm serious.

And yes, IAAEM (English Major.)

Re:Your sig

[bladernr]

Can you prove there are no gods?

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)

Re:Your sig

[bladernr]

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'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?

How do you deal with conflicts?

[mnmn]

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.

Wikipedia isn't a problem, people are just morons

[aussie_a]

ANYONE who takes into account only 1 source is a moron, unless they don't truly care about the accuracy (for example I read the article you posted, and I don't care about it, but when I was studying the history of the internet I read several sources).

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

(Unfortunately many were damaged or destroyed when someone - most likely Thuthmose III - tried to erase her name and image from every monument that may have had her name.)

Though this seems a little drastic, there was obviously bitter feelings against Hatshepsut.

I would say Wikiepdia is more authoritive on this subject as it says

The traditional belief among historians is that Thutmose III was responsible; however, researchers such as Charles Nims? and Peter Dorman? have examined these erasures and found that those which can be dated were done after year 42 of Thutmose's reign. As with many detail about Hatshepsut, historians have opposing views on who defaced her monuments.

(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).

Re:Your sig

[JVert]

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.

Re:Your sig

[Aussie]

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.

OT: 'Nail me to a cross test'?

[spaceturtle]

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.

Re:It's so simple

[CaptainAvatar]

The two are irrevocably intertwined.

Well, that's your opinion - but I'm somebody working at the coalface of history, and I don't see it. (Intertwined? Sure, sometimes. Irrevocably? Not in the least.) You haven't demonstrated anything other than the most superficial knowledge of the way history is actually done, so I'm not moved by such bland assertions. (Feel free to prove me wrong on that point, BTW.)

I fail to see how more details can come to light.

Well, of course they can - but again, this just shows you don't understand anything about how history is done. Do you think the US government, for example, conducts all of its discussions in public? It's my impression that they do not. "Details" of those discussions will eventually come to light, and may prove illuminating. Or not.

From which biased historians will pick elements that fit their pre-conceived view of events, and print millions of copies of books, with aid from their national governments, dwarfing and ridiculing information produced by anyone of contrary oppinion. That is the way it works.

That statement alone tells me you have had no contact with academic history. Very, very, very few academic historians sell (or even print) millions of books. They are ecstatic if they ever sell thousands of books. The rest of your statement is just rubbish. Sorry, you're talking through your hat. But I guess there is a reason why you chose the nick IgnoramusMaximus - why let knowledge get in the way of a good argument, hey?