Wikipedia 2.0, Now With Trust?

USB EVDO writes "The online encyclopedia is set to trial two systems aimed at boosting readers' confidence in its accuracy. Over the past few years, a series of measures aimed at reducing the threat of vandalism and boosting public confidence in Wikipedia have been developed. Last month a project designed independently of Wikipedia, called WikiScanner, allowed people to work out what the motivations behind certain entries might be by revealing which people or organizations the contributions were made by. Meanwhile the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that oversees the online encyclopedia, now says it is poised to trial a host of new trust-based capabilities."

Comments

An interesting experiment

[speaker of the truth]

Wikipedia is good enough for personal information or simply a quick look, i.e. unimportant information, however I doubt it will ever become the encyclopaedia it supposedly hopes of becoming. However having said that, it is certainly an interesting experiment and look into human nature (or at least American nature) with this trust-based scheme simply making the experiment more interesting.

Re:An interesting experiment

[CRCulver]

The problem is that many other reference sites on various topics, developed privately by informed and qualified individuals, have now folded since the maintainers thought Wikipedia superseded hosting such information on one's own website. And now, such information on Wikipedia can be vandalized at any moment right before someone would go look at the page, and kooks can twist the page to their own ends.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Loadmaster]

I agree. Wikipedia is great for a quick look and for finding more niche/pop culture subjects. I use it to get a start on research then immediately follow its sources or Google interesting info for more solid documentation.

While I find their goals admirable, I think they're overestimating their viability.

Swi

Re:An interesting experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll-proofing a reference site (as opposed to a casual forum like /.) without a paid staff is laughable, it's just a good-sounding measure to pacify a particular market (Germany in this case). It will be easy enough for either pranksters or marketers/scammers to figure out and workaround whatever provisions they set up... also there will be a black market for people who have established the creds to get it done.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

But this is exactly what an encyclopedia is for, to get a basic overview and pointers to the real sources. Have people forgotten that, or were there a lot of people out there using Brittannica as a primary source?

Re:An interesting experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know. Personally, I have found exactly what I have wanted from wikipedia every time I have looked into it - on articles ranging from people, geography or technology. Every time I wanted somebody to know something, wikipedia has never failed me. Granted, you may see traces/evidences of vandalism, but give me a system without any amount of noise in it. While you jump up and down shouting 'because anybody can edit it, it can not be trusted', I can simply not think any other website/reference/system capable of replacing wikipedia. And what I find funny is that you - the doubters - end up using it nonetheless.

Give me an alternative to wikipedia with less noise in it, or shut the fuck up.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Snowspinner]

Except, generally speaking, we do OK. Yes, there will still be vandalized/spammed entries. But, as someone who uses Wikipedia frequently both as a reader and as an editor, I can tell you, I rarely run into an article with transparently serious problems. Thus far, as many new techniques and workarounds as trolls, pranksters, and scammers have figured out, none have been able to overcome the one technique we've figured out - having a shitload of well-intentioned volunteers who are broadly empowered to fix things.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Ash Vince]

Actually I think alot of you miss a vitally important part of wikipedia when used to serious research: The references at the bottom of the page.

I would never actually quote wikipedia as a source in serious documents, but you don't have as a lot of the best pages have a bibliography at the bottom which quite often refers to thoroughly respected publications.

Re:An interesting experiment

[nine-times]

Every time this issue comes up, I make the same suggestion: the Wikipedia should branch into something like "stable" and "unstable" versions. Let the kooks vandalize the unstable version, but try to get trusted editors and fact-checkers to check-in changes to the stable branch.

First, this keeps the kooks out. Second, if you limit trust strictly enough, then you limit the number of people who can do damage to the stable branch. You set up a review process for those people, which should be easier since there are fewer of them and they're somehow in your "trust" system. Give them instructions that all information that's presented as fact needs to be cited to a reliable source, and have someone watching the watchmen. If any of your fact checkers or experts violate their trust, revoke their trust.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Mon Oncle]

I think it's a new critter. I can't imagine an encyclopedia covering many of my interests, like roleplaying games or the music from my childhood, or how words are pronounced (like Gojira).

On the other hand, sometimes the entries are poorly written and because they are on specialty topics (like beekeeping), they are not easy for a layman to correct.

I see it as a complement to the traditional encyclopedia, but not a replacement, and I hope some version of it will always be there.

Re:An interesting experiment

[joeszilagyi]

Stable and unstable versions exist on the German wikipedia, but the English (main) Wikipedia users and admins have been very resistant to the idea.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Blood_God]

Yeah, having just graduated from University we were told by a number of lecturers that Wikipedia wasn't an acceptable source for information when writing reports due to the way that it can be edited by anyone and therefore might not be entirely accurate. Of course this doesn't stop you from going to Wikipedia and looking at all the references that it cites...

Re:An interesting experiment

[BakaHoushi]

Wikipedia, if you'll allow me to use emotional buzzwords for a minute as if I were a politician in a debate, is a great example of democracy and freedom of speech. The truth is, we'd like all signal and no noise, but to try and rid yourself of all noise, you're going to lose some signal. By forbidding a certain action/author/etc. on Wikipedia, you may ban 100 vandals, but you also ban 1 extremely useful editor. To let the truly insightful speak, you need to let the truly braindead have their say, too.

The best way to deal with this is our old favorite saying, "citation needed." Like any information source, you need to ask "where did this information come from?" Using Wikipedia for serious work is a bad idea... directly... but it is a good place to find links to other places with more direct credibility.

Not to mention one should always check the "recent edits" pages for signs of vandals.

Wikipedia is imperfect, but so are the creatures that make it, so it's to be expected. It has a vast array of information that is hard to find anywhere else, and one of the best ways to look up "Amazon Wildlife" without running into horrible fetish porn sites along the way. So as long as people are willing to read and think and have a grain of salt ready, it will remain a valuable and interesting source of information.

Re:An interesting experiment

[risk one]

I would be very surprised (and a little annoyed) if they don't use this as the basic mechanism behind their validation scheme. This preserves the freedom of editing, and greatly decreases the probability that somebody reading Wikipedia will see a vandalized/substandard version of an article. Rather than merging changes from one branch to the other, like in software development, however, I think WP would be better off tagging a version of an article as stable, and keeping the latest version as unstable.

The main problem is who decides when an article or section should go stable? This is where the complicated algorithms come in. One of the most important principles of wikipedia is that authority counts for absolutely nothing. People complain that wikipedia makes no use of experts, but that's not true. It simply will not view additions by experts just because they are experts. Everybody is equal. This should be reflected in the validation scheme. So many proposals have teams of fact checkers and domain experts, which is very much unlike Wikipedia. An automated trust network (like the one described in the article) should be used to assign contributors a trust rating, and then let people vote on the validity of an article or section.

I should also point out that none of this is new. Most of these ideas have been in the pipeline for years. Check out http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_proposals#Automated_Trust_Networks for a list of proposed validation schemes.

Re:An interesting experiment

[zanybrainy941]

Personally, I have found exactly what I have wanted from wikipedia every time I have looked

How do you know? You found something, you read something, it passed the sniff test ... now, what is the truth value of what you found?

Personally, I love Wikipedia for answering questions like "what is this thing and where does it fit into the big picture". I also think there are a lot of capable motivated people making sure that it's as close to true as possible. Still, if you're relying on it for some specific fact, you'd better check a second source. Which is good practice no matter what you're reading, wikipedia or otherwise.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Kjella]

I still have never gotten to a Wikipedia page that's been vandalized, and while the media loves to put up "for 30 minutes, this B-celebrity's bio said he was a kiddie fiddler". Besides if you're quoting wikipedia there's always the permanent link, which is what I'd use if I ever noticed the problem. No, the problem is when there's a mainstream opinion or no such opinion, but a rabid minority that'll keep editing the page to fit their biased view. This is particularly true for anything and anyone who has "fans", "followers" or the like.

Re:An interesting experiment

[diamondmagic]

Unlike many encyclopedias, Wikipedia actually requires editors cite sources. All added information is required to have a source, otherwise someone else will come by and add a [citation needed] notice. You can check out all the articles that don't have sources cited.

Try clicking on the numbers next to each sentence next time you stop by.

Re:An interesting experiment

[kingduct]

I've also thought that maybe a system could be used such that each edit on the master document got a tag (from a predetermined list of tags such as "cited" "uncited" "opinionated" "controversial" etc). While in edit mode you would see everything. While in reading mode, you would see whatever you set your threshhold to. That way, the academics with sticks up their rears could see what they want to see, while others could see a lot more.

Yes, the discussion and history pages provides some of this, but they really aren't enough. There is a lot of great information being deleted, and I would like to be able to see it and a compromise would be reasonable. At the same time though, I find that trying to participate in the wikipedia is unbearable because of the snideness of so many people involved. Thus, I expect as the wikipedia culture becomes clubbier, the odds of it changing policies to allow more participation get lower and lower.

Re:An interesting experiment

[nine-times]

ather than merging changes from one branch to the other, like in software development, however, I think WP would be better off tagging a version of an article as stable, and keeping the latest version as unstable....[snip]... An automated trust network (like the one described in the article) should be used to assign contributors a trust rating, and then let people vote on the validity of an article or section.

I see a conflict here; if you base the trust on a per-user basis, it doesn't get you to trusting the article as a unit. Even if 90% of the page is a series of contributions made by trusted individuals, the remaining 10% might be made by non-trusted individuals, and that 10% might create a very misleading impression on the topic.

I think you need some method for signing off on the article as a whole, as being valid, true, and coherent. I don't think a single 50% majority vote will accomplish this. You really need a person or team who can serve in an editorial capacity, bringing the whole article together, making sure it's coherent and void of misleading ideas.

And yes, you're right that this is a foreign idea to the Wikipedia as it is today. That's exactly why I think a branch is necessary. The Wikipedia should remain essentially as it is for an unstable branch, but the stable version should be new, and it should have a more coherent editorial system.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Enderandrew]

Given that independent studies have shown it to be more factual than standard encyclopedias, I'm not sure why people continue to throw about the claim that it will never become as good as a standard encyclopedia.

I dare say, it surpassed standard encyclopedias some time ago.

The Wikipedia is not without fault, but the same can be said for any source.

Re:An interesting experiment

[nine-times]

The main problem I see here is that it doesn't lend itself to creating coherent articles. If you start dropping out particular edits because they don't match some set criteria, then I think many articles would end up more nonsensical and less coherent. Removing a "controversial" edit might also remove the appropriate context for a "cited" edit, and in doing so might cause the "cited" edit to become misleading.

You really have to understand how good writing and good editing works. Removing some fact because it's inaccurate might require several adjustments throughout an article, and so a particular edit of the entire article should be set as "approved" or "stable". This also implies that there might need to be a single editor per-article, in order to make sure that the article is well-written.

Of course, I'm assuming that part of the goal is to create good, informative, well-written articles instead of a simple list of objective facts which are either true or false.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Kadin2048]

Yes, kids use Brittannica as a primary source, along with other Encyclopedias. People don't start citing research papers or hard data until college (and even then, only in Grad School for a lot of colleges - sad huh?). The reason it's acceptable, is because the Encyclopedia companies try to ensure all the information is accurate, and then print it. It can't be vandalized later, so it's generally more trustworthy than wikipedia is assuming it's not a really old edition. You say this as if it's a fact carved in stone, that can't be changed. If Wikipedia replaced Britannica for initial research, but teachers stick to their guns about not accepting it as an actual source (which they should not), perhaps it will force more students to start doing real research at a younger age. Using Britannica as a source seems just as inherently lazy as using Wikipedia, and I don't think that should be acceptable even at the high-school level.

It's not like it's especially hard to drill down to real sources from most WP articles. Most controversial ones have citations, or at least a list of suggested reading, near the bottom. (And some articles, like ones on particular recent events, have direct links to primary source material, which you don't typically get in a traditional encyclopedia entry.) In some ways, it's a lot easier to begin doing real research from WP than it is from Britannica, and I think WP does a better job of encouraging skepticism and fact-checking skills.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that many other reference sites on various topics, developed privately by informed and qualified individuals, have now folded since the maintainers thought Wikipedia superseded hosting such information on one's own website.

[citation needed]

Seriously, if there are "many other sites" that have definitely all folded for that precise reason, you'd think you would be able to provide at least one example...

Re:An interesting experiment

[Solra Bizna]

I commonly visit Wikipedia to learn details of a specific algorithm. Sometimes (actually, rather often) I'll read the article and I'll see at least one statement that seems to contradict the rest of the paragraph it's in simply by having or lacking an extra "not" in a key place.

And I think to myself, "either I'm wrong, or this page was vandalized."

-:sigma.SB

Re:An interesting experiment

[TheRaven64]

The thing I feel Wikipedia really needs is some way of annotating an article with things like 'typo' 'badly worded sentence' or 'incorrect punctuation' and having the original author notified. With this, a casual reader could identify parts that need correcting, and a knowledgeable reader could then make the corrections. The closest Wikipedia has is the talk page, and since there is no way of saying 'tell me when anyone uses a talk page to write about something I've written' this doesn't work well.

Re:An interesting experiment

[maxwell demon]

Actually to be sure you'd also have to check those references[1]. Because otherwise you still might fall for fake information[2] or original research pulled out of one's ass[3], as is proven by Murphy[4]. And by the way, one plus one is three[5].

[1] April Fool: What you can do with references. Journal of Applied Fake 26 (1987), 424
[2] Joe Sixpack: Resources I trust. Yellow Press Magazine 25 (2001), 321
[3] A. S. Smith: Pulling and pushing. Yesterday's Research 42 (2010), 1876
[4] Jack Murphy: What can go wrong. Oops Conference Procedings 7 (1991), 112
[5] Frank Fake: New Arithmetics, Page 42. Stupid Press, New York 1976, ISBN 0-123-45678-9

Re:An interesting experiment

[Eloquence]

This is incorrect. Stable versions do not yet exist on the German Wikipedia.

Re:An interesting experiment

[MT628496]

Give me an alternative to wikipedia with less noise in it, or shut the fuck up. Just because you don't have an answer, doesn't mean that there isn't a problem.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it more reliable than any other encyclopedia, which are themselves often written by people with their own political or economic interest in mind? If you only use once source you'll often get a warped perspective, no matter what the source is.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Proofof. Chaos]

Too bad more of these experts didn't choose to contribute to the relevant Wikipedia entries, and link back to their own sites. Personally, I like checking out the external links on an entry, both to for verifiability, and for more in-depth information.

Re:An interesting experiment

[LordVader717]

I think it would be a good option for some of the more complete articles to be tagged as "this is a featured article. If you wish to contribute please use the discussion page".
Too many featured articles have lost their status due to people adding piles and piles of useless information, ripping up consistency and well written texts.
That way there might be more focus on improving the information that's there, than on just adding and reverting small edits.

Re:An interesting experiment

[duggi]

If you dont have the answer, why even bother about the problem. There is an answer, Use wiki to make it better, because we can. It is very unlike other sites like bbc, where you cannot post something interesting, or correct something wrong. Sure you can just send a mail, but in wikipedia, you can correct it. Lets do it. What is needed is not 100% people to be right all the time, just a dedicated few to make it work.

Re:An interesting experiment

[mdwh2]

That may be in theory - but in practice, I still find Wikipedia overall far more accurate and reliable than any of those other pages maintained on the web.

Do you have any examples of sites which were better than Wikipedia, but have folded because of Wikipedia?

Re:An interesting experiment

[AnonymousDivinity]

Every time this issue comes up, I make the same suggestion: the Wikipedia should branch into something like "stable" and "unstable" versions.

Sounds like Nupedia. Wikipedia was originally the "unstable" branch for Nupedia, but the project folded. It didn't work then, and I'm not sure it'd work now.

Re:An interesting experiment

[lazy_playboy]

So you suggest the alteration in the articale discussion or simply make the alteration yourself, of course?

Re:An interesting experiment

[mdwh2]

They do have a similar system for their offline releases. I think it would be easier to mark a particular version of an article as "stable" rather than checking in individual edits (as the latter is more work, and may lead to conflicts or inconsistencies).

You have to be careful - I think one of the reasons Wikipedia has been so successful is due to being able to instantly edit it. You run the risk that people may know a lot about the subject, but be less likely to edit because they don't want to wait and see if their edit gets approved at some later point.

Re:An interesting experiment

[mdwh2]

and while the media loves to put up "for 30 minutes, this B-celebrity's bio said he was a kiddie fiddler".

And the only reason they can ever find such cases is because Wikipedia's history is open to all, and they can search for such things (and in the cases I've seen, it's been more like under 1 minute, which the media neglect to mention). If you could see the history of news websites, I bet you could find all sorts of mistakes. (Then again, what's worse is that the mainstream media commonly has bias and falsehoods way beyond what Wikipedia ever has, and it never gets corrected...)

Re:An interesting experiment

[aichpvee]

Or the writer is just sloppy and has poor command of grammar. You see that sometimes on Wikipedia, too.

Re:An interesting experiment

[mdwh2]

The reason it's acceptable, is because the Encyclopedia companies try to ensure all the information is accurate, and then print it. It can't be vandalized later, so it's generally more trustworthy than wikipedia is assuming it's not a really old edition.

So wait for the Wikipedia offline releases.

Re:An interesting experiment

[mdwh2]

People can debate whether or not Wikipedia is better or worse than other encylopedias, but:

or Google interesting info for more solid documentation.

I find Googling for random webpages far less likely to give me reliable information than Wikipedia.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Loadmaster]

Then don't choose random webpages. If you are presented with data from Kook U or MIT choose the MIT result. Just because your searching doesn't mean you have to choose randomly among the results. Google Scholar is also a fine resource.

Swi

Re:An interesting experiment

[vux984]

It's not like it's especially hard to drill down to real sources from most WP articles.

The hell it isn't. The average stuff the average school project is based on would be nearly impossible to find the original sources.

School libraries are small, most of them aren't even interconnected. And even the public library system, which is interconnected, is slow. I recall trying to find the sources listed once in a britannica article in school so that I didn't have to cite britannica - (note it wasn't that i didn't want to cite briticannica, but rather that I was required to cite 10 different sources as requirement of the assignment).

I couldn't find a single one, anywhere. Zilch in the school library. And the public library didn't fare much better. Only one book was in the province, and it would have taken weeks to get through the inter-library system. The only place I could find the papers was if I wanted to pay.

Drilling down to the cite sources ought to be its own assignment. Its harder than writing the paper.

Re:An interesting experiment

[bob.appleyard]

I actually know someone who is a lecturer, and when he sets papers, goes on the relevant Wikipedia entries and inserts misinformation. Then, when this nonsense crops up in papers, marks them down in a "haha pwnt" sort of way. He says it's a way of teaching people not to rely on such sources.

Of course, this raises questions of ethics. He's sabotaging a source of information in order to "teach a lesson" to his students. Wouldn't his time be better spent improving said source of information? isn't that his job, after all?

Re:An interesting experiment

[sgtrock]

People don't start citing research papers or hard data until college (and even then, only in Grad School for a lot of colleges - sad huh?)

Boy, I'll say. I grew up in northern Minnesota in the 60s and 70s. Not exactly the cultural center of the universe by any means. Still, even in that time and place, students were encouraged to find other sources besides encyclopedias in elementary school. We were all expected to find our way around a library catalog by the time we were in junior high.

By the time I was in high school, the only kids still referencing the encyclopedias in their homework were the ones who cared more about taking shop than college prep classes because it was generally cost at least a letter grade drop. Many teachers would give a paper referencing an encyclopedia a failing grade.

Now you're telling me that in this day and age, when research is so bloody easy, that college students think it's OK to even crack open an encyclopedia? Let alone use one as a reference in a paper?? In the words of my teenage daughter, "Ewwwww!"

Re:An interesting experiment

[Loconut1389]

My main beef with wikipedia is that some people have firt hand or original, but unpbulished information. I've seen many truths deleted for lack of a reference. Can no one make an original discovery without having to get it printed in a book?

Re:An interesting experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is, we'd like all signal and no noise, but to try and rid yourself of all noise, you're going to lose some signal. By forbidding a certain action/author/etc. on Wikipedia, you may ban 100 vandals, but you also ban 1 extremely useful editor. To let the truly insightful speak, you need to let the truly braindead have their say, too.

While I agree that quality control is never going to be perfect, I disagree with you when you say that this means we need to kill quality control entirely. As a reader, I don't want to sift through a lot of brainless stuff to get the information I want. If I'm not very familiar with the subject, I probably can't pick out the informed, knowledgeable opinion from a lot of similar writings masquerading as informed opinion. Someone who knows what they're doing can do much better in sifting out the noise than I can. Really, that's a big part of the concept of an encyclopedia.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Planesdragon]

. Can no one make an original discovery without having to get it printed in a book? Not in the body of "established knowledge." If you have something new to say, pay the $50 and publish it yourself. Or submit it to another publishing body.

Because Wikipedia gives an author zero control over editing, it is not the appropriate place to publish something new. This is by design, and is a Very Good Thing.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

True. I never said there was no problem. Read again. My point is - there may be a problem (not for me, I can always refer to the cited sources to make up my mind), but don't go crazy bashing Wikipedia if you can not show something better.

Re:An interesting experiment

[superpulpsicle]

That is the most unethical abuse of misinformation I have heard. Would you tell us what school or state this is?

Re:An interesting experiment

[zenkonami]

It's funny. I am constantly reading about how Wikipedia is not, and never will be "ready for prime time" as it were. Yet, because I bother to check the sources, I find it's useful and accurate more often than not. I am assuming other people are checking the sources when they find Wikipedia to be inaccurate, because if they have direct knowledge to the contrary (or perhaps access to accurate sources not mentioned in the article) then shouldn't they spend a couple minutes correcting the article rather than naysaying the platform on an unrelated forum? After all, I thought that was why Wikipedia basically works.

As for other naysayers who don't have direct knowledge, don't check sources or don't have access to contradictory sources themselves, how do you know it's inaccurate or untrustworthy?

I have to agree with the above poster. From this perspective it certainly is an interesting experiment and look into human nature.

Re:An interesting experiment

[zenkonami]

+1 Mod Up

Wikipedia is an acknowledgement that a) information is not static and b) it is not the province of the intellectually elite. So long as the social contract as a whole values truth over ideology, Wikipedia will tend to develop towards the accurate, simply because it won't be useful to it's users if it doesn't. There is a kind of currency traded there in the manner of "I'll fix what I have facts about if the rest of you fix what you have facts about."

Re:An interesting experiment

[Loconut1389]

I once made an allegation that Signs (film) literally copied the alien sounds from ST:TNG "Schisms"- it was deleted for lack of citation. Just watch the episode and the movie- how's that for a citation?

That's a totally irrelevant article in the sceme of things, but it became a burr under my saddle for some reason and it illustrates my point. Wikipedia houses more than just pure scientific/historical matter.

I do get what you're saying though- I just think there is sometime room for claims like that and people sometimes go overboard with the citation needed crap. Other people can validate things like that themselves. If you don't know for sure its not true, don't remove it?

Re:An interesting experiment

[zenkonami]

How is this any different from having to check the sources of a magazine or newspaper article that may have inaccurate reporting in it, but is taken as fact? Or any different from books that have a slant, agenda, or simply poor research on the part of the author (1421: The Year China Discovered America)? Or what of Encyclopedia's of yesterday, which I recall discovering various biases and inaccuracies in well after writing a paper (that often were not caught by my Elementary and High School teachers, mind you); Funk and Wagnalls, Britannica, and Encarta?

That basically leaves scientific papers, which naturally never let the agenda or the bias of the researcher show through. I suspect most researchers try to be accurate and correct about their data and conclusions; but even they would not argue having someone check their facts and sources, repeat experiments, and verify results.

Re:An interesting experiment

[zenkonami]

Which raises the question, "Who watches the watchmen?"

Suddenly the distribution of information moves from a democratic system to a system of intellectual elite who are, after all, still human. I'd like to see the results of some of the Wiki type pages that are attempting to implement such a system and see how successful they've been, but at the moment I see little that will knock Wikipedia off it's spot as the most widely viewed (and edited) online "Encyclopedia."

Re:An interesting experiment

[superpulpsicle]

People who downplay wikipedia should try going a year without it. I hate people who say they can't trust it, when knowingly and clearly there is no better single source of information. Wikipedia has only been around for a few years. The editors haven't been given enough time to fully reach Good-Article potential on most subjects. Imagine 10 more years of refining. It can be a monster to reckon with.

Re:An interesting experiment

[porl]

i'm not putting your position down, but the 'copied' sound could have actually come from an external sound library... ie both st:tng and signs (haven't seen that so i don't know which tng alien sound you mean) could have used the same sound library. i have copies of both sony and bbc sound libraries, and it is interesting how many 'rubble falling 2' sounds you can recognise as having heard on movies.

i remember the door opening sound in the original doom games (1 and 2) being used on something else (can't remember where though), and i think a smashing pumpkin's song using the exploding barrel sound. those could have been ripped from doom itself, or from an external library, i don't know. i just found it interesting :)

Re:An interesting experiment

[speaker of the truth]

I actually know someone who is a lecturer, and when he sets papers, goes on the relevant Wikipedia entries and inserts misinformation. Wow, what a crappy person going around vandalizing websites. Shame he rationalizes it to himself by doing it for education.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Taxman415a]

If you've used it often for the things you've mentioned, and not checked further sources each time, then you've probably been taken for a ride at least once. I've been an active contributor for a few years now, and I can tell you that if it is for something important, Wikipedia isn't trustable right now for the most part. And that's fine right now because it's a work in progress, and the only problem is in expecting it to be 100% correct right now. As part of working on articles I see lots of vandalism that goes unseen for too long, inserted misinformation etc, and enough of it to know that if you haven't checked your sources each time, then you've been misled. Now that doesn't mean Wikipedia isn't extremely useful, it can be even now if used right, but more important is that the average article quality seems to be improving. As long as it is improving that's a key piece. But so far we haven't really been able to establish the trustworthiness of the information, something you really need if you need to use the information for something important. That's what the latest innovations are moving towards. With those types of tools, ranging from minimal marking for non vandalized versions all the way up to formally reviewed material, and automatic marking of the trustworthiness of text, the use of Wikipedia articles can get really interesting. If you can keep the free and open editing going while additionally having higher levels of review (and make those easy), then you might really have something.

An important side benefit of the existence of these more formal systems is that it may help make it easier for content experts to get and stay involved in Wikipedia. When they don't have to deal with the low brow vandalism and other forms of idiocy that the radically open system involve, then they may feel more comfortable getting involved. That should be a major goal of the new systems.

Re:An interesting experiment

[AxelBoldt]

Why not just jump in and fix that typo? It's really pretty simple.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Canordis]

Wikipedia's problem is not transparently serious problems - it's insidious, hard-to-spot inaccuracy. If I tell you that Napoleon died in 1934 from Syphilis contracted by sleeping with Gerald Butler's mother, you'll recognise that as false and thus go on your merry way. If I tell you, though, that he died in June of 1821, you won't notice, despite it being just as wrong. Random vandalism isn't a problem; people deliberately pushing an agenda is.

Re:An interesting experiment

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Sir, after reading your comment and having cursory look at your sources, I have come to the conclusion that your "sources" are highly inaccurate. Thus I conclude that, in fact, we shouldn't check references, that we won't fall for fake for fake information or original research pulled from from one's "ass". I'm not sure about your last statement though.

Re:An interesting experiment

[MillionthMonkey]

I actually know someone who is a lecturer, and when he sets papers, goes on the relevant Wikipedia entries and inserts misinformation. Then, when this nonsense crops up in papers, marks them down in a "haha pwnt" sort of way. He says it's a way of teaching people not to rely on such sources.

Your friend sounds rather insecure. Tell him to stop pissing in a public resource to inflate his own value as a source of information.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Solra Bizna]

So you suggest the alteration in the articale discussion or simply make the alteration yourself, of course?

Er, uh, yes, of course, yeah...

-:sigma.SB

Re:An interesting experiment

[imroy]

I actually know someone who is a lecturer, and when he sets papers, goes on the relevant Wikipedia entries and inserts misinformation. Then, when this nonsense crops up in papers, marks them down in a "haha pwnt" sort of way. He says it's a way of teaching people not to rely on such sources.

Any tips on this idiot's identity so I can point him at Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point?

Re:An interesting experiment

[mpe]

And now, such information on Wikipedia can be vandalized at any moment right before someone would go look at the page, and kooks can twist the page to their own ends.

Which is especially a problem where said "kooks" work for Wikipedia, they are well organised or their "kookiness" is politically correct.

Re:An interesting experiment

[mpe]

By forbidding a certain action/author/etc. on Wikipedia, you may ban 100 vandals, but you also ban 1 extremely useful editor.

There's also the issue of how much you should trust the people doing the banning.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Ed Avis]

If you had said they use the exact same sounds, then this claim could be verified by watching the episode and the movie. To allege that they copied it, though, you'd need to cite someone working on the film saying that they recorded a TNG episode off the television and decided to copy bits of the soundtrack for their movie. Which doesn't sound terribly likely, does it?

Re:An interesting experiment

[mpe]

Wikipedia's problem is not transparently serious problems - it's insidious, hard-to-spot inaccuracy. If I tell you that Napoleon died in 1934 from Syphilis contracted by sleeping with Gerald Butler's mother, you'll recognise that as false and thus go on your merry way. If I tell you, though, that he died in June of 1821, you won't notice, despite it being just as wrong. Random vandalism isn't a problem; people deliberately pushing an agenda is.

Pushing an adgenda isn't always subtle. There's the technique of "big lie" as well as topics which are taboo to question.

Re:An interesting experiment

[l0cust]

There is nothing called a truth value. The truth we all talk about is the one which is believed by the majority. You can read anything anywhere, watch anything anywhere, hear anything anywhere and still it may or may not be the elusive "Truth" you are searching for.

Wikipedia gives/(aims to give) you nothing more than the most generally accepted truth in most cases. If its the result of the free time tinkering by a bunch of vandals then that is what the citation links are for. If you can't trust the citation links or can't be bothered with even checking those links then why blame wikipedia? If you can believe anything showed on tv and anything you read on newspaper without even bothering to double-check their 'facts' then give wikipedia credit for giving you that option at least.

Re:An interesting experiment

[l0cust]

and have someone watching the watchmen

Seems like recursion to me. How many levels do you need before you are sure its really working?

Re:An interesting experiment

[nine-times]

A lot.

Well, but seriously you need at least two. You need an editor to review the article, and another level to review the editor. That's not recursion, it's just common sense. It's like having the police department and having Internal Affairs division. Who investigates Internal Affairs? I don't know, but it seems like the Internal Affairs division makes sense, but an Internal Affairs division to investigate the Internal Affairs division seems like a bit much.

You need someone to watch the watchmen, but it might be overkill to have someone watch those watching the watchmen. Those watching the watchmen should watch each other, too.

Re:An interesting experiment

[tehcyder]

I actually know someone who is a lecturer, and when he sets papers, goes on the relevant Wikipedia entries and inserts misinformation. Then, when this nonsense crops up in papers, marks them down in a "haha pwnt" sort of way. He says it's a way of teaching people not to rely on such sources.

Do you have a source for that?

Re:An interesting experiment

[AP31R0N]

Word.

As long as people use Wikipedia as a starting point, it's just fine. If you cite Wikipedia as your source, well, that's not going to play in any serious sort of product. If you are curious about something, look it up in Wikipedia. Use the sources referenced for any sort of research for school or work. Wikipedia is a fantastic source for sources.

Re:An interesting experiment

[jollyreaper]

I actually know someone who is a lecturer, and when he sets papers, goes on the relevant Wikipedia entries and inserts misinformation. Then, when this nonsense crops up in papers, marks them down in a "haha pwnt" sort of way. He says it's a way of teaching people not to rely on such sources.

Of course, this raises questions of ethics. He's sabotaging a source of information in order to "teach a lesson" to his students. Wouldn't his time be better spent improving said source of information? isn't that his job, after all? Agreed. Total douchebaggery. What's worse, I would imagine that his edits are subtle. I was with my boss once waiting for a meeting to start, the other parties were running late. I showed him Wikipedia since I thought he'd get a kick out of it. I ask him to give me a topic at random and he says China. We go there and in the first paragraph there's a vandal insert in a big font saying "CHINKS SUX!!" I tell him that the beauty of the editing policy here is that the vandalism will be gone inside a half hour. After the meeting, I pulled that page up again and yes, it was gone. He was suitably impressed.

What this douchebag is doing is probably far more subtle than that, like going in and dicking with the numbers. Oh, is the proper number 1.5 billion chinese? Change that to 1.2. Let's change one of their staple food sources to yucca root. Ha-ha, bet that will slip past those stupid Wikis!

Re:An interesting experiment

[japhmi]

That basically leaves scientific papers, which naturally never let the agenda or the bias of the researcher show through.

Thank you. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

I was never at any age allowed to cite an encyclopedia. We had to start citing research papers in high school. This wasn't in a special high school, just a normal one.

Re:An interesting experiment

[Loconut1389]

apparently, I can't type. I switched to dvorak recently and I'm a bit dyslexic and apparently when I was touch typing qwerty, my muscles learned to compensate with delays to un-transpose letters and I'd be watching the screen to automatically correct errors anyway.. now I'm 50% touch typing and seem to be missing lots of errors and then getting too excited to preview I guess. I'm not a total idiot, I promise!

fundamental flaw

[daniel.waterfield]

Er, won't wikiscanner just move the corporate/political vandals to home? This is leaving out the fact that wikipedia will never be seriously trusted due to it's open nature, to be taken seriously requires it to close off public access and to change to specialised, academic authorship - something that would corrupt it's mission.

Re:fundamental flaw

[Durova]

The WikiScanner automated only one of my most basic sleuthing techniques. People who go out of their way to manipulate the site look that much worse when they get caught.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Durova/The_dark_side

Re:fundamental flaw

[mdwh2]

This is leaving out the fact that wikipedia will never be seriously trusted due to it's open nature, to be taken seriously requires it to close off public access and to change to specialised, academic authorship - something that would corrupt it's mission.

There already exists such a project. But I think people take Wikipedia more seriously than Nupedia.

Irony:

[Kymri]

Seeing a 'Is Fox News fair and balanced?' poll as the ad for this story makes me amused.

Re:Irony:

[Anonymous Coward]

You are amused only because you think the news feeders other than Fox are fair and balanced, so someone who presents some conservative viewpoints seems unbalanced. Try reading a little about media bias.

Won't change a thing

[LordKazan]

I stopped editing wikipedia due to some extremely biased, shrill, and bludgeon-you-with-the-rules (claim you were violating the rules when you weren't) editors.

One of these editors was an admin, another was on ArbCom. It was basically a group of people who would camp one specific subject and keep it edited to support the cultural status quo/their religion's position on the article. They did it through keeping information out of the article that would cast the subject in the disfavorable light it should have, and does in most of the non-english speaking world, and some of the english speaking world.

These individuals would probably pass whatever trust-checking mechanism.

The truth is not reached via consensus.

Re:Won't change a thing

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent up. this is the case with many subjects not just one.
also with articles containing deliberately misleading info.

Re:Won't change a thing

[dancingmad]

Out of curiosity, what was the topic and the positions you mentioned?

Re:Won't change a thing

[discord5]

I stopped editing wikipedia due to some extremely biased, shrill, and bludgeon-you-with-the-rules (claim you were violating the rules when you weren't) editors.

Slam them in the discussion page with NPOV. The irony would not be lost :)

Re:Won't change a thing

[Eli Gottlieb]

One of these editors was an admin, another was on ArbCom. It was basically a group of people who would camp one specific subject and keep it edited to support the cultural status quo/their religion's position on the article. They did it through keeping information out of the article that would cast the subject in the disfavorable light it should have, and does in most of the non-english speaking world, and some of the english speaking world. Why do I get this awful feeling I know exactly which subject you're talking about?

Seriously, what are you talking about?

Re:Won't change a thing

[Snowspinner]

It's good to know that /. has enough committed Wikipedia opponents to raise a completely vapid and contentless post to a 5 in seconds. This explains how shit like the "ZOMG A WIKIPEDIA ADMINISTRATOR IS A SPY" thing got to the front page.

The shortest answer to this post is that Wikipedia isn't trying to publish the truth. It's trying to publish a neutral overview of things that have been claimed to be the truth. People who don't understandt his often have idfficult times on Wikipedia. This is because they are always trying to do what they sincerely believe improves the encyclopedia, and yet are routinely shot down for trying.

It is, however, not a bug in our method. It's a feature.

Re:Won't change a thing

[nine-times]

You're right, truth is not reached via consensus. But then, truth is not reached via authority either. In fact, I can't think of any set path which will always arrive and truth and never falsehood. If you have, please share, since it would lead to a huge philosophic and scientific revolution.

In the mean time, the best means to truth available to us (AFAICT) seems to be open discussion and review by knowledgeable and experienced people. So far, the Wikipedia has all of that, but I'm not sure it has a method for distinguishing between "open discussion" and "review by knowledgeable and experienced people". Perhaps it should.

Re:Won't change a thing

[Dachannien]

So what exactly is it that makes them wrong and you right, instead of them maintaining article quality and you trying to grind an axe on Wikipedia?

Re:Won't change a thing

[owlnation]

I wholeheartedly agree. And am in exactly the same position, I'm sure there are many of us.

The issue of trust is not one of sock puppetry, viral marketing, vandalism nor shill behavior of contributors. That is only to be expected -- and is of course absolutely rampant throughout the site.

That will NEVER stop. The perpetrators will simply get better at hiding it. If you run a large corporation, NGO, government etc etc, and you are not using Wikipedia to manipulate your agenda, then you are an idiot, because your competition / opposition most certainly is.

No, the most serious abuses of trust where Wikipedia is concerned lie with their admins. Some (if not in fact many) of them are corrupt and have a clear agenda. It seems to start at the top. Jimmy's agenda has been (rightly) questioned here many times.

Adding a new technology layer to that won't change a thing. If anything it will make it more obscured.

The fundamental issue is that the Wikipedia goals are arrogant and impossible. The solution is simple. Remove all admins. All of them. Put a big disclaimer at the top of every page saying something like that "the info below may or may not be factual. It is offered only as a starting point, and may not represent the truth".

That will go a long way to solving the issue. Wikipedia is an exercise in vanity and control. It's very clear that some people become admins because they believe their truth, and inwardly that they themselves, are better than everyone else. Their Wikiality is what you will accept... or else.

No. Fire all the admins, and Reality will take care of itself...

Re:Won't change a thing

[afabbro]

I stopped editing Wikipedia BECAUSE of their obsession with "being legit". It got really tiresome to look through pages with nearly every sentence marked "citation needed". Or to come back and find that whole paragraphs have been stricken from pages because they weren't sufficiently documented. There are dozens of pages I can think of that were once long, in-depth articles that have been reduced to stubs in the name of "being legit". I also disagree with the anti-original-research policy.

The whole point of Wikipedia is that it's self-correcting. If I know a lot about a subject, I write about it. If some of it is bogus, someone else will correct it. Documenting it with endless citations adds nothing. Wikipedia didn't used to be like that...but then some people got obsessed with "being as legit as Encyclopedia Britannica". I mean, gee, if we can't cite Wikipedia in our term papers, what good is it! Gasp! Yawn. Wikipedia would eventually have been good enough there wouldn't be a question, but now it's gone down this tedious path.

It's hilarious to read now. Go look at most of the higher math or science articles...few citations, but no one questions them because they don't understand them. Now go look at some pop culture article - tons of citations needed or marked all over the place. Some things are inherently un-citable, yet good to add to articles. And of course, there is NO standard for citations - a quote from some yahoo's web page is as good as a cite for a scientific journal. So what's the point?

I've made thousands of edits and created several entire categories, but ultimately it wasn't worth my effort any longer. Now I put my specialized content on web pages and if people find it, good for them; if less do because it's not on Wikipedia, big deal.

As a side note, I sincerely hope that the Wikipedia project is replaced by something with structured data, rather than free-flowing text...i.e., something that is queryable. "Here's an article about the Confederate Generals of the U.S. Civil War" should be accompanied by "and here is the information in a structured format so you can use it programmatically".

Re:Won't change a thing

[Air-conditioned cowh]

It would be helpful to know the specifics. Sounds like a straightforward [[WP:TEND]] issue. In particular...

You often find yourself accusing or suspecting other editors of "suppressing information", "censorship" or "denying facts".

Re:Won't change a thing

[TheRaven64]

The whole 'notability' requirement was one that really irritated me. I would have thought 'usefulness' was a much better standard for an encyclopaedia with no real size constraints. If a page is getting hits from people reading it, then it should count as sufficiently notable to remain, and not be deleted because it doesn't meet someone's standards for important. It's not like it's wasting shelf space...

Re:Won't change a thing

[LordVader717]

If you look at his users history you'll find that it was about circumcision. I can't say that I disagree with his standpoint, but whining around because he was involved in an edit war on a highly controversial subject doesn't in my opinion do anything to discredit the rest of the encyclopaedia.

Re:Won't change a thing

[Sigma 7]

I stopped editing wikipedia due to some extremely biased, shrill, and bludgeon-you-with-the-rules (claim you were violating the rules when you weren't) editors. Recently, there was an anonymous editor on the Mousepad article that was accusing regular editors under similar reasoning - in particular, making claims of pushing conjecture and plagiarism. When that editor was asked to provide a citation behind those claims, he merely made a list of pages he disagreed with rather than providing the information requested (even after being given a clarification.) As of this moment, both the article and talk page are semi-protected to prevent disruption.

The rules were followed closely in this case, as these were very serious accusations - if you received credit for an invention, you don't want others bringing up unfounded accusations against you, hence the rationale for the [[WP:BLP]] policy.

I can't comment specifically on your situation, but if you need to go against the status quo or make a claim that everyone disagrees with, you need to be prepared to provide strong and legitimate arguments in favour of your content. This depends on what is being added, but mainstream articles are usually a good thing to use.

Re:Won't change a thing

[mdwh2]

Can I ask, what article is this on?

The truth is not reached via consensus.

No, but Wikipedia is about verifiable sources, not truth. Though yes, it requires editors that follow the rules. But there are places on Wikipedia to raise the issue with more editors.

Re:Won't change a thing

[mdwh2]

Fixed your comment:

Disclaimer: The info below may or may not be factual. It is offered only as a starting point, and may not represent the truth.

I wholeheartedly agree. And am in exactly the same position, I'm sure there are many of us.

The issue of trust is not one of sock puppetry, viral marketing, vandalism nor shill behavior of contributors. That is only to be expected -- and is of course absolutely rampant throughout the site.

That will NEVER stop. The perpetrators will simply get better at hiding it. If you run a large corporation, NGO, government etc etc, and you are not using Wikipedia to manipulate your agenda, then you are an idiot, because your competition / opposition most certainly is.

No, the most serious abuses of trust where Wikipedia is concerned lie with their admins. Some (if not in fact many) of them are corrupt and have a clear agenda. It seems to start at the top. Jimmy's agenda has been (rightly) questioned here many times.

Adding a new technology layer to that won't change a thing. If anything it will make it more obscured.

The fundamental issue is that the Wikipedia goals are arrogant and impossible. The solution is simple. Remove all admins. All of them. Put a big disclaimer at the top of every page saying something like that "the info below may or may not be factual. It is offered only as a starting point, and may not represent the truth".

That will go a long way to solving the issue. Wikipedia is an exercise in vanity and control. It's very clear that some people become admins because they believe their truth, and inwardly that they themselves, are better than everyone else. Their Wikiality is what you will accept... or else.

No. Fire all the admins, and Reality will take care of itself...

Re:Won't change a thing

[LordKazan]

Perhaps you should get your neurology check.. that knee-jerk was pretty hard and uncalled for. When wikipedia first came out i was one of it's biggest supporters, wikipedia itself - specifically an administrator, an a member of ArbCom + their lackeys - made me change my mind.

Re:Won't change a thing

[LordKazan]

A vast number of source citations in the British Journal of Urology, and other peer-reviewed medical journals.

Re:Won't change a thing

[LordKazan]

see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=305909&cid=20719359 and my reply

I was trying to bring the article in a state of neutrality by presenting all relevant information pro and against, significant amounts of notable and strong-citation-provided material against the subject have been censored from wikipedia by a member of arbcom, an admin, and their lackeys via rule-gaming. They are engaged in the most egregious pov-pushing.

Re:Won't change a thing

[LordKazan]

it's hard to get neutral editors on an issue that is culturally-charged, especially when the medical journals you're wishing to insert citations from (the BJU, etc) go against the status-quo in the US (but not in britain)

Re:Won't change a thing

[LordKazan]

See http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=305909&cid=20720189 and replies.

Re:Won't change a thing

[LordKazan]

genital mutilation.

Re:Won't change a thing

[mdwh2]

Ideally you want the editors who have no interest in the topic at all. That they have no knowledge in the area isn't a problem, since their job is just to see which side is backed up by sources.

I guess this might be harder with some mainstream and controversial topics. But I'm not convinced that other references will do a better job there.

Re:Won't change a thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The articles on India are similarly inane. Basically a handful of guys who love Greek history decided they were going to take the reign of a minor dynasty of Greek descent in the outskirts of India. Then they skewed any India related article they could get their hands on to make it seem like anything that ever happened in India ever was the result of these minor border kings.

They misuse sources, engage in extensive independent research, and put minor authors on par with respected members of the field in the name of balance.

This stuff survives because a small clique of people with too much time on their hands manages to camp these articles and bully anyone who disagrees out of them. It gets especially tough when admins join the clique.

Re:Won't change a thing

[Eli Gottlieb]

Close. I thought it involved politics, but you still manage to meet expectations by hating on something that Jews do.

Cut and proud, ya goy.

Re:Won't change a thing

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

Wikipedia is generally excellent for factually based information. Where it falls down is when a topic has some element of 'controversy'. In this situation you often end up with an article very biased in one direction, or (what I believe is worse), an article that fails to show either side in an effort to be neutral. In these instances the 'talk' page is often much more insightful than the article itself, as it details all the controversy that will not make it into the article.

Re:Won't change a thing

[LordKazan]

Way to invoke Godwin's corollary. Ever consider it may have to do with the fact that it's NOT MEDICALLY JUSTIFIABLE and DESTROYS NORMAL SEXUAL FUNCTION?

no.. of course you didn't - you can't stand to have your position challenged so you Godwin.

Re:Won't change a thing

[LordKazan]

PS: Incase you didn't get it from my other post - my position rests on medical knowledge and human rights it has nothing to do with religion beyond the fact that the barbaric practice was started by religion (and religious thinking in the form of Virtue Medicine in english speaking countries).

If you want to do this to yourself, when you are an adult, to conform to your religion then fine - I have nothing to say on it it's your body. It is when you engage in enforcing the practice on non-consenting individuals (including, and especially, those incapable of consenting due to being minors).

Cosmetic Genital alteration of either gender for any reason, except immediate medical necessity, is abhorrent and criminal.

Re:Won't change a thing

[Abcd1234]

And I see you still haven't provided a reference to the article, or any other supporting material. If this POV-pushing is so darned egregious, the least you could do is let people judge for themselves. Unless, of course, you're only interested in pushing *your* POV...

Re:Won't change a thing

[Eli Gottlieb]

WTF is Godwin's Corollary? I've never heard of such a thing, and I certainly didn't invoke Godwin's Law itself.

Re:Won't change a thing

[LordKazan]

of course you could bother to read the entire thread as someone else has already named the article for you.

Re:Won't change a thing

[Abcd1234]

What, you can't do so yourself? The only reference I can see is this post , which mentions the Wikipedia article on Circumcision. Is this the one you're referring to? If so, why are you being a difficult ass, when you could have just linked to it?

Meanwhile, you still haven't provided details of the war, the material you were trying to have included, etc, so we're still relying on your word that something "egregious" actually happened, as opposed to you just having an axe to grind.

Better Living Through Benjamins

[RobotRunAmok]

1. Pay contributors, i.e., give them revenue. Even micro-payments will do, pennies. (The added side-benefit of this is that it means contributors will most likely need paypal accounts, which most likely means they will be "of age:" No more changing entries as result of bets made in the back of the school bus.)

2. Fire contributors who screw up, depriving them of that revenue.

3. Problem solved.

Anything else is a hippy-dippy feel-good buzz-word Web-X-point-something-or-other that begins with the letter "cluster."

Re:Better Living Through Benjamins

[Snowspinner]

Wikipedia gets hundreds of edits per minute. I don't think even micropayments are going to be cost-effective.

Re:Better Living Through Benjamins

[mrnobo1024]

Plus, any kind of payment system would have people trying to game it, to the detriment of quality - if Wikipedia paid by the edit, they'd have people dragging out trivial changes through as many separate edits as possible, making the history tab practically unusable.

Whereas on the other hand, if Wikipedia were to pay by amount of content added, this would be likely to lead to the rather undesirable consequence that editors of the aforementioned Internet-based encyclopedia might pad out their edits through the utilization of wholly unnecessary verbiage, guided by the realization that this practice would vastly increase their character count and therefore result in a larger payment to be made to the editors in question, granting to them a larger share of their economy's purchasing power - considered by many to be a desirable state of affairs, and certain to in some cases override any aesthetic misgivings that they might otherwise have had regarding the practice of composing overly long sentences such as this one.

Re:Better Living Through Benjamins

[Johnny Mnemonic]

2. Fire contributors who screw up, depriving them of that revenue.

Who determines if #2 happens? Who gets to decide if a statement is not factual? You can only use other experts to decide that--so are you proposing finding 3 experts for every subject matter? We have that now, btw. It's called the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

And you didn't even address where the money for #1 would come from. Ads? Then we would risk having advertiser bias. Subscriptions? Then how is this better than the Enc Brit?

It's getting to be time to have one of those snarky checkbox forms for how to fix the Wikipedia's credibility, as there are an infinite number of ideas, and none of them will work.

Re:Better Living Through Benjamins

[Mon Oncle]

I seem to remember learning in high school history that the reason legalese was so unreadable was that lawyers were originally paid by volume.

Re:Better Living Through Benjamins

[Guruthegreat]

What if wikipedia adapted a slashdot posting type system? Every edit gets a point, deleted or reverted edits minus a point, you can use points to rate other posters edits and when you have a high rated edit you get a micro payment.

Re:Better Living Through Benjamins

[Anonymous Coward]

How about just putting a rate system on article edits...
then pay depending on how a high score it gets.

i think it would simply solve those micro edits and 1000 edits on an entry per day (at least for those non hot topics).

Wikipedia is fine how it is..

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with Wikipedia as it is. I have never trusted traditional encylopedias more than Wikipedia. There is often much more information available in Wikipedia than in a traditional encyclopedia. Furthermore the this comment is just plain dumb "Last month a project designed independently of Wikipedia, called WikiScanner, allowed people to work out what the motivations behind certain entries might be by revealing which people or organisations the contributions were made by." Who gives a crap who made the edit I'm only concerned with the accuracy or value of the information present; if you believe everything you read no amount of academic authorship is going to help anyone. I for one like to listen to whatever anyone has to say on any subject be they retarded or wearing a tin foil hat or if they are teaching at university.

Re:Wikipedia is fine how it is..

[Anonymous Coward]

if you believe everything you read no amount of academic authorship is going to help anyone.

Not to mention that if you only look at the IP address, an internationally-renowned Harvard scholar is going to be indistinguishable from a drunken Harvard fratboy...

Re:Wikipedia is fine how it is..

[mrv20]

And how do you assess "the accuracy and value of the information present" that you're concerned with?

Knowing the source of the information can be be very valuable when assessing its value - this is where WikiScaner comes in. It's then up to you to judge whether (for example) Diebold were attempting to improve the factual accuracy of their own entry or to cover up some inconvenient truths.

jayg slimvirgin et al pushing Jimbo's Worldview

[Anonymous Coward]

While you still have Jayjg, SlimVirgin etc pushing their agenda Wikipedia will still lack any credibility.

I really lost faith with the whole institution when Jayjg failed to get enough votes for ArbComm and yet got appointed anyhow. If Jimbo wants to run it as his own personal little world view that's his right. Just don't expect the rest of us to take the place seriously.

Trust?

[SilentGhost]

Common, even /. is more trustfull. Trust is not something you can buy with another set of features.

OpenID

[Anonymous Coward]

of course, OpenID is not a trust system, but it could help to build up reputation, so that i could use my wikipedia-en account on wikipedia-de and vice versa.

Re:OpenID

[erlehmann]

also, wikimedia does already have OpenID support.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:OpenID

Flagged revisions on Wikipedia / mediawiki.org

[saibot834]

Here is Wikipedia's page on Flagged revisions
Extension:FlaggedRevs on mediawiki.org

rfta

[distantbody]

And yet the simplest and most effective quality control, requiring registration, is still considered sacrilege to the Wikipedia overlords...

Re:rfta

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like somebody hasn't been on /. long enough to remember the Coalition of Logged-In Trolls.

Re:rfta

[Snowspinner]

Actually, if there's one thing WikiScanner showed, it was that not requiring registration is useful to us in identifying problems.

Registration is a small hurdle. While it's impossible to bot-register accounts, and thus requiring registration would provide a layer of insulation from vandalbot accounts, we haven't actually had a serious vandalbot attack in years. For your garden variety fuckwittery, registering an account doesn't fix much - most of our total fuckwits are registered.

Re:rfta

[kusma]

Registration is a very poor method of quality control. Registering a nickname provides far more anonymity and less accountability than posting your IP address. Unlike on Slashdot, the IP addresses of edits made while not logged in are public on Wikipedia. Mandatory registration would make corporations completely safe from WikiScanner and similar tools.

Re:rfta

[infestedsenses]

That wouldn't remedy anything, it would just make the user database bloat up with fake accounts.

Re:rfta

[Anonymous Coward]

I have personally made dozens if not hundreds of helpful edits, mainly simple but unambiguously positive ones (like fixing typos), without being logged in to wikipedia. The day that wikipedia requires registration is the day that I can no longer be bothered to do this.

Incidentally, the same applies to slashdot - I wouldn't have made this post if I had to go through the effort of logging on from this abysmally slow computer. (The compulsory preview screen is almost enough to deter me by itself.)

Truth vs consensus

[ElMiguel]

I think reaching the truth via consensus is realistic; it seems to work pretty well in the scientific world. The problem with Wikipedia is that each editor self-selects himself to work on the tiny part of Wikipedia he wants to, and so people with an agenda are overrepresented in some articles. I do agree that people with agendas using legalism to try to weed out dissenting opinions seems to be one of Wikipedia's biggest problems (and I'm not even an editor).

Re:Truth vs consensus

[Thanatopsis]

Truth by consensus? That's not how the scientific world works. There's the whole experimental model and reproducibility of experiments that leads to consensus.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[smallfries]

Well, anyone who reads self-help books has a problem with understanding reality, let alone truth. Let's examine this wishy-washy new age idea that truth is a consensus consisting of a lot of compromises. I think that this idea is completely flawed on every level. You obviously do not. What consensus do we reach; that it's only partly a bunch of shit?

To back your point up you mention that things like "history" work less well than things like "thermodynamics". Do you really believe this is because people understand each other's views on science subjects more than arts subjects? That a consensus position can more easily be reached?

The basic problem with this theory of truth by consensus is that it assumes that truth is not discrete, and it can be reached by majority voting. In many subjects truth is discrete, and the voting model is closer to winner-takes-all. The reason that the truth crystallizes in this manner is because it is objectively testable. This is why we refer to the set of things that behaves in this manner - science. That which can be studied by the scientific method.

Furthermore, I think that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what wikipedia's purpose is. It has very explicit design goals, using your terms, it attempts to construct articles that have all of the known facts. That it, is ignores "understanding" as you put it, or POV as wiki puts it. If a fact can be attributed to a respectable source then it goes in. Understanding is left as an exercise for the reader.

You miss the point that wiki is better for science, because in terms of establishing what the facts are, science subjects are the low hanging fruit. History (for example) is harder because the facts are not always in an objectively testable form, and usually have to pried from subjective observation. An ideal wikipedia article is not a "compromise" between all of the opinions that went into it - it is a collection of all of the facts that could be verified regardless of whether or not the contributors agreed upon them.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[Anonymous Coward]

There's the whole experimental model and reproducibility of experiments that leads to consensus.

Uhh, you just proved the GP's point. He didn't say HOW consensus was reached, just that it was ruled by consensus.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I think reaching the truth via consensus is realistic; it seems to work pretty well in the scientific world.

No. No it doesn't. At every major breakthrough of science, the entire preceding body of work has to be challenged and rewritten. Truth comes first. The consensus comes later.

At every breakthrough, if the truth was subject to a vote, the new discovery would be outvoted--you have one guy (or team) with his experimental data, against every one else who still believes in the old perspective.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[ElMiguel]

Sure, but Wikipedia's goal is not to produce new scientific breakthroughs, but to document current knowledge.

In the scientific world, you can judge the validity of theories or try to reproduce experimental results in those areas in which you are an expert. For anything else, your best bet for getting as close to the truth as feasible is relying on the consensus. And, as I said, I think this works pretty well.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[jovin6]

The idea that truth, especially in matters that pertain to ethics and society, is a matter of consensus is well-respected in modern philosophy and not to be disparaged as easily as you think. Thus, liquidpele makes a valid point here, which can easily be extended to the purvey of science as well. Consider that objectivity, as it applies to the scientific method, has no bearing on the glaring potential problems with human epistemology. In fact, scientific method may perhaps serve as the best example of the formation of truth by consensus. Numerous scientists perform the same procedure, observe some sort of results, and then get together and decide that they observed the same thing, which at that point becomes a fact. Nothing in this process assures access to any sort of ontology, and in fact the only thing that differentiates it from matters which we typically deem to be subjective is the extent of the consensus on the issue (in many cases it is near universal).

Re:Truth vs consensus

[smallfries]

No (and quite appropriately) you are simply wrong. Only a sociologist would think that an ontology is required to determine an objective measure.

Numerous scientists perform the same procedure, observe some sort of results, and then get together and decide that they observed the same thing

Here is your flaw. Scientist never observe a result - they observe a measurement of a result. Something that can be performed objectively - unless you disagree with common definitions of length, breadth, speed etc. The distinction between the humanties and the sciences is specifically that objective measures exist of scientific processes, where-as the humanties are concerned with subjects for which there is no objective measure, and hence only debate.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[jovin6]

I never implied that "an ontology is required to determine an objective measure." In fact, I was suggesting that, to the contrary, something can be done objectively without any access to ontology whatsoever (that something being science). Though which of those two stances someone chooses to take is almost entirely a matter of semantics. As for my flaw, consider that it is very unclear to what extent we, as human beings, have a common understanding of anything, even of our "definitions" of length, speed, etc. Everything that is done in science is invariably mediated by the human senses, and any attempt to construct a coherent body of knowledge via scientific methodology runs head-first into the "other minds problem." Thus, ultimately, principles of coherence and consensus are what rule the formation of scientific facts, much as in other disciplines. Unless they are tied to ontology, and you seem to believe they are not, there is nothing unique about objective measures in their ability to avoid the epistemological issues that plague the formation of any coherent body of knowledge. The difference between them and subjective ones is mainly one of degree.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[smallfries]

In theory what you say is entirely correct. However in practice it is not.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[Anonymous Coward]

it is a collection of all of the facts that could be verified regardless of whether or not the contributors agreed upon them. If Wikipedia operated that way in real life, then that would be great. But it doesn't. The verifiable facts are often censored for one reason or another.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[jovin6]

Hahaha. Masterful rebuttal. And of course, all the fallacies in your original post still stand. Gotta love the Internets.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[Taxman415a]

Furthermore, I think that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what wikipedia's purpose is. It has very explicit design goals, using your terms, it attempts to construct articles that have all of the known facts. That it, is ignores "understanding" as you put it, or POV as wiki puts it. If a fact can be attributed to a respectable source then it goes in. Understanding is left as an exercise for the reader.

You had a lot of other good points, but this one is fundamentally wrong. WP does not ignore understanding, or POV or leave them for the reader. What it does, by explicitly chosen policy, is ignore what you and I (or any other editor) think, what our POV is and what our understanding is, unless we publish it in reliable sources. But what a reliable source's understanding of a situation is or their POV on a subject is very fair game (particularly if they are a prominent scholar etc on a subject) and is an essential part of a great article. In fact the presentation of the most important various views on a subject is encouraged. Again, what is against policy for good reason is slanting a POV or making it appear as if a minority view is the dominant one.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[smallfries]

If you believe that we have significant differences in our understanding of length and speed then my comment would seem like that to you. But the answer to your Cartesian dilemma is to open your eyes. Only in theory it is impossible to reach an objective level - in practice we take for granted the idea that we all live in the same universe for the simple reason that nobody has ever seen evidence of a contradiction to that. So while you can chase this theoretical hole, shouting but it's turtles all the way down, most of us accept that an objective universe exists. It's an idea that works well in practice, although it cannot be be proven in theory. You have to ask yourself if that is really because everything is subjective - or is it because the tools of logic that you are using are not powerful enough to ground themselves?

But sure, that would just be me and my fallacies. My apologies, I thought that you were capable of getting the literary reference.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[smallfries]

Yes, you've phrased this much better than the way that I hashed it together. Good correction, but is it not true that by a wikipedian's definition a POV backed up by a reliable citation is a fact worth reporting on?

Re:Truth vs consensus

[Taxman415a]

Yes, you've phrased this much better than the way that I hashed it together. Good correction, but is it not true that by a wikipedian's definition a POV backed up by a reliable citation is a fact worth reporting on?

Yes, if the relevant sources support the POV being a prominent one, ie important in some way. But the key thing is that then the view is expressed as what it is and included is who states it, believes it, etc and how prominent it is (to the extent possible). Then prominent criticism, response, etc can be included as appropriate. And for actually admitting on slashdot that someone has pointed out a good correction to something you'd written, I award you a symbolic trophy of your choosing in recognition of the rarity of said event. :)

Re:Truth vs consensus

[mpe]

This is why, imho, wikipedia is useless for things like "history" and great for things like "understanding the 3rd law of thermodynamics".

Much the same can be true of a conventional encyclopedia. You's still have this problem if the "history" defintion excluded anything more recent than the mid 19th century.

Re:Truth vs consensus

[mpe]

The distinction between the humanties and the sciences is specifically that objective measures exist of scientific processes, where-as the humanties are concerned with subjects for which there is no objective measure, and hence only debate.

There is not always "debate", sometimes there is simply "dogma". Even cases where any kind of potentially objective fact checking is activly resisted. e.g. consider how welcome archeologists would be welcome at the sites identified as "Nazi Death Camps".

Re:Truth vs consensus

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no. Science isn't ruled by consensus; it's ruled by the scientific process. consensus is merely the result.

Link to the actual New Scientist article

[sczimme]

Instead of using a link to a sub-optimal blog site, how about a link to the actual New Scientist article.

Wikipedia: Pop Culture Resource

[RobotRunAmok]

If you want a quick -- nay, exhaustive -- overview of the 5th season of "Buffy," or come across a reference to "Boba Fett" in an online forum and want to learn more, Wikipedia is the site to hit. It's value as a font of pop culture knowledge is augmented by its geek-contributors obsessive behavior. Politics? Religion? Any chapter in History or Current Events involving Politics or Religion? Reader Beware.

Re:Wikipedia: Pop Culture Resource

[Snowspinner]

I dunno. Out of the 30 articles featured and to-be-featured on the main page in September, 7 are popular culture articles. (An article on D&D, the "Bus Uncle" video clip, the pilot episode of Smallville, OutKast's "Hey Ya," Alison Bechdel's graphic novel "Fun Home, the Indian film Lage Raho Munna Bhai, and tomorrow's featured article on Blood Sugar Sex Magik) Yes, that list skews a bit geek (Though the Bechdel graphic novel is about as far from a geek comic as one can get), but there's still 23 featured articles this month on such geeky topics as meteorology, European rugby, Soviet history, and American industrial disasters.

It's more accurate to say that we, compared to similar reference works, have a disproportionately good coverage of geeky topics. That does not appear to have come at the cost of our coverage of other topics.

Re:Wikipedia: Pop Culture Resource

[Anonymous Coward]

Politics? Religion? Any chapter in History or Current Events involving Politics or Religion? Reader Beware.

Isn't that true in general? These two things are endless flame wars. For the same reasons, we have separate news networks, separate religions busy blowing each other up, etc.

Finding 3rd parties to write about these things isn't really an answer: either they just plain don't exist, they exist but are not interested at all, or they exist, are interested, and are employed by Britannica or World Book or some other Encyclopedia.

The biggest thing Wikipedia needs right now, IMO of course, is just a general audit of what it's got. They need to Deep Freeze certain pages that are "good" quality (things that aren't likely to need very many changes other than the occasional grammar touch up), they need to Freeze pages that are "pretty good" so that vandals can't come through with bulldozers and draw giant penises in ASCII, and they need to drop the "[Citation Needed]" in favor of "This sentence is worthless without a citation, therefore we're simply omitting it from general view until one is added." The audit could probably clean up a bunch of other general issues like internal linking being inconsistent, image copyrights and formats, templates changing weekly, and making "Category" and "Index" pages more useful.

Re:Wikipedia: Pop Culture Resource

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the notability crackdown. Unless the 5th season of Buffy is notable in some way, articles about it will probably be deleted with prejudice. I used to go to wikipedia to read trivia about every single episode of Futurama, but they've started cracking down on that; if a TV episide hasn't been nominated for an award, you might not be able to find it on WP in the coming future. (There are other possible reasons for something to be considered notable besides nominations, of course). "Trivia" sections are being removed from articles; long articles about "uncommon" subjects are being replaced with short summaries; articles that don't affirm their own notability will get speedily deleted; and, articles without adequate citations or good references will be tagged for future removal.

Some editors say, "No, that's exaggerated---we rarely delete things!" That may have been true a few years ago, but that is not the currently policy. I've studied the recent editing guidelines and asked numerous questions in <irc://irc.freenode.net/#wikipedia>. Search wikipedia for something that doesn't exist; now, the 'not found' page has a new line, something like: the article may have been deleted for not meeting quality standards. Open an edit window for an article that doesn't currently exist; there are now multiple boldface warnings about certain things being candidates for speedy deletion. I'm afraid to contribute anything anymore. If I really feel like there's an important fact missing from an article, I'll try to visit a local college library and come up with some good sources, but, I wouldn't dare create a new article, because I know it would have little hope of surviving unless an editor happened to feel like looking for references instead of hitting delete.

"Imagine everyone having access to all of human knowledge^W^W^W^Wonly the stuff we've deemed notable and non-frivolous. That's what we're trying to do."

I used to resent the Wikipedia-Watch referring to the editors, arbiters, and overseers as a "hive mind," but, the recent policy changes have made increased the likelihood of a hivemind emerging.

There's also a new system where there are a few overseers-to-the-overseers who can make an article or particular edit be deleted without showing up in the history log or deletion log; it's supposed to be reserved for the removal of private information, specifically in instances of the "right-to-disappear" and "right-to-anonymity" systems which allow an editor to protect their identity, if they so desire, when necessary. This can lead to strange situations where one user can make another user appear to be a vandal by careful manipulation of a page and posting of private information through multiple accounts; then, looking at the edit history diffs for a page can make vandalism appear to be caused by someone that it isn't, since certain edits are completely hidden. There's no way for anyone but the overseers-to-the-overseers to be able to tell if these kinds of nearly-invisible changes have even occurred on a certain article (or, at least, the pages outlining this policy seem to indicate this; whether some pages and edit histories might have a "Notice: some revisions are hidden to protect certain individuals' privacy, and some diffs may be inaccurate" notice somewhere on them is not documented, although I would hope that sort of notice will be added if it doesn't already exist.)

I also wish that deleted articles could be viewed by the general public if they so choose. I understand that sometimes deletion is used in cases of illegal content, but, what about the perfectly-legal but uncited or non-notable deletions?

There are also two database admins who have the power to do anything at all without leaving an audit trail (Jimmy Wales and one of the lead Wiki code developers, iirc), which is a little scary. It seems to go against the ideas that WP is supposed to stand for (opening edit model, visible history, etc). I only hope that it's usage is severely limited and that some am

Re:Wikipedia: Pop Culture Resource

[FiloEleven]

But there's still no information on how to use a "no-spill" gas can without spilling gas =(

Re:Wikipedia: Pop Culture Resource

[cashman73]

Well, Wikipedia's Featured Article Director, Raul654, the one that determines what FAs make it on the main page each day, is also a slashdotter,... so that would explain the rather high number of "geeky" articles, wouldn't it? ;-)

Re:Wikipedia: Pop Culture Resource

[phantomlord]

You mean I'm not the only one who spills more gas pouring with a no-spill gas can than I've ever spilled in the previous 25 years with the old style cans? I swear I splash some out every time I use the no-spill ones because the venting system causes major glugs. I'm tempted to just poke an air hole in the top of the can.

Re:Wikipedia: Pop Culture Resource

[mdwh2]

{{fact}}: give us an example of a poor article on a mainstream topic in religion?

Also of course, there is more to human knowledge than "pop culture" and "politics and religion", the latter being an area that involves disputes, and makes it hard to find any decent non-biased reference.

Not a religion, but still under the broader topic to give an example I am familiar with - I find Wikipedia's atheism article to be a better definition and description than Britannica's. Britannica:
* Talks about atheism as if it is mutually exclusive to agnosticism.
* Falsely claims that atheism rejects all religion (it doesn't - some religions don't require belief in a god, and atheism is only about rejecting belief in a god).
* Whilst it has some good parts, it on the whole reads like a personal essay with the author's personal opinions, rather than covering objectively what people think from referenced sources.
* Provides some further reading, but doesn't have sources inlined in the text.

Yes, things like politics and religion are sources of bias, but other encyclopedias are not immune to this, and with them, there is no chance for anyone to correct or even challenge the mistakes.

Re:Wikipedia: Pop Culture Resource

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's a slashdotter, maybe that means we should start looking out for duped FAs?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Mod article up!

[Anonymous Coward]

But who will moderate the metamoderators?

Same thing here

[rolfwind]

I tried adding something once to an article but they kept bludgeoning me and removing it due to that it wasn't referenced. I did reference it to a reliable source but I put it in a "External Links" as I couldn't add it to the citations/sources without being a registered user for some reason. If I have to become a registered user to add a citation, and if I have to add citations to add things without them being automatically deleted (regardless of their merit), that destroys a lot of anonymity. Which may be good or bad depending on your POV.

Wikipedia is pretty good as a resource in my experience, but lately they have been obsessed with being SEEN as accurate and are implementing rules that get them SEEN as accurate but I don't know if the actual result is that they become more accurate or just more orthodox and accepted by the establishment. They have been already shown in a study to be as or more accurate than Encyclopedia Brittanica - I think the direction they are heading actually does not lead them toward their ideal (accuracy) but more toward the mob rule/(orthodox accepted truths).

Re:Same thing here

[SEWilco]

And I got bludgeoned for adding and improving references. By people who refused to state what the case was about and why they were voting, although the rules require them to.

Re:Same thing here

[Haeleth]

If I have to become a registered user to add a citation, and if I have to add citations to add things without them being automatically deleted (regardless of their merit), that destroys a lot of anonymity.

Firstly, you don't have to register to add citations. Citations are the same as the rest of the page - if you can edit anything, you can edit the lot. I don't know what you were doing wrong, but it wasn't Wikipedia's fault.

Secondly, registering doesn't destroy anonymity; it improves anonymity! You don't have to provide any personal information at all when you register -- not even an email address. And if you edit as an unregistered user, everyone can see your IP address every time you post; if you register, the IP addresses you use are hidden from everyone apart from a limited group of Wikipedia administrators, and they are only allowed to view them if they have evidence that suggests your account is being used abusively by someone who was previously banned.

Re:Same thing here

[mdwh2]

Well yes, this is the problem - elsewhere in this Slashdot article, I bet is someone complaining Wikipedia is crap because it has things which aren't reference. Wikipedia can't win. People will always complain which way things are done.

In this case, why is it a problem what happened? What were you trying to add, and why couldn't you give a source? Requiring information to be verifiable has always (AFAIK) been a Wikipedia policy, and not something they added recently to become more accepted.

I couldn't add it to the citations/sources without being a registered user for some reason. If I have to become a registered user to add a citation, and if I have to add citations to add things without them being automatically deleted (regardless of their merit), that destroys a lot of anonymity. Which may be good or bad depending on your POV.

This isn't true, you don't need to register to add it as a citation (and I don't see that a registered account is any less anonymous than being unregistered - in fact, I would argue it is more anonymous, as your IP address is not advertised to everyone).

Re:Same thing here

[blackest_k]

what gives with the troll moderation?
anyone remember the guidelines concentrate on modding up rather than down?

One thing I hate about slashdot is moderators with an agenda, moderation isn't supposed to be about imposing your view point on a discussion, but promoting the better comments out of the mire.

In this case wikipedia watch appears to be a troll site the page linked too has as its opening line.

"January 2006: Harassing someone while hiding
behind a screen name is now a criminal offense"

which is strange on a page giving profiles of wikipedia editors and former editors.

its pretty clear that there is an intent to harrass the people listed on that page and make them more than a little uncomfortable.

There is very little information "about us (wikipedia watch)" just some names on that site and a PO box number for mail.

if the parent is linda mack its not a troll post, and if it isn't its an insight into the problems faced by wikipedia editors. either way undeserving of the troll mod.

Re:Same thing here

[rolfwind]

The citation list, not the page, was protected. I could not add ANYTHING to that list.

free encyclopedia strategies

[icepick72]

The article summary hits the nail on the head because that's what it's all about: boosting reader confidence, even despite any concerns about accuracy. Oddly enough the two concepts are different and yet closely related. And then there's Citizendium who state "We aim at credibility and quality, not just quantity". I'll tell you, Wikipedia is smart, expanding their already huge user-base by slowly gaining more trust, whereas Citizendium just decided to turn everything on its head suddenly. This could be a long, drawn-out marketing campaign, if there is one!

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[account_deleted]

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tmcnet trustworthy?

[SEWilco]

I don't know if I can trust that tmcnet site. Is it bad formatting or bad reporting when it says:

"As a result, although Wikipedia has grown in since its launch in 2001 around
per cent
f all internet users now visit the site on any given day its information
ontinues to be treated cautiously."

sources

[erlehmann]

also, articles that lack sources are somehow unwanted, so those who make something up on wikipedia have no good stand. with the suppression of unwanted information, it's kinda different, but as long as jimbo doesn't go crazy, it's all in the history. not many people may do, but i check consistency, article history and links before i believe what i see.

Trust and anonymity

[uid7306m]

The trouble with trusted editors is that any large organization can afford to pay someone to become a trusted editor. All you have to do is hire someone reasonably smart, and tell them to spend a day per week helping Wikipedia. Then, once and a while, you tell them to fix what you want fixed. Some would refuse, but others would not want to risk their job.

Since large organizations spend millions on PR, they would happily spend the small sums it would require for this plan. We're talking about US$40,000, which is not a lot. The only reason this plan would fail is that it would be too tempting to demand a lot of edits.

Ultimately, the problem comes down to anonymity. You really want people to put their reputation on the line, and you need people who care about their reputation. Paying university professors to write articles is one solution, though there may be others.

Alternatively, you just accept that Wikipedia is what it is: good for the stuff that everyone knows, of dubious value for controversial stuff (though often surprisingly good!).

Re:Trust and anonymity

[Snowspinner]

I agree, except inasmuch as, 6 years into the project, the surprise is starting to wear off, and it seems like it's time to start rethinking our sense of what should and shouldn't work in writing an encyclopedia.

Re:Trust and anonymity

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively, you just accept that Wikipedia is what it is: good for the stuff that everyone knows, of dubious value for controversial stuff (though often surprisingly good!).

Indeed -- in fact, it's generally very good for controversial stuff.

The reason why is that most proponents of fringe theories are happy if their pet theory is included. They do not actually try to remove coverage of mainstream thought. Wikipedia's policy of requiring citations means that it's always easy to tell which theories are mainstream (citations point to mainstream information sources) and which are crankery (citations all point to self-published pamphlets / websites hosted on home ISP web space / whatever).

In cases where there is a determined bloc of editors who are intent on making sure an article only details one point of view, this is always obvious from tags on the article flagging it as controversial and pointing the reader to discussions of the issue on the talk page.

So either way, the reader always has access to all the information s?he requires to make up h(is|er) own mind based on the evidence each editor presents to support h(is|er) case. This stands in stark contrast to the traditional Britannica-style approach of having a single authority decide which arguments are worth presenting, and which evidence to cite for each!

Wikipedia is ugly, but the fact that it uses a less reliable editing system means, paradoxically, that it's actually a more reliable source of information -- provided, and only provided, that the reader puts in a bit more work, follows up citations and reads the discussion pages.

Interesting article

[MarkWatson]

I like De Alfaro's statistical approach of ranking both blocks of text and editors.

I also like the approach of checking IP addresses, although I was caught in that: earlier this year I added an article on machine learning, but someone from my ISP had done vandalism; I was blocked for a few days until I went through their system; no problem, just a delay.

The whole topic of trust is a very interesting problem, one that also occurs on web sites, the semantic web, etc. (Imagine trying to perform reasoning with RDF on the web when some contains fake information).

I (slightly) embarrassed myself last night by sending a link to a parody article to a few friends and family, not realizing that it was a parody - I had to send out a "never mind" email this morning.

I have mixed feelings about private anonymous use of the web vs. the benefits to knowing who people are. I very recently turned off anonymous posting on my web blog - too many anonymous posts offered opinion that I doubt the posters would express if they represented themselves.

As an open platform (hopefully forever), the Internet will evolve in interesting ways :-)

Re:Interesting article

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I was blocked for a few days until I went through their system

Hm. I wonder if it would help to have a queue of articles that have been edited, but do not yet show up on the main page? Then the wiki Nazis could monitor that queue, and catch vandalism before it actually made it the published pages. After a period of time--say 24 hours, the edits are automatically published.

This would have the disadvantage of introducing a latency to good fixes, but I think it would really cut down on vandalism and graffiti. It also requires an army of editors to watch that queue, and I don't know if there are enough of them to really do that.

It also would do nothing to improve Wiki's main problem, imo, which is the well-meaning factual errors of the "truth by consensus" problem.

Re:Interesting article

[MarkWatson]

I agree: it is OK to introduce a delay in order to cut down on vandalism.

The Problem Lies with Misinformed Users

[mmyrfield]

I really wish /. posts would stop asking if wikipedia is "trustworthy" or "reliable". All of the cynics reply in chorus "no, it can't be because X can vandalize article Y, and group Z can gang up and bully topic Q into having systemic bias omg wtf @!$!".

No kidding. This happens. Guess what? It happens in print encyclopaedias also. Replace vandalism with plain old errors, replace the systemic bias of group Z with that of the editors and voila.

Then you have the camp of "ex-editors" who are really nothing more than bad editors who haven't taken the time to understand what the mission of wikipedia actually is, rather than what their contrived notions lead them to believe it is who say things like "I got scared away because what I added which was so clearly invaluable to me was removed by a long-time editor which clearly means I'm right and they're doodie heads with an agenda omg wtf @!$!".

What they don't realise is what they add has to be verifiable from reliable, secondary sources, with no new opinions of their own. Wikipedia seeks to add established analysis, not what you perceive to be right. And this is exactly what makes wikipedia more reliable than any print encyclopaedia - it has inline cited references to back up it's claims. Any part of wikipedia that does not yet have these inline citations (that anybody can and should follow up on) should still be considered works in progress - consider finding the source yourself!

So I guess my question is, why do you insist we hold wikipedia to a higher standard than other encyclopaedias? Stop being afraid of dynamic content.

Re:The Problem Lies with Misinformed Users

[Petrushka]

Then you have the camp of "ex-editors" who are really nothing more than bad editors who haven't taken the time to understand what the mission of wikipedia actually is, rather than what their contrived notions lead them to believe it is who say things like "I got scared away because what I added which was so clearly invaluable to me was removed by a long-time editor which clearly means I'm right and they're doodie heads with an agenda omg wtf @!$!".

I'm sure a fair amount of that goes on. But I think you're deluding yourself if you think that this drives people away from Wikipedia more than the opposite of what you describe: namely, editors who have tried to use well-referenced material but have been persistently reverted and ultimately driven away by people who prefer their own, unreferenced or inadequately referenced, versions.

People who have tried to use their own unreferenced material and were rebuffed, and the other types of losers that you describe ... well, they may eventually learn that they went about things in the wrong way, and they may someday learn how to write properly. But the people who were rebuffed for trying to use well-grounded factual material -- they're never coming back.

Re:The Problem Lies with Misinformed Users

[Anonymous Coward]

Print encyclopedias are uniform in their biases. You can know when you read one what the problem might be.

Wiki is not consistent. So some might lean heavily one way and others lean heavily another way and the layman has no way of guaging which or what.

The fact is, cliques form on wiki. They form more often, and their effects are more pronounced than they are on print. Trying to equate the two is a false dichotomy.

Re:The Problem Lies with Misinformed Users

[mmyrfield]

First of all, understand that it it not a "dichotomy" at all, let alone a false one. It's a comparison, and a very valid one at that.

Secondly, I would argue that it is far easier to distinguish what bias is present in a Good or Featured article on wikipedia than it is in print media. You can quickly scan the discussion page or check any of the numerous references (which are all requirements for articles to reach either status).

Comparing non-Good/Featured articles to print media makes no sense: the article has not reached maturity, which is equivalent to an print-media article which hasn't been written/reviewed yet.

Thirdly, I would contest that printed encyclopaedias are uniform in their biases. They are put together by scores of writers and edited by teams of editors, each with a different agenda or perspective.

Note

[joeszilagyi]

Trust is reliability. The problem is that (as others mention below) trust, truth, and fact are not subject to deviation or consensus. No matter HOW much some want it to be. The problem with Wikipedia is everything is subject to groupthink review and approval.

Science isn't. Facts aren't. The sky is blue, the planet is billiions of years old, two airplanes flown by terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, intellegient design is myth.

If enough people say otherwise aggressively enough, though, Wikipedia--even if they don't outright say otherwise--will leave it gray enough to be contested.

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No longer everyone's knowledge, now just citations

[kingduct]

I now find contributing to Wikipedia unbearable. At one time, everyone was supposed to contribute what they knew. It was a place for the world to create a new form of reference based on everyone's knowledge. Now, I find that if I contribute about things I know, I am told to find a citation. Thus, incorrect information with citations is allowed on, and good information without citations is removed. The goal is to look academic (like tradition resources) and not to let everyone share (like it originally was). It was incredibly frustrating to have people who had no idea what they were talking about start telling me that I was in the wrong for changing things.

I can understand people wanting to make sure that the right stuff is put on the wikipedia. But shouldn't it be people with experience in the subject matter of the topic who go through and find what is wrong? Instead it seems like people attach themselves to articles and feel like rules changes in the wikipedia give them the power to control articles and show their academic formatting superiority, even when they know nothing about the topic. I still use the wikipedia some, but this change has actually made me lose some of my trust in it. Whereas before the wikipedia more openly admitted that it was imperfect and I took it for what it was, now it pretends to be perfect and in order to do so is reducing its validity and I distrust it for that pretension.

Trust isn't the big problem

[nwbvt]

Trust isn't the Wikipedia's biggest problem at all. Its biggest problem is that it is an encyclopedia that is treated by many as a primary or secondary source. When someone argues that the Wikipedia is not appropriate for citations in something like a research paper, they get flamed by people claiming its more accurate or has more information than traditional encyclopedias. But thats completely missing the point; no encyclopedia (or any other tertiary source) is an appropriate source for citations.

Wont that make it worse?

[Richard.Tao]

If it's ruined by vandals with agendas, you'd be weeding everyone else out but them and the people who really care about wikipedia, which may do more harm then good. Age doesn't matter, just knowledge and the want to be fair. I think a system like /. where you could peer rank contributors, or articles so there is an agreed upon standard. Possibly make popular articles un-editable unless your ranked high enough.

On the other hand

[Jotii]

If you had to pay to edit Wikipedia, only the serious editors would do it.

True History or spin with no trust, just bias ....

[OldHawk777]

Thanks to all you folks at Wikipedia, maybe this will help US, EU ... understand and learn some about reality.

I remember reading encyclopedias and listening to news in the 1950/60s. By the mid 70s, I knew there was little truth in any history, but many extensive facts spun to cultural propaganda.

Among many cultural groups globally names like Hitler, Stalin, Mao ... Caesar, Huang, Alexander ... Ramesses, Saladin, Urban, Gupta, Columbus, Cortez, Falwell, Farrakhan ... Nixon, Reagan, Kohmani, Sharon, Kennedy, Bush2, McClellan, MacArthur, Montgomery, Custer, Napoleon ... (so many more) are held in great reverence and honored as great leaders of humanity.

I hope one day we will have a history based on what was provided to humanity, not what was gloriously lost for greed, creed, lies, and spin-legacy. Caesar, Bush2, Napoleon, Hitler ... had far more in common with each other, then anything in common with Gandhi, Theresa, Joan, Carter ..., but history books literally cover the bad with many good lies and justifications, and then for further future evil relegate or omit the good to almost anonymity. The greatness of Rome, Greece, Egypt, China, US, EU ... is not due to the imperial destroyers of human life and civilization ... The greatness of all cultures, nations, art, science, learning ... is due to Citizens creating and developing (not ruling). [Don't reply in support of megalomaniacs or dogmatist, because it will simply express your intelligence and nothing of value to humanity]

Please, understand (I do not say) wars or warriors are bad. Warriors fight for family, friends, and ideals. Warriors are never the pitiable and fearful foolish followers of pseudo-patriotism flag waving, religious dogma, or the mental and emotional cripples looking for gold, glory, and/or gore.

War can be forced upon Warriors, Warriors are human and make mistakes, but Warriors cannot be forced to fight on any battlefield. Warriors prevent the subjugation/slavery of family, friends, and ideals. Wars are human events caused by an insane few to injure the many. Economic class-warfare is cultural war and does cause death and instability of human lives and societies.

Interesting but tough problem

[felix9x]

This is an really interesting problem. In my opinion vandalism is not an issue with wikipedia but the quality of the research work involved with each article is. Every article has a varying degree of quality to it. Some are "good" as in someone who did thorough research has written the article. Some are "good" because many people did little good bits of research and the combination is good. Some are "bad" because the research was flimsy or the article is tainted by the bias of the author. Not all articles have been well researched. Not all articles have been reviewed or corrected by people who are experts on the subject. And finally the really hard problem. For some articles there is not enough "good" material elsewhere online available to cite or use by people who do want to do good research. For some topics in order to write a good encyclopedic article one would have to spend 5 month researching secondary sources which are not freely available online.

So we wind up with a situation where some parts of wikipedia are good because the topics covered have alot of good research material to rely on and some topics are poor because the cost/motivation of doing proper research are too great for an average wikipedia editor. This is the really tough problem to overcome since most of wikipedia is volunteer work and most people are not willing to dedicate large portions of their life to it.

Nevertheless this new tech is going to at least solve the vandal problem a bit better. Right now its a little difficult to spot vandalism in the see of changes. This bit of automation would make it much easier for the "police" force of wikipedia to spot and eliminate any obvious vandalism.

What about the reliability rating thingo?

[thegnu]

Wasn't there an article here on /. a month ago about someone who developed an algorithm that would track data on different editors (number of disputed/undisputed edits, number of total edits, how long account has existed, etc) and different entries (external references, number of total revisions, etc) and give a fairly accurate percentage rating on the reliability of the article? It seems like a big 57% reliable at the top of the article would make it clear that maybe the Bill Gates article was a little skewed by the trolls.

It seems like something that would require little to no overhead, could be updated automatically using the algorithm on each edit, and would kind of ruin it for the random troll who would see the credibility drop from 80% to 68% because he inserted 'a faggot' in between the words "Born" and "in 1943."

Re:No longer everyone's knowledge, now just citati

[808140]

It is true that cited information that happens to be incorrect or misguided will often be difficult or impossible to remove due to the existence of a citation — this is clearly a problem. However, I do not see the other direction as being an issue.

The fact is, nearly everything that is correct and accurate can indeed be cited. Wikipedia has, for very good reasons, a policy of not allowing original research — so anything you determine yourself is not admissible. But everything else is.

I'm the sort of person that "knows" a lot of stuff. I have a lot of trivia and information stored in my brain; I'd wager many Slashdotters are similarly of the "know-it-all" variety. But I cannot tell you how many times I have sworn that some factoid or other was true only to discover in the course of research that I was either mistaken, or that the knowledge was somehow so obscure that no one else made any references to it whatsoever (which, let's face it, probably means I was mistaken).

Unlike you, apparently, when this happens I thank my lucky stars that WP encourages citation of sources. When something is correct, finding a cite is a trivial endeavor, as it only amounts to telling them where you read what you're saying. When something is incorrect, your inability to find a cite will prevent you from looking like a daft fool by insisting something is true when it's not.

Many people who think they are experts tend to assume that the "cite everything" policy that WP has adopted does not apply to them — but more often than not, these people are not actually experts. Real experts, who do research and read on their subject of expertise in an academic setting pretty much full time, are accustomed to citing their sources (although they are often not accustomed to WP's prohibition against original research — but that's something else entirely).

As a rule of thumb, if you can't find a citation for what you know to be true, it's probably not true, and so I cannot empathize with your distaste for the citation requirement. However, I think you are right in your assessment of the problem in the other direction: citations can be of poor quality and be incorrect themselves, and people can be very unreceptive (read: belligerent) when you suggest that citation or no, their statement is either incorrect or POV or whatever.

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Re:No longer everyone's knowledge, now just citati

[Johnny Mnemonic]

But shouldn't it be people with experience in the subject matter of the topic who go through and find what is wrong?

Yes! Yes! But a) how do you find those people, and provided that you do, b) how do you get them to work for free?

Cache citations

[doctor_no]

One thing I wish Wikipedia would do is cache the citations; if the citations are made to a website. I've noticed a slightly out-of-date wiki entry would usually have a good majority of their citations lead to pages that no longer exist. I'm sure there are legal and technical issues that make it difficult, however, transparency of works cited is crucial.

Re:Cache citations

[Titoxd]

Well, we would soon run out of disk space. However, we can (and do) link to the WayBack Machine when we identify a dead citation. It is a boring job, but usually yields excellent results, as only a few sites use a robots.txt file that bans the WayBack crawler. One thing I wish is that the few sites that do block the crawler would allow it someday, and then we wouldn't have to worry about it. Heck, we could even include a link to the Internet Archive on the default citation templates ({{cite web}} and its ilk). ~~~~

Trust misplaced?

[jensend]

The article says that "trusted editor" status will be based on number and frequency of Wikipedia edits. I don't know about others, but I think that in many situations I would place considerably less trust in people who are constantly editing Wikipedia as opposed to occasional contributors- as a group they represent a very biased selection of the public at large*, and as individuals they often have agendas they're pushing which represent a major (if not the major) motivation for their continual editing.

*I was about to submit and realized this statement could be misread to mean that they're more biased people than average. That's not what is meant, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_bias.

No, It Doesn't

[Jane Q. Public]

WikiScanner does NOT allow people to tell the "motivations" of those who make changes... it simply identifies those parties (in some cases), and other people draw their own conclusions. Those are not the same things.

Further, WikiScanner is probably going to work itself out of a job, because now savvy people will not use Corporate sources for making their self-serving changes. Of course, WikiScanner will still continue to uncover the clueless... but if anybody in business is smart at all, its popularity is already making it less useful.

Uranium-232 decay energy seems correct...

[BlueParrot]

Well based on my coursework last week at least the U-232 alpha-decay energy appears to be accurate. That is, the peak we detected using a surface barrier detector fit quite well with Wikipedia's value. Ok, so the peak overlaps somewhat with one from Th-228, which complicates the experiment if you don't have a pure sample, but it appears to be correct. Now if you were looking for a reliable source on ME politics... well... let me know if you find one.

Vandalism isn't the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Vandals are easy to deal with. All it takes is a few clicks to undo or revert changes, and the level of studiousness is proportional to the importance of the article (more people will keep it on their watch list). Vandals can be annoying but they are ultimately a non-problem.

The real difficulty with Wikipedia is not so much vandalism, but people trying to use it as a billboard or soapbox. Advertisers and fanboys are the greatest headaches for maintaining WP articles, because to them, their self-interest doesn't seem like cruft, and they'll fight to keep their changes even when their content and tone is wholly inappropriate for an encyclopedia. This is one of the more aggravating things to deal with in WP, because the consensus knows that they're wrong, but individuals will continue to unilaterally make edits to articles, breaking all sorts of policies in the process and refusing to back down no matter how much sense and logic you try to inject into the argument. You even have blocs of people who proudly proclaim their defiance of established WP policies, for example the so-called "inclusionists" who believe that everything belongs in WP, against the stated mission of WP which is to be an encyclopedia, and will vote to keep pages that are even purely for advertising new products. These are some of the most counterproductive people in the WP system but there's little that can currently be done about them.

What WP is doing with these changes is backwards. WP is an anarchy, and it's impossible for an ordered system to keep up with the myriad changes that take place on a daily basis. What should really happen is that users need to be given more self-governing power, like being able to conduct consensus votes (not simple majority votes) to protect pages or suspend specific editors, instead of waiting for an admin to help them.

Re:No longer everyone's knowledge, now just citati

[The Earl of Sandwich]

At one time, everyone was supposed to contribute what they knew. In practice, many editors of Wikipedia believe they know things that aren't true. Since everybody's anonymous, there's no way to separate the real experts from the kooks. When you get right down to it, material just isn't useful unless it can be verified through references. This policy of demanding references is a matter of necessity, and not just an attempt to "look academic" as you make it out to be.

copyright infringement

[Chris Chiasson]

this story appears to have been stolen in whole from

http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19526226.200-wikipedia-20--now-with-added-trust.html

especially since the story mentions New Scientist

A non-issue?

[flotson]

I have found Wikipedia to be endlessly entertaining and informative. I think the real need is for more education in schools that gives students the rhetorical tools to analyze texts, to think about sources, and bias, and place all information (not just that from Wikipedia) in an analytical context. I don't take the New York Times as gospel, either.

Re:No longer everyone's knowledge, now just citati

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really have all this information that is so much better than Wikipedia's but is not available *anywhere* on the Internet (or in the entire world for that matter, as you can cite books and etc) for you to cite, then you should start your own very accurate website and then cite it on Wikipedia. With all this great exclusive information, your site should be popular.

My Concern

[Gnostic Ronin]

My concern isn't that some emo editor is deliberately re-editing the pages on controversial issues, though it is a concern. My main concern is that people are allowed to edit things that they have no expertise in.

I've read things like Steven Hawking's books. That does not make me qualified to interpret String Theory. I've taken courses in psychology, but I'm not really a trained psychologist. Wikipedia doesn't even take this into account. My edits on String Theory are treated exactly the same as Hawking's. I don't think that's a good way to insure accuracy. I'm much more likely to misunderstand a theory in cosmology than an actual cosmologist. He's trained. He's spent thousands of hours reading and studying, and for that matter researching cosmology. I've read a book, and for that matter, it wasn't aimed at physicists, it was aimed at "the average man".

Until WPdia recognizes that, I don't think it's really reliable. It may be "stable", meaning that what it explains about math and physics doesn't change much, but that could be because the article matches what people believe is true. If the majority of editors believe that Warp Drive is real, that's what the stable version will say. And if actual physicists edit the page to say otherwise, it will be reverted by some high school dropout.

Reality isn't what the lowest common denominator believes.

Re:My Concern

[mmyrfield]

The reason wikipedia doesn't care whether you're trained in the field or not when you make an edit, is because it doesn't matter. Wikipedia is not about gathering knowledge from peoples' brains, it's about gathering knowledge from reliable sources. This makes editing wikipedia mostly clerical work, and this above all else is what I think scares people away from editing wikipedia. Don't get me wrong, having a good knowledge of the subject you're editing makes the clerical work a lot easier, but the burden of evidence is exactly the same.

I've read things like Steven Hawking's books. That does not make me qualified to interpret String Theory.

Good of you to realize that, but wikipedia doesn't want people to "interpret String Theory". It wants people to present String Theory in a well sourced manner. These are two different things, in fact interpreting anything and then putting it on wikipedia is expressly discouraged (because it often qualifies as "Original Research" - see here).

I think you may be falling into the trap of expecting every article to be at the same level of completion. Just because it's stable, doesn't mean it's complete. When it's complete it will be rated Good or Featured based on the reliability of the content which is based on the reliability of the sources cited, and the balance of opposing views presented (if indeed the subject has them).

[citation needed]

[Anonymous Coward]

This is incorrect. Stable versions do not yet exist on the German Wikipedia.

I DON'T TRUST LIBERTARTIAN DOUCHEBAGS

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia: A Million Monkeys Typing
Editorial Note from Workers Vanguard no. 888
Since Wikipedia was launched in 2001 with the professed aim of providing a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet in their own language, it has grown explosively. With the number of visitors doubling every four months, it has become the third most popular news and information source on the Web. Nearly anything searched on Google returns Wikipedia as one of its top hits. Wikipedia exists in over 200 languagesincluding, get this, Klingon!and the English site alone boasts nearly 1.7 million entries. By way of comparison, the Encyclopedia Britannica does not exceed 120,000 entries.
But Wikipedia is no encyclopedia. A menace to historical knowledge, it is a New Age fraud that often provides a sanctuary for libel and character assassination. The software tool called wiki (derived from a Hawaiian term for quick or informal) enables anyone to create or edit entries whenever whatever enters their minds. The New Yorker (31 July 2006) observed, The user who spends the most time on the siteor who yells the loudestwins.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes, as the old proverb says. As scandals grow over the disinformation in many of Wikipedias entries, criticism has mounted in bourgeois academia and the media. Last month, the History Department of Middlebury College in Vermont became one of the academic institutions to bar students from using Wikipedia citations.
As Marxist materialists, our worldview is rooted in historical and scientific truth. Thus Workers Vanguard has had a strict, years-long policy of not using Wikipedia as a factual source of any kind.
Most ominously, beginning in 2004 Wikipedia has been cited in over 100 judicial rulings, including at the appellate level just below the U.S. Supreme Court. Right-wing judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago recently gushed that Wikipedia is a terrific resource. Partly because it [is] so convenient, it often has been updated recently and is very accurate (New York Times, 29 January). Posner speaks like a true believer in the Bush administration, whose idea of accuracy can be gauged by its lies about Saddam Husseins weapons of mass destruction.
One Jimmy Wales, an options trader who became the founder and guru of Wikipedia, tours the world promoting his volunteer community of open participation. Wales explicitly rejected scientific peer review of entries because it was intimidating; it felt like homework. There is no such oppressive authority in wikiality, to borrow a term from Stephen Colbert of Comedy Centrals The Colbert Report. I love Wikipedia, Colbert said in a July 2006 episode. Any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it becomes true.
Wikipedia is not just low farce. The New York Times (24 December 2005) notes dozens of accounts of people editing entries to suit their own business or personal interests, or their biases. Nazi white supremacists alter terms such as racist to white nationalist, while corporations hire bloggers to write favorable entries on their companies.
Anonymous libelers attack from behind Wikipedias apparent immunity. One prominent target was John Seigenthaler, former editor of the Tennessean in Nashville, who in September 2005 discovered that for four months Wikipedia had been carrying the smear that he was implicated in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. This was meant to wound and defame, as Seigenthaler had been one of Robert Kennedys pallbearers. Seigenthaler wrote in USA Today (29 November 2005) that due to federal law, unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers cannot be sued for disseminating defamatory attacks on citizens posted by others. A local man later came forward as the author of the smear, saying that he thought Wikipedia was a gag Web site. Jimmy Wales himself could read how some Wikipedist in 2005 concluded Wales biographical entry with the tale of his murder

Wikipedia Meme

[broward]

The growth rate of the Wikipedia Meme peaked out 18 months ago. I sincerely doubt that it was due to its lack of credibility but simply a manifestation of peak in general Internet growth. The inflection points in growth for several trends (social networking, craiglist, wikipedia, etc) are almost concurrent, indicating that rate of growth of the user-based Internet peaked in 2006.

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=wikipedia_meme

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry=internet_state_change

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=internet_state_change_part_ii

Need wysiwyg editor, not trust

[bigpat]

Anyone else notice that editing article content is becoming just a mad jumble of wiki's own syntax which is becoming even harder to read than raw html would be? It used to be that wiki formatting was just pretty simple and it left article content pretty readable in edit mode, but now with all the templates and such you often get a mad jumble of "{" and "|" which makes it very difficult to read and edit without screwing up the page. Mediawiki is in dire need of a good web based wysiwyg editing tool.

That's sort of my point.

[Kadin2048]

I'm not really sure what you're getting at.

Finding primary sources in print is hard and extremely time-consuming, and requires access to a big library. Completely agree. It's totally beyond the scope of most students in public primary and secondary schools, and probably most college students who aren't at a big university.

However, this is where Wikipedia is better than Britannica. In a Britannica article, you usually get a few print sources as references. In a Wikipedia article, you usually get a ton of references, and many of them are electronic (and if it's a recent event, many of them are both electronic and primary sources, e.g. links to news sources).

Take, for example, the WP article on George Washington. It has 49 direct citations, most of which are to sources that are available both freely and electronically. And many of those are to well-respected institutions that you could cite directly (the LOC, the Smithsonian, etc.). And beyond that, there's a separate list of suggested reading, which includes electronic versions of George's actual writings, a short biography published in the NY Times, and a collection of primary-source material related to slavery in Philadelphia by the Independence Hall Association. In five minutes, starting with the WP article, I turned up more primary and citable secondary sources than I probably could have found in an afternoon's worth of searching in a good library.

That, to me, is the real strength of Wikipedia. Regardless of its strengths or weaknesses as a source itself, it is an excellent portal to a vast quantity of electronic information, available to anyone with an Internet connection. While a student forced to use nothing but paper sources is hobbled by the size of their school's library -- which is almost always directly proportional to the wealth of the area they live in and the importance that the community places on education -- allowing student to use (good) electronic sources narrows the gap considerably, provided both have access to the Internet to begin with.

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Re:No longer everyone's knowledge, now just citati

[Anonymous Coward]

>incorrect information with citations is allowed on, and good information without citations is removed

who knows whats good and whats incorrect without further sources but from just your own edits?

WP going to be a trustworthy source is a good move, but why are you trying to keep it low by saying 'what i write is correct no matter what. let it in'? thats going to totally screw WP if people let those edits in.

if its a known good fact, its not too hard to find a source about it?

Isn't citing sources enough?

[jawahar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources

Re:Isn't citing sources enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is what if a contributor cited a faked source.

!!!!!!!!OMG {{random admin}} IS GAY!

[Titoxd]

I don't know why that reminds me of Special:Listuser...

~~~~

Mod parent up

[Titoxd]

Yay, someone gets the point. :) Even we admit it, and put the disclaimer on the top of the page that is returned when you click "Cite this article"

IMPORTANT NOTE: Most educators and professionals do not consider it appropriate to use tertiary sources such as encyclopedias as a sole source for any information -- citing an encyclopedia as an important reference in footnotes or bibliographies may result in censure or a failing grade. Wikipedia articles should be used for background information, as a reference for correct terminology and search terms, and as a starting point for further research. As with any community-built reference, there is a possibility for error in Wikipedia's content -- please check your facts against multiple sources and read our disclaimers for more information. ~~~~

The single main thing...

[petrus4]

...that destroyed my trust in Wikipedia was the legion of terminally pedantic ass clowns who've apparently taken over running the site, at least far as the policing of edits is concerned. After having pretty much everything I tried to enter being continually reverted, I gave up. The only use I have for the site myself at all now is primarily as a dictionary.

The other area where the site's administration is REALLY hypocritical and unbalanced is that the rules concerning edits are only applied to articles that enough people consider important. You can write whatever the hell you want on a page referring to a television program, and hardly anyone will say anything, depending on said program's popularity.

The site is also, as I've said before, beyond hopeless when it comes to objective information about public figures, simply because articles about said individuals are usually primarily maintained by people whose bias with regards to said individual is single-mindedly positive, irrespective of what the truth might be.

That's called Original Research

[ta bu shi da yu]

I'm particularly glad you got reverted, because I really doubt you can prove that. But if you can, then find a source. I don't just want to take some anonymous editors word for it.

If we followed your example, then the system would fall apart because Wikipedia only works well when it references good quality sources. It's not like you can just take it's word for anything - which Wikipedia administrators, long time users, and WMF members (and founder) freely admit to and warn about.