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An Interview with Wikipedia's Jimbo Wales
Raul654 writes "The Wikipedia Signpost, Wikipedia's weekly in-house publication, is this week featuring an interview with Jimbo Wales. The questions, which were submitted by Wikipedia regulars, hit on subjects related to the Foundation, the budgeting and legal issues, the blocking of Wikipedia in China, as well as where Jimbo sees Wikipedia in the future."
Hey Jimbo, missed the interview... How will you prevent Wikipedia from becoming balkanized, just like ordinary society, as groups of users with differing views form up their own projects, and start slinging mud at each other and calling each other "trolls"? Won't additional restrictions on editing, in the name of "quality," drive potential contributors to other pursuits? How will you prevent Wikipedia from turning into a collection of cranks, slackers, and trolls?
Can we edit his interview?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
1. Use a static analyzer to detect large amounts of grammatical errors, etc.
2. Look for articles outside the normal word/source ratio.
Should we look for new ways to deal with the inevitable vitality of Wikipedia, as a social mechanism to present additional sides of an argument or contentious issue? I'd say there are easy indicators of contention that we'll call 'revisionism,' where the sheer number of edits holds the greatest clue. Perhaps if there were some way to 'diff' the contents of edits / revisions in a summary fashion? It would be cool, for instance, to be able to summarize the changes one party made, and see all "relevant" historical changes on one page. Of course, what is 'relevant' as a summary topic or interpretation of a point, is subjective, but then, could this be user-interpreted, too? What if Wikipedia adopted learning 'preferences' to show a user what they deem to be relevant of issues they have researched on Wikipedia? That would be cool. These interpretation-affinities could be used to score related topics, or to make other suggestions. Some of this is already available, but in my opinion, not where it could be. Also, there are a lot of people who claim to be authoritative when their references are out of scope for Wikipedia. Why don't we provide authority within WikiP's scope, where a reader could judge on any particular poster's credibility based on accessible body of wiki 'precedence'... I'd rather not go all over to determine if s/o is credible as an informer regarding Earth Sciences. I would be glad to have available the highest-level scientific research, it's not really all that complicated if you've got the right attitude.
While I recognise that dictatorships (especially in the real world) are far from ideal, those powers let you get important things done rather quickly. From one angle, it's nice to know that Jimbo has the ability to immediately and permanently put a stop to childish back-and-forth 'arguments' between two contributers who both believe they're in the right.
My, that was a yummy potato!
or, The Emperor's New Clothes
I have karma to burn, so here goes...
Here on Slashdot, it's popular to tout the wonder that is Wikipedia, to revel in the wild-west democracy of it all, and break into rapturous platitudes about what a terrific source of high-quality information it is. Unfortunately, the reality (which none of the Wiki-boosters is likely to admit) is that Wikipedia is broken... fundamentally flawed, and can't be fixed.
Here's a tidbit for you concerning the food crisis in the Horn of Africa: drought is caused by high prices, overpopulation, and conflict. From the Horn of Africa Food Crisis article on Wikipedia: "This shortage, along with other factors including high cereal prices, overpopulation in the region, and conflict, have led to severe drought conditions." (1/11/06)
This is another example of why you can't rely on Wikipedia-the online encyclopedia written and edited by people with a limited grasp of the English language and (frequently) an even more limited knowledge of the subject matter. If you think that things written by committee are the epitome of bad writing, wait until you read articles that were both written AND edited by committee. And not just any committee, this a committee composed of your average basement-dwelling Net geeks, know-nothing Web noobs, and agenda-driven politicos.
Drought is a condition created by a shortage of water. That's the definition of the word. But here we have a Wikipedia article that plainly states that 'high cereal prices' are causal. Hmmmm... Explain to me again, oh geniuses, how high prices for cereals have 'led to severe drought conditions'? Apparently high prices are drying up the water supply. Clearly the author of this one is confused, either in their understanding of causality, or their understanding of the definition of the word 'drought.' Yet they felt competent to write (or edit) an article about the issue. Welcome to the world of the encyclopedia written by the ignorant.
The usual response of Wikipedia-philes is to answer any concern about the quality or accuracy of articles with 'anyone can edit it.' Which leads us to the immediate response (mine when I saw the above error): Why would I? Why would anyone waste their time? The person or persons who wrote this incorrect article will either a) change it back, or b) edit it further to destroy whatever correction I make. Where's the value proposition in this editing task? Am I supposed to feel satisfaction if I can see that it's corrected for 20 minutes before being reverted or overwritten? How am I supposed to feel tomorrow when I come back and see my efforts undone? Why would anyone with writing or editing ability or subject matter knowledge go to the effort of changing something that will almost immediately be screwed up again by someone without any.
No one is willing to address this issue. In forums, anyone who questions the problems of articles being written by people lacking essential subject-matter expertise is immediately shouted down. Long Live Wikipedia! Nothing possibly can be wrong! You just don't like the egalitarian nature of a "people's encyclopedia"... and on and on. Hello, McFly! If Wikipedia worked, it would be a wonderful resource. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, as the old saying goes.
In a community where everyone is 'equal' in power, despite inequalities in knowledge and ability, those with the later will, eventually -- inevitably, decline to participate. This particular type of communism (and that's not a pejorative) leads inexorably to a devaluing of the best in favor of not just the good, but the bad. In the case of Wiki articles, this means that a physics article is as likely to be written by a 12-year-old as a physicist. Or that 'drought' is as likely to mean 'famine' as 'water shortage.'
Wikipedia is an amusing read, but I wouldn't look to it for accuracy or anything resembling an even-handed explanation of a topic. The most that can be said for it is that it's an interesting social experiment. Nothing more.
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Let's see...according to Wikipedia, there are.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
WS: On a similar topic, Vsion asks: "Are there currently any efforts being undertaken by the Foundation to address the People's Republic of China's blocking of Wikipedia or to alleviate its effect?"
JW: Beijing-area Wikipedians are working to have the block lifted. Our position is that the block is in error, even given China's normal policies. Wikipedia is not propaganda, it is basic information. We expect that the block will be lifted.
Huh? Doesn't he understand the nature of Chinese censorship?
== Jez ==
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Pick a subject you have particular knowledge of -- maybe a local event or situation, or an area of learning or technology. Then take a look at how it's reported in the newspapers, in books and encyclopaedias, in movies and documentaries and news programmes. It's a fair bet that you'll come across inaccuracies, ranging from oversimplifications and typos to bias and misrepresentation to plain ignorance and blatant lies.
Now, stop and consider that that's how everything else gets covered, too. Frightening, isn't it?
Of course, some sources are much less likely to get things wrong than others. But very few sources are as authoritative as we tend to assume; all get things wrong from time to time. We should treat all printed and broadcast material with a little scepticism.
Now, look at Wikipedia in that light. Maybe it doesn't seem that much worse than the others after all?
Yes, it's true that there's vastly greater opportunity for errors to be introduced. But to balance that, there's vastly greater opportunity for them to be fixed, too. Wikipedia's far from perfect, but the huge majority of articles seem well worth reading, and its average doesn't seem noticeably lower than other reference works.
(In fact, rather than quality, I think its main problem is coverage; it's very patchy, and has too many gaps and stubs.)
Basically, as long as enough people want Wikipedia to be accurate, it will be!
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