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Interview Looks at How and Why Wikipedia Works
driehle writes to tell us that he recently had a chance to interview Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko. All three are leading Wikipedia practitioners in the English, German, and Japanese Wikipedias and related projects. The interview focuses on how Wikipedia works and why these three practitioners believe it will keep working.
I know at my university, professors frown on (and sometimes penalize) the use of wikipedia because of its less-than-authoritative nature
Two things I have observed:
(1) The distinction isn't clear cut. There are some people who write mostly or exclusively on a small number of articles to try to get them up to featured status, there are some people who divide their time and once in a great while might try to get something featured, and there are people who have never been to the featured article candidates page. (Full disclosure - I'm the person who oversees the whole system); and (2) The distinction is entirely self-selected. Nobody is forced to work on anything in particular, so if someone never wants to do a featured article, that is his choice. It's not as if people are being prevented from writing FAs (quite the opposite).
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I found myself and Chatmag.com in the middle of an argument over one of the more controversial Wikipedia entries, that of the online vigilante group Perverted-justice.com
Even though the controversy has not fully ended, it has slowed to the point that we reported it as concluded
I am convinced that the discussion feature works in that all parties involved have had more than their share of chances to defend their positions. The self correcting format of Wikipedia, in both the editing and discussions, sets Wikipedia in a class of its own.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
This is not a valid argument; you can just report which revision you worked from. One advantage this has over encyclopedias is that you can then compare that version with the most recent to see how knowledge has changed over time or to spot corrections.
There is certainly bias in virtually any source. However, I think there is simply more bias present in Wikipedia articles than in traditional encyclopedias. This is probably due to a combination of better (as in more stringent) editorial control, professional authorship, and the relative youth of Wikipedia as a reference work. I certainly don't consider this a damning fault of Wikipedia, but I find that using it as a reference requires somewhat larger grains of salt than does using a top-tier traditional encyclopedia. I'm generally willing to tolerate this because it's free, convenient, and usually has a decent selection of links to other sources.
One thing that I've found to be somewhat helpful in evaluating Wikipedia entries is the discussion page. Often, the discussion there gives hints as to the strengths, weaknesses, and biases in the article. I'm really glad that it's there and is visible. I wish they'd improve the threading of the discussions to make it easier to read, but it's still quite helpful.
That is what Template:Fact is for. If you see an article that claims something that isn't backed up by a citation to an authorative source, hit it with that, and "[citation needed]" appears, and the article is listed in the "Articles with unsourced statements" category. You can read more about this at Wikipedia:Citing sources.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The unofficial
The thing stayed up for more than a year.
I'm not familiar with this particular article, but dubious articles that survive for a long time generally do so because they are nearly unused: they get little traffic and aren't linked from anywhere. Wikipedia article quality is usually a function of eyeballs, so you can take comfort that few people see a bad article, even if it's up for a while.
But if you're going to rule out a source because there's an obvious joke in it, you may have to cut your media diet substantially. Both the BBC and The Guardian published great hoaxes with a straight face, as many others have.
Having gotten familiar with things on wikipedia over the last few months, I've found myself less than impressed. Its all too easy for a few individuals to push point of view, or keep any random pointless garbage article by muddling concensus. Most articles put up for deletion don't get massive attention, and half a dozen individuals dropping by and claiming keep for irrelevant reasons like "I find it useful" while turning a blind eye to the policy violations in the article, results in garbage finding a home there. When coupled with admins who just tally the opinions rather than read the debate (but they're very adament about it being a discussion and not a vote) it ends up being a gong show.
The same thing can occur in pushing poit of view in articles, and other agendas people want to push. its a nice read, but there needs to be some reform there to account for people who want to use wikipedia as a soapbox, and other dumbassery.