Slashdot Mirror
When Wikipedia Fails
PetManimal writes "Frank Ahrens of The Washington Post looks at how Wikipedia stumbles when entries for controversial people are altered by partisan observers. Case in point: Enron's Kenneth Lay, who died of natural causes last week, shortly after being sentenced to prison. His Wikipedia entry was altered repeatedly to include unfounded rumors that he had killed himself, or the stress from his trial had caused the heart attack. From the article: '... Here's the dread fear with Wikipedia: It combines the global reach and authoritative bearing of an Internet encyclopedia with the worst elements of radicalized bloggers. You step into a blog, you know what you're getting. But if you search an encyclopedia, it's fair to expect something else. Actual facts, say. At its worst, Wikipedia is an active deception, a powerful piece of agitprop, not information.'"
There are a number of sites that are based on user-submitted data. One that immediately comes to mind is the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). Now, I'm not intimately familiar with the workings of Wikipedia, but based on TFA, the main difference I see between them and IMDb is that IMDb has a more restrictive additions policy. With IMDb, any registered user can submit information, but every iota of information (aside from some user reviews/comments, which are presented as such) must pass through an editorial review.
Some will say that IMDb has the luxury of doing this, being owned by Amazon. But IMDb has been online since before there really was World Wide Web. It was started in the Usenet newsgroups back in 1990 and didn't get a web interface until a Welsh grad student built one in 1993. They have always exercised editorial oversight and did so even back when they were a loose group of volunteers with no funding to speak of.
It used to be that IMDb's structure made it less than nimble in responding to breaking news because of an involved and complicated build process. But over the years, more modularization and granularity have been built into their systems. But even if they're right on the forefront of a news event, their editors and data managers are scrutinizing what becomes part of their "official" record.
Now, people try to trick IMDb, flood them with wrong facts and bad info. Sometimes a bit gets by their editors. But the bits still have to go by an editor before they become publicly visible. AFAICT, this isn't the case with WikiPedia and that is its fatal flaw. And it's not just the wackos and those with an agenda that need to be guarded against. More damage can be done by a cadre of well-meaning fools than a handful of agitators. And it seems that even if they need to defend their systems against the axe grinders, they need to put double the effort into defending against fools.
Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges since IMDb is a lot more narrow in scope than WikiPedia. But they're both large repositories of user-submitted information, they both started as volunteer projects, and they're both widely regarded as great resources. The difference is that IMDb has always exercised more editorial oversight before letting user submissions go live, and IMO, that makes it more trustworthy. Perhaps Wikipedia should take a page from IMDb's book.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
I would agree that Wikipedia is poor at reporting stories that are both recent AND controversial - but to be fair, I don't think those are the kinds of things you should be looking up in an encyclopedia anyway. Look back at this same article in six months and I guarantee it'll be correct and unbiassed. It just takes time for the community to settle on the right wording.
Things that are NOT recent but ARE controversial ('Religion' or 'Area 51'for example) are generally well written, correct and take a carefully neutral stance. Things that are recent but NOT controversial (say "2006 World Cup Soccer") are well reported immediately and bang up to date with all the right facts.
It's the intersection of recent and controversial that messes up the system because too many people are editing at once and a lot of them are nut jobs. Once the topic gets old or becomes uncontroversial, the lunatic fringe loses interest and good writing can take place.
On the other hand, if you want to know the engine capacity of a 1963 Austin Min
i or the number of casualties in the RAF Faulds explosion or the exact nature o
f the student prank involving the Bridge of Sighs in Cambridge or the size of a
litter of European Red Squirrels - things that I consult an encyclopedia for rather than a newspaper - then there is no other place (on the web or otherwise) to touch what Wikipedia has done.
www.sjbaker.org
Sony ha
And how many Wikipedia authors follow these guidelines? From what I see, most have not even read them. Wikipedia encourages folks to jump in and start editing. Stopping to learn the rules is an optional step usually skipped.
And even if an author is motivated to read the rules, they're so complicated and disorganized, it's impossible to get a grasp on most of them.
Even when authors know the rules, they often don't have the background to apply them. When I used to play copy editor on WP, I would try to get authors to rewrite stuff that was clearly speculative — except to the author! One guy had written that a certain comic book character was obviously based on another character in a famous short story. The connection wasn't at all obvious to me, and he had no source for this information — he was just stating his own opinion. But I had a hell of a time convincing him to reword his statement: it was obvious to him what the facts were, and that was that.
One other note: you talk about "the Wiki [sic] community's guidelines" as if these rules somehow express a consensus of a large group of people. They do not. There is, in fact, little in the way of consensus building at Wikipedia. Most processes, including rule-making, are dominated by a few people. Sometimes those few people are just whoever's managed to bully everybody else into going away.
Why not have a second, JavaScript scrollbar on the same side as the regular scrollbar, that instead of scrolling down the page scrolls back in time through previous page versions. This would enable any casual reader to easily see how the page has changed.
Alternatively, why not highlight text that has been changed recently - red for the last 12 hours, orange for the last 24 hours, green for the last week. Clicking on the text would carry you through to the previous version of the page, with the colour of the text changing accordingly.
I have a problem with the concept of 'authoritative'. It is standardised political delusion. We don't need this. What we do need is a quick way that the reader can detect sabotage. It is then up to the reader to weigh what is said, and determine what to believe or not. The uncritical reader will always be wrong. What we need is a convenient tool for everyone else.
Regards,
Roger
Each page(sometimes a grouping) needs to become it's own community. I run a forum about writing operating systems and I've just setup a mediawiki to contain osdev(as it's called) information. My mediawiki requires accounts to edit/post content to the wiki and (with a free mediawiki plugin)the accounts are just forum members that I've placed in a certain group. Myself and fellow moderators can very easly determine who has valid content to contribute to a osdev wiki but it's just to overwhelming to try to maintain that level of control for topics I'm not familiar with. You compare just the "amateur systems" section on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osdev with my project list at http://www.osdev.org/wiki/index.php/Projects, 23 vs 132 OS projects listed. I'm not saying that people visiting the Osdev page on wikipedia should be redirected to my site, I think more community features need to be added to mediawiki. I say lock all pages and require community involvement to gain editing rights. You might lose a poster that just wanted to dump off information but that's why I have a forum for people to make requests in. Basically the forums become the filter/distiller for the wiki in the long run.
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
Wikipedia has already taken care of false information problems, in a variety of creative ways.
First, you have to remember that important article are hit thousands of times by various people, and since everyone has ability to edit, problems can often be quickly cleaned up. I feel that slashdot proves that if you though enough geeks at something, truth comes to the surface quickly.
Second, Wikipedia strongly supports citing sources. Try moving around Wikipedia, and you will soon find a header stating that "this article needs sources" and basically a warning that it may contain gibberish. When you are doing things of importance, you should always check sources. Especially when dealing with something like Wikipedia. This is also an advantage Wikipedia: unlike most encyclopedias, where you have to go find the sources, Wikipedia is point and click.
Wikipedia is the the greatest proof that the Market Place of Ideas works. It shows that when you throw enough ideas together, the truth will survive. Though we may have unfortunate events like the one in the article, almost all information is accurate, and problems are quickly solved.
I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint.
I ask why the poor have no bread, they call me a communist.
Wikipedia is a duplicate of what the wiki community believes the world is. If 10% of people are convinced that Elvis faked his death (or whatever) then 10% of the time, that will be on Wikipedia.
For example, I edited the articles for the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA to state that they were "organized crime families, that...da da da" That stayed in place for over a year before some evil, black-heareted editor removed the truth that the wiki community had agreed on.
The morons who think they know everything will claim that wikipedia should only be edited to show the "truth" as they know it. These are the same people who would deny that any media ever gets any story wrong. I'm certain that half of everything I know is wrong, so I'm always intersted in another point of view.
Andy Out!
Editorial Oversight does not necessarily lead to fair and balanced articles, or even truthful articles. For a great living example of this statement, pick up a copy of The New York Post or tune into FOX News.
For a better example, pick up a copy of the New York Times or tune into CBS News. B-)
Propaganda doesn't consist of JUST the Big Lie. Some even more effective tools are:
- omission of contrary opinion and events that don't support the party line,
- bias in choice of events to report, giving an incorrect view of cost/benefit ratio,
- ridicule of opposing opinion and claims - direct, by word-choice and word proximity, by false analogy, by association, etc.
and a host of others. The establishment media outlets use them all - to the point that a media outlet that even mentions non-establishment opinions or events that support them appears hopelessly right-wing to many observers (such as yourself B-) ).
To make an informed decision you must first be informed. That means you have to hear all significant sides of any issue - whether their claims are true or not.
What distinguishes FOX News is that it reports both the Left and Right sides of issues.
If it gives slightly more words to the Right sides, is that because it's slightlly biased to the Right? Or is it because the Left arguments are well-aired and familiar to all viewers, while those of the Right, receiving little coverage elsewhere, need a bit more explaining?
And does it matter? Is it better to hear a few more words about one side, or to hear ONLY the other?
As to truth: I challenge you to find examples of out-and-out fraud on FOX News to match those of the weeks of sticking by the transparently-forged Rathergate documents, the pyrotechnics-enhanced "demonstration" of the gas tank hazard, or a number of other similar stunts on the establishment media's flagship shows.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
honeslty I don't see this as fud. Fud to me is someone needless, or warrantless spreading doubt about something. Doubt about wikipedia is justified. As a whole, society and people are stupid. When groups get together things inevitably turn into a gong show. Wikipedia is just another example of something that got ruined by a bunch of people using it.
As I said on the other wikipedia article here not too long ago:
its very easy for a few idiots to get together and muddle things into no concensus. You could write an article on something remotely notable that couldn't possibly have any sources and easily have it kept by having a few buddies show up for the AfD. They don't get major exposure, and all it takes is a handful 90% of the time. Part of the blame for this lies with the admins. Most seem lazy and unwilling to do anything that requires work. AfDs are supposed to be debates, and they insist that what it is, but admins often just tally the responses and go based on that, if an AfD look like this:
Delete - Violates WP:OR
Delete - not notable, original research, violates WP:V
Delete - as above
Keep - pickles
keep - spork
keep - I like ponies!
they would simply close it as a no concensus even though its clear the people who want the article kept are brain damaged.
Admins also aren't content editors. In a content dispute, they'll protect the article or block those involved in an edit war, but they won't go "Yeah, you're full of crap, stop trying to add that ridiculous information". Which basically means when blocks and page protection expire, they go at it again. There are two IPs that have been warring over Herner Werzog's nationality, an admin will randomly semi-protect the page, but it expires and they come back and fight over it again. These kind of things damage wikipedia a lot. Until they start actively dealing with these things, its going to suffer, and likely fail.