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Wikipedia Criticised by Its Co-founder
wikinerd writes "Wikipedia is under criticism by its co-founder Larry Sanger who has left the project. He warns of a possible future fork due to Wikipedia's Anti-Elitism and he presents his view on Wikipedia's (lack of) reliability. New wikis on various subjects have already emerged, with some of them being complete forks of Wikipedia. Critical articles on Wikipedia are also being published by other sources."
A good example is this article, which has a section biased towards the separates Tamil Tiger guerrillas. Compare it with this article on CNN.
Thank you for so neatly summing up the problem in what appears to be one of the first posts. I've read several articles over the last while on wiki that contained a paragraph or two in them that I just simply cringed at because the author didn't really know what the heck they were talking about.
I seem to remember a story not long back
in which the former head of Encyclopedia Brittanica criticized it for that very reason.
It is in danger of becoming just another set of web pages which may or may not be opinion. The fact that its co-founder is pointing this out as well says a lot.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ummmm... this is how wikis work. When you post something, they automatically link words that have wiki pages defined for them within the same wiki. So if you see a word linked, it is to another wiki page.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I often find that most of the major articles have one or two hardcore guys with an agenda who "monitor" all the contributions everyone else puts in. For instance, the page on rape had a section called "Rape and Sexual Torture" and talked about societies where rape is tolerated and accepted as a government function. Then the link at the end was "Abu Ghraib prison scandal."
While Abu Ghraib is definitely an abuse situation, there were no cases of rape involved, and it's not standard U.S. policy to rape people. U.S. society doesn't view it as a viable, standard policy. Based strictly on the wording of the section, the link didn't apply.
Well, anyway, I changed the link to something clearly more pertinent (in my mind)--"Human rights in Saddam's Iraq." The Saddam page specifically describes how rape was used against political dissidents and citizens, just as the section on the rape page talked about, so already it was more relevant than the Abu Ghraib link. Also, I had feelings that the Abu Ghraib link was politically motivated, and rather than have the page start political flamewars, I felt a link to Saddam's Iraq was something everyone could agree on.
This one hardcore guy wouldn't let go. Eventually, I removed both our links and stuck in the Rape of Nanjing as a compromise--something more pertinent to that section than either of the links we had. The other guy seemed to agree and let it be. Then I didn't watch the page for a month or two.
I came back, and sitting beside my Nanjing link was, you guessed it, Abu Ghraib again, snuck in with some other major update. The page on Abu Ghraib doesn't even mention rape except that one prisoner is claiming it without proof. However, the Saddam page mentions rape, and Nanjing is just a given.
I also find this same thing in other articles. For instance, the Windows XP article contains a "fisher price" comment. I removed it and said it was a personal comment that implies a majority of users feel that way, and that if you're going to imply it, you should cite it. The hardcore guy of the Windows XP page stuck the link right back and linked to a couple of blogs and news sites where the author mentions the "fisher price" interface--still no hard numbers to show the majority of users actually feel that way, but now it looks "official" simply because he linked to some sites that use the term.
I've stopped looking at Wiki with the assumption of objectivity. Just about the only fun pages there are the ones about games and such.
No, on Wikipedia it isn't automatic. Someone has to manually add the links by surrounding words with [[Tags]].
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Wikipedia will live or die by its traffic. As it seems bent upon being an encyclopedia of everything, it has to have the hundreds, and thousands, and tens of thousands and more revisions each day.
For any project that seeks to be an encyclopedia of everything, there are but two roads: leave the door open to all, like Wikipedia, or keep the writing closed, and hire researchers to build the articles from the inside. The trouble is, the more knowledge you want to include, and the faster you want it, the more researchers you'll need to hire. That costs a lot of money, and unless you hire a true army of people to do the job, it's going to be a few years before you begin to see any progress. And the progress doesn't get faster.
No, for all the inaccuracies, arguments, and varied forms of pettiness, the raging river of activity has to remain and grow for Wikipedia to survive... and to have any form of accuracy. Consider that one person creates an article. It is only a stub, but it all information in it is correct. Someone edits it, and adds something, but some part of that is incorrect. Someone else edits again, correcting that, and adding something else that's incorrect. Someone else adds something else, and misses the mistake. Another person comes along, and fixes the mistake. The stub is shaping up, and the article gets more attention for some reason. A few people edit the budding article one way and then another. They get into an argument, and the argument becomes a fight. The truth lies somewhere between their positions, but that's forgotten. Maybe there's a reversion war. One of them gets pissed off and leaves. The other one feels he's won the day, and lingers for a little bit, then leaves. Then somebody else comes in and fixes the article.
The end result is the article becomes acceptably accurate. And it has the hands of many different people, and the subtle truths that they bring. A single researcher brings only his own hand and the truth he knows.
Great example of some of the strengths of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
In Fox's opinion, they are fair and balanced. In your opinion, they are not.
In my opinion, you are a troll. In your opinion, you are not.
This is a problem. Certain things are facts (George Washington was the 1st president of the US), while other things are opinions (George Washington was a great leader). People need to be able to determine the difference between fact and opinion.
But I must admit that I give Wikipedia credit for at least having as one if its stated goals differentiating fact and opinion (unlike the first post here), and trying to give multiple viewpoints equal footing. They seem to acknowledge the nature of the debate and present both sides. It would be terrible if somethat that is trying to become a general reference source were to be despised by either liberal or conservative, athiest or any variety of theist.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
First, full disclosure - I'm a wikipedia admin, I'm the featured article director (I choose the featured articles on Wikipedia's main page), and I'm one of the arbitrators (on the arbitration committee Larry mentions). I'm going to try to address Larry's points in turn. Some of what he says is true, but much of it is wrong, or totally misses the point. Larry left in 2002, meaning that he has been away longer than most of th currently active people have been there. The policies have changed radically, and so I don't think it's unfair to say he has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to the community or the policies.
First, about the title of this thread - calling Larry Sanger a co-founder of Wikipedia is a bit of a stretch. It's before my time, but I know several people who were around from those days found this objectionable. As I understand it, Larry was more involved in Nupedia (now defunct). Wikipedia was started to augment Nupedia, and (as I understand it) the idea was Jimbo Wales'.
Now, this "lack of public perception of credibility" Larry mentions - this is misleading. Wikipedia is (as others on this thread have said) an experiment. However, I don't think the public percieves us as uncredible. I think it would be more accurate to say that the public is still making up its mind. Yes, there is some inaccurate information in Wikipedia - the same can be said of Britannica. However, Wikipedia has been cited in in books, in academic studies, in conferences, and in court cases. If the public really though of Wikipedia as a unreliable source, then I don't think that it would be drawing in these kinds of references
The next problem Larry mentiosn is the trolls. The arbitration committee was formed about a year ago as a way for Jimbo Wales (the actual founder of Wikipedia) to devolve his powers to the community. In particular, he appointed a committee of 12 users who would have the right to issue decrees and such - the ability to prohibit people from doing certain things, or ban them, 'etc etc. The primary (and pretty much only) complaint against the committee to date has been that it has been too slow to act. On the other hand, I think if you were to ask the average user what he thinks, the trolling problem has been getting much better in recent months - just look at the list of complete cases. Several long time trouble makers are currently banned (and if they come back, it resets the clock on their ban). I know one recently banned user (troll) said (before he was banned) how much he hated it, how much the "cabal" had taken over, 'etc. If the trolls are saying this, I take it as a good sign. Beyond that, I can't really reply to Larry's nebulous complaint about trolling because he's really not saying a whole lot there.
Larry's third (and perhaps only concrete point - IE, specifically refutable point) is that he claims Wikipedia has a lack of respect for experts. Nonsense, I say. As a rule of thumb, we expect that everyone (experts and laymen alike), if requested, can cite specific sources to justify their edits. In this respect, it is no different than Academia. Quite frankly (and this is my personal opinion) I think a great majority of the editing disputes could be solved by requiring disputants to cite and/or quote reputable sources. On the other hand, Larry's asseration that "But if the expert should have the gall to complain to the community about the problem, he or she will be shouted down (at worst) or politely asked to "work with" persons who have proven themselves to be unreasonable (at best)." - I think this gets more to the heart of how Wikipedia works. If you want to contribut
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I'll add my own wiki experience to the mix. I was doing a paper on the Japanese writer Higuchi Ichiyo last semester and, not knowing much about her, I ended up using wiki as a source. EVERYTHING I cited from wikipedia was factually wrong. Luckily I ran it by my professor before handing it in, but I will never use Wikipedia as a source on a paper again. They've completely turned me off to using it for any academic purpose. I do still visit wikipedia when I need general information but I even take that with a major grain of salt.
Am I alone in thinking wikipedia should A) have experts come in and run a "stable" version of the encyclopedia and that B) a Google scholars type function is right up wiki's ally?
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
E2's minimum node requirements ensure that the user has a significant body of work which can be inspected and that they are contributing. Since users cannot edit the writeups of others, and gaining levels does not grant you any powers over other users (they seem to be there mostly to raise the bar to abuse of the system and to make you look cool) the situation is in no way analogous to your suggestion. In addition E2 now has a system called the honor roll which greatly decreases the writeups necessary to level up if your nodes are of sufficient quality. The E2 approach could easily be adapted by removing or reducing the number of writeups required, and adding in a requirement for a certain number of accepted edits.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"