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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.
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
This goes back to "and who is policing the police?". If there is human involvement, then all things human will naturally be involved (emotions, agendas, etc..). There is nothing that you can do about it except to just trust that the system "works", at least most of the time.
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.
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 ?
Noone's going to guarantee that. It's wikipedia, there are no guarantees.
The question is whether ngoing vandalism outweighs the potential for abuse by the administrators. German wikipedia appears to think it is. We shall see.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
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.
"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?
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
How does Encyclopedia Britannica do it? Or the NYT? For one thing, Wiki'ers are supposed to cite their sources. If sources are cited or don't check out, edits don't get made. That's the way it ought to be. Statements of fact should always be allowed, and statements of opinion should be quotes from notable figures (such as a historian or something), and the person making the statement should be identified.
Just my $0.02.
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.
Wikipedia (nor any other encyclopedia that I know of) doesn't give any sources for its claim that, for example, Norway borders on Sweden, that it has a "very elongated shape" or that it is "generally perceived as clean and modern".
Giving sources for *every* claim you make quickly degrades into nonsense. It should be sufficient to give sources for any claim that isn't patently obviously true. (to anyone with a knowledge of the field anyway) One could actually well argue that the last claim I mention, what Norway is "generally perceived as" doesn't really belong in an encyclopedia, it's very subjective anyway, certainly it's not an undisputable fact.
There is one thing that can be done; peer review. I am not talking about college proffesors in tweed jackets (but I am sure they would be welcome). The problem I see in Wikipedia is that the "rules" the comunity has developed seem more important to the registered users than presenting nutral, correct and well referenced content.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
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".
If there's an article that obviously needs better sources, feel free to add {{unreferenced}} to an article that has no sources whatsoever, or otherwise add {{fact}} after a sentence that seems like it's badly in need of a source to back up the claim made.
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.
And who decides who will be part of the cadre?
Hey, I've got an idea. Let's do something based on the Hindu concept of rewards for good deeds. We could call it "Karma". Like if someone had done a bunch of editing that nobody disapproved of they could accumulate points and after they get a certain number of points they earn the right to approve changes... we could call that "moderating."
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.
Good example, but vandalism is pretty well covered by the system already. It is easy to detect and easy to repair. The biggest danger to Wikipedia's quality are claims that aren't easy to verify, usually concerned with specialized fields that few people are familiar with. The best argument for account registration is not to keep out deliberate troublemakers, but to make it easier to trace factual statements to the one who made them and ask followup questions for references or credentials.
If a scientific article is amended with a certain statement, it would be useful to have a user name attached to that edit, so the user can be asked to clarify where the information is from and what credibility the source has. An IP address is not so easy to contact.
How does Encyclopedia Britannica do it? Or the NYT?
They FIRE people. People LOSE THEIR JOBS. If someone abuses or games or otherwise plays loose with the facts they risk MAKING LESS MONEY.
Money. You want capital 'T' Truth? Make it about the money.
The wikipedia "model" as it stands now is all reward (big ego boos, "Look Ma, I edited Luxembourg!") and very little risk (Dood1: "Yo, I just got banned from posting in wikipedia!" Dood2: "Like, D00d, you are so-o-o-- cool! That rawks, man! And screw them!"). The day a writer of a wikipedia article loses his source of income for doing a bad job is the day wikipedia begins to be credible.
You want "community"? Go to a parade or fireworks display. You want an encyclopedia of facts? Pay people.
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.
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
Sorry but that's not how it works at the Wikipedia, because at the Wiki, there is Facts, Opinions, NPOV, and endless battles over whose NPOV is more POV than N and so my NPOV IS REALLY THE ONLY NPOV and that other guy's NPOV IS POV POV POV POV!!!!!!
Check out the history of cyberstalking, for one. See how repeatedly it morphs into a completely bland and useless article that makes no mention of the use of an false accusation of cyberstalking as a means to suppress dissent.
Try adding mentioning, with citations, that people can be falsely accused of cyberstalking. Watch how that is reverted away. That has happened repeatedly on this article. On July 11th, a section containing the DOJ description of cyberstalking and how it compares to physical stalking was added, along with a section containing a link concerning the problem of false accusations, and the use of the accusation of cyberstalking itself as a means of well, stalking. Note how in the span of 15 days, Aine63 repeatedly attacks the article, until by July 21st, there is no indication that the DOJ itself say that cyberstalking has no universal definition but that stalking laws generally require a credible threat of violence. And also gone by July 21st is any mention of the problem of false accusations.
So who is the cyberstalker here? Is it Aine63 who stalks that article to keep out for his/her own reasons any discussion of false accusations? Or is it me because I a) used the compare feature to find out why a section was removed, b) noted Aine63's involvement, and here state that Aine63 is a Wikinazi, who has a definite POV and should be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
I wonder why Aine63 is so worried about false accusations as to remove their discussion from the wikipedia.... What a fucktard though.
If you read the talk page you find out that this has happened repeatedly. Someone puts in sections about false accusations and things like that, and it gets expunged by some sort of article stalker. In fact, the discussions of this behavior have themselves been removed from the talk page. Why is the wiki so worried about talking about false accusations? Well you might look at how the wiki itself has been used to promote false accusations against John Seigenthaler.
My sense is that the Wikipedia ultimately is doomed due to its insistence on Neutral Point of View articles and all of the fights that that causes. The traditional media is encountering the same thing with the bloggers. An open, but non neutral point of view is far superior in terms of presenting information AND context than a supposedly neutral, objective, point of view that can only fail to provide context and that hides a hidden agenda.
Because let's face, to claim that cyberstalking is not subject to false accusations is just bullshit, and definitely not a neutral point of view.
So what have we learned here? Wiki's NPOV is fatally flawed. Wikiality, truth based on majority rule is fatally flawed. Aine63 is fucktard that probably uses the false accusation of cyberstalking as a tool in his/her life.
I don't know how their new editing rules will prevent Aine63's malicious attacks, we shall see.
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
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".
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