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Observer Gives Wikipedia Glowing Report
JaxWeb writes "The UK newspaper The Observer is running an article about the open encyclopaedia Wikipedia. The article, 'Why encyclopaedic row speaks volumes about the old guard,' gives Wikipedia a glowing report and mentions some of the issues which have recently occurred regarding the project, including the need to lock the George Bush article in the run up to the election, and Ex-Britannica editor Robert McHenry's comments, as previously mentioned on Slashdot."
It's nice to see a traditional media outlet take a favorable---not just arms-length "hmm"---view of Wikipedia. I hope others follow suit.
Why do the Wikipedia admins need to lock popular, topical and controversial articles from editing? Is it because these articles somehow attract more vandals than well-meaning passersby and contributors?
Or is it just that these popular, topical and controversial articles make Wikipedia's fundamental flaws more obvious?
According to the laws of aerodynamics, the bumblebee should not be able to fly. Yet fly it manifestly does, albeit in a stately fashion. So much for the laws of aerodynamics.
Erm, whoops, yes they should be able to fly. Their cliché is outdated.
English is easier said than done.
Is that the wikipedia is designed around the original intent of the Internet in the first place. Nevermind what the internet has become in the modern era, it was originally designed to share and consolidate information from all its users. The Wikipedia is designed specifically to facilitate that. And, while in its default mode, it does leave itself open to people who want to make an arse of themselves, there are plenty of counter measures and options to such problems. All in all, it is satisfying to see the success of the project purely because it is nice to see the internet used for what it was intended for and do it well.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
That is all.
Well, it's also useful for playing games with pages that you don't agree with until they get locked.
Many people when first informed about the concept of Wikipedia scoff at the idea that you can get factual information from a medium that is open to everyone. Normally I just agre with them that it is a problem that requires some effort to combat.
Recently I've changed my whole view on reading information online, due mostly to thinking about the Wikipedia concept. Consider Wikipedia to be analogous to asking a classmate a question like "What does ecology mean?" or "Could you explain a null modem?"
Nobody would decry this as a fruitless effort to gain information, because it is quite possible that your friend knows a lot of information on the subject in question. So you take that information at face value, knowing that there is a possibility he's wrong. If the information "feels right" or "feels wrong" that's all you can tell. It then becomes a starting point for deeper investigation, not the final word on anything. In the end it raises another very important question: Who do you trust to have the final word on something?
I'm fairly sure Jamesday is exxagerating regarding "200 or 500" servers; there are about ten servers currently being ordered for this quarter.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
But isn't having more people contributing to Wikipedia supposed to be a good thing? Why isn't this "extra work" a nice problem to have?
What you are seeing in the Wiki fights is simply a microcosm of the conflicts that have permeated western societies since, well, the rise of humanism.
Who is authority? Who defines truth? Why should I believe them?
In our pseudo egalitarian society, we can no longer even really understand WHY someone would obey a king, or the concept of Divine Right, except insofar as the king-as-thug interpretation, since he's got all the military power and can threaten us. But the fact was that a great many people believed the king was the king because he DID have the divine right to be there.
What we see in Wiki is the ultimate in relativism - the 'consensus' decides what's truth, which I think we can all agree is patently absurd. But relativism has so overtaken our societies that no fact can simply be stated without dissent anymore. I that sense, Wiki is merely a symptom, not a disease of itself.
As the author states, if you use it, you vote for its validity. If you don't, you don't. Personally, I use Wiki all the time, and particularly for 'hot topics' I find it constantly plastered with bias and political correctness. (But then again, so are articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica - more subtle perhaps, but there is a probably bias inherent in any extended presentation of just about anything.)
Wiki is a useful friend who knows something about everything - you can ask him or her whatever you want and probably get a right answer. It doesn't mean Wiki should be held in the standard of a bibliographic reference tool, any more than a useful friend would be.
-Styopa
The real problem is how they've chosen to define "perfection". Like any evolutionary system, Wikipedia will evolve into the state best fulfilling it's selection criteria.
And unfortunately, Wikipedia's selection criteria is not accuracy, but popularity. It works well in situations where there's a high degree of correlation between the two, but fails miserably in cases where there's not. Cases such as issues where there's a lot of controversy (i.e. politics) or issues where there is some fact that's commonly believed to be true even though it isn't.
You presume that each edit would bring the quality level average closer to that of the person who edits it. But really, if I'm ignorant about a certain topic, I'm not going to go through the article about it and "bring it down to my level", so to speak. In the real world, at least some people can realize that the other person writing the article is more informed than they are, and will not clobber the article in the manner you seem to suggest they will.
And Wikipedia is not about "science". It notably makes several provisions against "original research". Science and research should not be conducted on Wikipedia, though the progress of science and research elsewhere may be reported as such.
You do have the right idea about how Wikipedia is good as an introduction to an area, but certainly not a comprehensive guide to a topic. It's not supposed to be. It's just an encyclopedia, for crying out loud, not the end-all and be-all of reference works. If I want to learn the intimate details of a topic, I don't run to Britannica, or Encarta, either.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Why don't they implement a 'sandbox' where new additions go, getting published after a certain period of time and where previous authors can vote against the addition?
A problem with a straight-up voting mechanism is member bias. For example, if you were to post articles on Slashdot where one said "Bush is evil", it would be modded up whereas "Bush not so bad" would be modded down because of the makeup of Slashdot users: probably 50% lefty, 25% center, and 25% righty. The mods will represent the opinion of the lefties the greatest.
Of course not. What I mean is that a model where a single article written by many is not going to work, because everybody will try to push their views into the article.
Many people writing many articles and letting the reader do the judging is the only way I can think of. And the media is, or at least supposed to be, doing exactly that.