Slashdot Mirror
Long-Term Wikipedia Vandalism Exposed
Daveydweeb writes, "The accuracy of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, came into question again when a long-standing article on 'NPA personality theory' was confirmed to be a hoax. Not only had the article survived at Wikipedia for the better part of a year, but it had even been listed as a 'Good Article,' supposedly placing it in the top 0.2-0.3% of all Wikipedia articles — despite being almost entirely written by the creator of the theory himself."
How many times must it be said? Wikipedia is great for researching trivia. But don't believe everything you read there. Your grandma may as well have posted it!!...
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/love.html
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
as it is simply "flat out wrongness."
Personally I think wikipedia should be treated as any other source, you should have at least one other, independent, source that backs up the first. I've found mistakes in the college text books that I pay hundreds of dollars for, so if your only going by one source your bound to get screwed. What I really like about wikipedia is that it gives you great sources that you can use, check up on those sources as well.
Most of the anti vandalism efforts are directed at kicking the obvious stuff, there is waay too much information out there for someone to check every fact. It's a problem without an easy solution, we can't write a fact checking bot and we don't have enough humans. Go figure. Oh well, it'll make for interesting podcast discussion next week.
That you can do shit with other people's hard work? wow..
Saying that a certain percentage of articles undermines the whole encyclopedia is likening everybody to criminals just because some of us are.
I just can't believe people are still beating this drum - when will individual cases like this stop making /. news?
Can someone offer a link to it? I may have missed it??
Correct me if I am wrong, but I just read the AfD page and it doesn't appear that this was a hoax or vandalism at all. What it was, was a well written article on a theory that did not meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. It was also written by the creator of the theory which is against Wikipedia's policies on original research.
We all know Wikipedia has its flaws. However there is a sentence in TFA that i think quite interesting :
The assumption is that, if they make it as far as Good Article review, they're probably quite good.
I dont blame Wikipedia's admins or users for not having thought about that before...I think i would have probably assumed the same thing in their position.
That's something that could be changed easily. It may be interesting to set up a commitee that is in charge of double-checking the informations in the article before actually allowing people to vote for or against the tag "Good Article" based on the style and the quantity of information in the article (What seems the main criteria to differenciate a normal and a good article).
I'd say it's more like proof that the system works.
Sure you can create a false article. It's not like scientists have never falsified their research and published it in a journal, for example.
The proof is whether they're caught and the mistakes are corrected. In an obscure subject this may take a while in ANY format.
People need to learn to apply good research skills across the board, not just to wikis.
Considering the source is one of these.
Life is too short to proofread.
Irrespective and regardless are words.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Nobody's claiming that Wikipedia is 100% accurate. Even closed encyclopedias though can contain errors. The point is that those errors are less likely to be detected since very few people have access.
I don't want to read
....surely the creator of a theory is the most qualified person to write about that theory?
Is it possible to read deleted articles on Wikipedia in any way? I know articles are deleted for a reason, but it seems like a Bad Thing that once an article is judged unworthy, all its history and edits disappear into a black hole.
I know that right now I can use caches or Wikipedia mirrors to access the article, but imagine if somebody ten years into the future want to read the offending article. (It had to have some interesting stuff, since it had been picked out as a Good Article earlier.)
This submission title is misleading. If a scientist creates a "crackpot" theory and it has a name and the details of his theory are in wikipedia, what's the problem? All the discussion in the link relates to him not being "notable" enough to be in there.
This info isn't "unconfirmed". NPA personality theory exists:
NPA personality theory is not widely known in psychology. As far as I can tell, there is only a single unique publication about NPA theory: Toward Self and Sanity by Anthony M. Benis, a book published in 1985 and now long out-of-print. The text was republished in a little-known speculative science journal in 1990. That journal is not a psychology journal, and tends to publish speculative articles on fringe science topics such as warp drive.
Why should this information/opinion not be added to the wikipedia article rather than just deleting it?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The wikipedia is a very good source for new information, but not trust. So you get here, collect info, and use check that info with facts elsewhere.
Also the wikipedia is not a tool to dectect if something is false. Wrong ideas can be supported there. Seems that people use all encyclopedias to avoid thinking. That iself is wrong.
-Woof woof woof!
Mod Parent Up!
nukem996, you are not wrong in suggesting that people should use multiple sources when writing things, but the truth is people should never cite wikipedia as a source. It's not because the information is wrong, but it's because the information has not been vetted in a process that can be methodically demonstrated. Even peer-reviewed journals can fail, and they do, but the truth is the information contained in those journals is being vetted by people with backgrounds in related fields and the information is being analyzed in a way that is methodically laid out. If Wikipedia was designed in that way -- where the process was highly moderated, then it would be a legitimate source, not unlike how a book or a journal is a legitimate source. (Although old books and journals are wrong in the worst kinds of ways... sometimes)
I've written several articles on Wikipedia on obscure things (Phosphatidylmyo-inositol_mannosides) which was just an exercise in me understanding my own research, but the stuff I've written, even if heavily sourced on Wikipedia is so obscure I could just make up anything about that and it would likely fly. And the truth is, if I write anything that seems correct, for the most part it will last because it seems correct And therein lies the problem that an unmoderated system cannot solve for. Wikipedia assumes honorable and intelligent users and gives enormous privileges to these users, when just one bad apple can go around slowly obscuring fact with fiction.
Anyway, I've ranted here which is not what I really wanted, but my point is simple: Wikipedia is a good starting point, but should never ever be used as a cited source. Find the information you discover in Wikipedia in another source and use that. And, because you should be a good wikipedia user, put that source into the article.
Now I'm just convinced that even the people who submit articles don't read them first. This wasn't "vandalism" per se so much as it was shameless self-promotion by Anthony M. Benis, who invented the same psychological theory that he would later write about on Wikipedia. While his knowledge and authority on the theory are not in question (what with his being the creator of it), the notability of the theory in the field of psychology is in question.
It seems that the true nature of the article is far, far more boring than what the summary leads you to believe.
The basic complain is that the NPA Personality is not really a widely accepted theory that was promoted on the Wikipedia by the author of the theory himself. Notable or not, the NPA Personality theory was published, thought not accepted. That doesn't make the article vandalism or a hoax. The author is self-promoting on Wikipedia and violates the no primary research rule. It doesn't really say anything about the Wikipedia system. The fact that it was caught and then voted for deletion means the Wikipedia is working. It's not vandalism nor a hoax. It's a long, edited article on an obscured, generally unacceptable theory in psychology promoted by a less than notable author. What's up with people trying to bash the Wikipedia?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I fail to see how this is a black mark against Wikipedia. The theory is genuine, just not really worth mentioning. If you read the deletion discussion, you'll see that Wikipedia is working just fine. A whole bunch of people had an intelligent, generally respectful discussion about the merits of the piece, then decided to remove it after due consideration. 'Vandalism'? I think not.
I have to ask - is this Slashdot Anti-Wikipedia day? There have been three anti-Wikipedia articles in the last 24 hours or so.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I'm afraid so. Here's what Google tells us.
I was curious, so i figure some of you will probably be too.
e n.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPA_personality_theory+NPA+pe rsonality+theory&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&lr=lang_ en&client=firefox-a
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:UZxn8h7HkXcJ:
If language didn't change we'd all still be saying "thou".
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sure it works - but not even remotely to specs. Wikipedia consistently claims that 'problem articles' are (supposedly) caught and fixed in fairly short order. (Minutes to hours is the figure most often bandied about.) Yet here, and in the Siegenthaler Affair, is a case of a problem article that persisted for months.
I read a few comments on the talk pages. It was interesting to see how the problem was approached and dealt with. My conclusion is that Wikipedia needs releases like Linux distros.
The user could indicate in a profile whether she wants stable/testing or unstable pages, maybe even sections/volumes whatever could be separately specified.
The stable version could only be edited by assigned editors and mostly for typos and broken references and such. If an error is found it could be indicated with a note of different color but the original text would not be deleted. (Removal may be necessary in case of a copyright violation.)
The testing version of the pages can be freely edited, but the contributions appear only after a moderation/review.
The unstable version would be what we have today.
For an article to make it to stable it needs to stay in testing long enough without major changes AND reviewed by several authors.
With a system like that the article in question would never made it to stable, probably not even testing.
Matyas
I've once found two pages sticking together in a book I got from the library. Burn all the libraries!
does every new idea gets published in every "good" magazine ? does every new painting gets sold for 20$mil when its still wet ? every new idea needs time and place to grow, then why wiki is such a bad place for this ? why cant wiki be a place for knowledge to be born and flourish ? ou... its encyclopedia it has to have facts not "ideas".... facts are supported by creditable magazines and so on... ideas are supported by your own understanding and interpretation...
Thou does not see the problem that you mention of.
Jonathanjk.com
"Rooby rooby doo-- reeheeheeeheehee"
I sometimes use Wikipedia as a place to get some information that I will have to carefully verify using other sources. I would never trust anything on Wikipedia to be right and would never cite it as a source in a paper. You just never know on Wikipedia when you're going to run into some BS (for the reason you described).
A number of Wikpedia articles are great, but I've noticed too many misleading articles, or articles with just tons of crap in them. For example, some of the articles on bogus medical treatments and pseudoscience are just filled with unscientific gobbledygook that make it sound that theres an actual scientific disagreement over whether the bogus medical treatment is actually bogus. Any 10 idiots with a few dynamic IPs can make quite a big mess on wikipedia and we live in a big world with lots of idiots. Any 10 reasonably smart people who actually don't know exactly what they're talking about can be equally as harmful.
We're all tired of various "experts" and "specialists" attacking Wikipedia's accuracy.
If a "classic" encyclopedia was to be examined for accuracy, you can be sure you'll find multiple instances of brutal inaccuracy. We're friggin' human, nothing we create is perfect, and we're not perfect, and the world isn't perfect. Deal with it.
Seriously. Wikipedia is going to have growing pains like any other online medium where public input is involved. To pretend that a couple of sources are misleading in anyway is a little silly. 98% of Wikipedia by these standards is an OK source. Most likely, verifiably. Seems like a good working system, and I know it is already, because I USE IT. Now if I want to double check facts, an extra source is never a bad idea, which is why I'm so into project gutenberg (sp?) and other sites like that as well. The more information we have immediately available, the better. Everyone should double check all of their facts anyway if it's about anything really important!
Why don't they teach THAT in schools anymore?
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Tagged this one under "nevertrustwikipedia" just like the last 4 or so relevant wikipedia articles.
There are two special difficulties with the Internet. First, the sheer ease and untraceablity of publication which makes life so easy for the irresponsible. And second, the growing tendency of even responsible people to quote or link to other information without thinking. And there is a special problem with Wikipedia; the absence of any proper oversight. It's significant (at least to me) that the major on-line newspapers, the NYT and the UK Guardian, both have stringent procedures for responding to reader complaints.
It would be really good if the major world universities would actually get together and produce something like this, perhaps with a clearly delimited three-tier approach:
Highest tier, fact checked academic publication rendered to encyclopedia level.
Second tier: Reviewed and monitored information not from academic sources, like the CIA yearbook.
Third tier: reader contributed unverified information clearly labelled as such.
Pining for the fjords
Even better, let's make sure wikipedia has a note somewhere on the front page that links to something about BASIC INFORMATION THEORY. Unless they do already. People should be easily notified that double checking facts in life is always a good idea! Apparently they need it more than their getting it!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
(1) Wikipedia has a tremendous amount of high quality, accurate information.
(2) Wikipedia has a large amount of bogus info, misleading statements, and other problems.
My Opinion:
(3) Wikipedia could be made more accurate/better if articles were systematically reviewed by experts.
(4) The only practical way for (3) to be accomplished is it were organized and run by an extremely well financed non-profit or a private company that could somehow recoup its investment by selling access, advertisements or some kind of product.
Essentially, the private company would start with the current wikipedia and pay real experts in the various fields to go through and prune the bogus crap and misleading statements. I don't know if this is compatible with wikipedia licensing in its current form... but I think an encyclopedia with all of wikipedias content, but peer reviewed and without the crap, would be fantastic. You might be able to actually cite it! (Argue all you want, but there's no way you can cite Wikipedia right now in a real academic article.)
I wonder if all the subtle mirrors will be fixed...
I never liked how so freaking many website do more or less subtle mirrors of Wikipedia. Not for licensing reasons -- they have full permissions to do this if obeying the GFDL -- but because Wikipedia is often freaking unverified information. You'd think about.com and the likes would know better!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Usually these articles are spotted when the author in question links them to an existing article. See for example this piece of nonsense which is working its way through AfD at the moment. I spotted it when it was linked to the existing Penal Colony article which is on my watchlist.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
It was a "pleasure" reading it. I was definitely spent, drained, you could say.
I can understand that there are some reasons why we wouldn't want the creator or a 1st hand source editing the wiki for it, but does it truly outweigh the benefits of allowing them to add information?
Sometimes a 2nd hand source can leave out information which is critical to understanding the whole article. If the article was about something I did, I should be allowed to edit the wiki and add or edit any information which I think is missing or is incorrect. Some may have a tendency to exaggerate, but that's what the peer review system is. If I wrote an article for a journal and the only way for that article's content to appear on wikipedia is to have someone read my article and either summarize it or copy/paste snippets of my article into wikipedia, don't you think it'd be much more accurate if I had written the wikipedia entry itself.
If it really needs to be a 2nd hand source, I can easily find a close friend who would do it for me (i.e. politicians having their workers update the wiki with new information).
If we're so afraid of the original 1st hand source editing their work, I find it even scarier we trust 2nd hand source more.
HD Trailers
This just goes to show you that you should never believe anything you read on Wikipedia. I know this because I read it on Slashdot. :P
This reminds me of the article that appeared in a couple of Australian newspapers today, mentioning Brandt's findings of 142 copyvio's on Wikipedia. By the time the newspaper article was published, Wikipedia admins had located and fixed all articles mentioned, plus another hundred or so. Good work dead-tree press!
- Chuq
There are quite a few wikipedia mirrors on the net that usually update from the main site with delays
r y
For instance http://www.answers.com/topic/npa-personality-theo
I think a more meaningful metric for how much harm was done was how many people were exposed to the article. If only 500 people visited it in that year, that's pretty much equivalent to a more prominent "bad article" that was only up for 10 minutes, if 500 people visited it during those 10 minutes.
Both articles about uninteresting subjects, rarely accessed by anyone except the original authors. Instead of "minutes" vs "months", probably a better metric would be number of times a dubious page is read before it's noticed and fixed. Perhaps a few dozen in each case I'd guess.
And all of them negative to some extent. Is this just me, or does this sound odd?
I don't want to read
No. It didn't. A problem only exists, if it is spotted. If no one cares or knows, then it is not a problem. It may still be a fault though.
In this case the fault was lurking in Wikipedia for nearly a year. But when the problem arised (Hey, guys, look at this article. Doesn't it look suspicious?) it was dealt with on short notice. It's the same with bugs. Of course bugs exists everywhere, but one of the main problems with existing bugs is, that they aren't discovered, until someone stumbles on it and can nail it down to an identifiable bug (e.g. reproducing it again and again). So how to fix something you don't know it exists in the first play?
The Wikipedia way is to have everything in the open: All texts, all versions, and everyone can have a look. But for such a special interest field as the NPA theory, no one except the author knows about or wants to know about, how do you get the second glance? It seems that the only people ever looking at the article for nearly a year weren't specialists in the field, so they could only look for formal criteria and didn't feel inclined to cross examine the contents.
It's as much news as "Troll gets FP on Slashdot!" Big deal. Slashdot trolls are modded down, Wiki trolls are fixed or deleted.
I have to disagree with "The proof is whether they're caught and the mistakes are corrected.". By that logic, proof that the system doesn't work can't even exist. If nothing is caught, then you can't say there is a mistake that isn't corrected... by reporting on a mistake, it will be caught and corrected. Let's say I've caught articles with inaccurate facts, have not reported or corrected it. Is that proof the system doesn't work? Only so long as I don't report on it...
The system is self-reinforcing in its philosophy. It's almost the old paradox of the person that says, "Everything I say is a lie." Only in this case, "Everything Wikipedia gets right is proof that it's a good moderated source. Everything that Wikipedia gets wrong will be corrected and is proof that it's a good moderated source." If that is true, it cannot be proven as a flawed system (speaking generally, but not totally; as a general weakness of the overall basis of moderation, but not necessarily complete weakness).
Do I read Wikipedia? Sure. It's a good for generalized info on a topic I'm not at all familiar with or only slightly familiar with. Would I research using its facts directly? Absolutely NOT. Many "facts" included are bold enough to say "Citation Needed"... if you don't have a citation for something not common knowledge, DON'T include it. That in and of itself is, to me, proof of flawed editorial doctorine utilized by many at wikipedia. It's like reading a translation of a classic novel in a foreign language. You don't quote the translation if you are doing scholarly work unless the target is the general public, you quote the original. Especially don't quote it if it can't even list its source, unless it is claiming original source.
So, possibly I did expose one proof of the major flaw with Wikipedia: Citation Needed. I'll call that self-admitted proof of a flawed system, where editors admit lack of research on their part, lack of input from the public, lack of credibility of fact, or whatever you want to classify the flaw as.
I don't think Wikipedia is broken or beyond repair. It's an interesting system. But like all systems, it has its strengths, limitations, and weaknesses. I think its far too unproven to call a success, regardless of its popularity. I think time will both improve the system as well as lend to it being proven more.
I8-D
Comrade Ogilvy sighted again!
Why is anyone at all surprised that Wikipedia is stuffed to the gills with junk and propaganda?
Oh, and let's get rid of another myth. You don't have to believe everything you read on Wikipedia - really? There are at least 965 domains that scrape Wikipedia's content and serve it up with advertising. Chances are, almost any factual subject searched for on Google will include Wikipedia and/or the scrapers.
Most people are unaware of these scraper sites, and they don't realise that they're reading Wikipedia without the visual clues. So what chance do they have? Wikipedia is feeding lies, distortion and propaganda into the body of the Internet, and all we get from slashdotters is -1000 mod points and pointless statements that "other encyclopedias have mistakes in them" as if that made a difference. The real difference between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica is that EB stands behind its scholarship and if a mistake is discovered, they will fix it. There is no guarantee from anyone at Wikimedia or anyone else as to the veracity of any article.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Thou dost. Grief, it's only an archaic conjugation, it's hardly rocket science...
I don't argue that there should not be a Wikipedia, but I would love to see an academic version with some real clout (which would include the legal right to slap cease and desist on anybody copying its content instead of linking to it.)
Pining for the fjords
Damn! And in this of all possible years! Can we still celebrate after such a scandal?
I have discovered a truly remarkable
I'm an Amish, and thou art an insensitive clod.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
That's the best thing about Wikipedia: the debates are transparent, down to the boring nitty-gritty. No transparency at all with the Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia do with a firmer identity process, even if to just weed out the multitude of sock-puppets.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
How do you know if it's a reliable source if no one is an expert on a fictional fact? Think about that one. I bet everyone who monitors that site thought there was someone else who knew what NPA was. There was a great interview on NPR this weekend with the founder/creator of Wikipedia. He said that it is a completely open resource, that is monitored and maintained by people who generally live up to preserving the reliabilty and integrity of article sources. He also mentioned that there are thousands of experts out there monitoring Wikipedia, and that false information for the most part doesn't last that long. Oh well, there was one that got away, so to speak. For a free information resource all-in-all Wikipedia is great. If you guys want a reliable resource get a subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica, where fact finders get paid lots of money to keep a lock down on facts. If that happens to Wikipedia, then you have no reason to complain.
this one freak incident obviously means the ENTIRE project is utterly worthless. oh well, delete it all.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
I think wikipedia would benefit from an automatic grading system.
Articles that have been there for a long time, that have been edited by a big number of editors, from different IP addresses, at a regular pace over long periods of time should be receive a mod up.
And the opposite: articles that were edited by a few authors, from a few or a single IP address, in a short period of time should be added an automatic warning when displayed.
Contributors can be graded too:
Modifying text in an article would count for an automatic negative vote of the modified sentence, and for an automatic positive vote for nearby sentences. The authors who contributed the moded up or moded down sentences will have their karma increased or decreased appropriately.
I am immensely surprised that these seemingly endless Wikipedia stories are not called out as FUD. Instead, it's always exactly the same arguments about Wikipedia's rules and processes and "insightful" comments about how you can't trust anything etc. etc. Okay, we're all agreed that Wikipedia's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. So why go over it again and again?
There certainly seems to be an increasingly frequent crackpot/vested interests battle against Wikipedia (and I'm not saying that certain issues shouldn't be addressed). Regardless of whether you think it's 90% accurate or 99.9% accurate, the fact remains that it is an immensely valuable resource. For some people this is a threat. For others, it puts it in the same camp as our omnipotent-Google-master. Most just want to use it for what it is, and fighting the FUD is the best way to ensure that this keeps happening - a sullied reputation will only decrease donations and other help.
sam brightman
Some have expressed an interest in reading what Wikipedia called a "good article," the NPA personality theory article. Here it is, grabbed by Wikipedia-Watch from Google's cache, and stripped of junk added by Google: http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/npa.html
Archaic Grammar Nazis, I love it!
Jonathanjk.com
Vandalism? A guy promotes his own theory using wiki and finally gets busted. Htf is this vandalism?
And, besides, having a graduate degree myself and written tons of papers: misinformation, unchecked facts and self-promotions are rife across all libraries. As one of my professors told me, "I discovered, way back, as a student, that I could find a source to make any point I wanted...."
Wiki is the bomb. Lay off it!...
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
IMHO using an encyclopedia article as your only source for research is simply not a good idea, be it Wikipedia or Britannica or any other. Encyclopedias are meant to give an overview about topics and to cite original research, witch is what you should be reading and citing in your own research, not the encyclopedia article. There are of course exceptions to this, for instance if your are citing something fairly trivial and not fundamental to your research. But in general using an encyclopedia as your main source is just wrong.
Sindri Traustason.
For 2000 years we've been sold the theory that there was a virgin birth, turns out the whole thing was a mistranslation from hebrew into greek. And millions of suckers out there just continue to swallow it.
Deleted
If this guy created a theory, and no one else has done work to collaborate it or contradict it, why is it a problem?
I'd say have a tag or a notice on the page stating that, but otherwise I'd say it's a good resource. There's thousands of doctors and scientists with good (and bad) ideas that will never be heard. This is one way their work might attract attention and interest, and then further work can be accomplished either confirming or denying the theories.
Isn't that how science works? Sure this isn't the same level as peer reviewed publications... it's the same process though, just a different audience.
There are three (or actually, four) grades of article on Wikipedia: Normal, "Good Article" and "Featured Article". Featured articles typically go through a yet more rigerous process to get onto the Wikipedia front page "Featured Article of the Day" slot - which is (in effect) an additional, yet higher, grade of article.
The criteria for "Good Article" is that someone submits the article for review - this is usually the principle author - but it could be anyone. If the article is not rejected within a few weeks, it gets the "Good" stamp of approval. The problem is that there are vastly too few reviewers for the volume of material - and most of the articles are never read carefully by reviewers - so almost anything will get the "Good Article" stamp of approval by default just because nobody bothered to check it. Hence it's quite likely that a typical "Good article" is no better than a "Normal article". This is a TERRIBLE thing for Wikipedia.
On the other hand, "Featured Article" is exceedingly hard to reach - the reviewers are meticulous and insanely nit-picky...which is a good thing. If an article has a little gold star at the top-right of the screen (indicating that it's "Featured") then it's likely to be pretty damned good. Most featured articles go on to appear on Wikipedias front page for a day - which entails another level of review. By definition, only 365 new "Front Page Featured Articles" can be created for each language every year...which is utterly negligable compared to the 1.5 million English language articles out there.
What Wikipedia needs is a change to the way that "Good" articles are checked so that positive approval is required rather than a mere lack of rejection. That would require a transfer of some reviewers from the prestigious "Featured Article" track to the "Good Article" track. However, people like the prestige of being the gate-keepers of "Featured Articles" and they don't like the relative obscurity of being a mere "Good Article" reviewer...so this is unlikely to change.
But right now "Good Article" means precisely nothing.
Nothing will.
Browsing through tech site articles one day and found that Ars Technica's was basically a puff piece, even an advertisement, for the site. I looked at the history, and the discussions, and it became quickly apparent that unlike other tech site articles that had criticisms, Ars members and staff were systematically removing any negative information. With a passion.
It has actually turned me off from clicking Slashdot's story links to that site. Of course, if those people look here, and have mod points, I am sure this will get modded to -1 Troll, ergo, anonymous posting for the first time in years (since signing up, I think). I don't need stalkers of that caliber.
This NPA thing is a freaking hypothesis just like many others, although a funny one. How is this related to vandalism and what is the justification for simply deleting the entry. A plain disclaimer that is hasn't been proven or confirmed would have sufficed.
Let me guess - they weren't English textbooks, were they?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I am head of HR at a company that recently got an award for our integration of NPA personality theory into the hiring process. Please nobody tell anybody in the HR community about this. Thanks.
I'm kinda tired of wikipedia stories. Its a neat project but it has taken a bunch of story time recently and I'd rather see more diverse postings. Sorry for being a troll.
Minutes to hours is the figure most often bandied about.
Minutes to hours is the figure bandied about for vandalism of articles, not for non-notable / original research articles which need to be deleted. Indeed, that would be a silly claim, as the Articles for Deletion process takes a few days (unless it meets the criteria for Speedy Delete).
Seriously, from the discussion:
As the primary author of these articles and of the NPA personality theory, you are undoubtedly the single most qualified person to provide us with the evidence we need to prove that these articles meet Wikipedia's standards for notability, accuracy, and verifiability.....
--Psychonaut 04:58, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenna_Jameson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_Arts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
How can self promotion and astroturfing be a reason to delete an article in such a contest?
All I see is: you can be a whore, a merchant or a bogus theory and be on wikipedia, as long as you're famous; you can use your page there to do your self promotion, even link to your commercial site, as long as your famous; you can be a bogus theory as long as your famous, but nothing of the prior if you're not.
This is closer to entertainment than to an encylopedia.
If this guy is serious about his theory, he should really considers finding another way to have it known, since wikipedia is really not the right place to do that, but not for the reasons the people said on this discussion page, just because it is becoming closer and closer to google than to a real encyclopedia every minute.
Having worked for a baboon, I can tell you this is so true. Nothing is ever good enough for Mr. Jubjub!
And, if he thinks I am going to work for bananas and kiss his red ass for another 2 years, he has another thing coming!
I get what you're saying, I really do. It's a bit capricious to say "ok, this book was published by an author who apparently underwent no peer review so it does not get wikiprotection but this OTHER book was published by an author who was at least mentioned in this other book so it's valid." There's no rhyme nor reason for the choice, just someone saying that it isn't important enough for wikipedia just because either the moderators (or whatever they call themselves) didn't like the source or realized there weren't a lot of them.
Who are these people to say "oh, it's just one book? Then it doesn't count" and more importantly, are there any lines to be drawn? If it had been cited by a handful of websites, would that be enough viability for the theory? What if those websites only obtained the information from Wikipedia? If I go out tomorrow and print my own book about the concept, which I then get on Amazon, will that be enough to return the article?
But Wikipedia's argument, or at least that of the defenders of deletion, is that it was just one man on a pulpit. If I speak eloquently on how I think blank CDs are, in fact, a veritable mini-world and that burning them reprograms the people into data storage units, my theory would not pass muster and would not belong there. Just printing a pamphlet with my theory on it should not make it valid and does nothing to increase the scientific standing of my belief. Paying for a nice binding also does nothing to increase the scientific standing it just means I had an extra buck fifty per copy. If I make a website promoting my book, it does not make the theory any more credible. And finally, to the Wikipedia argumetn: if I just go to a website and add information about my book, it does not make the theory any more credible. And just because nobody has taken the time to publish an article saying that his theory has no basis and is probably false doesn't make it correct.
It seems like Wikipedia is trying to stand as the gatekeeper between "legitimate" information and a half-million articles that are nothing more than "hey, wouldn't it be cool if the world were, like, totally on the back of a turtle. I'm going to call it turtology and post it to Wikipedia."
As for this article, I personally think that Wikipedia should just own it. Post a new article saying "hey, this man published a book 20 years ago. It was never peer-reviewed, but was subsequently republished in a journal of fringe science in an issue also covering warp drives (although to be honest, I don't know what was actually in that issue, the warp drives was just mentioned in another comment.) In 200x, the author added his article to Wikipedia where it was deleted as an example of original research, prohibited by Wikipedia's terms. News of this long-lasting "error" and it's belated "correction" however had spread to various websites and led to some controversy over the policy against non-original research."
Insert links where appropriate. Maybe even start a list of famous wikipedia controversies. End of story, for now. For the most part, people will forget that this "long term vandalism" had ever happened and it'll be a yet another internet furor (hello YTMD, Star Wars kid, first post) that came, went and now is remembered only in the link tags of slashdotters. Discussing the controversy does not necessarily give the theory any more or less scientific credibility.
Wiki is a great source for fun "facts" but will never be a serious source of reference. It's very nature precludes it from being taken seriously.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
You can read deleted articles; -just go to the history tab on the far right(/top), and you'll get there..
-I imagine the most "anti-social" things are deleted at some point, though..
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
Wikipedia's use of the word "encyclopedia" is Astroturfing.
How many people would use it if it were called Wikipinion?
The things you claim about Ars Technica are demonstrably false from a 5-minute browse.
There are _plenty_ of negative comments about articles, individual editors/writers, and general themes.
Your post was also not modded -- as you predicted -- to -1 Troll (although it's pretty clear it should be).
So, is there a SINGLE SHRED of truth in what you wrote?
Didn't think so.
I'm fucking sick of all the Wikipedia-haters and pro-"intellectual property" twatwaffles coming out of the woodwork here on Slashdot!!!
Stop being such "academic" and/or "professional" tools! When did Slashdot stop being a bunch of Linux+Perl hackers keen on liberty, anonymity, and strong cryptography?
NPA stands for "Not Particularly Accurate"?
There are two points
I am quite sure that Wikipedia would accent an article on relativity written for them by Einstein or on Cosmology by Hawkings. So the fact of a theory article being written by the author of the theory as grounds for not being accepted is pure hogwash. Of course, I can imagine all of the first year physics student trying to correct Hawkings.
But this is typical of Wikipedia, since many political and religious beliefs, etc. are written and described by opponents and non-practitioners. Wikipedia is not the place for information about controversial subjects. Imagine a Wikipedia article on the character and morals of George Bush. 'nuff said?
The point is if the theory is accepted widely enough to merit unadulterated inclusion.
On the other hand, if the theory had been entered and written with disclaimers in front (not accepted, non-mainstream theory, at variance with mainstream research, etc) it probably would have remained. The main problem is that it did not proudly proclaim its lack of status, and it seemed vaguely reasonable to the inexpert in the field. Of course, you can still see it in the Goggle Cache for awhile.
The main problem is that personality is likely much more complex then what is proposed in the article, even if you accept the basic premise of a genetic basis for personality. The theory itself would likely be more appropriate to the early 20th century
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Yeah, you didn't even use it right. "I do not see the problem that thou dost mention" would be more correct. Thou is you, remember, not me.
have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
And why would it be a problem if we still used thou? In fact, the dis-use of 'thou' and expansion of 'you' created a small problem. Note how romantic (and other) lanugages have a singular and plural 'you' (for instance, french has Tu and Vous). English used to have this as Thou/You.
While I agree it does not belong in Wikipedia, and should be removed, I do not think it is 'vandalism'.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You can use wikipedia to do research for a 5th grade paper of the constitution. I don't, however, recommend using it to get legal advice or to figure out how to remove your own appendix...
Life needs more saving throws.
Moe: Moe's Tavern
Bart: Hello...Is there A Benis there?
Moe: Call for A Penis! Is there A Penis here?
Moe: Oh, wait a minute...Listen, you little scum-sucking pus-bucket! When I get my hands on you, I'm gonna put out your eyeballs with a corkscrew!
Bart: Bwahahahaha
Such an inflamatory statement.
This is very important to understand, students and teachers both when it comes to Wikipedia in academia.
Since Wikipedia only purports to be a collection of knowledge elsewhere, the question of whether it is legitimate to cite it in a paper is immaterial, since you could always cite the original sources. It works out for everyone, whether they believe in Wikipedia or not.
Clearly you should NEVER cite a Wikipedia article (even if it is appropriate for the assignment) which itself does not cite its sources.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Undisirregardlessfully, it's not an issue, as long as everyone understands what's being said.
Seriously, though, I'm on the "it's not a fucking word!" side. The prefix "ir" has its own, separate meaning and, when prepended to "regardless", it makes it look like gibberish to anyone who understands what each part of the word means on its own. It's a mistake on the order of a double negative (ain't no) and not a legitimate new word or new meaning of an older word.
Any mention of long term vandalism on wikipedia should mention the aquatic ape theory article.
Well, except that irregardless is a word. In fact, it has been in use since at least the 1920's. It may not be a very good word. But your claim it is not a word is incorrect.
From Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:
Irregardless[']s fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that "there is no such word." There is such a word, however.
"Wikipedia is non-authoritative, Wikipedia is non-authoritative, Wikipedia is non-authoritative" It's like the mindless droning of the ants in _The Once and Future King_. I swear Wiki-boosters are the most superstitious slashdot posters. Yes, repeat your magical incantation over and over and everything will be all right. Next thing you know there will be a "non-authoratative rosary beads" so you can remember your meaningless chant.
Take away all the posturing and the euphemistic wording and face up to it: what non-authoritative really means is "not to be trusted." The vast majority of Wiki articles are written by folks who have some idea of what they are talking about, then "edited" by people with almost no concept of what editing really means, further revised by basement-dwelling PFYs and those with only a passing familiarity with the subject (they once were in the same room with a book about physics) and then the whole pile (Jimbo's big bag of Klingon language info!) is hyped all over the Internet as the "next great source of information."
But let anyone point out that what it really is is a giant mish-mash of half-baked trivia and out comes the wiki-boosting crowd, like the zombies from _The mummy_ tunelessly repeating "Wikipedia is non-authoritative, Wikipedia is non-authoritative, Wikipedia is non-authoritative"
You claim that fewer people have access to encyclopedias than have access to the Internet. Doesn't everybody who pays tax to fund the county library have access to most major encyclopedias such as Britannica and World Book?
i couldnt find the article on wikipedia thanks to their censorship.. i did happen to find the original article on googles cache and i can say i would have been dumb enough to believe it was true, but that fact of the matter is.. fact is only a matter of opinion. so you cant believe anything now days even if a bunch of monkeys say it's true.
just not happening.