Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Founder Sees Serious Quality Problems
Juha-Matti Laurio writes "The Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has acknowledged there are real quality problems with the online project. From the article: 'Meanwhile, criticism from outside the Wikipedia camp has been rebuffed with a ferocious blend of irrationality and vigor that's almost unprecedented in our experience: if you thought Apple, Amiga, Mozilla or OS/2 fans were er, ... passionate, you haven't met a wiki-fiddler.'"
It's clearly benefited Slashdot. The story quality and lack of dupes proves it.
I'm seeing more and more people use it as their de facto source for information.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
What other encyclopedia chronicles the history of slashdot?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_history
No Sigs!
I've debated people here and they use wikipedia facts that were wrong as proof they were right. It drove me crazy... he wouldn't take any other source no matter how many, wikipedia was the spoken word. Yikes.
In a perfect world wikipedia would work, but people aren't perfect, and people have agendas... that is why it will never be taken seriously with anyone outside the community.
It's still one of the best destinations and tools on the Net. Everytime I show it to someone who has never seen it, they're blown away.
Bark less. Wag more.
These people still can't hold a candle to Jack Thompson.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Of course there's a lack of quality. Anybody can come in and edit anybody else's work.
Step 1: Create an account
Step 2: Do whatever the hell you want to the whole place
Maybe a level system ought to be put in place. Create enough new entries and then you can edit other users' work. It's not a perfect solution, but it would cut down on some of the nonsense.
e2 | LJ
Wikipedia usually works, in my experience, especially on popular or controversial articles. Just within the last hour, another editor and I had a dispute over whether "dry mouth" is a negative or neutral effect of marijuana. We went back and forth a few times but we eventually agreed to combine that postive and negative effect lists, and now it is all settled. Such compromise is not always possible but it is much of the time and the system usually works.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
A solution I liked was to make the publicly-editable entries into an unstable branch, and to promote versions of pages that have been fact-checked and have been agreed to be up to Wikipedia standards into a stable branch. Redirect anonymous viewers to stable pages if available, and mark each version as to which branch it belongs to.
It never will. And that's OK.
Wikipedia can be valuable even in mediocrity. I've used it as a "jumping off" point for knowledge about things that aren't covered in more traditional sources. Want to know the origins of "all your base are belong to us"? Wikipedia is great for that sort of trivia. Want an in-depth explanation of Relativity? You probably don't want to necessarily trust Wikipedia for the last word on it, but you might be able to find a few pointers to some good books.
Wikipedia is what it is. As long as everyone understands what it is, it'll do fine.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
slashdot reports on wikipedia's quality hm... first thing i wanted to check was what wikipedia said about slashdot.
;)
Slashdot is often criticized for posting story summaries that are inaccurate and/or misspelled, and for intentionally posting articles that many find highly biased, and/or defamatory and often incite flamewars, while ignoring news or commentary on issues which outsiders may consider more serious or important (see Slashdot subculture). It is also infamous for the Slashdot effect, when thousands of Slashdot readers read an article and connect to the linked website, flooding it with unexpected traffic, and at times bringing the site down in a manner similar to a Denial of Service attack. The use of "slashdot" as a verb refers to this effect.
Well I don't see any problems with the quality of that article
Jokes aside for most things I've used wikipedia for, it has been a good help and is pretty accurate too. Might be just because I normally read at geeky/nerdy type of articles.
sarchasm
Regarding Wikipedia itself, I find it to be pretty useful as a repository of widely-known information (dates, names etc), very useful on computer-related information, and perhaps not so useful or reliable on other things. But that's still a net positive. Why the hostility?
Could there be a commercial opportunity in forking Wikipedia, and then having an advertising-supported business hire some editors and professionals to verify Wikipedia articles, perhaps in conjunction with other content? Or perhaps having a university fork Wikipedia and then flag which edits have been verified, or edited, by students or professors of the subjects covered by a particular article? Or perhaps introducing a Slashdot-style moderation system (where you can by default, for instance, only see edits which are rated 5*'s or higher?)
http://amishthrasher.blogspot.com/
It seems like this is sort of a trend. I mean, didn't vandalism and trolling force the introduction of the moderation system here? And didn't that happen nearly everywhere on the web as discussion boards increased in size? Anyone see a trend? It seems that once it goes from a clubhouse to a gym, you start to get bad apples.
Another poster suggested a leveling system, and I agree. I think that wikipedia should establish a system whereby articles are ranked, i.e. culture - specialized - mainstream or something. That way, as you start out, you can work on culture articles, then work your way up. Or maybe base it on page views and specialization. People who just joined can make new articles (to fill the missing ones) or can work on general articles that are rarely viewed, then work their way up.
Wikipedia is an excellent online source of information. But because of its name, critics hold Wikipedia to the same standard as an encyclopedia. I certainly don't think it's the same thing as an encyclopedia, a wiki's open and collaborative nature is fundamentally different from the construct of an encyclopedia. It's not better or worse, it's just a different thing.
But then again I wasn't drunk and high while I was reading wikipedia....
How ironic that I find that is the best time to fire up a random page in Wikipedia.
It's not like the Register doesn't have accuracy issues either.
Test your net with Netalyzr
By it's nature, Wikipedia is no good for academic research or as the final authority on anything. That said, if I want an overview of what something is all about, and the information doesn't have to be 100% accurate, then Wikipedia is the way to go.
Think about the information you would get by just Googling something. You're just as likely, probably more likely, to come up with garbage information. The difference at Wikipedia is that it's been reviewed by many eyes, and it's not under the sole control of some random dude with who has a web page.
Users should, of course, be aware of the potential for bad information. In fact, I'd recommend to any user who hasn't yet, you should read their What Wikipedia Is Not page.
Some people do have really serious doubts about the credibility of wikipedia content.
On the other hand, wikipedia people do have doubts about these other lads as well. Hmmm, looks like circular distrust to me...
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
Dissatisfaction with the quality of an article in Wikipedia is not a fatal flaw... it's the engine that makes Wikipedia work. If a user needs information on a topic, and the information is incorrect or incomplete or poorly presented, the user will, in some cases, just go out and research what they need to know using other sources...
Wikipedia does not hold to the standards of print references because it's not finished. It's a work constantly in progress, and you get to see the work in progress as well as a finished product.
Bearing that in mind, Wikipedia must not be judged by its worst entries, as those entries will be brought up to par eventually... in a few hours or a few years. Bad entries will be made into good entries as the right editor for the job steps forward.
This requires information filtering abilities on the part of the reader, and these abilities have too long been dormant in most readers... in a polished and professional publication, mistakes aren't acknowleged as such. There's even a sentiment that if it's in print, it's an absolute irrefutable fact, rather than the best information available to the publisher.
In Wikipedia, the reader knows that what they are reading is a collection of the best information available to the writers... and they can modify it if they see a mistake, or have more to add to the topic. That sort of dynamic interaction with the source material is very, very powerful, and can lead to a depth impossible in a regular encyclopedia on obscure topics... everything from Hallucigenia to Indian Clubs. Try getting that info out of your Brittanica.
Wikipedia is great as a point of departure for further study. It will, at the very least, provide the reader with a notion of what the scope and nature of the subject is, and the incompleteness and error of the artivle will be corrected as people who know what they're talking about step forward over time.
SoupIsGood Food
A case in point is the Wikipedia page on the village of Mellor, a small village that has languished on the edge of obscurity for 14,000 years and I'd swear it still had some of its original inhabitants walking around. The odds of there being more than two or three on Slashdot who have ever been there is virtually nil.
Because of the limited editing it gets, the accuracy is probably higher than normal. HOWEVER, any inaccuracy probably lasts longer than normal, for the same reason.
Pages that get edited frequently probably lose errors a lot faster, but gain new ones equally fast. In that sense, it is no different from computer programming, where rapid development cycles create as many (or more) bugs than they fix - although, they're usually different bugs the next time round.
I think Wikipedia would benefit from some sort of development cycle, where an "in progress" copy of the article is maintained, then occasionally snapshotted to create the "official" copy. For "non real-time" articles, I would suggest that pages not significantly edited for, say, 36 or 72 hours be treated as a "final revision". (A minor alteration would be the adding/removing of symbols such as commas and apostrophes.)
This would give you the "anyone can edit" freewheeling anarchy of the current system, the live, raw feel that some apparently crave, and yet also provide a version that has some semblance of consent behind it, something that maybe isn't perfect but is good enough for now. It's not exactly QA, in the usual sense, but it's still QA, in that you've got to not find any showstoppers within some deadline.
A "traditional"(!) wikipedia with deliberately de-synchronised mainstream version would probably not be the best solution, but I honestly can't think of a better one while keeping the current approach.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Insightful, but extremely Pessimistic
Why do you even bother posting that in the first place? Why go through the trouble of trying to convince the rest of us to consider your view?
People seek to educate and learn because it makes us feel good. If knowledge were merely a matter of cost/benefit, it wouldn't happen.
And stop it with the melodramatic persecution complex.
Ok, so we have The Register with an article "Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems". The article consists mostly of unsubstantiated Wikipedia bashing. There is only one sentence which discusses anything the Wikipedia founder actually said -- and that is only in reference to two specific articles, not the project as a whole. Besides, it was a comment on a Wikipedia mailing list.
Slashdot, of course, turns the headline into "Wikipedia founder sees serious quality problems", as if Zonk didn't RTFA. There's a constant dialogue about where Wikipedia is good and where it is bad on Wikipedia mailing lists. Nothing has changed.
The Register's real point in the article is a propaganda one: the concept that "an encyclopedia is only as good as its worst article". Puh-leeze. That's an insult to the intelligence of readers, as if we can't tell when we are reading gold and when we are reading crap. Then again, maybe that's a problem for regular readers of The Register.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Hey, it's not like "paper" encyclopedias don't have problems. Just open up encyclopedias printed in the 60's-70's in the US and in USSR and read a few chapters on socialism and communism. :-)
Register: Wikipedia Inaccurate, Badly-Written
Pots, kettles war over who's the blackest
[Story body here]
To make the project work, the project needs to ensure that people who have committment to the project and it's ideas and expertise in the field have some way of at least removing the agendas and making certain that the facts are as correct as possible. I'm not certain that this does not completely invalidate the whole project, however.
What Wikipedia is, however, is what you'd get when you asked everyone what they *believe to be true* based on whatever basis that they tend to trust in. I don't want that to seem like a put down, or a weakness, however. Most people have a firm basis for what they believe to be true, particularly if it comes from their personal, first hand experience. Therefore, Wikipedia will have tons of good information, and it does. However, when it comes to places where people start reaching farther than they can grasp, it starts to break down. And when those people are obnoxious or stridently unaware of their own limitations, you start getting problems.
What that system needs is a filtering system that lets you have the opportunity to screen out the contributions of people who fit a profile that you feel is suspect. The data should all remain in the wiki, but depending on what you, yourself want to see, you should be able to personalize the editing to match what you can accept. If you feel someone is a wacko (it doesn't mean they are), and they make an addition, you may wish to ignore their contributions in certain topic areas and instead accept the article as it exists without their input.
The worst part of this idea is that people who don't want to see what they don't understand, may find themselves hearing the choir singing to them. However, I don't think you can force people to learn things. It has to be their decision. The best you can do is accept their view point in their submission and then let their deeds speak for themselves and have people choose to ignore them. There should be a peer reviewed filter in Wikipedia that doesn't remove non-expert content, but rather, doesn't let the content of experts be overwritten if there is an agenda involved and that view of the article is viewable if you select the appropriate filter.
I do think, however, it would end the wars where the Wiki is compromised by billions of astroturfers and crackpots under different names. Under this system, what they post never gets overwritten, so they have no reason to go covert. At least, they have no motivation to keep up a running list of fake names and constant counter-editting. There will probably always be the people who post the same things under a billion different names to see if they can get to the most "trusted" filters, but if you are careful, they should never be able to sneak on to your lists.
Obviously, this system would have to be automatic, designed well, and probably require a huge amount of storage space to hold everyone's submissions. But I think it would be best suited to the actual aims and spirit of the Wiki, if it could be done.
Amen. As a society we cannot rely on our own knowledge to teach ourselves. I reccomend that we rely on an older, more advanced race of aliens to do our education and encyclopedia-writing for us. This is surely the only path to a brighter future! Notify the United Nations immediately!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
And behind the scenes are a half million desperate nerds trying to be right about something, all while defending this exercise in social onanism as a "community" effort to provide a free educational resource to people.
Much as I'd like you to simply be a troll, there's a lot of truth in that. I've recently started contributing to Wikipedia myself, and I seriously question my motivations; am I just indulging my anal-retentive geek (or rather less flatteringly, nerd) nature when contributing information about frankly unimportant stuff?
And believe me, I don't think I'm the worst case by a very long shot. There are COUNTLESS contributors out there seemingly editing stuff, and adding stuff or making changes in for ego's sake. I don't want to go on about this, but the vandals aren't the problem. They're easily reverted and usually transparent. The problem is the anal-retentive-and-don't-get-it-or-don't-care fact-adders who will (for example), clutter up abbreviation disambiguation pages (such as 'MC' or whatever) with very poor entries. These are at best obscure uses of 'MC', where those using such an abbrevation would know what it means anyway. At worst, they simply take anything they can think of that consists of an 'M'-word then 'C'-word, and slap it in, even if it's an obscure subject and no-one actually uses that abbreviation.
Just an example, but it's dross. And it has to be said that if there is any particular tendency in such addition of inconsequential garbage, it's most noticeable in the geek/nerd manga/sci-fi/computer-gaming subject areas.
They don't get that slapping down a load of facts *isn't* the same as writing a good article; I'm not sure that they care, they're simply writing for the sake of it- if it's about anything, it's about their pet interest. It's this stuff that justifies (in part at least) the "social onanism" tag given in the parent post.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Jimmy Wales runs Wikipedia from the profits that come from Bomis and from donations. Bomis.com is a porn directory network with an innocent-looking front end, and a huge number of ads and paid links.
Wikipedia is straining under the load from a massive increase in traffic. This is due to the buzz from the media, as well as impressive rankings in Yahoo and Google.
Most of the insider administrators are anonymous, and they can use their editing privileges to stomp on any initiatives from the unwashed masses that they find objectionable. The word "cult" comes to mind. Recently there is a move on to require footnote citations for most assertions, in order to make the articles appear neutral. However, in my experience last week with Jimmy and one of his top anonymous admins, SlimVirgin, it seems to me that if the citation itself looks like an opposing opinion, then that's good enough. No one over there actually reads the stuff they cite -- no time for that.
The only defense the unannointed have is to put together their own list of CGI proxies, and give them a hard time for a couple of days. But the admins have many more "rollback" weapons to make it easy to "revert" any changes, which makes this too much trouble for any single unprivileged person.
I predict that before Wikipedia breaks under the traffic load, Jimmy will start running AdSense or Yahoo ads. At that point a lot of editors will probably leave, since their work is volunteer and they might now see Wikipedia as something quite different. Look at what the Google tie-in did for Mozilla Foundation, for example. Potentially millions per year would be generated by ads on Wikipedia.
Then he'll bank most of the money, buy some more bandwidth to keep it going as long as he can, but ultimately let it run down. I don't for a minute believe that Jimmy is motivated by this:
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004
I will no longer read the register. I have been too annoyed by 'articles' I read in the register that I found quite bitchy and immature. Yes, I'm annoyed when in dispute with someone else they try to prove their point by linking to wikipedia, which I consider to be of little value as a proof, BUT, it's nonetheless useful, and here's why - wikipedia, and I have RTFA on the register and here's where I disagree, does NOT need to replace the web. It does NOT need to be authoritative and conclusive; it only needs to be a *starting point* to introduce a topic and its range to someone. Accuracy, as far as I'm concerned, is a far lesser concern. In real life an encyclopedia would be the first thing you read when you research something, NOT the last! It should be no different for wikipedia.
The real challenge is finding the volunteers to fix all the obscure articles. People work on what they find interesting, and if no contributors find a topic interesting, it's not going to get fixed.
The problem is that a lot of the obscure stuff that *is* there is in areas where geek (or rather nerd) types have interests, and it's not always that well-written. In fact, I think this is arguably at the top of the (otherwised unordered) list of problems with Wikipedia:-
(1) The anal-retentive "fact"-adding tendency. Those who'll add obscure/unused abbrevs to a *disambiguation* page. They don't get that some facts are more important than others, or that simply adding information to an article doesn't necessarily make it more helpful. They'll create lots of small stub articles, when they'd be better combined in a single article (placing them in context). If there's one thing I've learned as I get older, it's that leaving stuff out is *hard* but very important. You can't include everything. And you have to order that information well. The self-indulgent factoid geeks don't know or care about this.
(2) Change for change's sake. I'd be interested to see the amount of "churn" that goes on in some articles simply caused by people changing stuff for the sake of it. It's not necessarily a bad thing; it's just pointlessly wasted effort over a minor issue.
(3) *Potential* subversion by those with an agenda, including professionals. I've seen at least one instance of what appeared to be a PR person editing anonymously. This is dangerous, because most zealots with an agenda are transparent; PR and the like are professionals, and more likely to slip under the radar.
(4) Vandalism; annoying, but usually pretty obvious
(5) Lack of citation. This is very rare, and whilst normal encyclopedias don't normally include citations, Wikipedia's credibility would be much enhanced with more of them.
There are probably more, but my brain is full; that's enough to be going on with...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Who the hell uses encyclopedia brittanica or any other encyclopedia for mission critical anything. You use it for what are the names of the beatles or the seven dwarves or where is liberia. Ususally it is pretty on for such things. If you need to be sure you can then multiply reference your results somewhere else to verify your source. LIKE YOU SHOULD if it is important. This is acutally a topic my girlfriend and I got into a fight about. Having never looked at it she stated that it couldn't be usefull because it wasn't peer reviewed. Well Brittanica isn't peer reviewed like a journal either but that's irrelevant. I understand the issues and value of style, professionalism and accountablility that you get in a traditional encyclopedia. Still accesibility and speed are not irrelevant. Multiple "voices" and viewpoints are a definite advantage over traditional encyclopedias. Also if you are reasonably sophisticated reading the editing arguements on highly subjective topics can be very enlightening more so than the "facts" in the article. Sure rely on it as a only source at your own risk but used intelligently with an awareness of it's pitfalls it is a very useful and valuable resource. It is neither as great as it's best article or as bad as it's worst. Someone else did a comparison recently and on three out four topics it had more information, was more up to date and accurate than the traditional encyclopedia on the fourth in the reviewers opinion was awful. I can live with that.
Demonstrating one amazing advantage for wikipedia. The ability to link directly to "expert" resources.
That plus the fact that one can see how entires change over time. Giving insight into controversial aspects and changing views over time that are completely missing in a normal encyclopedia.
Both are good starting points, the wikipedia has the advantage in getting the reader past the starting point to more definitive/authoritative information IMO.
The parent comment is not a copy of the same poster's comment with the sense of no statements reversed. A rather plain sort of trolling, although it is not actually trolling. :)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I've also noticed a trend whereby people will do stealth vandalism, changing one tiny fact or number. This is far more insidious than the harmless dorks who replace an entire article with "Brent Stevens eats babies". This is clearly an effort by people to discredit the very idea of Wikis.
I've read wikipedia, /., the Register and alot of other places for a long long time. I'm a geek. I remember /. when it was Chips and Dips for godsake and the great comment ban of '98 during Operation Desert Fox.
The Register has gotten more and more snarky in it's reporting. I don't know if it's a change in writers or tightening due to the Recession in Tech since '00. It's gotten so rough IMO that I don't go there anymore.
Orlowski is terrible, when I've corrected him or commented to him I've gotten crappy responses when I was civil.
Why not have a rating system? They should make a rating system, so you could add Informative, Incomplete, Biased, etc, and have articles with particularly low ratings flagged for review (do they do something like this already?).
I think they should lock a lot more articles that are known to be complete and accurate. The definition of, say, orange juice hasn't changed all that much in the last 10 years and probably won't in the next 10.
Working these two concepts in together, I think they should have the 'modifiability' of the article be based on how high it's rated. For just a stub, or no article at all, then anyone should be able to modify it. But if the article is long (enough) and complete, then say maybe only a register with many high-rated articles can change it.
I think the main idea here is to promote and protect good content, but I seriously think they should not do anything to restrict an average joe from exlpicitly adding content.
Anyone else there think I'm on the right track?
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
Lets test this theory out and take a look at the wikipedia entry for a British band that was popular in the early 80's, Theatre of Hate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_Hate
Led by singer/songwriter Kirk Brandon, the original group also consisted of: guitarist Simon Werner, bassist Jonathan Werner and drummer Jim Walker.
Incorrect, Simon and Jonathan were in a previous band with Kirk Brandon, The Pack.
Theatre of Hate garnered much early attention as a live act and in 1981 made their debut with the concert LP "He Who Dares Wins Live at the Warehouse Leeds".
Incorrect, the album was "He Who Dares Wins Live in Berlin".
Shortly after the album's release however, Brandon fired the remainder of the band an assembled a new line-up consisting of: guitarist Billy Duffy, bassist Stan Stammers, saxophonist John Lennard and drummer Nigel Preston (who was soon after replaced by Luke Rendle).
Incorrect. Stammers, Lennard, and Rendle were already in the band. Rendle was fired and replaced with Preston.
Another concert recording, "Live at the Lyceum", followed in 1982 before Theatre of Hate entered the studio with producer Mick Jones of the Clash to record their first non-live album debut, "Westworld", which went on to reach the UK Top 20. The album also spawned the Top 40 single "Do You Believe in the Westworld?".
The only correct sentences, although Westworld made the top 10.
In late 1982, Theatre of Hate released another live album entitled "He Who Dares Wins: Live in Berlin."
Incorrect, see the above correction.
In early 1983 the Theatre of Hate disbanded. Brandon went on to front Spear of Destiny and guitarist Billy Duffy formed the group Southern Death Cult, which would later become enormously successful after shortening their name to The Cult.
Incorrect, Billy Duffy joined The Death Cult, along with Ian Astbury, the singer for disbanded Southern Death Cult.
So, out of 7 sentences, only 2 were correct. Why was it again that I should trust Wikipedia as a source of information?
Just because the website exists, doesn't mean that I am obligated to correct misinformation.
One of the biggest problems with Wikipedia is that they give special preferences to anonymous vandals who use America Online to carry out their misdeeds. The Wikipedia block user interface specifically suggests to "keep blocks in these ranges to 15 minutes or less" when blocking a vandal within AOL's IP range. No other ISP in the world receives this sort of favoritism from Wikipedia; repeat agitators from all other internet service providers are blocked for hours, weeks, days, months, and, if necessary, indefinitely.
I've heard people say, "Wikipedia is like a public toilet; when you need, you're glad it's there, but you never know who was there before you".
I've been editing Wikipedia for about a year now, and while I find some of the utopian aspects (i.e. allowing anybody, even anonymous users, to edit) to be intellectually appealing, the result is, without a doubt, mostly crap. Instead of spending my time improving quality, I spend my time fighting blatant vandals, well-intentioned idiots, and clueless newbies. And what time is left over gets eaten up in silly beaurocracy.
Like many /.'ers, I do software development for a living. No software development project (or any big project, be it buiding a space ship or digging ditches) would survive with the attitude that anybody can do anything they want. People need to both be educated as to the right way to do things and prove themselves trustworthy.
Wikipedia is a great resource. I turn to it often to get background, or find out interesting facts about almost anything. But I wouldn't trust it for anything important.
The "tortured prose" of this Register article is apparent in their lack of details on how the Bill Gates and Jane Fonda Wikipedia entries are "unreadable crap" (in Jimmy Wales' words). We're merely told this repeatedly, but the Register never backs their argument (or Wales'). Also, one sees another instance of the double-standards which are tolerated for judging Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica.
If "[s]omething that aspires to be a reference work ought to be judged by the quality of the worst entry" then why are we only allowed to judge one encyclopedia—Wikipedia—on that basis? With such a ridiculously high bar, it's easy to hand-pick articles one knows a great deal about and see if the encyclopedia in question measures up.
Which brings me to the next problematic criticism of these encyclopedias: drawing conclusions by weighing too small a sample. I recall that EB's former editor used exactly one entry to conclude that Wikipedia is akin to filth one is likely to find in a public bathroom (or words to that effect). The Register article's critique centers on reviews of two Wikipedia articles—Bill Gates and Jane Fonda's entries. The only way to reach the conclusion that EB has a "handful of errors" (as the Register says) is to do a survey; you can't judge articles you've never read. It seems to me that a proper review of a large encyclopedia would require a far larger sample size than a "handful" of articles in order to justify any reasonable conclusions about quality, no matter what those conclusions were.
Finally, the Register article mentions a few "respon[ses] to criticism" but doesn't actually critique these responses with a proper explanation. Just because one is told something like "this is what my critics will tell you" doesn't mean you have reason to dismiss the criticism. If one is interested in learning what's really going on, one has an obligation to think about the critique and weigh it on its merits. I "welcome the candour" as well the Register does, but I certainly want my candour to come with examples to back up points. When I evaluate EB using the guidelines I'm told to evaluate Wikipedia by, I come up with the conclusion that EB is merely different from, not better than, Wikipedia. And this conclusion I arrive at without giving any credit to Wikipedia for being free (as in the freedom to share and modify) which EB most certainly isn't. So, if I happen to be a victim of EB's "HUAC", I can't do anything to improve EB without going through the gatekeepers that registered their unwillingness to examine the above topics at all.
Digital Citizen
by the Uncyclopedia as the one true source for all knowledge.
Uh, if it was just some nobody who rolled back the changes why don't you just reinstate them?
Why on earth would you blame Wikipedia?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
All Jimmy Wales actually said was that two articles were terribly written. Wales has always had a goal of high quality in Wikipedia. Having two poorly written articles out of over three quarters of a million is hardly an admission of "Quality problems" except for the two particular articles cited. (yes, there are other articles that need work as well.)
... which seems as good a description as any to us."""
:-).
The real issue here is the repeated attacks by this reporter: Remember Andrew Orlowski is the same reporter who wrote about Wikipedia :
""""It's the Khmer Rouge in diapers,"
Clearly Andrew has found that Wikipedia bashing is an easy meal ticket and that is the actual source of his over-exaggerated headline writing. Orlonski needs to get paid and he needs his editors to view him as a positive asset, drawing lots of eyeballs to the Register website. A quick Google for Orlowski and Wikipedia shows a long, slanted history for our boy Andy.
There is a verb for this: "Dvoraking" "To Dvorak"
"The act of trolling by a supposedly 'professional' journalist in order to draw visitors to a webpage generating hits for the paid advertisements."
In fact, given this background information Andrew Orlowski has less real credibility than, say, your average slashdot poster.
Orlowski isn't a total waste of time however. After all he has noted that: "Segway's brains head for toy robot", "Microsoft FAT patent rejected - again", and the incredible "Police stake out bar, hoping to catch man drunk"
Wow, Andrew! Whats next? I wait in breathless anticipation.
(What, proofread this? not worth the time, Andrew.)
I'm not flaming here - but I don't think it's that big of a deal if an article on Bill Gates or Jane Fonda is inaccurate. I'll bet the one on Evolution isn't too great, either - but this is what Wikipedia is about. Let me explain:
To hear EB talk about it, you would think that the only good encyclopedia entry on Bill Gates would include factual information about his birth, life, finances, etc. That's fine if you are writing a history book for schoolchildren, but what Wikipedia does is actually captures the cultural moment around an issue - the fact that Bill Gates' article is inaccurate is because there is so much contention surrounding him.
To my eyes, Britannica is enforcing a cultural imperialism that the only right information is Politically Correct whitewashed facts. While that certainly is important, for instance, if you are really looking for the best definition of "evolution" or an impartial recounting of facts about Jane Fonda, that's not what Wikipedia does.
It captures the fullest dimension of the issues - the facts (as they are percieved) and all the culturally significant alternate views as well. Imagine what value future anthropologists might glean from a snapshot of Wikipedia - they wouldn't care who Bill Gates was in any kind of factual way - they would want to see what the world thought of him. Or the WTO, the World Bank, Greenpeace - you get the idea.
Wikipedia has quality issues?
I don't believe it. Next thing you'll be telling me that there's pornography on the internet.
OK, some have argued well that an Encyclopedia is really not a valid source of information for writing an article worth publishing. So, in that sense, both Wikipedia and other Encyclopedias (Britannica, etc.) offer starting points to point you in the direction of other more relevant sources of information.
Experts, including dead-tree encyclopedia authors, are definitely biased despite their voluminous amount of knowledge. They will *refuse* to look into some areas of study any further because they don't want to do so. The "peer reviews" may simply be a group of people patting each other on the back and not seriously attempting to counter the bias. The advantage of Wikipedia is not that it is unbiased, but that, given some time and effort, you can use the diff tool to find out what else each other has written and determine the bias. In other words, authors can't necessarily hide behind their biases.
Wikipedia of course has its stronger areas and weaker areas, but it is one resource among many that can be useful when doing research. As some have mentioned, it is kind of like running a Google search on something.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
The Wikipedia block user interface specifically suggests to "keep blocks in these ranges to 15 minutes or less" when blocking a vandal within AOL's IP range. No other ISP in the world receives this sort of favoritism from Wikipedia
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wikipedia works best for geeky subjects.
I don't think that's true. Wikipedia's featured articles come from all categories. That's certainly not a perfect proof of my point, but an indication.
(6) The idiot who thinks he's funny. In fact, so funny, that _everyone_ should find his stand-up comedy act when seriously searching for information. In fact, heck, everyone should be mandated by law to read his jokes, but finding them instead of actual info is almost an acceptable substitute.
I still remember one article in the German wikipedia... about cloning didgeridoos. Complete with a picture of tiny little digeridoos in test tubes, and a paragraph about how they live longer than the ones born naturally. About a year later, it was still there. (Now it's finally gone, though.)
OK, so it's a sorta the bastard child of your points 3 and 4. Except while the PR professional knows they're subverting and polluting a resource for profit, and the vandal knows they're defacing, the "funny" idiot might actually think he's doing a public service.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Why does every project like this have to be "the next big thing". Why do we have to compare to the E. Britanica and rabidly defend Wikipedia with ever more elaborate answers? Wikipedia is an interesting project, and extremely useful as a starting point for research. That's good enough for me - leave the "Wiki-religion" outside.
Different things are "trivia" to different people. From my perspective, the birthdate and biography of someone who lived hundreds of years ago (except for someone historically significant, e.g. Shakespeare or Caesar) is trivia, while a rundown of the features in the latest World of Warcraft patch is not. I imagine the opposite is true for you. My interests are a closer match to Wikipedia than yours, so I'll use that (bearing in mind that it's constantly in motion and checking the Talk and Article History pages as necessary). You have more historical interest, and so a more conventional encyclopedia is probably a better fit for you. It's no shame to Wikipedia that they lack good information in some areas--simply a matter of specialization.
I suspect that this trend will continue. Wikipedia will continue to expand in geek-friendly and pop-culture areas, while articles one would expect to find in Encyclopedia Britannica will be left mostly empty. If you're looking for the title of a Star Trek episode or a comic book supervillain, check Wikipedia; for articles on Ancient Greece, use Encarta. Most teachers don't accept Wikipedia as a bibliographic source anyway, due to the possibility of students editing a Wikipedia article and then quoting themselves authoritatively. I think that as long as people (including Jimmy Wales, the founder) compare Wikipedia to Britannica and expect it to measure up, they'll continue to be disappointed--they're simply different things with different strengths. That's all there is to it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
what I think the writer of this (imho) crappy article didn't seem to get.. it's not a normal encyclopedia. it's a shared media.. to share information.. not to suck it up. :)
if you go to a restaurant on a date.. you pay for it.. this is more like a free shared cook out where you prepare meals for each other for free, ofcourse you're not going to like all of it.. but you can help people with their recipe's and cooking.. you can still bring a date ofcourse
it's just like with opensource software.. it requires interaction, ah different way of thinking.. and that's what makes it a better product in the -end-
because those "some nobody" people can be persistant.
You write some content, they delete it. You put it back. They come back through a different internet connection and delete it. You put it back. They come back a week later and delete it. You put it back. They come back six months later. You don't put it back because you aren't still watching it because you aren't an anal-retentive so and so who obsessively manipulates an online encyclopedia article using tactics gleaned from Goebbels. And when you try to restore it a year later when you finally notice, the person responsable is a popular editor or even an admin and sucessfully maintains their status quo in their favorite articles with a mixture of subtle abuse and social engineering.
This does happen. Many of us have seen it happen. The Wiki process is not perfect enough to stop this happening when someone with a brain larger than the average Goatse troll is going out of their way to break it.