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
You don't go to Wikipedia to learn things about actively controversial subjects. You go to Wikipedia to learn things that nobody cares to dispute. Like science, math and biology. Or even history.
If there's significant controversey, it'll usually get its own section on a page.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
You step into Wikipedia, you understand what's up.
You know it's not a peer-reviewed encyclopedia. It's a WIKIpedia.
You know anyone, including you, can edit it.
Whenever you read up on a controversial topic, you expect controversial results... would a traditional encyclopedia even HAVE information about some enron executive? I doubt it.
Let's not make controversy where there is none.. wikipedia is a stunning example of what the internet is good at.
The advantage of WP isn't that it's right all the time, it's that it is (through the tireless effort of zillions of people on five-minute breaks) self-correcting. When the AP screwed up their Ken Lay story, it took overnight before a retraction was posted. WP's story is screwed up for 5-20 minutes at a time.
The mainstream media are almost equally susceptible to being hacked -- even if you don't follow wingnuts like Rush Limbaugh or the insane propaganda and political fart-lighting on Fox News, it's not hard to spot gross errors or oversights in news reporting. "Unbiased" news doesn't exist, investigative reporting isn't anymore, and the media circus is just that -- a circus. Wikipedia may be raw, uncensored, or wrong, but at least it tends to correct itself rapidly.
For what it's worth, the science articles are rapidly becoming the most comprehensive archive of science knowledge ever aimed at the general public. (Of course the refereed literature is larger, but it's not a reference work for the layperson).
and that is, "consider the source." If someone is dumb enough to believe uncorroborated reports without any kind of consideration for the fact that the reporter could be wrong, lying, misinformed, or promoting an agenda then they get what they get.
The Internet is a great resource. Wikipedia has been very good for helping me find new things to be interested in, but it's not the end solution. If anything it's the beginning and the beginning only. I use Wikipedia to find out that I want to learn more about a subject, and from there, once I have had a chance to consult or read from true experts then I can make my judgement.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This is simply a case of people not being able to understand that wikipedia is not the exact same thing as Britannic. You have to look at the talk page, you have to hit a few revisions if you want to be comfortable about the accuracy of data. At times I have learned more reading the debate back and forth of two opposing viewpoints than the entry itself.
Unfortunately, people think in metaphors. Well, that is not so bad in itself, but people often seem unable to get beyond the metaphor and understand that some things are not exactly like anything they are familiar with. Case in point, how many people equate hacking into a website with breaking into a house? Or infringing on a copyright with stealing a car? This is just another case of people unable or unwilling to appreciate that wikipedia is unique and cannot be treated like a traditional encyclopedia.
Finkployd
As far as I know, one does not check an encyclopedia for things that have happened in the last couple of weeks. That's why we have newspapers (online and otherwise).
"When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself." ~ Jack Gurney
Well said. Additionally, the article doesn't support the headline. There were only a couple of bogus entries and those were corrected within one or two minutes. The article also takes issue with statements like: "Speculation as to the cause of the heart attack lead many people to believe it was due to the amount of stress put on him by the Enron trial." Where's the problem with that statement? It's clearly labeled as speculation, and many people, rightly or wrongly, still believe the stress of the trial led to his heart attack. Perhaps such speculations are best left out of Wikipedia articles, but one can't reasonably argue that it's incorrect or misleading when it's clearly listed as speculation. In short, this is a desparate attempt to nit-pick Wikipedia and it even fails at that.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
You don't expect the encyclopaedia on your shelf to be up to date and accurate on something that happened half an hour ago. Wikipedia was never intended as a news service, anyone who treats it like one is going to be sorely disappointed.
The role of Wikipedia is for reference, give it time and the information there settles down to the truth or at least something close to it.
Don't ask it to be something that it isn't any you won't be disappointed.
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.
The comment above is just the sort of comment that deserves a few 'insightful' mod points. Sometimes, pointing out the blindingly obvious is difficult when people so desperately want things to be something other than what they are. Wikipedia is, at best, something *like* an encyclopedia, and as such should serve similar purposes. Some people think that somehow there is a way to take the human element and passion out of a user-contributed site, or any site, or any work or endeavor of humankind for that matter. There isn't. Let us simply understand that you can't have the factual accuracy and neutrality of an encyclopedia for something that occurred yesterday; technology alters the quantity and speed of information, not its quality. If you want neutrality, you must wait for cooler (and further removed) heads to prevail.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
I am not a conspiricy theorist...
Now you are. Congratulations on the shiny new hat.
Do you state that all truth is subjective as an objective truth?
That said, when you look at Wikipedia, you should be checking the references. If there are no footnotes or a references section on a Wikipedia article, read the article with interest but don't trust it for anything.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Also, Wikipedia marks articles that involve current events and controversey as such to make it clear that it's not necessarily an objective and concise source of information. So long as they are forthright about that, I don't see a problem.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
You're exactly right, you know. Anything recent and controversial on wikipedia is very likely inaccurate - and most users find this out pretty quickly, whether through common sense (ie: you have regular people editing articles) or through experience (such as this Ken Lay thing).
As a result, you quickly get the idea that WIKIPEDIA IS NOT FOR NEWS. Meanwhile, the author of TFA seems to be under the impression that its information should always be bang-on accurate immediately. This ain't gonna happen. Just like the collective consciousness, any event that's got the masses riled up is going to be poorly portrayed in its opening hours. Fortunately, the strength of Wikipedia is that, soon enough, its accuracy is recovered.
A good example is the Ken Lay thing. Take a look at it today; it's pretty accurate at the moment. This may change; a lot people are still pissed about the guy, even years later.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Troll#Attent ion-seeking_trolls
Troll article -> Slashdot links to it -> Lots of pageviews -> More ad clicks -> Profit
Sony ha
If you're not similarly skeptical about information in the rest of the media, you're naive.
Hearing the tech reporting on the news is pretty scary. I imagine it's similarly painful for experts in other fields to hear their field discussed by reporters.
The sentence violates several of the Wiki community's guidelines for article authorship. Using the word "speculation" is not enough. There has to be a credible source cited to be behind the speculation so that the "fact" of the speculation can be established as either belonging to a majority or significant minority. Otherwise the sentence is reporting nothing more than an individual opinion(whether it is the author's or not, or whether it belongs to many people) and can slant the overall impartiality of the article - simply mentioning such speculation can skew a future reader's opinion of the subject of the article. In any case, it's way too soon to tell what the concensus is regarding Lay's death, so remarking on such speculation as fact is ridiculous.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2005/12/16
I think it's valid criticism for non-technical articles. As noted by others, wikipedia kicks ass for noncontroversial, primarily technical topics.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Look at the little row of tabs at the top of every Wikipedia page. See the one marked 'history'? Click on that. You are now looking at a complete history of edits to that page. The handle of everyone who edited it, the date and time it was edited and the commit comment they attached to it. Isn't that enough?
You can click the radio buttons to the left and get a side-by-side comparison of the article as it was at any times in the past or you can see the entire article exactly as it was on any given date. You can click on the author's name and send them a message on their 'Talk' page if you want to ask about why they changed whatever they changed. You can go to the 'Talk' page for the article itself and see comments from the various editors - heck, you can even get a history of the edits to the Talk page!
Generally, if there are a lot of 'rv: vandalism' entries on the history page (eg on the "Computer" article that gets vandalised a lot) - then perhaps the article itself is pretty stable - but gets a lot of editing history because people are fixing up the actions of complete idiots. If on the other hand there is some kind of 'edit war' between two editors - then this is still a controversial subject - so treat the article with care. If the article had a busy period for some days or weeks - but then all the subsequent edits were spelling fixes, addition of foreign language versions and stuff like that - then this is a stable and trustworthy article.
The number of References at the bottom of the article is another good gauge of quality.
www.sjbaker.org
What you say is generally true but I did find a counterexample.
The wikipedia entry on Kryder's Law, which is just Moore's law for hard disks was an example of a technical article older than 6 months, which should not have been controversial. It turned out to have some serious problems, like there never was any such thing as Kryder's law until Wikipedia invented it.
Since I originally pointed out the error, the article has been updated. You can read about what was wrong with it at http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/Kryder's.html
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.
I can see the coder-geek authorbase as the primary cause of Wikipedia's problems. Here are the issues I've noticed in the past. Many of these examples may have been rectified, but they still exist in countless other forms:
They're insidiously opinionated. Instead of saying wasabi is "fried with peas," they say it is "considered quite tasty with fried peas." Gee, "tasty" is completely objective I guess, not a matter of personal, ahem, taste, at all. Someone tries to argue them down, but they know they're "right," after all they learned C++ when they were 10.
They miss the forest for the trees. The article on AIDS has wonderful information on the disease's origins, treatment and spread throughout the world. Too bad there's no fucking organization to anything in the article, and the section titled, "Global epidemic" is precisely redundant with the one named, "Current status." It's like the typical geek's desk, awash in code printouts and spec sheets. There's good stuff in there, somewhere (he's sure) but he'll be damned if he can make any sense out of it (but hey it's like a puzzle and those are fun). He should just print one more copy instead of checking if it's already there, and organizing his shit.
They don't know how to write. If the spelling and language mechanics are correct, then it's good writing (which is like saying that any code that compiles is good code). There's no rule in Strunk & White about too many clauses in one sentence! Thus, the writing is perfect. Decent style, flowing sentences, consistent tone and voice are only for the weak-minded; hackers are made of sterner stuff (well, mentally).
They're obsessed with dumb trivia. Every article must have its "In popular culture" section, just to prove that they, like Ken Jennings, know stupid references to everything.
They don't know jackshit about page layout. Does every table need a full set of borders? Must LaTeX equations be fucking huge? Why can't editors use a color wheel (or common sense) to choose nicely matching colors? Deitel & Deitel is not the standard on typesetting or formatting; use a textbook that had an editor as a guide on page layout, like "Fundamentals of Aerodynamics" by Anderson. Clean tables without distracting borders, equations modestly marked by centering and italics (no huge font necessary), headings used only when needed. It's black and white because colors would be superfluous. But it's fun on Wikipedia to add superfluous formatting, it's just like adding new features to software. Oooh, shiney! Instead of featuritis, it's sectionitist, bolditis, table-itis.
So that's what I think ails Wikipedia in a nutshell. Many of these are addressed by Wikipedia policies, but when even Wikipedia's founder (Jimbo Wales) dislikes following them, how will they ever gain decent implementation? Especially when any editor with half a brain who does support them is just another uncool, uptight elitist who should be ignored. It's no wonder that Wikipedia today is still a nightmare of good information. Citing Wikipedia at the college level is still academic suicide. Unless their policies and people change throughout the chain of command, Wikipedia will never evolve to a real authoritative source that is a true encyclopedia. It's fun to read, but only as accurate and objective as the rest of the internet.
What you don't mention is Tycho's motivation in writing this rant against Wikipedia, as revealed by the part of the article you didn't quote: He was pissed off because they deleted some of his articles. Articles about a book series called "Epic Legends of the Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga". A book series that doesn't exist.
In other words, this very set of arguments as to why wikipedia's system "doesn't work" was prompted by an incident of wikipedia's system working. Tycho tried to post false information, and Wikipedia rejected this. And Tycho got pissy and went and complained about Wikipedia on his blog.
Now given, Tycho's false information was awesome; the ELOTH:TES stuff that Wikipedia rejected is truly hilarious, and now that it's been moved to its own wiki (where it probably should have been in the first place), it's turned into a collaborative project in its own right, as if Borges' "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" conspiracy had had as their goal to parody fantasy novels.
But it didn't belong on Wikipedia. And the incident in which it was removed from Wikipedia itself neatly refutes the complaints that the incident inspired Tycho to level against Wikipedia.
The first complaint is that "Any persistent idiot can obliterate your contributions... all sources of information are not of equal value... I believe there is such a thing as expertise." I don't think it's very hard to read between the lines here; we already know Tycho is pissed off because some "persistent idiot" obliterated his contributions. It's not very hard to imagine that the real issue here is that Tycho (who certainly is a person with expertise) thinks he as a source of information is of value, and the Wikipedia hivemind does not. But Tycho himself shows that the things wikipedia values are more valuable than "expertise"-- Wikipedia values facts, neutrality and whenever possible rigor, and ignores authority. If we accepted "expertise" or appeals to authority, then we'd be obligated to accept Tycho as a source of information just cuz he's a real smart person with a real popular blog. And then Wikipedia would have a series of articles about a fantasy novel franchise and ill-fated 1980s children's TV show which never existed.
Second off, Tycho issues the complaint that Wikipedia's "errors get fixed eventually" principle isn't very useful if you don't know whether the errors have been fixed yet. Simply looking at a wikipedia page, you have no way to know whether you're looking at a cleanly vetted, accurate bunch of information, or if your pageload just happened by random coincidence to fall in that 30-second gap of space between a vandal entering a statement that Ken Lay committed suicide and a watchlister rving it. This is a much more serious and substantial complaint, and one which is a serious problem for the idea of Wikipedia as an information source. The lesson to be learned here is of course that you shouldn't treat wikipedia as a primary source but rather a starting point for further information, and if the information you're taking from wikipedia is important you need to check the references like a hawk. But in the end, it still isn't a real problem-- as Tycho has shown us. After all, as Tycho found when he tried to introduce false information, that little gap of time where the Wikipedia Wave Function hasn't yet collapsed and pageloads return false information is strikingly small. This is generally not a matter of errors taking months to get fixed. It is sometimes measured in minutes or seconds. The probability of hitting at a bad moment is small enough we can effectively ignore it, unless we have some kind of ulterior motives and are just trying to make Wikipedia look bad.
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
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.
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.
As you may know, on this day, Bonaparte made a coup d'État and thus became known as "Napoléon"...
Every time a single person (or institution) is in charge of the writing / editing of any article, a risk exists, and that's why a) encyclopaedias are not scholar references b) science suppose peer review.
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.
That is true, but I would argue simply that an encyclepedia that is 100% correct cannot exist, even if you exclued the recent and controversial. I think thats a true statement. Or rather, I think it could be made, but most people wouldn't agree that it was 100% correct. Most people simply disagree on the truth, although that does not mean that objective truth doesn't exist. Do you see what I'm saying? It gets really complex, just trying to talk about it.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I think the correct solution in this case it not to argue content but to file a 'Request for Deletion' - explaining that the term is a neologism. That - together with the "No original research" rule should get rid of the offending article in short order.
www.sjbaker.org
I imagine it's similarly painful for experts in other fields to hear their field discussed by reporters.
I'm a statistician, and I can attest that is DEFINITELY the case for me. Few days go by that I don't see or hear bad statistics in papers, magazines, radio, or television. Informal internet polls get reported as fact (I'm looking at you, Popular Science)... few statistics give any sort of error margin, and even if they do, many times the person reporting the statistic doesn't understand the importance of the error margin (for example, the infamous boys are better at math than girls claim)... Yeah. Anyone with basic software can churn out a number and claim they have a good statistic, after they've (intentionally or unintentionally) biased their results.
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!
The fact remains that for controversial topics, depending on the time of day I hit the page, I'm presented with different information. That's not a good thing.
You're also presented with a button to give you the edit history. Use it.
The older versions are still there. And the comments of the people who made the changes about WHY they did so are there, too. You'll be able to tell if there is a controversy in progress and what all the sides of the argument are. Then make your own choice.
Try THAT with Brittanica. Or the New York Times. Or CBS News.
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.
The common whine about Wikipedia and "editorial neutrality" reflects the common ignorance of the fact that ALL sources have biases. At least in Wikipedia's case, the issue of bias is openly accepted, discussed, and worked around/with.
Look for the little gold star in the top right corner of articles that have been through the 'Featured Article' mill. My own article on the "Mini" for example.
www.sjbaker.org