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Wikipedia != Authoritative?
Frozen North writes "Recently, this article in the Syracuse Post-Standard caused a stir by dismissing Wikipedia as an authoritative source, and even suggesting that it was a little deceptive by looking too much like a "real" encyclopedia. Techdirt suggested an experiment: insert bogus information into Wikipedia, and see how long it takes for the mistake to be removed. Well, I did that experiment, and the results weren't good: five errors inserted over five days, all of which lasted until I removed them myself at the end of the experiment."
why would you keep it surprising? it's a website everyone can submit to, you should treat it like websites you don't trust.
that doesn't mean they're not good for finding information however, you just have to check it from somewhere else as well(which is easier if you know what you should check too).
(real encyclopedias have errors in them too sometimes, encarta as one)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Seriously... do you believe everything you read on the internet?
It's a publicly editable encyclopedia. By now, people should realize that there are many kiddies out there who have nothing better to do than to screw with others.
And how much are people paying to use the site?
Oh ya its free. And not a bad quick referance.
M
Worse, it's subject to the biases of whoever writes the article. I've seen some pretty bad stuff, horribly biased, passed off as a real encyclopedia author. It also sucks that people around here tend to insert Wikipedia links, thus inferring that they're somehow authoritative in any way. They're not.
Wikipedia != encyclopedia.
Wikipedia == blog
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Ok, I can imagine this post will be redundant in about 5 seconds, but why on earth would you consider a publicly editable web encyclopedia to be authorative in the first place? This is the Internet, not all you read is true.
Grab an article out of a "real" encyclopedia, and compare it to the Wikipedia article. Do they factually match?
I would be very interested in the results.
Oftentimes, Wikipedia articles are updates the same day that events happen. This is one advantage over *any* "real" encyclopedia.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
If you try looking for something that isn't directly related to technology the information is sparse. Try, for instance, "permian period". You'll find a rather sketchy description, if compared to a traditional ecyclopaedia, like the Britannica.
I remember seeing this story originally on Boing Boing, and the author, Frozen North, leaves some facts out that his site covers. However, his submission is a bit of flamebait.
Alex Halavais did the same experiment, changing 13 things, and all of those were changed. He did most of them over the course of the same day from the same IP, so they got caught.
Wikipedia is a tool, nothing more. If you believe everything you read on the internet, well, you get it.
... I was taught by teachers and librarians not to rely on the printed encyclopedia (the only we kind we had back then, you young whippersnappers!) as an authoritative source, since all it contained, by its nature, was summary data which was easily outdated. I remember one teacher in high school even telling the class that anyone who cited an encyclopedia article in a paper would get an F. A bit drastic, maybe, but it got the point across: an encyclopedia is not supposed to be the be-all and end-all of research. It's a place to get a quick idea of a subject and ideas on how to learn more, a starting point for research in depth. In this role, Wikipedia performs admirably.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
What the hell does that mean, "too far"?
"It's weird and scary and dangerous and a threat to my job, so I'm going to condemn it." Cf. Microsoft, MPAA, RIAA, buggy-whip makers.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
..than any other news or reference source?
I read inaccurate news. I read mistakes in references. The only difference here is that it can be malicious.
I'm sure that just like every other reference sourc Wikpedia isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn cool.
At least it doesn't have a political stance like a news source does, by endorsing a point of view, or a candidate. That worries me more than some prankster inserting bad data.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
The scientific philosopher Thomas Kuhn put forth a model of "scientific progress" where-- simply put-- once you get enough people to accept a theory as "true", it becomes the baseline for truth. The most common example of this is the slow progressive adaption of Newtonian Physics, and then of Einstein's Relativity: doubters are in abundance, until they are won over to the new paradigm.
WIkipedia, IMHO, is the epitomy of that concept: if you get enough people on the Internet to write a common text, and go to great lengths to democratize the process, then you will get the generally accepted "truth". Even scam busters like Snopes often resort to the line of reasoning "this sounds too much like an urban myth, therefore it's an urbam myth" variant on the same theme.
Don't get me wrong-- I love the WIkipedia. In my book, it's enough truth to get you through the day, and that's all I really need 98% of the time.
davejenkins.com |
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.
No, you're still there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_Coward
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
If you'll grant that there are more honest people than asshats in the world, then over long periods of time, the wiki will tend towards authoritativeness as intentional errors are weeded out. The majority of edits will be valuable.
Or perhaps you're more pessimistic than I am, with regard to human nature.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
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.
You also say you add "perspective". If it's your perspective on the matter rather than some notable perspective, you may have run afoul of the no-original-research policy.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
...the problem is, if websites start using Wikipedia as their source, you suddenly have bogus information backed up by "semi-legitimate" websites. Suddenly it starts seeming rather plausible, particularly if it is the kind of information you wouldn't normally expect to find in a standard encyclopedia. Basicly, while not verified by a proper source, it would go unquestioned. And then often taken for truth.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The tester introduced five subtle errors over five days in a database with over a million entries and because they weren't corrected in time periods of between 20 hours and five days, concludes "it would be very easy for subtle mistakes to sneak into Wikipedia, and go a very long time without being corrected." Wow.
A more accurate test, it would seem to me, would be to take articles of varying importance and, in fact, check the facts. (While you're at it, do the same for analogous articles in, say, Britannica.) The one problem with this is that checking facts is a very intense process, if you're serious about it.
Without having gone through this process, it would appear hard to say whether traditional publishers are any better at it than the volunteers who contribute to Wikipedia, except that over the past few years, I've grown to be as skeptical of traditional "authoritative" sources as I am of the morning newsprint.
I've worked in the publishing industry, and in my opinion, a number of publishers considered "authoritative" are living off the inertia of a time when sharp, intelligent people were cheap to hire, and one could afford to have encyclopedias checked by "armies" of worker bees.
Cheers...
No, Wikipedia has an extremely strict NPOV article. Besides, the GNAA article is useful for attracting trolls, lest they do damage elsewhere. Wikipedia is not paper. It can live with an article on the GNAA, or 150 articles on Pokemon, and survive just fine.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I think you violated the No Original Research policy and the "Auto-biography policy.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
from merriam webster online /in-"sI-kl&-'pE-dE-&/
Main Entry: encyclopedia
Variant(s): also encyclopaedia
Function: noun
Etymology: Medieval Latin encyclopaedia course of general education, from Greek enkyklios + paideia education, child rearing, from paid-, pais child -- more at FEW
: a work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge usually in articles arranged alphabetically often by subject
Britannica always knew their (traditional, dead tree) encyclopedia was aimed at kids, which is why it was always sold to parents AS A RESOURCE FOR THEIR CHILDREN.
The real problem here is using the same word, encyclopedia, to describe three utterly different things...
a/ traditional dead tree encyclopedia
b/ electronic (hyperlinked) encyclopedia on read only media
c/ wikipedia
Traditional dead tree stuff was of course read only, and absolute accuracy depended on many things, including cultural background and editorial integrity, as well as actual facts (where said facts were ascertainable) for example the traditional dead tree encyclopedias (that were all there was when I was attending school) would talk about a Christopher Columbus discovering America for our (English) Queen... no mention of him actually hailing from a smelly mediterrenean port or indeed Culumbia (or later New Amsterdam, etc (NY to you young punks)) and any entries about the East India Company will have similar cultural and editorial bias, non mention whatsoever will be made of the facts, that our (English) early trade envoy's gifts and personal manners were treated with richly deserved scorn... the silk brocade wearing maharaji using the proferred gifts of fine english tweed as animal blankets.
Being read only media, and being "authoritative" these complete fallacies presented as impartial facts.
Electronic encyclopedia such as Encarta are similarly read only, and similarly in the throes of cultural and editorial filtering, laid on top of any basic factual errors (such as the location of the normal locker observatory, to quote something close to home)
Wikipedia is completely different, it is not read only, it is not hampered by editorial policies or cultural prejudices.
Sure, this means assholes are free to enter bullshit as fact, but in just the same fashion as we are free to spoof an IP address or send out forged SYN packets, only the pond scum does it. Of course the pond scum will have every exuse in the book ranging from "I'm only doing it to test how good this is." to "Serves them right for not being as leet as me." however the underlying fact is the same, it is pond scum behaviour.
Pond scum behaviour is an inevitable part of the internet, it is never going to be stopped and it never should be attempted, because the co-operation of the sensible majority (especially the sensible majority with some real clout like sysadmins) have enough momentum and enough existing weapons of mass co-operation (eg usenet death threats for maladministered nntp servers) to keep the pond scum in the place that they themselves elect to live.
To blame wikipedia because some pond scum has the ability to make erroneous entries that are uncorrected in five whole days (wow, encarta still has errors that are fucking years old) in a FREE FUCKING RESOURCE is directly akin to blaming Tim B-L, Scott N, and the INN nntp server coding crew for usenet spam.
In short, such accusations are ONLY EVER MADE BY THE POND SCUM THEMSELVES.
There is of course a direct parallel to the rules of spammers (subscribe to the usenet abuse groups nanae etc if you don't know what I mean) which are
http://bruce.pennypacker.org/spamrules.html
No, the real test of the validity of Wikipedia is to choose a hot potato and compare the content with the "respected" outlets such as encarta and britannica, and see which one is actually living up to the TRUE ideal of an ENCYCLOpedia, which is to EDUCATE,
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Wikipedia is currently working to reference all the facts on it. There is a project set up to do it also here Fact and Reference Check. Here is a quote:
There isn't any reason why every fact couldn't be referenced making Wikipedia one of the most authoritative sources of information ever created.
The entire Wikipedia model depends on trust and goodwill. If you vandalize wikipedia, then someone will clean up after you. But it's still rude, even for an "experiment".
A Wikipedian put it this way the other day: In my neighborhood, people make a habit of picking up the trash. Please don't come and litter just to see if someone will pick it up.
So you know, like, be cool, huh?
WikiLove,
Jimbo Wales
Wikia
I've contributed to a few wikis (including my own, of course), and I can tell you from experience that people who author pages tend to watch them like hawks for edits. That's why Mediawiki provides the "Watch Pages" feature, afterall.
But I agree with what you said... if the wiki is considered unauthoritative, then it is more likely that people will scrutinize and correct the content. But the problem is that eventually this behaviour will result in the belief that the wiki is authoritative. I guess the best thing to do is to continuously raise this issue in order to provoke people to be discerning with respect to the wiki content.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
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?
(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.
HAHAHA - dude, what about whole countries that distribute history books that are written to conform to the ruling parties doctrines?
This is to be expected.
I only recently started tinkering with the Wikipedia, and in a few places found errors. Naturally, I fixed those. I contend that the experiment was of too brief a duration, or the errors introduced were obscure.
The success of the Wikipedia is that it is possible to correct errors when they are identified by whomever found the error. This is a great strength over closed encyclopedia.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Think of all the damage done by the millions of people reacting to false information.
Then again, if Wikipedia did not exist, think of all the damage done by millions of people lacking information.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
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.
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.
Theists always say this and it is complete and utter tripe. It's in the basic definition: atheism. It's not a belief in 0 gods, it is a lack of belief in gods. Theists have a great difficulty in understanding the difference.
You can't accept that people don't have this belief, so try and make the lack of it a belief in itself which is absurd.
You don't need a belief system to not believe in something. Otherwise you'd need a special religion for each non-existant thing, i.e. the non-tooth fairy believers religion, the non-santa claus believers religion.
Just because lots of theists find it difficult to wrap their heads around the concept of not needing to believe in anything, they find a need to fit everything into a neat little belief box. As though they're embarrassed about having a belief system while an atheist doesn't.
>it's not black and white, you just need to use your own brain
Agreed, but the lack of a formal registration system and dependence on volunteers is going to hurt this project as it becomes more complex and more popular. I don't think the "open wiki" model scales so well as A LOT of wiki articles are full of disinformation and bias. Granted, most aren't, but there is a strong US-centric bias and some of us who have corrected disinformation only to see it reappear because of the citation of false facts makes me, at least, give up on contributing.
That said, the best advice is the line you just gave: always be skeptical about your sources. I think this is a postmodern idea, as this whole debate focuses on the assumption that britanica et al are infailable when in reality they have to deal with the exact same problems the wiki people have to deal with.
>like when reading a newspaper.
I would go as far as saying that people don't use their brain with the media. How many Americans still believe between the fictional connection between Saddam and 9/11?
The problem here is cultural and wikipedia is the symptom. People, in general, are not skeptical enough. There is way too much trust (this also applies to politics, religion, etc). Wiki readers know they are getting into something they can't trust unlike old media. The real catch (the real issue) is that old media is just as untrustworthy, if not more so because of ownership bias and other factors.
Particularly in the social sciences -- such as economics -- peer review has been a poor maintainer of quality. In the social sciences, pro-Statist ideas dominate, while free-market ideas are systematically selected against (this is not a conspiracy, but it is simply a natural outcome of the way the system is set up, with State-funding etc). However, the problem isn't so severe in the natural sciences, where the issue of pro-State vs. free-market is marginal.
I agree, however, that Wikipedia has a better model.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Atheism cannot be a "religious" stance by definition:
No god or deity = not religious. It could be a state of belief, as opposed to a state of concept or idea (the chief difference between ideas and beliefs is that ideas change according to new empirical evidence, beliefs do not), but your attempt to equivocate the atheistic stance by purely semantic means does nothing to enhance the debate...it only muddies the waters of the debate.
I fully understand what you're saying here, but the definition I provided above clearly says that the set of deities must include at least one. Therefore your own statement here shows the fallacy of engaging in a semantic argument--you weren't able to write a short post without contradicting yourself.
I point this out because it's so easy to discuss philosohpical topics such as these and descend into an uninteresting semantic debate about what we ought to call things rather than what things are. If you reply to this post and insist that you're going to change the definition of the term religious or atheist to suit your needs, that does nothing to convince others of your point; though they may even choose to adopt your non-standard definitions, there's no way of ascertaining whether they've grasped your underlying point. The hope in most semantic attacks is that the change in wording will simply find its way into the subtext of future conversations and change people's minds that way. Sort of an underhanded approach, which is why I personally detest such attacks by language. Political correctness is a great example of what I'm talking about.
So, I'll address the point underlying all your wordplay...that might get us somewhere. Is it possible, do you think, that atheists might be divided into two categories: those that hold atheism as an idea and those that hold it as a belief? The idea atheists might very well hold that there is no god, but this is not incontrovertible fact...much in the way one "believes" in a scientific theory. For instance, I "believe" in Newton's model of gravity--but only insofar as it has been shown to correspond with nature. Should I need to move into the realm addressed by General Relativity, then I would not "believe" in Newton's model for that purpose. Do I think that Einstein's model is "true"? Well, no, of course not...the model hasn't shown that it corresponds exactly to reality in every situation (I'm not sure how it could meet such a high standard, either).
So, one might be atheistic in this sense. A subtle difference between a scientific theory and holding atheism in the same way, however, exists and must be addressed. And this difference is embodied by your statement:
This statement is absurd. It is silly to judge what someone would do or think in the presence of a condition that is simply impossible. In this case, "if he were given a logical proof that a god must exist" is the impossible condition. No one who has done any study of philosophy or religion would accept this as something that could actually come to pass--in other words, it is not in the set of things that could occur in this universe.
So, pinning your argument that atheism is a belief system much like religion on this statement is a major flaw in your reasoning. I might say your belief that hippogriffs do not exist is flawed because you are so prej
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
And once again, the strength of Wikipedia shines on. In the linked article, the word "subpoena" was misspelled. It is no longer misspelled.
There is no such thing as a "definitive" source of information, for several good reasons:
(1) History is written by the winners, so the only window we have into the past is often from the perspective of the victors. Whether or not history is true as we believe it to be is unproven and unprovable.
(2) Much of our knowledge is incomplete. The gaps are filled in with speculation or theory. New information is discovered and new theories are formed continually.
(3) Everyone is biased. In a very real way, each of us lives in his own world, with his own perspective, biases, and beliefs. So what is intrinsically "true" to one can be just as completely "false" to another.
(4) There are whole areas of knowledge about which we are completely ignorant. For example, before the 20th century, "quantum mechanics" was a completely unknown, completely unanticipated field of inquiry, one which has had totally unexpected consequences in many other areas.
(5) People often lie just to improve their status. There are many examples of accepted biographies (even autobiographies) being turned on their heads by later fact-checking or contradictory accounts.
(6) Experts often disagree about the causes or significance of data, especially experimental data. Contradictory theories may co-exist for decades before a majority agrees on one, and even then a vocal minority holding a completely opposing view may persist for many years, maybe even forever.
In a nutshell, most of what we call "knowledge" is simply a majority consensus about what constitutes "reality". Real, concrete "truths" are few and far between. The best we can sometimes hope for are "rules of thumb" that work well enough to get us through each day without being eaten or run over.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Dude, lay off the thesaurus for a while. I'm serious.
And yes, IAAEM (English Major.)