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Not As Wiki As It Used To Be
jonney02 writes "The BBC NEWS is running a story about how Wikipedia plans to take back control due to the recent onslaught of malformed articles." It's always been a scary balance between allowing total anonymous participation in a web forum, and preventing yourself from being overrun. I don't envy the Wikipedia designers one bit.
Wiki is a nice, centered information solution. The biggest problem I see for articles that aren't instructional is a lack of references. Some writers to a good job, but it seems that articles of fact should cite where those facts come from. After all, it's not Slashdot...
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
So who will guarantee that the administrators will have a high culture rating and knowledge to discern truth from fiction ?
And who is going to guarantee that they will not prevent anything from publication if it does not fit administrators' political, religious views or outlook on life ?
Huh ?
Has dmoz been successful ?
NO.
Read radical news here
So you need some form of regulation to curb corruption. You introduce editors, moderators, whatever.
And then you have to ask: who watches the watchmen (quis custodiet custard or summat)
(Cue the usual /. Wikipedia flame-war)
Meta will eat itself
I like the idea of there being "gatekeepers" who keep the "canonical" article, pulling from various "dev branches", a la Linux development. I think Wikipedia could use this more mature approach now. In the beginning, of course, it benefited greatly from its openness, but now it's time for editors to start provided more focused guidance.
Wikipedia is making a mistake. The wiki model brought Wikipedia to the dance, and Wikipedia is now running off with another guy. This usually ends in gun play.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
subuse.net/level2 is completely free of any rules. Unlike most wiki's it doesn't even have a purpose. Wikipedia wants to be a wiki-encyclopedia, so when people stray from entering encyclopedic worthy entries, the wiki model fails.
:)
But when a forum is completely anonymous, and completely without an intent on what the content should be, you have something that never needs "control taken back".
Besides, anarchy can be fun!
Sugapablo
"The wikipedia page about Luxembourgish language has been containing libelous statements about the former Luxembourgish Minister of Pubs^H^H^H^HEconsomy since January..."
Here's an idea: maybe you could, like, remove it?
And who decides who will be part of the cadre? Jimmy? I think we can see from his past actions, that he may not be the best judge of who would make the best administrator. I think they need to take a vote within the ranks, and let the editing community decide, then give Jimmy a limited number of vetoes to remove people he doesn't want.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Under the new approach, page edits will no longer be immediately applied to pages but will instead have to be approved by an administrator before they become visible. Vandalism or changes which are not approved will not appear.
With the thousands of edits that happen on wikipedia per second, I don't see how this change will do anything but create an impossible backlog.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I envy and appreciate the designers of Wikipedia.
Now, I know you're going to post some examples in response to this of just crazy outlandish things (see GW's page if it isn't on lock down) but all and all, I appreciate what they've done for me.
To illustrate the shortcomings, however, enjoy this Onion Article.
My work here is dung.
He tried to, but now the page is full of ^H^H^H^H
The latest Slashdot meme.
You are a total fucking moron. You think that just because people have a login ID that they are somehow all of a sudden more likely to treat others with respect and behave with decorum? Were you sucking dick while they were handing out brains?
Sincerely,
Logged in person
Wikipedia could be called an experiment in human nature: assuming that everybody does their best (and no evil) is just like one of the principles of communism (everybody should do their best at work, despite their motivation, salary, etc). I did never believe it could possible work as well as it did.
I did not research this but I assume that in the beginning mostly more educated people used it and they tend not to abuse it too much. As it became widely adopted and used, everybody started to use it, meaning a higher percentage of people who would like to abuse it.
Unfortunately I don't believe that a [global] experiment in human nature can survive... Check out Winterbottom's movie, "24 hour party people".
I see what you're saying.
But if we modify the analogy so that wiki IS the dance and that all the people meet at the dance and pair off and settle down, they don't need to go to the dance anymore.
What I'm saying is that after the initial wiki process is over for a given article you could say that - as long as people agree that it's a complete and up to date article - the wiki process could be closed since there is no more to be added at the present time.
I'm not saying that this would work but I can see on both sides of the line.
Reinventing the wheel since 1979
I say keep wikipedia as it currently is, you can add a disclaimer to the top of every page saying that the information is freely edited and may be false, but if I wanted an encyclopedia that was completely written by a bunch of elitist self-important ivy-league PhDs, then I would just dust off my encyclopedia brittanica books.
I had tried to create a user id for myself on wikipedia, in order to update an article I was reading, and was immediately banned, along with my IP. I was quite angry because there was no warning - and I complained. A response came quite quickly, politely informing me that the name I chose violated some pattern matcher for inappropriate names. I was still annoyed, but after they released the IP block I created an appropriate account and put a "watch" on the article I had wanted to update.
Over the following weeks, this relatively low-profile article was vandalized several times; each time it was corrected but also represented a vulnerability to people reading the page. One attack, in particular, deliberately reversed the sense of several health and safety tips, making cautions into recommendations and recommendations into cautions.
Clear, Dark Skies
It's somewhat amazing how, at a major university, I still sea at least 50% of my fellow students handing in midterm papers with blue underlined links crediting Wikipedia as a source on their Works Cited page. Unreal.
I have seen arguments that Digg will take over slashdot. But when a site grows, it always faces these types of issues, and editorial oversight is the only defense.
Ok, I give up, why you?
The problem is that credentials are rarely relevant to the broad array of information Wikipedia covers. For instance, I wrote the article about the headbolt heater, which is the device that causes people from warmer climates to ask people from colder climates if their cars are electric (as its 3-prong 110-volt plug typically dangles a few inches out of the vehicle's grill), but I have no qualifications in the field of headbolt heaters outside the fact that I happened to know about them and find some good information about them. In another example, I am a law student and found an article or two that was written by a practicing attorney but needed some clarification.
In a purely credentials based system, I would likely not have been allowed to edit the work of a more experienced person in my own field. To allow otherwise would be to defeat the entire purpose of the credentials system, as an amateur hobbyist in any field would have to be allowed to edit the work of a seasoned professional, and that's essentially what already exists.
I think a better decision would be setting up something akin to the meta-moderation system here on slashdot. Instead of designating users to do the reviewing, why not let all users (or at least those that had an account for a while) review random edits from wikipedia. You could then assign higher weights to edits of users whose edits are often marked as incorrect/vandalizing in the moderation system, and make them come up more frequently on the not-so-random list of edits to review. That way, you'd keep control in hands of the contributors, and vandalizing edits of obscure pages would have better chances of being caught. Of course, such a system would not be perfect, but on the other hand, peer-review by a smaller group of people that you trust wouldn't be that perfect either.
This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
.. but how will they staff it?
I think the Wiki concept is perfect for a niche application, such as documenting a software process, or a software project, or some other specific topic that has a focus. I use a number of corporate Wikis and hobby related wikis for these exact types of topics. However.. in Wikipedia's case, it is a whole different ballgame.
The problem with Wikipedia is that the folks that *now* are most inclined to contribute to Wikipedia are the ones that stand to benefit from their contribution, either by pushing an agenda, or disparaging another source. Granted, there are a number of contributors that are active with good intentions, but I suspect as Wikipeda continues down the path of letting *anyone* contribute immediately, that subsequent contributions will be more skewed towards revert wars and subtle edits to existing content vs. new content and contribtions.
The reality is, all the editing of existing content will become more of a platform to introduce opinnions and agendas vs usable content. Not to say that there aren't contributors that will continue to give good content, but what might have been 5% of agenda pushing 2 years ago is going to be 40% now with the critical mass of information.
Wikipedia is making a good move and the social dynamics will be interesting (i.e. Managing and Staffing this new model)
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
Towards the Singularity.
I wrote the BBC piece, and it's generated a lot of discussion on the WikiEN-l mailing list, as well as some correspondence between me and senior wikipedians around the question of whether the German proposal amounts to making the Wikipedia *more* or *less* wikilike. My blog posting goes into more detail. At the moment Jimbo and I have agreed a truce- we disagree over the implications, and I accept that he sees what's happening as an improvement not a restriction.
For reference, this is supposed to be about the semi-protection. Which just happens to involve registering an user account and showing, just for a few passing moments, that you are capable of appropriate conduct.
That is, if you want to edit the couple of popular articles that happen to be semi-protected at the time.
There's 196 semi-portected articles at the moment in English Wikipedia. There's 1,355,706 articles. There's 70 articles at the moment that are full-protected, as well as handful of articles that show up in article count but are actually protected against recreation.
It still leaves you (...calculations, calculations, I'm a bit bad at math...) over 1.3 million articles for you to completely vandalise if you don't bother to spend a whole two minutes registering an user account.
You don't even need to confirm your email address.
And the separation of approved / unreviewed edits has not yet, as far as I know, even been implemented in MediaWiki.
Sorry if I sound a bit tired. I just find it a little bit vexing that people get stuck on small things like "hey, it says 'anyone can edit', and I get this error message that says that I can't". This is what happens when someone realises that you need some control. Regrettably, utopias where everyone can do anything don't work - human nature being what it is, you need some control. It's almost like saying "Oh, sure, everyone can come in our country!... except for people who don't have a passport and visa... and people who try to cross the border at a funny place... and armed, hostile soldiers of another country... obviously... But apart of that, everyone can come!"
So read "a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" just like you would read "a city where everyone can perform on the streets." (don't be surprised if, in such city, the police asks you to get the hell away from the way of the traffic and move to the sidewalk like everyone else.)
Secondly, what the heck is wrong with the concept of reviewed versions? It doesn't prevent anyone from editing the stuff or even seeing the unreviewed edits, it just prevents people from seeing stuff we don't know to be good. It's a quality control measure, not a barrier to contributing.
only half believe that. While it is impossible to deny that our species is polluted with short-sighted agressors I believe that they are the minority. Most of the people I know are loving and caring who would go out of their way to avoid deceiving or hurting people for personal gain.
And yet, the history of all societies is driven by such people.
It's banal to remark that even monsters love their children - banal, but true. I'm pretty sure the people who trash wikipedia wouldn't treat their own homes or families that way.
Clear, Dark Skies
I don't really know what else to say about it.
We are introducing some changes, yes. The changes are specifically designed to make us MORE of a wiki than before.
We used to have to protect articles. We didn't like that, so we moved to what we call semi-protection. We still don't like that, so we are moving to non-vandalized-version flagging.
Each of these steps was specifically designed to make Wikipedia MORE of a wiki.
Sheesh.
--Jimbo
Wikia
Actually, IMO the biggest threat to Wikipedia's "quality" claim is that, contrary to the disclaimer at the bottom of pages on en.wikipedia.org, "This Wikipedia isn't English." Vandalism has nothing to do with the problem -- un-vandalized articles are just as bad as the vandalized ones.
Until someone comes up with a way to sort out the crap writing, Wikipedia is still going to have the appearance of something that's poor quality. Some of the articles read like they were written by a random spam generator.
Some examples:
Whatever else you may get from Wikipedia (I read it for the laughs), the articles (both writing and factual content) don't say "quality." More like "any idiet cun edit hour artikles, and we du!"Just click the "Random article" link. Within two or three clicks, you're bound to land on an article that contains spelling, grammar, logical, or factual errors. Not only are some of these articles the worst form of "committee-write," they're chock full of errata, as well as contradictory and even downright wrong information.
Of course, the Wiki-boosters mantra "anyone can fix it" is ridiculous, as there's no value proposition in correcting sloppily written articles when you know that some "administrator" with a fifth-grade reading level is going to revert the article as soon as you've cleaned it up. Of course, this is the same group (Wiki-boosters) who sincerely believe that giving every child in Africa a laptop with the Wikipedia on it is the sure cure of all that continent's ills.
Until Jimbo's Big Bag of Trivia gets some real editorial staff, "quality" will continue to be job 237,345,861.
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From Wikimedia Meta-Wiki:
What is changing?
We want to open up editing without damaging the reader's experience.
We want to be more wiki and let editors edit freely, which is where all the good things come from. At present a small percentage of articles (a few hundred out of 1.5 million on the English language Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/) are locked or partially locked from editing. We want to open these up. But Wikipedia is a top 20 website (Alexa ratings, no. 17 on 3 month average; no. 15 on 30 August 2006 -- http://www.alexa.com/), so we must keep it good for the readers.
The new feature will mean that edits from new or anonymous editors will be delayed before being shown to readers - they will see a 'flagged OK' version by default, with a link to the live version. The idea is to enhance the reading experience, and free us to enhance the editing experience. If vandalism can't be seen by the general public, there will be less motivation to vandalise.
Anonymous or new-editor edits will need to be approved by a logged-in editor. Of the thousands of editors on the large Wikipedias, many concentrate on checking revisions and dealing with odd changes and vandalism -- this will assist their work and we do not expect new delays.
We are also considering a related feature to flag particular versions of articles as being of high quality. This is to a different end: a high-quality finished product. This will likely be tested first on the German language Wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/), which has already had three stable editions released on CD and DVD, which have sold quite well. If the feature works there, it may be used on other language Wikipedias.
These features are not finished, so we don't have a lot of fine detail as to how it will all work as yet. But we hope this change will allow us to do things such as open up the George W. Bush article or even the front page itself to full unrestricted editing.
When was this proposed?
Jimmy Wales asked for a time-delay feature for casual readers in late 2004; after very fast editing on the Indian Ocean tsunami produced a very high-quality article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_ea rthquake) very quickly, but with some highly visible vandalism; we've hotly discussed how to achieve stable high-quality editions of Wikipedia since almost the start of the project, in 2001.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Let me suggest that before you write me off as a troll, you try it for yourself: Pick an article with an egregious grammar error, correct the mistake, and then come back in a week or ten days. Unless the article is completely obscure (i.e. no one ever sees your changes) chances are that the article will be back in the same sad shape within that time.
When I first discovered the Wikipedia, I thought that it was cool that I could help to "fix" broken articles (I'm a writer in my day job). So I spent a little free time correcting the grammar errors (and generally sloppy writing) in a number of articles, probably around 10. Within a week, all but one of them had either been reverted so that the original mistakes returned, or re-edited introducing the same or similar mistakes. When I saw that, it became clear to me that what Wiki-boosters claim as the main strength of Wikipedia is also a weakness. It also significantly cooled my interest in editing the poorly written articles I come across.
Basically, writing done by committee is always going to be inferior. Since that's the method that the Wikipedia currently uses, it's hard to see any significant improvement in the quality of the articles coming along. Further, I think that there's no real solution to this problem as long as every article is open to editing by anyone at any time. Someone suggested that there should be a static "live" article and then people would work on a dynamic "backend" article that would become the live article once it was edited and checked for accuracy. But I'm not sure even that would work, since it requires someone to take ownership of the article.
Perhaps there's a solution out there, but none of the proposals I've seen suggested looks like it would work.
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You don't cite encyclopedias, because you don't use them as sources in scholarly works. Encyclopedias are starting points. You use them to get an overview of the information you want, and references to more primary sources. You then go to those sources read and use them. This is even true in sources themselves. If you are reading a paper by Dr. A, and he talks about the results of Dr. B's experiment, you don't quote him on that, you go get Dr. B's paper and quote that instead.
So even when you are talking about Britanica, it's improper form to cite a reference book. When you are talking Wikipedia, it's downright stupid. Especially since it's changeable. I mean the student can always change it to say what they want. It'll get revered, of course, but they can just claim "That's what it said when I looked at the page, so I figured it was right."
You always want to go to the most primary source available. Don't read a paper about a paper about an experiment, read the paper about the experiment by the experimenters themselves. Don't read a newspaper article about a speech, read the transcript of the actual speech. While all the sources that are more levels removed can be useful starting points, and have useful commentary and analysis for you to think about, they aren't what you should cite. Don't believe their version of things, get the original and check for yourself.
Hang on -- are you out of your fucking mind? People are THANKED when they make grammatical corrections. What in the world would anybody revert a grammatical correction for? I DARE you to show me your accounts where you've done that and had it reverted soon after. Chances are if that happened you weren't just fixing grammar, you were inserting other garbage that didn't deserve to be there.
The nice thing about Wikis is that they keep track of each individual change. No vague or mysterious claims permitted; every edit is well documented. I hereby call you on your bullshit and ask you to produce the "diffs".
audioLibre - freedom of music