False Fact On Wikipedia Proves Itself

An anonymous reader writes "Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia."

Comments

1984?

[betterunixthanunix]

Wikipedia now creates the truth. If they say 2+2=5, then 2+2=5. You will learn to love Big Wiki.

Re:1984?

[Cornwallis]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who notices this stuff. Not that it will do any good. These kinds of "authoritative citations" are no better to me than what I used to hear "in the old days" - that is, "I heard it on TV so it must be true!"

Re:1984?

[NorQue]

Oh, Wikipedia is dead wrong in this case. According to Google 2 + 2 equals 4.

Re:1984?

[morgan_greywolf]

Here we go again.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Like all encyclopediae, it cannot be taken as a primary source of information. Der Spiegel is not a scholarly journal, either. It also cannot be taken as a primary source of information.

Bottom line: If you want to do real research, you need to go to primary sources. Calling something from Der Spiegel an authoritative citation is like calling something from The National Enquirer or Vogue an authoritative citation. Maybe the problem is that the Wikipedia editors think Der Spiegel is an authoritative source.

Re:1984?

[Mylakovich]

You missed the joke. It was pretty subtle, though.

Re:1984?

[Dog-Cow]

Der Spiegel is not a scholarly journal, either. It also cannot be taken as a primary source of information.

I take exception to the idea that only scholarly journals may be primary sources of information.

Your attitude sucks.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we save 1984 and Orwellian for things that actually are.

If Wikipedia is factually incorrect, it's really nothing compared to the factually incorrect-ness of most people's heads.

Re:1984?

[dmesg0]

If you need anyone to tell you that it was a joke, you need to go back to being an ovum and pick a different sperm cell.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bottom line: If you want to do real research, you need to go to primary sources. [...] Maybe the problem is that the Wikipedia editors think Der Spiegel is an authoritative source.

For something as simple as the full name of a German public official, Germany's major news weekly really ought to be authoritative. What is a primary source for a person's name, anyway? Their birth cerificate? What would be a scolarly journal on that subject? Should I ask the librarian to subscribe us to Trends in German Public Officials' Names?

Re:1984?

[PopeRatzo]

He's taking your class online, which your school now offers, pass/fail.

Re:1984?

[eat here_get gas]

wikipedia is to an encyclopedia as much as a bunch of people at a bus stop are to a dictionary.


disclaimer: the above is someone's sig, apologies for its fractured rememberance...

Re:1984?

[rbunker]

Wikipedia now creates the truth. If they say 2+2=5, then 2+2=5. You will learn to love Big Wiki.

As long as they get Julia's name wrong, and not mine, I am ok with this.

Re:1984?

[nabsltd]

Maybe the problem is that the Wikipedia editors think Der Spiegel is an authoritative source.

The problem is that if some "fact" is posted on the Internet and there is nothing else posted on the Internet that contradicts that "fact", then that is "authoritative" to Wikipedia.

So, it's not really an issue over the quality (or lack thereof) of work Der Speigel produces. If you substitute the New York Times website, an official government web page, or even a "scholarly journal" for Der Speigel, you could just as easily end up with the same kind of mistake.

Re:1984?

[linhares]

I take exception to the idea that only scholarly journals may be primary sources of information. Your attitude sucks.

[citation needed]

Re:1984?

[owlnation]

So, um, what grade do you suppose you'll get in my class?

An unfair one. It's disturbing that you are in a position of power. You are obviously discouraging open-mindedness and creative thought. Many newspapers and journals are a valid source of information in many subjects. Obviously there needs to be caution with them, as there must be with ANY source, but newspapers are legally accountable.

An opinion piece in a newspaper isn't worth much, but an interview, with direct quotes for example, is. Newspapers are used all the time as sources for University level historical research. More than one newspaper is better of course.

I don't know what you teach, but you probably shouldn't be teaching. Der Spiegel is for the most part an ethical publisher, it's certainly exposed many things -- such as neo-nazism -- than other outlets have failed to find.

Re:1984?

[bhsx]

Here ya go!

Re:1984?

[mcgrew]

I take exception to the idea that only scholarly journals may be primary sources of information

Actually, scholarly journals can be sources of disinformation, too. It's happened before that researchers have gotten something wrong, then were quoted by other researchers in other papers. It has often gone full circle (and I wish I had a citation, but it's been a long time since I read about it).

There have been instances of respected newspapers using The Onion as sources, not realizing that fine news source is humor. The Onion must hate that, it would be like when you make a joke comment on slashdot and it gets modded as "insightful".

In Wikipedia's defence, I've complained about an edit I made after I became a cyborg in its entry about cataract surgery. I added information about the accomodating lens I had implanted in my eye, and it was quickly removed. I added it again and it was removed again. I gave up, and a few months ago I mentioned it here and someone encouraged me to try once more.

The entry finally stayed put, although someone changed the date that the FDA approved it from 2003 to 2004, despite the manufacturer's website says 2003 (I just now changed it to 2003, I wonder if it will stay?). I suspect that a different IOL manufacturer edited my edit out because the device is by far superior to any other IOL.

Kudos to Wikipedia. It is a great resource for satisfying curiosity; when I found I needed cataract surgery it was the first place I went. Same goes for when I had to undergo a vitrectomy (I wouldn't wish that procedure on my worst enemy).

It's also great for when you're turning old LPs and cassettes into CDs, you can copy and paste track titles into your burning software.

My dad gave me great advice when I was a kid: never believe anything you hear (or read) and only half of what you see.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 1 + 1 = 10.
No kidding.

Re:1984?

[schon]

Here we go again.

You mean with all the wikipedia apologists?

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Like all encyclopediae, it cannot be taken as a primary source of information.

OK then, what do you suggest? Oh, that's right...

you need to go to primary sources.

You mean like the actual fucking person the article is about? Oh wait, Wikipedia doesn't consider the actual fucking person to be a "primary source"!

And therein lies Wikipedia's problem.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if you want something with a bit more style...

Re:1984?

[MrNaz]

Obviously we are referring to the loose kind of journalism one would find in Der Spiegel. The point that the GP was getting at, that you so flippantly deride, is that too many "researchers" these days are willing to use the first three results from a Google search as the sum total of their research into a topic. While Der Spiegel may be a reputable news outlet, one cannot generally take its articles as primary sources, and certainly not for the purposes of engaging in encyclopedic grade research.

I feel that Wikipedia needs to put in place policies that start selecting out those contributors who are unable to either engage in this level of research and those who are unable to produce encyclopedia grade writing. Many of the Wikipedia articles are, while informative and good as an introduction into a topic, very superficial and poorly written. Unsophisticated use of language is not a problem per se, however it can lead to ambiguity. The ability of a writer to consistently ensure that there is no other way their text could be interpreted is the difference between a mediocre researcher and a true scholar.

Oh, and for the record, an interview with direct quotes in a newspaper is *not* a primary source unless the newspaper states that the printed interview is the unabridged transcript of the interview. That is almost never the case. Newspapers almost always edit their interviews for brevity, language style and sometimes even content policy.

So your self-righteous indignation at his teaching standards are misplaced. It's not that he's unfair or too strict, its just that kids these days have become so spoiled by the easy access to lots of junk information that they have lost all understanding of what real research is.

Re:1984?

[ta bu shi da yu]

Yet another person to misuse the {{fact}} template I initially created. Sigh.

Re:1984?

[MrNaz]

You could assassinate him, and then check his tombstone. I'm pretty sure they'd get it right there.

Re:1984?

[HungryHobo]

The moral is that newspaper articals should cite their sources just like wikipedia does.
If a newspaper cited wikipedia then it should make a note as such, especially in it's online version where it would take up no real space.

Of course then it would become obvious how crap the research done by most journalists is.

The problem is not with wikipedia.
The problem is with reputable newspapers not citing their sources allowing this kind of circular crap.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Wikipedia could be right.....for incredibly large values of 2

Re:1984?

[MrNaz]

That analogy makes sense like baked clams on a toilet seat.

Re:1984?

[raffnix]

Wikipedia + Google = WorldDomination

Re:1984?

[timeOday]

Right, it's not as if this type of event is new or unique. The Bush administration was caught a few times leaking information/lies to the press, which were published unsourced in reputable news outlets, then the administration cites the press in a press briefing or a public address.

Re:1984?

[penguinstorm]

I, for one, welcome our new Wikipedian overlords.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

2+2 does equal 5, for extremely large values of 2.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Wikipedia's policies should be altered at all.

It is what it is... an encyclopedia that ANYONE can edit. If you want an encyclopedia that _most_ people can edit, that is supposedly more reliable, where articles are analyzed with scrutiny and the aim is reliability, you can use Citizendium http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Citizendium . It was created by the co-founder of Wikipedia because he thought that there should be a more reliable Free Encyclopedia than Wikipedia.

The only thing that needs to be adjusted is how people see Wikipedia... or MAYBE their citation policy. Wikipedia is not the end-all be all and any facts that you get from it that you're considering publishing should be checked against their sources.

Re:1984?

[xappax]

Consider the exploits available if simply being John Doe made you an authoritative source on the "John Doe" article. You could delete anything negative in the article and back it up with "That didn't happen, and I should know." You can claim whatever false credentials you want, and cite yourself as asserting the claim.

Treating the subject as an authoritative source on themselves may seem intuitively obvious at first glance, but it can lead to a lot of problems.

I don't want to read an article about what John Doe claims about himself (because most of it is probably boring, and some of it is probably distorted), I want an article about what reasonably reliable third parties report about him.

Re:1984?

[eln]

If you want a well-researched and well-written encyclopedia, go buy the Encyclopedia Britannica.

If you want an encyclopedia that offers a good overview of a mind-bogglingly huge range of topics, visit Wikipedia.

Both of these things have their place. Stop trying to turn one into the other.

Re:1984?

[mdwh2]

I agree that there's nothing specifically wrong with Wikipedia here. The far bigger problem is the way that the media copy information from each other, and elsewhere, without checking any facts they quote. Given how, unlike Wikipedia, people are far more willing to treat the news as truth, this is very worrying.

The same circular referencing could happen between any other kind of source too - nothing special about Wikipedia.

The only difference here is that, thanks to Wikipedia's edit history, you can see the problem occurring. When it happens any other time, we don't even know it.

Der Spiegel is not a scholarly journal, either. It also cannot be taken as a primary source of information.

No, but it is a secondary source. This is a problem - what to do if secondary sources are wrong? Moving to primary sources doesn't help, as they could still be wrong. Also, not allowing secondary sources would mean that finding citations would be far harder.

I think the key point is attribution. When you see "Paris is the capital of England[ref Der Spiegel]", this is actually shorthand for "Der Spiegel states that Paris is the capital of England". Suddenly, it's clear that it's not Wikipedia that's making the false claim: the claim is clearly attributed to Der Spiegel.

And indeed, this problem occurred because Der Spiegel didn't state their references (like most media sources). Had they attributed the claim to Wikipedia, then it would be instantly clear not to use them as a source for Wikipedia. So the fault lies clearly with Der Spiegel, for making a false claim without attribution.

Re:1984?

[Random Walk]

Maybe the problem is that the Wikipedia editors think Der Spiegel is an authoritative source.

The problem is that Wikipedia encourages the use of secondary sources and discourages the use of primary sources. According to Wikipedia policies, it probably would have been "original research", and thus unacceptable, if an article author would have tried to get hold of the primary source (copy of birth certificate).

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia now creates the truth. If they say 2+2=5, then 2+2=5. You will learn to love Big Wiki.

2+2 does equal 5, but only for large values of 2

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

No wikipedia is just that...a wiki...

Re:1984?

[Rary]

You mean like the actual fucking person the article is about? Oh wait, Wikipedia doesn't consider the actual fucking person to be a "primary source"!

And therein lies Wikipedia's problem.

Quite true.

I'm mentioned in a Wikipedia article. Not by name, but by an old nickname (the same one I use for my username on this site). However, it's spelled incorrectly, mainly because it's quoting another website that also spelled it incorrectly. That website also states a bunch of "facts" that were made up as a joke, and the Wikipedia article repeats those "facts".

I can't correct the original website, but I can correct Wikipedia -- except that I'm not allowed to, because I can't actually provide a link that proves that I really do spell the name the way I do, or that the "facts" were made up. Plus, I think it's even against the rules to edit articles about yourself.

Therefore, both of the people out there who care about the content of this particular article will remain blissfully misinformed.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. This world would be a much better place if biographies on Wikipedia were written by the subjects themselves. It's worked out so well in the past.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like they did with Elvis' middle name?

Re:1984?

[D Ninja]

Bottom line: If you want to do real research, you need to go to primary sources.

Uh huh. And half the time these "scholarly journals" you talk about are reporting finds from other people. That makes them a secondary source.

I agree that Wikipedia should not be a primary source of information, but it provides a very good jumping off point.

Re:1984?

[BornAgainSlakr]

An article about a person: Barrack Obama

Do you see the 216 notes, the "Reference" section, the "Further Reading" section, and the "External Links" section at the bottom?

Welcome to Research 101 where you learn to use an encyclopedia as a repository of citations accompanied by a summary of knowledge instead of as a definitive source.

Once you wrap your mind around that basic concept, you can start learning how to critically examine the encyclopedia article by making judgments about the quality of the citations.

When you reach that level, it might suddenly become clear why factual errors in Wikipedia are not a problem.

This was never an issue with printed copies of Britannica...people just knew that you do not cite encyclopedias. Really, my third grade teacher taught us not to never cite an encyclopedia. The Britannica set our school had was riddled with errors and years out of date. So, I have a really hard time understanding how Wikipedia is a problem.

Re:1984?

[cgenman]

The only real primary authoratative source for a person's name would be a birth certificate or passport, neither of which are public documents. Beyond that, you have their word, and the word of people who should be in the know. Newspapers who cover that beat should be in the know.

Wikipedia has articles on Slush Puppies, obscure 80's videogames, and The Star Trek Experience. The standards of research need to vary quite a bit simply because A: many of their topics are obscure or under-researched, B: most fall outside the scope of scholarly journals, and C: attempt to explain pop-culture phenomenon before they have bubbled up through the literature, like Naked Hiking. Their information policy needs to encompass heavily researched topics like Salmonella, pop culture icons like Tony the Tiger, information compendiums like lists of generic terms based on active trademarks, and truly obscure / trivial subjects like the person who visits Poe's grave every year.

In short, Wikipedia *is* the internet, or at least a reflection of it. It is a collection of articles written by anybody interested about any subject, and that is what makes it useful. It is in essence a collection of nearly 3 million ever-evolving essays. Reducing that to "authoratative sources only" would destroy its utility and make it, well, like so many other undersized and ignored information aggregators online.

Also, "Encyclopedic grade writing" has always been pretty terrible. My relatives still have some Britannicas from 1986 in her house, and you wouldn't believe the raw obviousness of some of the mistakes in them, even judging by the knowledge of the time. Encyclopedias have always been freshmen essays into complicated subjects they do not know enough about. The advantage of wikipedia, while no more authoratative, is that hundreds of people with direct experience can correct and expand the articles, whereas traditional encyclopedias are written by staff writers with limited knowledge and stay wrong forever.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]The ability of a writer to consistently ensure that there is no other way their text could be interpreted is the difference between a mediocre researcher and a true scholar.[/quote]

what do you mean by that?

Re:1984?

[xappax]

Newspapers aren't expected to cite their sources because traditionally, they take responsibility internally for fact-checking everything and backing up whatever they print with their institutional reputation.

The problem is that not having to cite sources and having the authority of a huge, trusted institution behind them has made journalists very lazy. They can write almost anything they want, and it will be taken at face value.

Wikipedia allows newspapers to be used as reliable sources because of the traditional expectation that a newspaper will be accountable for its mistake should it print something wrong. Unfortunately, it seems that this expectation is too optimistic.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, not everyone have read "1984" .

Re:1984?

[eln]

He means a true scholar will hunt down and kill anyone who misinterprets his work.

Re:1984?

[Clandestine_Blaze]

*Checks Wikipedia*

It says I get an A!

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, YOU missed the joke.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind the fact, that the Ecyclopedia Britannica contains just as many errors as Wikipedia, if not more, and in a whole lot of cases isn't nearly as detailed.

Re:1984?

[Sancho]

It's not that we're trying to turn one into the other--it's that people use one as the other incorrectly, and that further weakens Wikipedia. It's always the idiots that spoil it for the rest of us.

Re:1984?

[damonlab]

2 + 2 does equal 5, for extremely large values of 2. It's true, I've seen it on a shirt: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/generic/60f5/

Re:1984?

[paralaxcreations]

I think you missed the joke yourself. It was also pretty subtle.

Re:1984?

[Moryath]

Obviously we are referring to the loose kind of journalism one would find in Der Spiegel.

Or the New York Times, or by CBS/ABC/NBC/CNN...

The point that the GP was getting at, that you so flippantly deride, is that too many "researchers" these days are willing to use the first three results from a Google search as the sum total of their research into a topic. While Der Spiegel may be a reputable news outlet, one cannot generally take its articles as primary sources, and certainly not for the purposes of engaging in encyclopedic grade research.

Which is a large reason Wikipedia is so shoddy: sources are taken on "reputation" and the arbitrary decision of what a "reliable source" is, usually as defined by whether or not (a) most of the left-winger edit warriors of Wikipedia agree with the source's conclusions and (b) whether anyone else can come up with something that passes the "reliable source" test to discredit it (interestingly vague; lies and nonsense have remained in Wikipedia sometimes for months because a "reliable source" said something wrong, a set of bloggers caught it and documented very well that it was wrong, but the left-wingers shouted it down, claimed the blogs were not "reliable sources", "No Original Research" when someone simply replicated the sources the blogs were using as proof that it was false, etc...)

I feel that Wikipedia needs to put in place policies that start selecting out those contributors who are unable to either engage in this level of research and those who are unable to produce encyclopedia grade writing.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia's policies are currently the reverse: they have a major problem with driving academics and good researchers away, and it doesn't help that those who are "unable to produce encyclopedia grade writing" instead wind up spending hours per day "reverting vandalism" and are eventually given admin tools.

Power corrupts: Absolute Power corrupts Absolutely: Petty Power corrupts all out of proportion. Wikipedia admins are the worst sort because they, and their power, are so petty. It doesn't help that they also routinely overestimate their own competence.

Many of the Wikipedia articles are, while informative and good as an introduction into a topic, very superficial and poorly written. Unsophisticated use of language is not a problem per se, however it can lead to ambiguity. The ability of a writer to consistently ensure that there is no other way their text could be interpreted is the difference between a mediocre researcher and a true scholar.

How to lie with statistics. Also, Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit.

Most wikipedia articles are not "informative and good as an introduction into a topic" - the sourcing is routinely biased, and important countersourcing ignored or minimized if included at all.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

no. Here ya go!

Re:1984?

[_Sprocket_]

If you want a well-researched and well-written encyclopedia, go buy the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Whether the quality of the Encyclopedia Britannica is to the level you claim (there's been doubts raised before), it's still an encyclopedia.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously we are referring to the loose kind of journalism one would find in Der Spiegel. The point that the GP was getting at, that you so flippantly deride, is that too many "researchers" these days are willing to use the first three results from a Google search as the sum total of their research into a topic. While Der Spiegel may be a reputable news outlet, one cannot generally take its articles as primary sources, and certainly not for the purposes of engaging in encyclopedic grade research.

The thing is that if you start dissecting research what you often find is that much of the data actually 'descends' from a surprisingly small set of primary sources. What happens is that over the years more and more people write on the subject, their works are then used as sources by later authors and so on. Whey you take one of the more recent books and dig down through it's bibliography, the bibliographies of the works cited in this new book and so on, weeding out the primary sources these are often quite few. Basically the bibliographies form a kind of expanding tree structure with the latest books on the subject having extensive bibliographies citing lots of earlier books, reports and articles that are based on surprisingly little primary data. An example of this is US and UK authors writing English language books on German Japanese WWI and WWII topics. Often they will limit their selection of primary sources used to what has been translated into English and totally ignore the wealth of information available in German or Japanese. It is actually a surprise when often rarely you come across an English speaking author who has actually bothered to go to Japan or Germany and interview people of these nationalities and use original language sources before writing of the events in question.

Re:1984?

[eln]

I'm not saying the Encyclopedia Britannica should be cited in research papers, it clearly shouldn't. I was primarily objecting to the previous poster's assertion that Wikipedia needs to put stricter limits on contributors, which I believe would kill much of the value of Wikipedia as a source of a vast array of information.

Re:1984?

[BenFranske]

Obviously you have not been smacked down by Wikipedia editors for reporting original research in Wikipedia. In other words if you want to prove that someone famous lives in your town going to their house and interviewing them is not sufficient. You must publish that interview somewhere else (and not self-published because they'll smack you for that too) and then someone else must correct the article. All because some newspaper got lazy and reported the incorrect town of residence as a larger town nearby. No, I'm not upset though.

Re:1984?

[Moryath]

There have been instances of respected newspapers using The Onion as sources, not realizing that fine news source is humor. The Onion must hate that, it would be like when you make a joke comment on slashdot and it gets modded as "insightful".

But the best humor is humorous because it is insightful and witty. Compare an "all guys getting hit in the groin" show like America's Funniest Home Videos to some really, really good stand-up comedy, or to A Modest Proposal... nothing prevents something from being both insightful and humorous.

Re:1984?

[BenFranske]

Obviously you overestimate the quality of Encyclopedia Britannica which is also full of errors.

Re:1984?

[_Sprocket_]

You mean like the actual fucking person the article is about? Oh wait, Wikipedia doesn't consider the actual fucking person to be a "primary source"!

And therein lies Wikipedia's problem.

Because people never lie. Not even about themselves.

Re:1984?

[_Sprocket_]

Ahh. I see now. Thanks for the correction.

Re:1984?

[quintaldo]

Most wikipedia articles are not "informative and good as an introduction into a topic" - the sourcing is routinely biased, and important countersourcing ignored or minimized if included at all.

Oh yes, so true. Thank you for saying this. This discussion is dangerously veering into the politically correct. Wikipedia is much worse than this talk makes it look. Thanks for talking about the totalitarian power (ridiculously "petty" as you aptly put it) exterted by wikipedia admins. Wikipedia is a trap, a trick, a propaganda machine and a totalitarian project. The way power is exerted in there, the quotes from its CEO, everything concurs to this conclusion. Appearance of freedom is the bait (appearance of network-power-structure), hidden pyramidal power structure is the claw.

Re:1984?

[DriedClexler]

Anyone else ever been the unwitting cause of a circular citation?

One time at a debate tournament at a high school just south of Austin, Texas, I remarked to a friend, when walking between buildings, "Hey, check the layout of this place ... it looks like the school was built on a former slave plantation."

A year later, I went to that same school for another tournament, and that same friend said to me, "Hey D/C, did you know that this school used to be a slave plantation?" And I said, "Oh really? Where'd you hear that?"

And then he thought for a second and said "... you."

He was the kind who prided himself on being able to know lots of stuff, which really made me question how careful he was in his "learning".

Re:1984?

[GXTi]

The actual fucking person (emphasis yours) is a perfectly good primary source on themselves, as long as they're quoted in print somewhere so others can verify that they actually said it.

Re:1984?

[itschy]

You mean like the actual fucking person the article is about? Oh wait, Wikipedia doesn't consider the actual fucking person to be a "primary source"!

And therein lies Wikipedia's problem.

Please do not disturb the fucking person. That would be just rude.

Re:1984?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Wikipedia's only strength is that it's the way of least resistance. It's "slightly" better information than random webpages, but it has both of it's disadvantages :

1. it only provides majority opinion (e.g. total disregard for religious dimensions of both the darfur, kosovo and kashmir conflicts, economic theory (let's not go into exactly what is wrong with economic theory on wikipedia, we all know what the problem is), religious stuff like abortion/euthanasia/islam ordering the killings of gays, non-muslims and women, totally biased information on israel, ...), and silences minorities. The problem is that academics are a tiny majority (and honest academics who only comment on their field of expertise are yet again a subset of them). The people who really know something are very quickly drowned out on any subject the mass-media push an opinion about anything.
2. Amongst it's contributors (and, sadly, admins) are people you really, really, really don't want to be the arbiters of knowledge. Lobbyists, journalists, "activists" and even kids trying to discredit someone's dad have all been known to use wikipedia to great damage. Outright falsifications and lies have been published to great acclaim (e.g. the many Jim Wales sagas), for reasons as idiotic as increasing some idiot's ego.

Wikipedia is like one of those know-it-alls. They can be surprisingly knowledgeable about tiny little subjects, but you really can't tell -at all- when you're being fed total bullshit.

All information from wikipedia should be treated as if it's probably falsified, because a subset of it is. It is not merely wrong or inaccurate, but actually falsified.

Re:1984?

[Scrameustache]

you need to go to primary sources.

You mean like the actual fucking person the article is about? Oh wait, Wikipedia doesn't consider the actual fucking person to be a "primary source"!

The primary source would be his mom ;-|

Re:1984?

[quintaldo]

i understood he meant that sloppy writers write ambiguous statements : statements that can be taken to mean different and/or contradictory things. Whereas good writers will know how to weed out such ambiguities from their articles. I guess experience teaches them that.

Re:1984?

[zippthorne]

The problem is that if you audit the wikipedia and Britannica, you'll find that Britannica doesn't actually offer anything in the way of increased accuracy, and it sacrifices greatly on both the number and depth of articles.

Wikipedia is a strange phenomenon. It ought to be a lot worse than it is.

Oh, and before the wikipedia, I used to laugh about all the sci fi shows where they accessed "the ancient database" or somesuch. Now, I think, it might be inevitable if storage becomes cheap enough.

Re:1984?

[quintaldo]

Of course academia is flawed and it serves the elites, but the point is that wikipedia is worse than academia while posing as a haven of freedom and libertarianism. Wikipedians use the libertarian structure of the net to implement a totalitarian agenda. Their pyramidal power structure, their shadowy power practices, the orwellian declarations of their CEO, everything fits into that theory. I couldn't care less about academia. But I'm sure we'll all regret it if wikipedia and other new-age false-libertarian corporations take its place. And that's what this story is all about. That's what wiklipedia is about : inventing a totalitarian structure for the government of the masses in the coming age. Already the numerization of information is in place : newspapers routinely edit their own old articles, libraries are being numerized, don't you see that's it's an orwellian dream? History can be and is being rewritten to suit the leaders' needs on a daily basis.

Re:1984?

[Aristos Mazer]

Somebody mod this up!

Re:1984?

[7 digits]

That "cyborg" post is a great post. I'll keep that handy: I just started to need to remove my glasses to read...

And, kuro5hin still exist ? Amazing...

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why anybody should want real research for anything ? Human name that is one of the facts that can not be researched :) That just name, ID, not a fact at all :).

Re:1984?

[Ploum]

Wikipedia-fr is already affected from a long time in this article :

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Gourg

It is stated that the "Fat_Gourg" has a fan club of thousands of people in France.

The fact is that the fact gourg started as a running joke on a website/forum after someone found this picture online. The game, between approximately 20 people, was to found the author of the picture. One of those 20 people was a regular wikipedia editor with a good record and created this page with false statement like "Thousand of people".

Ultimately, the fat gourg joke came to a journalist in UK who interviewed someone on the forum which, of course, putted some exageration and emphasis in his description. The journalist then wrote an article saying that "it was an huge phenomemon in France followed by thousands of people". This artcile was followed by a very small television reportage in the school of the child who drawed the Fat Gourg.

The article was then added as a source on Wikipedia.

I tried two or three times to correct that page but :
- a (otherwise) respected wikipedia editor which is part of the joke always undo my changes
- my version is now in conflict with all of the sources in the article (which are, in fact, comming from one and only one person)

So I look like a liar because Wikipedian the television and newspapers say something but, ultimately, nobody in France know about the Fat Gourg except a few tenth of people on a forum.

And yes, I feel that something is bad but I have no real solution.

Re:1984?

[Chris Burke]

That's odd. I always though America's Funniest Home Videos was an insightful commentary on inherent masculine insecurities, and the fear that no matter how strong and capable we may try to appear, someone will find and exploit our vulnerabilities and reduce us to the weeping man-child that we all secretly fear we are deep inside.

And that the someone will be a 1st grader with a whiffle-ball bat.

But maybe I'm reading too much into the show.

Re:1984?

[wnissen]

Wikipedia are so reactionary about "original research" that they frequently throw the baby out with the bathwater, and then call in an airstrike just to be sure.

Sure, the perpetual motion wackos need to be protected against, but the lumping of basic reporting and sourcing in with scientific research is a major problem.

Re:1984?

[metamatic]

What you say is true in general; however, in the specific case of a person's name, it is often the case that that person *is* the definitive source.

For example, under UK common law, your name is what you say it is, not what anyone else thinks it ought to be. You can literally go by any name you like, so long as you don't do so for deceptive purposes.

Re:1984?

[steelfood]

Therefore, both of the people out there who care about the content of this particular article will remain blissfully misinformed.

Damn, it's one helluva circle if Wikipedia can change what the primary source remembers.

Re:1984?

[cwrinn]

Obviously, Google needs to update their Calculator, duh.

Re:1984?

[clintp]

The problem with wikipedia is that John Doe can publish a page anywhere on the internet interviewing himself. Cite that as a reference, and ta-da! The [citation needed] notations go away and there's now an authoritative reference on the topic.

Sounds silly, but it is done in practice.

[Citation? Nope. I'm not going to rat people out that have done exactly this...]

Re:1984?

[jc42]

Der Spiegel is not a scholarly journal, either. It also cannot be taken as a primary source of information.

We might add that this should be obvious to anyone with a smidgin of German (or access to a German-English dictionary, which google will find for you in a fraction of a second). The name "Der Spiegel" means "The Mirror". So they state right there at the top, in their masthead, that they are only mirroring what other people say or write. It's hard to think of a more blatant way of saying "We are not a primary source."

Of course, we wouldn't expect many Americans to understand such things. There's an old joke:

Q: If someone who speaks two languages is bilingual, and someone who speaks three languages is trilingual, what do you call someone who speaks only one language?

A: American.

Re:1984?

[Moryath]

See? That is why insightful is funnier than just someone getting kicked in the groin...

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

"False Fact On Wikipedia Proves Itself"

Of course... because a fact does not have a self.

Re:1984?

[hrimhari]

All very nice, but I wonder how many sources you'll look to confirm every person's full name. Chances are, you'll do it with three sources, max. Unless you have a greater threshold?

Where do you actually draw the line?

What if some sources had the extra name and some didn't? How would you decide which is the right one?

Honestly, it seems to me that the problem is more in the likes of which source is more respectable for a certain topic, not exactly how many sources you look at.

I'd rather confirm somebody's name with the government (public records) or his own representative (if one exists).

There's also the possible consequences and difficulty to fix them to take into account when you're researching something. This seems like something to be put into the third page of the newspaper as "Errata" and it certainly isn't very difficult to fix in Wikipedia.

All that said, I'd be more comfortable if no article in Wikipedia could be created/modified without at least one validation.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're confused. The issue is not that the person himself is not a reliable source, it's that Der Spiegel dropped the ball by using Wikipedia as a source for the full name that they printed.

Re:1984?

[Hordeking]

Excuse me? Wikipedia is a lot worse than it is. (See article.)

So, to put this statement into perspective, you're saying that x!=x.

How could anything be anything other than what it is? Whatever it is, that is what it is, neither more, nor less, than what it is.

Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of the word is is.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

This was the funniest thing I've seen all week. Thanks for the laugh. I am still ROTFLMAO!

Re:1984?

[skeeto]

Go read some Encyclopedia Britannica articles. They aren't any better than Wikipedia. For example, Britannica's article on Wikipedia contains some factual errors.

Re:1984?

[Opyros]

There have been instances of respected newspapers using The Onion as sources, not realizing that fine news source is humor. The Onion must hate that, it would be like when you make a joke comment on slashdot and it gets modded as "insightful".

Although it doesn't involve circularity, this is an instance in which the London Sunday Times printed "facts" from a spoof plot summary of The Lord of the Rings.

Re:1984?

[PinkyDead]

I take exception to your reassertion that Der Spiegel is not a scholarly journal - it has pictures for crying out loud, is doesn't get more scholarly than that.

Your attitude sucks more.

Re:1984?

[jc42]

An opinion piece in a newspaper isn't worth much, but an interview, with direct quotes for example, is.

You should be careful of supposed direct quotes, too. It's all too common for news organizations to "edit" quotes, and sometimes the result says something rather different than what the person originally said. Publications with reputations as good as the New York Times have been documented publishing manufactured quotes inside quote marks. So it's still best to dig for the primary source (a recording - which could also be edited) rather than relying on what a news publication says a person said.

Newspapers are used all the time as sources for University level historical research.

And note that some newspapers are "publications of record", i.e., they're the primary sources of certain kinds of information. The best known are marriages, deaths, and court decisions. These are documented in official archives, of course, but a newspaper "of record" is usually much more easily available from many libraries. You just have to be a bit careful to quote only the things for which the newspaper really is an official publication of record.

Re:1984?

[PitaBred]

Except not really. Britannica is basically useless any more. It's not more accurate, it has less information, it's less current. ANY encyclopedia should only be regarded as a starting point for serious research. It's great for a quick relatively unimportant fact or to point you to some proper research but since Wikipedia is publicly editable the facts need cross-checking with a reputable source if you're going to use them as a basis for anything serious.

Re:1984?

[Fieldgeek]

The birth certificate can be a bit wrong too. Back in the Stone Age when my grandpa wanted to join the army to fight for his country his birth certificate was changed to make him a year older. He then was "officially" one year older. I do believe he told of people who, when they were turned away from joining because they were not old enough, were told to come back tomorrow when they were a year older so they could join.

Re:1984?

[changa]

The Onion loves it when they get mistaken for real news.

They have said they laugh when they get taken seriously.

Re:1984?

[mea37]

"The only real primary authoratative source for a person's name would be a birth certificate or passport, neither of which are public documents. Beyond that, you have their word, and the word of people who should be in the know. Newspapers who cover that beat should be in the know"

I agree with the gist of your post, but not with this first paragraph.

Yes, the information standards applied to a wikipedia article need to be in tune with the nature of the information in that article. Relying on a newspaper is risky, though -- they are often second-hand or even third-hand sources, and their quick publication cycles lead to relatively high typo counts (not to mention factual error counts) that might be corrected in a later issue's retraction but will never be revised to correctness in the original article.

Add to that, this "fact" was known to be in dispute -- so the standards for verifying it should've been higher than normal.

If you need the name of a public official, there are public sources for that name. If you need my name, you might have a harder time, but that's a moot point.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a well-researched and well-written encyclopedia, go buy the Encyclopedia Britannica.

If you want an encyclopedia that offers a good overview of the nuances of spoken Klingon, visit Wikipedia.

There. Fixed that for ya.

Re:1984?

[JWSmythe]

    No single source of information should ever be used.

    Anything written will contain unintentional bias by the author(s), misreported facts, and other errors.

    A well constructed article, research paper, presentation, etc, must contain facts from a variety of sources, who do not use each other for their primary source of information. Otherwise, the conclusion will be biased by the tainted facts.

    What should *REALLY* happen, which unfortunately has been disappearing in recent years, is the whole concept of fact checkers. Did someone call his office and ask for his full name? Did some check birth records. I don't know how birth records are handled in Germany. Would they have contained the full family name as shown? There are lots of valid authoritative sources for information. Unfortunately now, people just go to Google (or whatever search engine) and do a quick search to validate their assumption or fill in a few blanks, which may be with improper information.

    This is unfortunately difficult, where some sources will not discuss matters with the press (journalist or fact checker), without a public statement. It's a breakdown in the flow of information. Assumptions must be made to fill in the blanks. Sometimes mistakes are introduced, either intentionally or accidentally, but they frequently remain uncorrected.

    My news site ran a story a while back, source from another "professional" news agency. It was about the movement of several US Naval ships. Being that it came from a trusted source, it was assumed to be fact. We received an email from the mother of one of the sailors that said something to the effect of "That ship isn't where you said. It came to it's home port two weeks ago. My son is home right now, and they have no plans to go anywhere." A bit of searching and a few phone calls later confirmed this. We printed a retraction where the original story was.

    Despite our retraction, a few days later another very unreputable pseudo-news source used us as their source, and wrapped a whole conspiracy about it, with a forward looking statement equating to World War III. Since we're all reading this, and the world isn't a dead glowing rock in space, the war didn't start, there were no nukes flying, and the world didn't end. In the minds of the unreputable pseudo-news source, we must be part of the conspiracy.

    It's fun to cherry pick facts for stories, but it doesn't make the resulting story true. Running less than the truth results in gaining a reputation for lies. I want to maintain a reputation for the truth. Of over 20,000 news stories we've run, I believe we've only needed to retract 3.

Re:1984?

[Lennie]

The point he/she was trying to make is that Wikipedia is a lot better than you might have expected.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've clearly never had a course in postmodernism.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

you could try citing your /. journal entry when updating wikipedia with 1st hand information.

Re:1984?

[Larry Lightbulb]

2.4 + 2.4 = 4.8 Rounding this by the rule that if it's below .5 then you round down, and if it's above you round up, gives 2 + 2 = 5

Re:1984?

[jc42]

Newspapers aren't expected to cite their sources because traditionally, they take responsibility internally for fact-checking everything and backing up whatever they print with their institutional reputation.

Except that few newspapers have ever done that. The claims that they do are mostly PR that originates from the newspapers themselves. Some of the PR also comes from Hollywood, of course, with their flocks of "intrepid reporters" exposing the bad guys.

Most newspapers have never done any significant amount of fact checking. The more honest ones inform their readers of this in a subtle manner, by not reporting facts but rather what various people said about the facts. And even then, quotes tend to be "edited for clarity", sometimes to the point of saying something very different than what a person actually said. And, of course, there's the traditional technique of "lies of omission".

News organizations have traditionally relied on the fact that their readers generally don't have any way to do fact checking themselves. So they can talk about how much fact checking their journalists and editors do, knowing full well that hardly anyone could fact-check this claim.

And over the past decade, most newspapers have cut back radically on staff. The cutbacks have especially hit their reporting and editing staff. So now, if you want fact checking, you're generally more likely to find it online, not in newsrooms.

Re:1984?

[penguinstorm]

The subject can be an authoritative source on certain facts quite easily, by providing documentation to support claims. Errors & location of birth can easily be corrected simply by providing a copy of a birth certificate.

In this case it's not the subject themselves that's the authoritative source so much as the documentation. The subject is really just communicating the information.

So it's quite easy for subjects to /be/ authoritative, assuming they're willing to provide access to some of their personal information.

Re:1984?

[osu-neko]

That website also states a bunch of "facts" that were made up as a joke...

Chuck Norris, is that you?

It should be noted that, considering the standards allow a simply website link, you can make a page on a website stating that those facts are made up, and set the record straight, then link to that website to correct the error. How this is supposed to be more reliable, I'm not sure, but that's Wikipedia for ya...

Considering Wikipedia's standards, you can probably just link to this thread.

Re:1984?

[osu-neko]

Memory is primarily a function of the imagination. The primary source will change what is remembered over time in any case. It would be unsurprising if a retelling by someone else changed what the subject remembers. In fact, that's quite common.

Re:1984?

[boojum.cat]

Also, "Encyclopedic grade writing" has always been pretty terrible. My relatives still have some Britannicas from 1986 in her house, and you wouldn't believe the raw obviousness of some of the mistakes in them, even judging by the knowledge of the time. Encyclopedias have always been freshmen essays into complicated subjects they do not know enough about. The advantage of wikipedia, while no more authoratative, is that hundreds of people with direct experience can correct and expand the articles, whereas traditional encyclopedias are written by staff writers with limited knowledge and stay wrong forever.

That's not true. Look for a copy of the 11th Edition of the Britannica. We found the 1915 edition, in reasonable condition, in a used bookstore for less than $200. Many of the articles were written by the top scholars of the day. Of course, it's not so good for most 20th century events.

Re:1984?

[osu-neko]

You mean like the actual fucking person the article is about? Oh wait, Wikipedia doesn't consider the actual fucking person to be a "primary source"!

And therein lies Wikipedia's problem.

Because people never lie. Not even about themselves.

Ah yes, but thankfully, people never lie about other people, so your point isn't completely illogical.

Oh, wait...

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having edited Wikipedia, I can't agree. When Science magazine did its comparison of Wikipedia and Britannica accuracy, it compared articles on science topics. Well, Wikipedia doesn't do so bad on science. Aside from some crank science, a couple of controversial topics (global warming, evolution), and a little bit of vandalism, science doesn't tend to attract edit warring. If you're interested enough in science to be editing science articles, you're interested enough to know what you're talking about, and there are generally recognized authorities to draw on as sources. (Mathematics is probably an even better example than science.)

However, Wikipedia's problems really come into play in politics, history, biography, etc. There, you're dealing with more subjective material. People with opinions feel compelled to edit, whether they know anything about the topic or not. If someone who is more informed tries to show that they are wrong, they don't accept it; they just convince themselves that those people and their sources are "biased." There's also more vandalism. So, the Science study shouldn't really be used to "prove" that Wikipedia and Britannica are equally accurate.

That said, I do think Britannica has been coasting on its reputation, and is not as accurate as it could be.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows, 2 + 2 = 5 for sufficiently large values of 2.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipeadia is not "an encyclopedia". It is a social project where pretty much anyone can contribute their tidbits of "knowledge". As this article demonstrates, referenced and cited material quickly digresses into a Wikipaedia-centric solipsism and one would do well to check against a true encyclopedia (which, for those not accustomed to ancient, 20th century technology usually come in the form of a handheld device called a book ), which are created by a closed group of qualified researchers.

Interestingly enough, Wikipedia has the potential to become a useful reference and might do so once it shed it's propensity for demagoguery.

Re:1984?

[Elektroschock]

The problem is the echochamber nonsense. That somethin is a "reputable source" doesn't mean it is right. A positivism trap is dangerous, in particular when you deal with technocratic conditions.

Re:1984?

[Elektroschock]

A problem emerges when commercial intersts come into play, e.g. in the case of the Open XML article that tends to converge back to a Microsoft advertisement through edit warfare.

Re:1984?

[thtrgremlin]

I take exception to the idea that only scholarly journals may be sources of information.

There, fixed it for you. I'd even agree in proportion to the triviality of such information. As far as "Only scholarly journals are primary sources", the only other type of primary source is direct observation and personal opinion, but they needed to be stated as such and kept in context. The easiest thing to do here is when it isn't a scholarly journal, cite in text the context of your supporting argument, like "Joe the Plummer, some idiot tax cheat with no license that calls himself a plummer that happened to be standing around near Barack Obama one day while the camera was on him says we need XYZ to fix the economy" is reasonable, but saying "some people believe we need XYZ to fix the economy", and your source is Joe the Plummer and you cite it hurts your integrity. There is a really important difference.

Though honestly, my BS alarm always goes off when I hear the phrase "scientists say" or "doctors agree" us often followed by a line of bullshit. Truth or not, it is the epitome of lazy "journalism". Just take a short line to explain who is saying it, and a rough idea of their credentials. Then, not only can the information be put in context, but when it is proven wrong it doesn't send creationists in a frenzy writing their local school board.

This way when people share interesting stuff they read, they can say "Hey, some doctor guy is looking into investigating a possible link between mercury and autism." rather than "Hey, did you know the reason your kid has autism is because of those vaccinations you gave him?" Not that people are going to stop being idiots and grossly exaggerate things out of context, but at least when someones BS alarm goes off, they can more easily hunt down the source and confirm some kind of validity.

I would hope that despite publications [that suck], we can have slightly higher expectations for something we are going to call an encyclopedia.

Re:1984?

[_Sprocket_]

Yes. That would be covered by my statement "People never lie. Not even about themselves." Thanks for restating the issue. :P

The problem here is that the subject themselves aren't necessarily any better a source of information than any other source of information. It's not that the subject isn't involved. Its a issue of looking for vetted sources.

Re:1984?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

The purpose of Wikipedia isn't to satisfy someone's vanity by calling them what they wish to be called. Millions of people might read an article about person X, but person X is at most just one of those people. What matters is picking a name that allows those millions of people to find the article they want. So the fact that there is a law in the UK allowing people to call themselves whatever they want is completely irrelevant (except if the article wishes to talk about the person's preferred name).

Re:1984?

[shutdown -p now]

So, to put this statement into perspective, you're saying that x!=x.

How could anything be anything other than what it is?

A floating-point NaN != NaN. So GP implies that Wikipedia is not a number? Hm, well surely it isn't... see, suddenly it all makes sense!

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia now creates the truth. If they say 2+2=5, then 2+2=5. You will learn to love Big Wiki.

yeah may be right or wrong that only god knows it and the man behind the articles...
cmiiw...

http://c3v3n.blogspot.com

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

would you please point what article is it?

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fix though is so easy: only allow references that predate the creation (or at least the disputed edit) of the wikipedia article. How could they overlook that??

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Awww why make it so hard for yourself? It's pretty easy actually, EVERYTHING you read on the internet is TRUE!

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

In regard to Wikipedia penalizing editors who aren't good enough at writing, I don't think that would ultimately be beneficial. While bad writing is a problem, there are often bad writers who know what they're talking about, and due to the wiki model it's possible, at least in theory, that someone will come along and fix the writing.

What I'm trying to say is, better a poorly written but accurate and informative article than no article, right?

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

... left-winger edit warriors ...

Thanks for making your bias clear.

... the sourcing is routinely biased ...

The pot calling the kettle black.

Re:1984?

[Chris Burke]

Oh, and before the wikipedia, I used to laugh about all the sci fi shows where they accessed "the ancient database" or somesuch. Now, I think, it might be inevitable if storage becomes cheap enough.

Yeah, but in the sci-fi shows any culture described as "ancient" is also somehow always wise and knowledgeable and dedicated to their cause. Whoever is considering Wikipedia as "the ancient database" sure isn't going to find that to be the case. I can see it now:

"Captain, I've been reading the Ancient Database to discover where they originally developed their super weapon used to defeat the Mk'La'Boof armada, so that perhaps we could find a prototype. Apparently it was developed in a research lab in Kyle Is A Big Fag, Germany."

Re:1984?

[Miseph]

"Calling something from Der Spiegel an authoritative citation is like calling something from The National Enquirer or Vogue an authoritative citation."

What if they ARE the primary source, though? Obviously if your research is about one of those publications you are obligated to use it as a reference, but there are other cases where they might just be the most authoritative source available. Vogue, for example, publishes a fairly large number of interviews with people of interest, and research on these individuals would be correct to include such publications, and they also publish many primary source articles on fashion and design which would be absolutely valid sources for someone researching those topics. You might not care about such research, or see any valid reason to conduct it, but the world does not revolve around your preferences or interests.

Granted for an example like this one, a newspaper probably isn't the most appropriate source, but that hardly means a newspaper never can be.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

But 2+2 does equal 5, for particularily large values of 2.

_AC

Re:1984?

[bornwaysouth]

It means..
Third-person singular simple present indicative form of be.

I looked that up in Wiktionary, so it must be true.
Not that I understand the answer. And all that simple approach is before someone waffles on about perception versus physical reality, and whether reality is just a bunch of equations chatting on some big whiteboard.

I did note that you were able to duplicate the word 'is', so you cannot have written it in Word, which would have queried it as a possible spelling error. That is, Word would want to know with regard to 'is is'; is 'is is' 'is' or is 'is is' 'is is'.

Re:1984?

[schon]

As you don't actually address my argument, am I correct in assuming that you can't?

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a really insightful and well-written post. I just wish you hadn't misspelled plumber three times. :-/

Re:1984?

[schon]

No, you're confused.

I'm not confused, you're delusional.

The issue is not that the person himself is not a reliable source, it's that Der Spiegel dropped the ball by using Wikipedia as a source for the full name that they printed.

Wow. Just *WOW* . That is just so fucked up I'm at a loss for words.

I said that Wikipedia's criteria for determining if a source is "authoritative" is wrong, and you try to contradict that by pointing out that the source they quoted was wrong?

Wow. Just Wow.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Wikipedia offers a good overview of a large range of topics, and meaningless drivel on a mind-bogglingly huge range of topics.

The vast majority of Wikipedia's entries are articles that should not exist (articles on movies for example, belong in a cinema journal) and are written so badly that they are literally useless for anything other than the list of relevant links which may or may not contain a link to more useful information.

Re:1984?

[Lars T.]

Ultimately nothing and nobody is a really trustworthy source - Fox Mulder was right: "Trust No One".

Re:1984?

[metamatic]

The purpose of Wikipedia isn't to satisfy someone's vanity by calling them what they wish to be called. Millions of people might read an article about person X, but person X is at most just one of those people. What matters is picking a name that allows those millions of people to find the article they want. So the fact that there is a law in the UK allowing people to call themselves whatever they want is completely irrelevant (except if the article wishes to talk about the person's preferred name).

This doesn't seem to be the way Wikipedia actually works. For example, the article on CmdrTaco lists his name as Rob Malda, even though I bet more people know him as CmdrTaco. Similarly, the article on the Unabomber lists him as Theodore Kaczynski.

And conversely, the article on Elton John lists him by that name, rather than his legal name. Ditto the articles on Paul Merton and David Walliams.

Re:1984?

[omnichad]

Sorry. That's original research, and also against Wikipedia's rules.

Re:1984?

[Lars T.]

You mean like the actual fucking person the article is about? Oh wait, Wikipedia doesn't consider the actual fucking person to be a "primary source"!

And therein lies Wikipedia's problem.

Yeah, because we all need articles that say things like:

George Walker Bush is the greatest president ever <ref name=Dubya>The man himself</ref>.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I pointed out in an earlier reply, that Nature study doesn't really tell the whole story, because it was comparing science articles. Wikipedia doesn't do so bad on science. Aside from some crank science, a couple of controversial topics (global warming, evolution), and a little bit of vandalism, science doesn't tend to attract edit warring. If you're interested enough in science to be editing science articles, you're interested enough to know what you're talking about, and there are generally recognized authorities to draw on as sources. (Mathematics is probably an even better example than science.)

But the Nature study didn't look at more subjective topics like politics, history, biography, etc., which is where Wikipedia really has problems. That's where you get writers with strong opinions on topics they barely know anything about. They won't listen to someone more informed who tries to show that they are wrong; they just convince themselves that those people and their sources are "biased." There's also more vandalism. So, the Nature study shouldn't really be used to "prove" that Wikipedia and Britannica are equally accurate overall.

That said, I do think Britannica has been coasting on its reputation, and is not as accurate as it could be.

Re:1984?

[Larryish]

I would like to learn more about Naked Hiking.

Please forward everything you have concerning this important and interesting subject.

Re:1984?

[horza]

Rather than the time-consuming labour-intensive task of fact checking, it's cheaper and easier to stick the word 'allegedly' in a sentence somewhere. Even if you forget you can print a retraction in small print on the page of page 32, and heaven forbid should you get a fine the increased circulation will pay for that.

Phillip.

Re:1984?

[Solovus]

Remember: Wikipedia is now God!

1. The New God. Wikipedia.org Retrieved February 11, 2009

Re:1984?

[lavaface]

It's great for a quick relatively unimportant fact or to point you to some proper research

Wrong! What most people who post on any Wikipedia thread fail to understand is that the Encyclopedia Brittanica is really divided in to two sections: the Macropedia and the Micropedia. The Micropedia is a large collection of brief articles on a wide range of subjects. This is what most people think of as an encyclopedia and Wikipedia surpasses EB in this respect.

The Macropedia, on the other hand, is a series of well-organized, in-depth information on a limited number of topics. The quality of writing and comprehensive nature of the Macropedia easily surpasses that of Wikipedia. I love Wikipedia and use it all the time. I just wanted to clarify this oft-overlooked point.

Re:1984?

[martin-boundary]

This so called "exploit" is primarily a bug in wikipedia and there's really no reason at all that it should be there.

If you compare this to say a news story about a person, then the reporter will quote what other people have to say about that person (just like wikipedia does), but often the reporter will *also* try to contact the person to get their point of view. This is good journalistic practice, and if wikipedia doesn't do it they can rightfully be blamed.

What wikipedia articles should always contain is a prominently placed section reserved for the subject of the article (if the article is about a person), so that the subject can review the article, and set the record straight in their own words if they want to. This way, the readers get both points of view, and they can make up their own mind who to believe.

Re:1984?

[Splintax]

The naming conventions seem to suggest that this isn't Wikipedia policy. (For example, the article on 50 Cent is called '50 Cent', not 'Curtis James Jackson III'.) Perhaps the articles you cited need to be renamed - though it might be worth checking the discussion pages first.

Re:1984?

[Splintax]

This is against Wikipedia policy, so you should be able to revert such changes if you encounter them.

Re:1984?

[Splintax]

This is good journalistic practice, and if wikipedia doesn't do it they can rightfully be blamed.

The problem is that Wikipedia is edited by volunteers. You can't really 'blame Wikipedia' for this problem - it's the unfortunate result of the fact that properly sourcing articles is not a particularly interesting task, so few Wikipedia editors spend their time doing it well. (Plus, there are no serious consequences to not properly sourcing information on Wikipedia - so people aren't as concerned about it.)

Re:1984?

[Splintax]

I can't correct the original website, but I can correct Wikipedia -- except that I'm not allowed to, because I can't actually provide a link that proves that I really do spell the name the way I do, or that the "facts" were made up.

So what do you suggest? Wikipedia includes information that's verifiable, not information that's true, because determining the truth of a statement is difficult.

Readers can easily verify that the source cited did in fact claim that your name was spelt that way, and did in fact state the made-up 'facts' about you. Verifying the objective truth of those statements is much more difficult.

If you can't provide a reference to some source that corrects the misinformation, then unfortunately the misinformation will stay there. The anonymity of the internet means that saying "this is not true, and I know this because the statements are about me" is not good enough. How do I know you are who you say you are?

Re:1984?

[eggnoglatte]

Except if x in NaN ("not a number") in IEEE floating point format. Then, x== x is false. ;-)

Re:1984?

[Splintax]

What are you on about? The AC was correct. The issue in this case was that Der Spiegel took this guy's name from Wikipedia - an encyclopedia that can be edited by anybody. A newspaper with paid editors should properly fact-check anything it reports, especially when it's reporting information taken from Wikipedia.

I said that Wikipedia's criteria for determining if a source is "authoritative" is wrong, and you try to contradict that by pointing out that the source they quoted was wrong?

Generally, newspapers are fairly authoritative sources, as they're expected to fact-check what they publish. Wikipedia is not a reliable source, and doesn't pretend to be. Der Spiegel didn't fact-check properly, and Wikipedia cited them as a source for incorrect information. A more reliable source has come along, so the Der Spiegel citation has been removed. It's interesting that the incorrect information came from Wikipedia in the first place, but it's ultimately irrelevant - the same thing could have happened if they got the incorrect name from any other unreliable source.

What exactly do you think is wrong with Wikipedia's criteria for determining if a source is authoritative or not? Have you actually read the guidelines? In this case, Wikipedia editors made the reasonable assumption that a newspaper was a reliable source; the assumption turned out to be incorrect and the incorrect information and citation was removed. Hopefully, citations from that newspaper will be considered less trustworthy in the future.

It's unfortunate that sometimes incorrect information ends up on Wikipedia, but it's unavoidable. The guidelines exist to minimize the amount of incorrect information, but they can't hope to eliminate it entirely. In this case, Wikipedia policies worked and eliminated the incorrect information. Therefore, the problem is with Der Spiegel, not Wikipedia.

I guess this makes me 'delusional', huh? Attack the argument, not the person.

Re:1984?

[Splintax]

I'm not certain, but I don't think a birth certificate is a primary source. Primary source - the guy saying "my name is so-and-so". The birth certificate is a secondary source - an independent third-party certifying that so-and-so was the name given to the child.

Re:1984?

[Splintax]

In other words if you want to prove that someone famous lives in your town going to their house and interviewing them is not sufficient.

Why is your claim more trustworthy than the newspaper's?

It may be that you're right and the newspaper's wrong. But generally, newspapers are more reliable than random people on the internet. This is why the rule exists.

Re:1984?

[Splintax]

Wikipedia appears to satisfy most of the definitions for 'encyclopedia' listed by Google. Encyclopedias don't need to be printed on paper, and they don't need to be written by experts or even be accurate. Of course, accurate encyclopedias are preferable to inaccurate ones.

Re:1984?

[martin-boundary]

I'm not blaming wikipedia for using volunteers, I'm blaming it for not designing their article structure properly so that it can cope with a subjects' "right of reply", which is a fairly common gripe.

It's trivial to add a section that is only editable by the actual subject of the article (assuming they can prove who they are). As a result, the difficulties with allowing subjects to edit the wikipedia articles about themselves while claiming unreferenced personal knowledge are entirely artificial.

For example, wikipedia could have a clickable banner "Is this article about you? Click here to give your own side of the story", which leads to a textbox where the subject can give his side, including uncited claims based on personal experience, and also contact information to prove his identity. Then these comments, would be added verbatim in a section marked "right of reply" or whatever, and included as part of the main article.

In this way, people can correct the wikipedia articles (about themselves) whenever they feel it needs to be done, and the volunteers who write the articles need not do anything different from what they do now.

Re:1984?

[Splintax]

The problem here is, as others have pointed out, that people can't be trusted to honestly report details about themselves.

There is an existing set of guidelines on how to deal with this problem, but I accept that there is room for improvement. However, I don't like the way your suggestion seems to allow the person to say whatever they want and prevent others from editing that information. Seems that would make Wikipedia less of a wiki - anybody should be able to edit it. If you want to present autobiographical information that can't be revised and updated by other people, you should make a personal website. Wikipedia should summarize the information that's out there, including citations from the personal website if necessary - remember, Wikipedia includes information based on its verifiability, not truth.

Re:1984?

[JCota]

You know, they need to rename the title of that show to "Americas most funniest shots to the Nuts" However, It could be a mouth full to say, and might give the

1st grader with a whiffle-ball bat.

too many ideas. btw I have a wierd sensation that this will get modded down so go ahead make my day.

Re:1984?

[adamgolding]

Her said 'also', not 'therefore'...

Re:1984?

[Big Hairy Goofy Guy]

As someone who changed his name (in the US) I'd like to modify your perspective a bit.

My name is what I say it is among my friends, but that's it, and that's true only because I'm a nice guy. I say my name is 'Ben' so they call me 'Ben'. Not 'Benjamin' not 'BJ' not 'Dude' or 'Bud' or 'Junior'.

I had one acquaintance who liked the name 'Benny' better. I told her I didn't like that name but it made no difference to her. My name stopped being what I said it was and became what *she* said it was, at least as far as she was concerned.

And that experience is replicated with other 'non-friends' like governments. If I want to get a mortgage and buy a house, or if I'd like to drive a car, or travel to a different country (like the UK) the name 'Ben' will not work.

The United Kingdom will not allow me to enter their country without documentation. My government will not grant that documentation with 'any name I choose to call myself'. In practical terms, my name is what the government calls me; it isn't what I call myself (or tell others to call me)

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary source would be his mom ;-|

That's a big source!

(in honor of xkcd's 'Your Mom' jokes fetish)

Re:1984?

[martin-boundary]

The problem here is, as others have pointed out, that people can't be trusted to honestly report details about themselves.

That's a problem with the way wikipedia operates now, but that's not a problem in what I'm talking about, because readers would get to see two versions of the facts.

However, I don't like the way your suggestion seems to allow the person to say whatever they want and prevent others from editing that information.

Think of the page as being split in two. On one side, the subject says whatever they want, on the other side, everybody else says whatever they think is true about him/her. The two together give, in the mind of the reader, a much better picture of the truth than simply omitting one side. But this doesn't work if the subject can't write anything they want, ie if there is a suspicion that he/she is being gagged or edited by a third party.

Most importantly for wikipedia, by allowing the right of reply from the subject, it solves the problem of being perceived to be taking sides, in precisely the same way that newspapers have solved the problem for ages.

So it's not an untested idea, it actually works. And you can also see that sometimes it fails, namely when interviewees claim their comments have been edited or taken out of context, which is why it's important to give the right of reply verbatim to the subject.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should read 1984. You have described the concept of doublethink. This is where you can uphold two matually contractidory statesments as true while actively denying the contradiction.... and forgetting the fact that a contradiction exists, and then forgetting that you realised that there was a contradiction in the first place. So,
x!=x, is perfectly true, if "Big Wiki" tells you it is. QED.

Re:1984?

[Jurily]

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Like all encyclopediae, it cannot be taken as a primary source of information. Der Spiegel is not a scholarly journal, either. It also cannot be taken as a primary source of information.

Shall we go even further? You are also no scholarly journal. Me neither.

There is no truth. All hail Eris!

Re:1984?

[Rary]

So what do you suggest? Wikipedia includes information that's verifiable, not information that's true, because determining the truth of a statement is difficult.

I don't really have a suggestion. This is an unfortunate limitation of the workings of Wikipedia.

Basically, Wikipedia's version of "truth" is "if it's been repeated enough times, it's true". I think this is why so many people around here seem to dislike Wikipedia -- although I'm not one of those people.

You said that Wikipedia includes information that's verifiable, but really it includes information that's repeated, which is not necessarily the same as verifiable. I mean, staying within Wikipedia's guidelines, I would be providing "verifiable" information if I modified the entry on Chuck Norris to state that he sleeps with a pillow under his gun. I could provide countless links to prove this. Can you find a single link that disproves it?

Re:1984?

[BornAgainSlakr]

I misread it.

As to the argument about the actual person being a primary source... Yes, Wikipedia says that you should not write or contribute to articles about yourself.

My original point stands here: an encyclopedia is a repository of citations with a summary of knowledge. It is not a collection of autobiographies.

An autobiography is in no way definitive. It is a primary source, but it is subject to as much as, if not more, bias than any other kind of source. Not discouraging autobiographical edits would introduce more bias and factual errors than it already has.

The mission of an encyclopedia is to collect as many sources as possible, including a person's autobiography, summarize them, and provide you with the citations necessary to aide you in your own research.

So, I still don't see problem. Especially in this case since the problem was fixed quickly. Think if Britannica had gotten it wrong in a print version. Even with printed errata, the error would persist for years.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly why the Year of the Linux Desktop should never come, because once it does its time to move to something else.

Re:1984?

[ToastyKen]

I like what I saw in someone's sig on /. once:

"The trouble with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice, not theory." :P

Re:1984?

[BZ]

> but an interview, with direct quotes for example, is

Have you ever been interviewed by a newspaper? I have. My experience, and that of othrs I know who have been interviewed, is that newspaper reporters will take the things you said, copy and paste on a word-by-word level, mixing and matching answers to different questions, and then publish it.

It's even worse with online publications of various sorts, but my experiences above were with a "good" print newspaper about 10-ish years ago, before print reporting had deteriorated to quite where it is now.

Mind you, sometimes the newspapers will have things right. But for the most part, on issues I know something about, they bat no better than 30%. I have a hard time imagining they do better on things I don't know anything about; I just don't catch them.

Re:1984?

[againjj]

The problem is that if some "fact" is posted on the Internet and there is nothing else posted on the Internet that contradicts that "fact", then that is "authoritative" to Wikipedia.

The other one noticed on Slashdot had this property: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/19/1452244

Though, the low number of times these things come out and how much they are spread around testifies to the fact that Wikipedia is a lot more reliable than what one might otherwise think given its premise.

Re:1984?

[againjj]

you need to go to primary sources.

You mean like the actual fucking person the article is about? Oh wait, Wikipedia doesn't consider the actual fucking person to be a "primary source"!

The primary source would be his mom ;-|

Hello, I want something from your Mom....

Re:1984?

[xappax]

First of all, there's a huge technical challenge to what you're suggesting. Namely: how do you verify someone's identity? Considering how hard people take it when there's a mistake on their Wikipedia article, can you imagine what an uproar there'd be if a vandal was able to officially impersonate some famous person on Wikipedia?

It'd be a big deal, therefore the verification system would need to be pretty strong. That kind of system is very labor intensive and fairly bureaucratic, and not at all the kind of work you can get volunteers for, meaning it'd be expensive too. Basically, it's completely unfeasible for Wikipedia to do that - they can barely afford to keep running as is.

Secondly, you tout the "right of reply" like it's some enshrined rule of free speech that you get to write your comments on any web page that talks about you. Certainly people deserve the right to present their own subjective perspective on any matter, but there's a place for that - a separate web site.

Third-party websites play exactly the role you describe very easily, and a decent autobiographical site /will/ probably end up being referenced in a comprehensive Wikipedia article. Not as fact, of course, but as the claims of the site. This means there ends up being a citation link to a site where the subject of the article can write whatever they want, with no restrictions on verifiability or relevance. And those looking to Wikipedia for an encyclopedia rather than an autobiography can skip the link. Everybody's happy, right?

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is your name Bill?

Re:1984?

[Splintax]

You said that Wikipedia includes information that's verifiable, but really it includes information that's repeated, which is not necessarily the same as verifiable.

It is in the sense that Wikipedia uses it. A statement is "verifiable" when its accuracy is easy to determine. Whenever Wikipedia says "X is true" and provides a citation, it's really saying "X is true according to Y". When a citation is provided, it's easy to go and verify that Y did in fact claim that X is true.

It's still hard to verify whether or not X is objectively true, but Wikipedia doesn't try to do this. In this sense, you're correct: what's 'verifiable' is what you can easily show that other people have repeated.

I mean, staying within Wikipedia's guidelines, I would be providing "verifiable" information if I modified the entry on Chuck Norris to state that he sleeps with a pillow under his gun. I could provide countless links to prove this.

I don't think any of those links would constitute "reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy".

I think Wikipedia's flaw, if you can call it that, is that it can't make sure all its policies and guidelines are followed. Pretty much every problem on Wikipedia is a result of policy being ignored.

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not always clear what are the primary sources. Here is an example:

The official transcript handed out before Obama's Inaugural Address by his speechwriters and Inaugural Team contained two spelling errors. When the transcript (by CQ Transcriptions) was published on msnbc.com and The New York Times online, I noticed the errors and pointed them out to the publications, also to whitehouse.gov which at that point did not have any transcript or text. Some other media did not make the same errors. After a couple of days whitehouse.gov corrected the errors, and I wrote The New York Times again and they corrected the transcript online, but without publishing a notice concerning the change.

The errors were "forbearers" instead of "forebears," and "Khe Sahn" instead of "Khe Sanh."

At the time of this writing, the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inauguration_of_Barack_Obama#Inaugural_address still contains one of the errors, namely the word "forbearers" should be "forebears." (The words are distinct and have different meanings.) Reference to audio or video of the speech confirm to me and some others that the President said "forebears" and not "forbearers."

I don't think changing the spelling of the text of the transcript in the Wikipedia article is sufficient. Instead, there should be an explanation. Also, there should be a discussion about what is the official version. At this point nobody is willing to undertake this job. Reference to some online transcript that was later changed is really insufficient source, just like the Der Spiegel situation.

We are increasingly in an oral world. But written text published on paper still counts. Sometimes, as in Inaugural Addresses, they get carved into stone and years later schoolchildren look to them as models. It is important that all of us, including Wikipedia, get it right. How?

Re:1984?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, to put this statement into perspective, you're saying that x!=x.

Is true for x=NaN.

Nothing new

[wjh31]

This false fact cycle has been done plenty of times before. There was one recently-ish regarding a football team in some european championship, a british paper included a very silly false fact from wikipedia (something about the fans wearing wellies on their heads or something along those lines) and in a similar way, the cycle was closed. I cant remember the exact details, im sure someone will follow with a link

Re:Nothing new

[sam_handelman]

You're not kidding this is nothing new.

  The hebrew bible gets the order of Persian kings wrong. Josephus quotes list of Persian kings found in hebrew manuscript. Tada, the list of persian kings is independently verified!

  New technology enables this kind of thing to happen with amazing *speed*, but it always took careful consideration and scholarship to disentangle. If anything, having all those explicit timestamps makes this much easier in the information age, but the volume is probably greater than people can really process.

Re:Nothing new

[larry bagina]

there was also an instance (from slashdot last year) where a journalist edited a wikipedia page and used that as a source for his article. Then the article was used as a citation.

Re:Nothing new

[History's Coming To]

Not forgetting the fact that God (take your pick) doesn't meet the notability criteria...

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

It was done by a b3ta user, and can be found here. It is very funny.

Re:Nothing new

[AikonMGB]

Funny? More like insightful..

Re:Nothing new

[xolo]

The hebrew bible gets the order of Persian kings wrong. Josephus quotes list of Persian kings found in hebrew manuscript. Tada, the list of persian kings is independently verified!

Do you have some references? A quick google search didn't turn up anything on it

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean soccer, right?

Re:Nothing new

[PRMan]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that recent archaeology has, once again, proved the scriptures true in this area (regarding the Darius/Cyrus relationship, if Gubaru is, in fact, another name for Darius who was a regent ruling in place for Cyrus, making neither of them before or after the other).

Of course, I don't know if this is true since you didn't list any examples of what you are talking about.

Re:Nothing new

[KlaymenDK]

That's not right. It's not even wrong.

Re:Nothing new

[bruthasj]

Yes. Right here: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1123229&cid=26811271

Re:Nothing new

[camperdave]

Yes. Right here: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1123229&cid=26811271

Well. That settles it then.

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

The really easy way to refute a claim of citation is check the dates of the paper's article and the information at hand.

It's pretty simple: just don't accept references to articles, that are written/published later, than the modification in question was made!

Re:Nothing new

[roystgnr]

Huh? I certainly thought that God had enough published secondary source material to qualify as notable by now. Even a best selling book, I've heard.

But then I looked deeper. It turns out that the authors of that book claimed to be working for God; in some passages they were even just taking dictation! I'm sorry, God, but autobiography and self-promotion are not the routes to having an encyclopaedia article.

The extent of this God person's attempts to get around the Wikipedia guidelines are mind-boggling, but I still haven't found anything about God that didn't look like it was rooted in self-promotion. Many of these authors are even brazen enough to admit it, and they claim that every single one of the other authors is another of God's children too. Unless someone can find a secondary source about God that wasn't written by God or by some "sock-puppet" God created, I'm afraid all those Wikipedia articles are going to have to be deleted for lack of notability.

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually now you have a problem of who you believe, forgetting the NPOV:

The Hebrew bible quotes the order and length of Persian kings.

The Greeks quote the order and length of Persian kings.

The Persians quote the order and length of Persian kings.

They all independently quote them differently. So people with an agenda will pick one and make a declaration, while scholars will say they're all different, irreconcilably so because you can't really prove it one way or another (the other two "didn't really know" and the Persians are possibly lying to increase their history, number of kings, etc).

Now what happens on Wikipedia is that the self appointed dick chooses which source he likes best. He is the admin so he will revert anything that contradicts his preferred choice. So you will forever see "The Hebrew Bible mistakenly quotes the number and length of Persian kings" rather than the true wiki NPOV policy of "The number and length of Persian kings is disputed".

Re:Nothing new

[martin-boundary]

Huh? I certainly thought that God had enough published secondary source material to qualify as notable by now. Even a best selling book, I've heard.

Actually, these are unverified facts which were debunked years ago. I refer you to the following books by Oolon Colluphid:

• Where God Went Wrong
• Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes
• Who Is This God Person Anyway?
• Well That About Wraps It Up for God

Re:Nothing new

[History's Coming To]

That's actually kind of scary...the self proclaimed rules of academic rigour, as defined by Wikipedia (whilst not a definitive source, one that's certainly trusted by a large number of laymen*) do not allow the existence of and/or referal to any "work of god" other than in fiction.



* ...or woman. Or person. "Layman" is, however, the quickest to type and retain the meaning. And yes, I know, this footnote took longer, but it just goes to show I thought about it. Pedant..

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

He's lucky anyway

[Enleth]

Knowing what some journalists are capable (or rather incapable) of, I'd not be surprised if they had quoted him stating that his name is "Karl Theodor [citation needed] von un zu Guttenberg"...

Re:He's lucky anyway

[snspdaarf]

Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern schplenden schlitter crasscrenbon fried digger dingle dangle dongle dungle burstein von knacker thrasher apple banger horowitz ticolensic grander knotty spelltinkle grandlich grumblemeyer spelterwasser kurstlich himbleeisen bahnwagen gutenabend bitte ein neurnburger bratwustle gerspurten mitz weimache luber hundsfut gumberaber shonedanker kalbsfleisch mittler aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm

Re:He's lucky anyway

[KlaymenDK]

That's actually an interesting idea. If you were to print that --in nearly any context, really-- you would, if nothing else, make people stop to think.

On further thought, I think I'll change my name to include "[citation needed]" as a middle name. Imagine the fun when discussing philosophy and identity with people!

Re:He's lucky anyway

[robot_love]

Nice! Please tell me you didn't do that from memory.

That was always one of my favorite sketches. It was just so...ridiculous!

Re:He's lucky anyway

[7 digits]

I was so waiting for someone to post that...

For the clueless mods that marked you as Troll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDPqB9i1ScY

Re:He's lucky anyway

[snspdaarf]

My memory was never that good. I think what makes that sketch funny is the idea of a reporter having to memorize that name.

He will just have to..

[Dynamoo]

He will just have to change his name so it matches Wikipedia. Problem solved.

Re:He will just have to..

[rolfwind]

This should be more of an indictment of the state of journalism rather than wikipedia which is a free non-profit service.

Re:He will just have to..

[linhares]

he could be shot also, then buried amongst the non verifiable.

Re:He will just have to..

[jsiren]

Under a tombstone that says [citation needed]?

Re:He will just have to..

[Spatial]

Citation is futile. Lower your firewalls and surrender your hardware. You will be assimilated. Your prose and factual distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will adapt to serve the collective.

Re:He will just have to..

[kellyb9]

He will just have to change his name so it matches Wikipedia. Problem solved.

As far as I'm concerned if it's on wikipedia, it's already true. Wikipedia is a public record.

Re:He will just have to..

[linhares]

[citations were needed]

Re:He will just have to..

[jakykong]

Oh, so Wikipedia is the predecessor to the Hitchhiker's Guide! I wondered why, when found to be in error, the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor usually blame it on the universe being in error.

Re:He will just have to..

[dr80085]

When I first read the title that's just what I thought he'd gone and done...

This is a story?

[MyLongNickName]

I hate to bring this to the attention of the nerd community.... the world existed before the explosion of the internet. This is hard to believe, but true. I have it on good authority that the world started sometime in the 1920's.

That being said, this type of problem existed long before the internet "Person A" starts a rumor. Others pick up on it, and a reporter who talks to "Person A" gets his story confirmed by others who heard the story from Person A. Not new. Not news. The speed of things has definitely sped up in the last decade, but this happened also with the invention of the telephone, telegraph and television.

Also, another nice fact. Wikipedia is not your research center. It is a place to start. If you are using it as a source for your research paper, you should get an F.

Re:This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

The story isn't that Wikipedia isn't a source for research (as opposed to a starting point). The story is that supposedly reputable news organisations don't get this - that they blindly copy factoids from Wikipedia without checking them. And not just one or two, not just some, but pretty much ALL the major players (on the German market).

Of course, the fact that this involves Wikipedia really is not all that important indeed; it could just as well have been about some other site, or a rumour started elsewhere instead of on the Internet. But given the importance of the press for a democratic society, it's worrying that so little care is exercised there and that journalistic integrity, for the most part, has become a fig leaf to cover up the fact that it's all just about one thing anymore: making money.

Re:This is a story?

[bcmm]

Anyone who cites Wikipedia in a paper should fail, as everything even remotely contentious on Wikipedia is supposed to be backed up by a citation from a proper source. Wikipedia's use in writing papers is in telling you where to find material you can cite.

Re:This is a story?

[Metabolife]

I have it on the ultimate authority that it's 2000yrs old. Back then messengers got their information wrong all the time.

Re:This is a story?

[Stray7Xi]

Little known fact, Jesus actually had a mohawk. Now I'm off to fix his wikipedia entry.

Re:This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember reading a Bin Laden page and came across some interesting bits, like his stated reasoning behind 9/11. Since then it's been completely wiped clean and it's now a stale "Bin Laden is a terrorist" article.

From what I've learned, those controversial wiki pages are usually defended by little cabals, and anyone editing outside of the cabal is hit with a ban after a bit of coordination through emailing. The problem isn't necessarily media outlets copying false facts, but groups of people with a biased agenda and admin access.

Re:This is a story?

[obarthelemy]

He probably wasn't as white as often protrayed, either.

Re:This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

It also has the use that you think some area is well-described on Wikipedia, so you fact-check it yourself and then cite that specific revision of the page. That is a perfectly good use of Wikipedia in a citation, even in a research paper.

Re:This is a story?

[JustinOpinion]

Good points.

I'd also like to emphasize something: while Wikipedia surely 'dropped the ball' on this one, serious blame must be placed on the various 'traditional media' outlets. They should they be verifying information from a few different sources before publishing. Moreover, they should be citing where they got their information from! If their article had citations, with Wikipedia listed as the source for the name/biographical information, then Wikipedia would have known that they couldn't use it as an independent source for their own citations.

There is frankly no good reason why mainstream media should not be more rigorously citing their sources for information (especially for Internet articles, where the extra space of a few footnotes doesn't matter). Of course one of the main reasons they might want to do so is that it would make painfully clear just how spurious and unfounded their reporting is.

In other words, if using Wikipedia as a source in serious research garners you an 'F'... then surely citing newspapers should do the same.

Re:This is a story?

[hxnwix]

"fact: Wikipedia is not your research center. It is a place to start. If you are using it as a source for your research paper, you should get an F."

In this case, using contemporary, respected newspapers and periodicals would not save you from inaccuracy.

So, you shouldn't use those, either. In fact, you shouldn't use anything, ever, as there is no sure thing. Fact: no facts.

Re:This is a story?

[Znork]

As has been noted many times, proper sources aren't necessarily always all that good either. A healthy dose of skepticism is always useful, and when it's something important, verify claims against multiple independent sources or even yourself.

Of course, in this case the guys name is so long that even adding a whole extra name is hardly more significant than a spelling error, which frankly isn't that uncommon in newspapers anyway.

Re:This is a story?

[pipatron]

The good thing is that you can go back to an old revision and read what it said.

Re:This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to bring this to the attention of the babynerd community.... the world existed before the explosion of the internet.

There I fixed that for you. only the youngin's think that way. Most of us that remember when Local (and not so local) BBS's, Compuserve, and Prodigy were the only choices before the holy wars of the AOL and others.

I remember using microfiche and actually GOING TO THE LIBRARY (THE HORRORS!) to do research for high school papers and projects. You could close the loop on a false fact back then just as easy, it just took more time. I found many of them, typically getting me yelled at by a history teacher. Me getting suspended about the history classes being full of lies and half truths..

I loved finding a blatantly wrong thing in a textbook and then a teacher foolish enough to try and defend that falsehood as a fact.

Re:This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus was Mr T?

Re:This is a story?

[oodaloop]

In the intelligence community, we call it circular reporting, and it also predates the internet.

Re:This is a story?

[elrous0]

Speaking of the 20's, did you know that the world's elephant population has more than doubled in the last 20 years?

Re:This is a story?

[RiotingPacifist]

I thought the story was that Wikipedia verifiability over truth policy is retarded!

Re:This is a story?

[Alomex]

Consulting wikipedia should be treated the same way as asking a friend for pointers. It is definitely a good place to start, but one would never write a paper saying "this doesn't exist [citation: I asked Joe Blow and he said so]".

Re:This is a story?

[linhares]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy

Re:This is a story?

[linhares]

Of course, the fact that this involves Wikipedia really is not all that important indeed; it could just as well have been about some other site,

It could never happen in slashdot. Or maybe I am new here.

Re:This is a story?

[linhares]

not if the article is deleted by those fucks

Re:This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if you were writing a paper in a field you had little knowledge about, but surely if you're writing one then you would already know enough so that looking things up in a book or journal would be quicker than using wikipedia?

Re:This is a story?

[linhares]

"You could close the loop on a false fact back then just as easy, it just took more time. I found many of them, typically getting me yelled at by a history teacher. Me getting suspended about the history classes being full of lies and half truths.. I loved finding a blatantly wrong thing in a textbook and then a teacher foolish enough to try and defend that falsehood as a fact." --Stalin, that you?

Re:This is a story?

[iamangry]

Amen. We have this problem in my design class. A lot of the more lazy students cite wikipedia as a source for facts because they dont want to take the time to read (or at least skim) the real source. Its becoming a real problem, and I fear that it wont stop when they get into industry. People need to stop being so lazy and realize that its an encyclopedia, not a quotable source.

Re:This is a story?

[dkixk]

Also, another nice fact. Wikipedia is not your research center. It is a place to start. If you are using it as a source for your research paper, you should get an F.

Yes, start with something more credible, like Fox News.

Re:This is a story?

[KlaymenDK]

Actually, the "Jesuses" (Jesii?) that are nailed to the walls of churches across the continents vary quite a bit in appearance, and this somewhat in accordance with the local natives. That's not to say that in all of Africa's churches he's a (negro|black|coloured|native African, I can never figure out the PC term), but he does have a distinctly more southern semblance in, say, Italy than he does in, say, Sweden.

Re:This is a story?

[jopsen]

I hate to bring this to the attention of the nerd community.... the world existed before the explosion of the internet. This is hard to believe, but true. I have it on good authority that the world started sometime in the 1920's.

I'm sorry but the clock first started ticking the 1st of January, 1970, before that time did not exist...

Re:This is a story?

[SatanicPuppy]

Like in this case, where they cite an unreputable publication?

What needs to happen is people need to understand how to evaluate a primary source. Newspapers can be a good primary source...if they're the organ of record (e.g. They originated the story after having talked explicitly with the human primary sources). You can't quote a newspaper article that was picked up from the AP wire, however. They change those.

I am forever astonished at the people who think something is fact just because it's written down.

Re:This is a story?

[mdwh2]

There isn't a "verifiability over truth" policy - rather, the threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth. You're reading it in the wrong direction: this policy doesn't mean that untrue "verifiable" things should be added. Rather, it's to stop people claiming that things should be added because they claim it's true, even though no one can verify it

Yes, it's unfortunate that sometimes seemingly "verifiable" things can turn out to be untrue. But the same situation would have occurred if the policy was "truth" - since someone would still be claiming this fact was true, based on what the media article said (or perhaps, not based on anything).

"Verifiable" is meant to be a subset of "truth".

Re:This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the "Jesuses" (Jesii?)

Jesi

Re:This is a story?

[rfunches]

And yet my local paper (News & Messenger, Prince William VA) has published front-page articles explicitly stating "According to Wikipedia" and directly quoting the wiki article. Clearly the academic bounds on Wiki use have not made their way into the world of journalism.

Re:This is a story?

[Twinbee]

How about if the topic is mathematics, and the level is pre-PhD / pre-post graduate?

Common, it may not be up to scratch on all topics yet, but look at the larger picture say in 200 years, where Wikipedia could really be used as a genuine source of citation, at least on certain topics for less advanced levels of research.

Re:This is a story?

[nchip]

A example from Ethiopia:

http://flickr.com/photos/adavey/2868581353/in/set-72157607357696464/

Notice that Ethiopian orthodox church descents directly from the original Christian church in Judea, it was not brought into the country by west-european missionaries in later ages. They had over thousand years of tradition of painting Christian images without even knowing what white people look like.

Re:This is a story?

[geekoid]

"Anyone who cites Wikipedia in a paper should fail"

Why? What makes anything else better then Wikipedia?

Re:This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the nature of this 'factoid' being that they gave the guy 13 names rather than 12, I think this is a case where a researcher's time would be better spent elsewhere. I don't think Mr. von und zu Guttenberg ever expects to be called by his very long name, and so its more of a trivia fact than something that is going to shake the foundations of German democratic society...

I don't think you can infer from the fact that many news organizations got this trivial fact wrong that they get all of their facts in the same manner...

Re:This is a story?

[MyLongNickName]

In school, i was not allowed to use an Encyclopedia as a source of a research paper, period. Perhaps my education was different than yours. But, I was told that a source like an encyclopedia may be used as to find further reference material. The concept was that the encyclopedia is not a primary source and should not be used as such. Is this not the general standard for research papers?

Re:This is a story?

[Mr. Conrad]

Agreed. I recently read an inconsistent and biased article from Wikipedia that states, "Wikipedia has been accused of exhibiting systemic bias and inconsistency." But I'm not fooled. Not one bit.

Re:This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, only spiegel.de copied from Wikipedia, all others copied from spiegel.de..

Re:This is a story?

[bcmm]

Like in this case, where they cite an unreputable publication?

Newspapers should be reputable publications, and if they aren't, that is their fault. Wikipedia does not claim to be a "reputable publication" of that sort.

The only one missing

[rjmx]

Whoever added it probably did so because it was the only possible male name he didn't have.

Ahhhhh ... completeness achieved.

Not Wikipedia's Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't that Wikipedia provided bad info, or even that Wikipedia makes this kind of hoax easier. The simple fact underlying this kind of story is that using a single source for anything is extremely bad (scholarship, reporting, research, fill in the blank).

A much more interesting story (to me, at any rate) would be improved journalistic standards that use Wikipedia as a jumping-off point rather than The Font of All Wisdom.

Re:Not Wikipedia's Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem is that regardless of journalistic standards, once false information is propagated, it can be exceedingly difficult for your principled journalist to determine which sources they are referencing are, in fact, correct. in this example, referencing the primary source would have been helpful, him being alive and all. but it's not hard to imagine that when the primary source is, say, a dead person, that it can be a lot more difficult to fact check. yes, it would be ideal if the journalist were able to do the digging and sleuthing to determine that the secondary sources they're referencing are incorrect; however, it's really not going to be possible for every journalist to always go reference all primary sources for every fact in every article. i don't think it's a violation of journalistic ethics for journalists to make a good effort at referencing secondary sources if the primary isn't available; and if the secondary sources agree, proceeding.

Re:Not Wikipedia's Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia isn't The Font of All Wisdom, but it uses Helvetica ;)

Re:Not Wikipedia's Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

"Principled journalist"? What the heck is that? Is that one of those self-contradictory phrases like "military intelligence" or "jumbo shrimp"?

Emperical evidence has supported this for ages

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a well known fact among editors. Make an edit to an article on an obscure topic and you have a finite time to verify the facts using online sources. Before long Google has indexed your change and your independent sources get relegated further down the list. After a little more time your article has been used as a source and soon it is not clear as to what is independent fact and what is derived from your own words.

Re:Emperical evidence has supported this for ages

[saibot834]

There is a nice (and quite popular) information graphic by Titanic, a German satire magazine: This is how our information society works (the arrows translate as: "cites from", "plagiarizes from")

ObPython

[Chris Tucker]

Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, of Ulm.

Re:ObPython

[TeknoHog]

from Ulm import Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg

Re:ObPython

[snspdaarf]

Damn! I didn't see this earlier. Now my other will get modded redundant.

Re:ObPython

[Anonymous Coward]

Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, of Ulm.

That's my name too. What's more, whenever I go out people stop and shout that I go there.

Re:ObPython

[Anonymous Coward]

rofl I knew someone would make this comment

Re:ObPython

[FunkSoulBrother]

Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel

primary sources discouraged

[Random Walk]

That's what you get if you discourage the use of primary sources in favor of secondary sources.

Re:primary sources discouraged

[Mononoke]

That's what you get if you discourage the use of primary sources in favor of secondary sources.

How does one go about verifying that what these primary sources say is true?

Re:primary sources discouraged

[Aladrin]

Check Wikipedia!

Seriously, though. The same way you always did: Footwork. You need to actually talk to real people to verify things. Just taking the word of a reporter/journalist/blogger/whatever is never enough.

Unless, of course, it doesn't really matter. Then you can just take their word for it and apologize later when they are found wrong. (And you, since you copied them.)

Re:primary sources discouraged

[Anonymous Coward]

you go to the register office, and ask for this guy name. there is nothing more authoritative than this. by definition, what primary source states is non debatable, because it is the generator of the information - that is not to say that it's true.

Re:primary sources discouraged

[jcnnghm]

Sometimes speed is more important than accuracy. For example, the other day I wanted to confirm that my assumption about the purpose of water towers was accurate, so I looked up water towers in Wikipedia. Had I had to use primary sources, the research would have never been done, and I would have never learned anything because I wouldn't have bothered. It really doesn't matter if the information is a bit inaccurate. After all, wasn't there an article not that long ago that suggested that Wikipedia is more accurate than print encyclopedia's anyway?

Re:primary sources discouraged

[Random Walk]

The problem is that wikipedia itself discourages the use of primary sources by wikipedia authors. The reason they give is that using primary sources may lead to "original research", which is strongly discouraged as well.

Re:primary sources discouraged

[Mononoke]

You need to actually talk to real people to verify things.

I am the King of the World. Please be certain to spell my name correctly in my Wikipedia article. You won't need references, because I told you directly and who would know better than I?

Re:primary sources discouraged

[ubernostrum]

The same way you always did: Footwork.

Ah, so now you want to violate the "no original research" policy?

Re:primary sources discouraged

[Aladrin]

It's not 'original research'. It's fact-checking. You aren't finding new facts, you are verifying existing ones.

What would be _Really_ Weird...

[Anonymous Coward]

would be if a copy of Wikipedia from the distant future fell through a wormhole to the present, and revealed the German Minister of Economic Affairs of 2009 to be "The first against the wall when the revolution came".

Noble lineage

[Anonymous Coward]

Is he a relative of Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern Schplenden Schlitter Crasscrenbon Fried Digger Dangle Dungle Burstein von Knacker Thrasher Apple Banger Horowitz Ticolensic Grander Knotty Spelltinkle Grandlich Grumblemeyer Spelterwasser Kürstlich Himbleeisen Bahnwagen Gutenabend Bitte Eine Nürnburger Bratwustle Gerspurten mit Zweimache Luber Hundsfut Gumberaber Shönendanker Kalbsfleisch Mittler Raucher von Hautkopft of Ulm?

Re:Noble lineage

[Anonymous Coward]

Is he a relative of Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern Schplenden Schlitter Crasscrenbon Fried Digger Dangle Dungle Burstein von Knacker Thrasher Apple Banger Horowitz Ticolensic Grander Knotty Spelltinkle Grandlich Grumblemeyer Spelterwasser Kürstlich Wilhelm Himbleeisen Bahnwagen Gutenabend Bitte Eine Nürnburger Bratwustle Gerspurten mit Zweimache Luber Hundsfut Gumberaber Shönendanker Kalbsfleisch Mittler Raucher von Hautkopft of Ulm?

Fixed that for you, see Wikipedia if you are confused. Feel free to cite this post.

Adding Wilhelm?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have changed it to Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg personally

I can't help but think of this story:

[gzipped_tar]

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius as well as other Jorge Luis Borges stories.

This is just, umm, fantastic -- in the fantastic sense of the word "fantastic".

And I'm very sorry for the Wikipedia link.

Re:I can't help but think of this story:

[Petrushka]

And I'm very sorry for the Wikipedia link.

So you should be! As this is not Wikipedia, we are allowed to cite a primary source.

And it's a very apt comparison. An excellent story illustrating some fundamental problems with how sources work. It was also, I get the impression, an important inspiration for things like The Dumas Club and the prologue to The Name of the Rose.

Re:I can't help but think of this story:

[cerberusss]

Sorry, but your post isn't entirely clear to me. Do you mean the wikipedia article is made up, or that this whole topic (false fact on Wikipedia proves itself) sounds like a story from J.L. Borges?

Re:I can't help but think of this story:

[gzipped_tar]

The latter.

People Fail

[MazzThePianoman]

Sounds more like a failure of investigative journalism, not Wikipedia.

Re:People Fail

[nedlohs]

I don't think getting a public figure's name right in an article actually counts as "investigative".

Re:People Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Like others have commented, Wikipedia considers investigative journalism to be "original research", which means that it is not allowed on WP. Also, WP's insistence on secondary sources leads to incredibly stupid situations like "you may not write about yourself on Wikipedia until you have published your memoirs".

So, you are right that this is a failure of IJ. But it is a failure of WP to actively discourage practicing IJ.

Re:People Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean investigatory journalism, Hansel.

Re:People Fail

[Petrushka]

Sounds more like a failure of investigative journalism, not Wikipedia.

Riiiight. If the print media cite an erroneous "fact" from Wikipedia, the print media are wrong and Wikipedia is right.

And if Wikipedia cites an erroneous "fact" from the print media that demonstrably has Wikipedia itself as its ultimate source, then the print media are wrong and Wikipedia is right.

Does that kind of automatic rejection of any criticism sound more like (a) an intellectual endeavour, or (b) a religion?

Re:People Fail

[MazzThePianoman]

It sounds more like you are forgetting that good journalist check their sources and are often required to have more than one source to reduce such errors. Wikipedia by its nature is neither wrong or right and must always be taken with a grain of salt.

Circlejerk

[Peil]

Not exactly surprising...

We have top people working on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

We have top people who tell me that his real full name is Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wolfgang Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.

IJ: Who?

GA: Top men.

There, now Wikipedia can be corrected.

Remember, you saw it here first.

this is true

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever a comment appears on Slashdot whose title says "this is true", it really is true. It says so on Wikipedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#Truth

Re:this is true

[gzipped_tar]

Well done. This permalink should be even better. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slashdot&oldid=269993818#Truth

Oblig. UserFriedly strip: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20061127

Re:this is true

[Hal_Porter]

Well done. This permalink should be even better. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slashdot&oldid=269993818#Truth

That link is truly a thing of beauty.

Obligatory Python reference

[Einmaliger]

Why is it that the world never remembered the name of Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg?

Just goes to show...

[Crumplecorn]

...how crap Wikipedia's idea of a worthwhile reference is. I've seen many discussion pages where people have wanted to add in information which is 'generally known' (and it genuinely is generally known), but there is no verifiable source who states it, or a source who states it doesn't meet their standards. On the other side we now have 'reliable' sources proving unreliable (the reason why, and the wiki-fail-circle is actually fairly irrelevant).

Wikipedia is merely a vaguely accurate primer on any topic, and you generally have to at least skim the discussion page to get even that. While they continue to adhere to arbitrary standards to the point of complete detachment from reality, it can never be anything more.

Re:Just goes to show...

[u38cg]

The trouble (to me) is WP does not rigourously distinguish between primary sources and secondary sources. Indeed, the "no original research" policy actively works against this. So, instead of finding the guy's birth certificate and using that as a source (discouraged) the name as given in a newspaper is encouraged.

Of course, just clamping down hard on online-only sources would be useful too.

Baudrillard knew this was coming.

[Anonymous Coward]

In simulacra and simulation:

"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true."

Who really cares what the guy's name is? In the simulation of the world that is wikipedia, I guess his name DOES have wilhelm in it. It's not true or false, but just the simulation.

In other words, "You can't stop the signal" or maybe "there is no spoon." Those are about equivalent, I think.

Wiki is better

[delirium of disorder]

The media has always blindly repeated false information on a massive scale. The blunder referenced in the article actually shows us that Wikipedia helps the situation. We can see who makes edits and when they are made, so we can trace down these kinds of problems. The same media mistakes that have always happened continue to happen, but at least now we can know about them.

Re:Wiki is better

[obarthelemy]

Totally agree. Let's worry about journalism for now, and take care of wikipedia once journalism consistently reaches wikipedia-level accuracy, balance....

Re:Wiki is better

[owlnation]

Totally agree. Let's worry about journalism for now, and take care of wikipedia once journalism consistently reaches wikipedia-level accuracy, balance...

Yes... mostly. Absolutely no doubt that the failure here is journalism, although Der Spiegel is normally a reliable publication. However, it is extremely disturbing that there are ANY people out there who view wikipedia as quotable -- and part of the blame for that does rest with wikipedia. Not that wikipedia is going to change that, because they take themselves more seriously than anyone ever should. Wikipedia, if they were entirely honest and fair, would publish a disclaimer at the top of every page. However, vanity and pride will prevent them from ever doing that. It astounds me that they've not been subject to a massive legal campaign -- I'm certain one day they will be.

Wikipedia is information pollution. Google's unfair and skewed page ranking of that site does more harm than good. Fundamentally some of the blame for this lies with Google artificially promoting wikipedia than anything else.

Wikipedia is a gift to anyone who wants to distort information. Especially if it's subtle, as in this case. Since journalists can't be trusted to validate facts, it seems it's very easy to get your agenda or distorted version of the truth out there by manipulating wikipedia - and we all know how trivially simple that is to do, especially if you form a cartel -- or worse, become the lowest of the low, a wikiadmin.

Re:Wiki is better

[nekokoneko]

This makes absolutely no sense to me. Everything in the internet, nay, everything in the world should be taken with a grain of salt, why should Wikipedia be responsible for publishing disclaimers and whatnot? If the general population is unaware of what a real research is, is it Wikipedia's job to teach them? Remember, Wikipedia itself never claimed to be authoritative nor 100% correct all of the time.

Google's unfair and skewed page ranking of that site does more harm than good.

I would speculate that a significant amount of Google's users are actually looking for the Wikipedia article in several searches. I don't think Google owes it to anybody's arbitrary standards of what should or shouldn't have a high page ranking, except in terms of finding what people are searching. And that seems to be working pretty well for them.

Since journalists can't be trusted to validate facts

That is the problem and Wikipedia can't be held responsible for it.

Re:Wiki is better

[Anonymous Coward]

Horseshit. Go to any given article about any significant event that is a decade old or less. Here's the first example I could think of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War

Check out the citations: CNN, Newsweek, The Guardian, BBC, Globe and Mail, Washington Times.

If Wiki is better, it's getting its information from the media, so the question is: better than what exactly?

This is really simple to prevent...

[crt]

All they needed to do to prevent this was to ensure that the cited references pre-dated the original edit. If you can't find a reference that pre-dates the edit, then you have to assume it's possible that the reference came from Wikipedia itself.

Re:This is really simple to prevent...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!

Re:This is really simple to prevent...

[Seth Kriticos]

Yea, that'll make things simpler. Search the whole revision history since the article went on-line to check if your edit was in there somewhere before the external reference. Now give me my damn pony..

Re:This is really simple to prevent...

[RonnyJ]

That would work up until somebody decided to add the same 'fact' a second time.

I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

what sound did he make when he found out?

Re:I wonder...

[JoelMartinez]

I have it on good authority, that it sounded something like this

And this differs from other bad media facts how?

[salesgeek]

This is the oldest play in the book:

1. Write blog post with your "facts".
2. Write and distribute press release using your "fact" and referencing the blog as source.
3. Watch with glee as media outlets pick up your release and create thousands of references for your "fact"
4. Use the list of big time press that ran your "fact" in your advertising.
5. Evil laugh on the way to the bank.

Wikipedia...

[madhatter256]

A lot of colleges today will either take off points or simply throw away papers that have sources cited to wikipedia due to it's known major inaccuracies.

Re:Wikipedia...

[geekoid]

".. known major inaccuracies."

such as?
In the several studies I have read about wikipedia, it's been more accurate the 'traditional' sources.

Re:Wikipedia...

[Petrushka]

I wouldn't go that far. I'd simply apply the same penalty that I apply to all work that uses improperly sourced information. There's nothing magic about Wikipedia that makes citing it a worse crime than, say, citing a livejournal site.

Whatever happened to research?

[Antony-Kyre]

Maybe this is why schools don't want students citing Wikipedia as a source. RESEARCH cannot be emphasized enough.

Wikipedia may be good for providing an overview, but factual information it doesn't necessarily make. If anyone can edit, it's not like a newspaper, or other reputable source.

Re:Whatever happened to research?

[Lumpy]

Actually my wife being in grad school, the prof's will FAIL anyone that has a reference that is online at all. He is tired of the half assing that students are doing lately and requiring that all references be in print form only with full information on how to GET access to that reference.

She's an accounting major though.

Re:Whatever happened to research?

[geekoid]

The prof. is an idiot then and belongs in the 70s.

and students have always done half-assing.

Re:Whatever happened to research?

[I'm not really here]

Google Books to the rescue!

Re:Whatever happened to research?

[staeiou]

That's the 21st century version of failing a student for referencing a book from a "popular press" like Penguin, Harper, Random House, Doubleday, etc. No joke, one of my professors told me that when he was in grad school, he was publicly berated for citing one such book, even though it was a reprinted out-of-copyright classic. He was told he should have gotten the reprint published by a university press.

Re:Whatever happened to research?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fail.

No, the professor fails. Primary sources are online these days. This is not a response to half-assing; it is half-assing in itself. Accounting, huh? If a student downloads public records from a governmental department's website, then the student HAS gone to the best source for the data in question. There is no reason to have a student choose between driving 500 miles to the city in question, waiting one to three weeks for an agency to get around to shipping the data in hard-copy form, or using substandard, but available data. It's abusive to the tax-supported bureaucracy that's trying to digitize and automate some of its information processing to insist on hard-copy transmission, and it's abusive to the competent students to push them towards non-optimal information when better information is easily available.

If the professor can't tell the difference between the results of a 10-second Google or Wiki query and the results of a student going to the appropriate location for the desired data, then the professor isn't up to the task of grading papers. Change the course requirements, or instruct a competent graduate assistant to run down and pre-screen the sources used.

Re:Whatever happened to research?

[ronabop]

Does access to the books require a cart, driven by a buggy whip, as well?

Re:Whatever happened to research?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see his point. As most students tend to half ass it through college (you half ass it through high school). Watch the PBS 2 hour special on it, and from my experience in college that is a solid fact.

Yes most of you do half ass it. plus get it too easy.

when I was in college, a 80 was and F a 90 was a B- and only 100 was an A on a test.

Now I see you slackers getting a fricking 70 and you get a C!!!!

that explains why all college grads I work with are useless uneducated losers. you are all failures compared to how college used to be. retention rules that scale back the grading so that even the losers are getting "good grades" are causing the failure of the system making college grads useless.

That has to incredibly piss off the few honors students that are actually there to learn.

Re:I also hear...

[internerdj]

Once upon a time when news outlets reported on news, they needed to protect some of their sources because some of the information could result in retribution on the source. To get sources to open up they promised confidentiality where appropriate and as time went on this became the culture: The news has source authority based on the assumption they are practicing good journalism. As information has recently accelerated, there is less time for good journalism and instead we have good-enough journalism but they still maintain a front of source authority.

John Jacob ...

[silvakow]

His name is my name, too!

Hmm.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I, for one, am glad to see that the good old Authoritative Traditional Media are doing their usual bang-up job of showing their superiority to the unathoritative hearsay nonsense of those kids and their so called "new media".

All jokes aside, that is really what bugs me about the old media/new media debate: You've got people like Andrew Keen winging about how the new media are ushering in the death of taste and truth; but comparing them to some imaginary ideal of old media at their objective best. Unfortunately, "new media" are, in many cases, crap. However, "old media" are, in many cases, crap, and generally crap that is markedly less participatory, open, or responsive.

In certain respects, I'll be sad to see things like newspapers go, they have their upsides. If, though, they exist to parrot wikipedia and press releases, then what is the point? Wikipedia can parrot itself for free, and if you are the sort of sick bastard who actually likes press releases, prnewswire is that way.

Re:Hmm.

[cgenman]

The Wikipedia entry is already corrected, whereas the old media outlets are fixed on the page and will be wrong forever. This really shouldn't be an article about how Wikipedia destroys information, but how clueless old media can't keep up with this new world of dynamic information.

Hilarious

[Aerynvala]

I think it's funny as hell. It says far more about the stupidity of journalists than it does about wikipedia. Any idiot who doesn't double check their information deserves to be a laughing stock.

Re:Hilarious

[Hal_Porter]

The worst thing is that lots of awful journalists hide behind the doctrine of protecting their sources and by karma whoring to a rabidly partisan audience.

E.g. if I write an article now accusing Obama of eating babies based on anonymous sources, right wingers will back me up. A few months ago I could have done the same with Bush. Though I'd probably need a right wing and a left wing pen name to make it work.

Enjoy your 'reality'.

Re:Hilarious

[snspdaarf]

Don't be ridiculous. Nobody is going to believe Obama eats babies, because they will interpret your remark to mean human babies. Kitten, puppies, and harp seals are a different story.

Is that a joke in your pocket, or are you just reading Wikipedia?

It's a trust thing

[noundi]

Here's my philosophy on this: put some trust in wikipedia, put not trust in someone who puts some trust in wikipedia. Meaning while you can learn from wikipedia you should never use it as a source, but rather as a source of inspiration. And if you're a come-see-the-ads-on-my-page-guy (journalist, yes the title has been changed, go with it) you should NEVER exclusively use wikipedia as a source. However previously, when come-see-the-ads-on-my-page-guys were called journalists they actually did something called research, and this includes validating your sources. When the title change was upon them this concept became legend. Thus the come-see-the-ads-on-my-page-guy from spiegel.de didn't bother to click the history of the page, or read the conversation, or double check it elsewhere.

My question is, why are we questioning the authenticity of wikipedia and not the authenticity of todays journalism?

Sad but true...

[hesaigo999ca]

It's a sad world when most news communities are page scraping information from the web, instead of following up leads. Old school would never permit you making any such claims until the source had been proven, avoids problems in the end. However, today, it is cheaper to go Google something and then get your info from it....

ie- Story surfaces of Rhianna being beaten up by Chris Brown, a quick Google would show up some
mixed stories, so if someone was really trying to be quick and landed on the first page, would see that Chris Brown and Rhianna, have never been together as they alleged they were not...(we know they were thanks to access Hollywood)...however, without contacting Rhianna's publicist, this would actually go out in a story, if someone did not do their homework.

Wilhelm? Very odd!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

When someone wants to make a malicious entry in Wikipedia, they should put in some effort to make it sound plausible. Wilhelm as a first name for a Guttenburg stands out like a sore thumb. Obvious fake.

It is as though someone added names like Wolfram and Brian to the name of the venerable Headmaster of the Hogwartz, Albus Dumbledore.

Re:Wilhelm? Very odd!

[Aladrin]

I seriously hope you are kidding. None of those names stand out as odd to anyone more than a few hundred miles from there.

Re:Wilhelm? Very odd!

[budword]

You are not a Harry Potter fan. He is kidding.

Re:Wilhelm? Very odd!

[Aladrin]

Actually, I've read all the books (and some fanfic that pretended to be the books) and watched all the movies... I still couldn't decide if he was kidding or not.

Re:Wilhelm? Very odd!

[Trogre]

Surely a name like Wilhelm is just screaming out to be noticed.

I don't get it

[squoozer]

Why does everyone seem to get so up in arms when something is wrong on Wikipedia or worse when something is changed to be wrong. Do people really think that a site such as Wikipedia, where anyone can edit (just about) anything, isn't going to get abused. To be perfectly honest I'm surprised it doesn't get abused more than it does. Wikipedia is a great starting point for research it should never be the end point.

Wikipedia: a failed experiment

[viralMeme]

Wikipedia: a failed experiment in user generated content. Verifiable seems to mean, someone else typed it into a website ..

Re:Wikipedia: a failed experiment

[Crumplecorn]

The experiment succeeded, most people just don't know how to interpret the results.

Re:Wikipedia: a failed experiment

[JasterBobaMereel]

Encyclopedia Britannica a failed experiment in publisher generated content, Verifiable seems to mean someone published a book, newspaper, with it in, and no one checked if was actually true ....

Wikipedia is not a primary source
Britannica is not a primary source
Newspapers are rarely a primary source

Re:Wikipedia: a failed experiment

[internerdj]

As opposed to someone else typed it into a book? My books are not filled completely with references to peer-reviewed papers or committee approved technical specs. And this doesn't exactly give me warm fuzzies about the integrity of publishing houses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights The internet is a mixture of facts and inaccuracies, so is any published work. The only difference is now you don't have to be rich to make your mixture of facts and inaccuracies heard.

Research is both about weeding out the important stuff from the unimportant stuff but weeding out true stuff from untrue stuff. Banning wikipedia or failing someone for a refence to it is just pointless. Wikipedia is good for a starting point for research, a representation of what the general public thinks about a topic(factual accuracy being unimportant in that case), and a good exercise in critical thinking (Does it make sense? Can I find other sources that back up what I found? What do the edits/discussions say about the information presented? Why is that important to the topic?).

Re:Wikipedia: a failed experiment

[owlnation]

Wikipedia: a failed experiment in user generated content. Verifiable seems to mean, someone else typed it into a website ..

That depends what the basis of the experiment was. If you look at Honest Jimbo's Bank account I think you'll find wikipedia to be successful. If you are a book-burning nazi hell-bent on forcing your view over others, and over truth, you'll think that wikipedia is the greatest site on Earth -- a 4th Reich for the Internet.

But yeah, if you are the average person looking for truthful answers... it's really an abject, miserable failure.

Re:Wikipedia: a failed experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

But yeah, if you are the average person looking for truthful answers... it's really an abject, miserable failure.

Meh. Your opinion. I use it regularly, for a wide variety of tech and non-tech subjects - as a starting place - and find it highly accurate and very relevant. So do millions of others. I don't take it as gospel but I'm yet to find any serious problems.

Re:Wikipedia: a failed experiment

[geekoid]

"But yeah, if you are the average person looking for truthful answers... it's really an abject, miserable failure."

no, it's not. In fact it is surprisingly accurate. More accurate then a lot of text books and encyclopedia's.

unsurprising

[infalliable]

"Major" news outlets seem to be notorious for doing piss poor fact checking before releasing a story.

Hell, a former president visited by high school and they got the name of the school wrong on the news.

Truth

[whisper_jeff]

It is true and I shall make it so.

Ah, the beauty of the information age. I love it yet it makes me laugh at times.

Lame name game

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought you were going to say they changed his name to Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern -schplenden -schlitter -crasscrenbon -fried -digger -dingle -dangle -dongle -dungle -burstein -von -knacker - thrasher -apple -banger -horowitz -ticolensic -grander -knotty -spelltinkle -grandlich -grumblemeyer -spelterwasser - kurstlich -himbleeisen -bahnwagen -gutenabend -bitte -ein -nürnburger -bratwustle -gerspurten -mitz -weimache - auuber -hundsfut -gumberaber -shÃnendanker-kalbsfleisch -mittler -aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm.

Cryptographic hashes

[ewg]

This is why we'll soon be dropping old-fashioned "names" for cryptographic hashes of our decoded genomes.

Yours truly,
2619601604C639867C95D816A5E1A1FA

Re:Cryptographic hashes

[PopeRatzo]

Dear 2619601604C639867C95D816A5E1A1FA,

You're going to get diabetes at age 68.

Re:Cryptographic hashes

[gzipped_tar]

Dear 2619601604C639867C95D816A5E1A1FA,

Unsurprisingly, it appears that md5("ewg") = 2619601604C639867C95D816A5E1A1FA (as verified by echo -n "ewg" | md5sum ).

You should have used a salt. And a better hash function.

Signed,

5fb72929dc95aa57fb6b30652777b6
aba0299f5548fb3e685e22598d8440
d4ef6fd35e1558beb9fb1533a52dbf
9ecd99b411d36f3bbf737a5db36765
eb67a903

Re:Wikipedia is redefining what knowledge is

[Anonymous Coward]

DICK BUTT

It's not quite the same

[blind biker]

The Hebrew Bible (Tanach? I think the Torah is part of the Tanach, which should be most of the Old Testament. I might be rusty on this) does not quote Josephus' Antiquities, so your example doesn't quite fit.

Re:Wikipedia is redefining what knowledge is

[noundi]

Rationalism will be considered the human trait above all others. If you can't prove it, it's worthless.

This perfect world you're describing I would take to dinner, propose to, marry, make love to, raise a family of little perfect worlds, grow old with and finally together we would share the same grave.

Why are news articles used as 'sources'?

[JSBiff]

It seems like, if you are going to do an encyclopedia article, the source for someone's full name would not be a news article (which is a 'secondary' source - that is, the journalist had to get that info from somewhere else), but you should instead source facts from 'primary' sources - like a birth certificate (or other similar 'official' document - I'm not sure if Germany has the concept of a birth certificate like we do in the USA). True, there could still be an error in the official document, but at least the official document gets you much 'closer' to proof. I mean, technically, even if there is an error in the birth certificate, until the error is corrected, that *is* the 'correct' legal name for the person.

Re:Why are news articles used as 'sources'?

[kuldan]

Yes, we have that concept of birth certificates too - followed by Acceptance of Fathership (if in doubt) etc., all of which have to quote your full name - those papers are 25 years old in my case and the only ones besides my ID Card that state my full Name.

Re:Why are news articles used as 'sources'?

[JSBiff]

Well, I realized a problem with my example shortly after posting it - I think birth certificates are not generally a matter of public record (at least in the US), so it would be hard for anyone other than the person themselves to verify their name by their birth certificate, but the basic principle still applies - there should be some sort of official public document which can be used as a 'primary source' by which someone's name can be verified.

Re:Why are news articles used as 'sources'?

[DragonWriter]

It seems like, if you are going to do an encyclopedia article, the source for someone's full name would not be a news article (which is a 'secondary' source - that is, the journalist had to get that info from somewhere else), but you should instead source facts from 'primary' sources - like a birth certificate (or other similar 'official' document - I'm not sure if Germany has the concept of a birth certificate like we do in the USA).

Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia and, itself, a tertiary source, generally prefers secondary sources to primary sources. (see WP:NOR)

People writing in media that are considered secondary sources (including news articles) should prefer primary sources, not tertiary sources.

There's a simple solution to the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Chronology. Only allow verification of edits that pre-date the edit. Tadaaaa!

Can the man, himself, correct it?

[BenEnglishAtHome]

If I understand the way Wikipedia works (and I'm sure I don't, in any breadth), if, while the error was up, Guttenberg himself signed on and corrected the error, justifying his change in the attached discussion with "I should know my own name", the wiki-nuts would come out of the closet to revert him because he's not quoting a source.

Have I got that right?

Re:Can the man, himself, correct it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of.

Wikipedia is not a primary source, and isn't supposed to originate any new information or research. It's supposed to collect information that's already out there, and that can be independently verified. That's why everything's supposed to have a source.

The upshot of this is that you're not supposed to edit your own entry, or the entries on anything you're directly involved in. Anything you write can't be independently verified, and could count as independent research, so it has to be deleted.

It's OK to publish stuff elsewhere on the 'net, and get someone else to edit Wikipedia to match though. I don't see any reason you couldn't edit it yourself - it's not like Wikipedia knows who you are.

Re:Can the man, himself, correct it?

[u38cg]

Haven't seen it happen specifically with a person, but yes, I can easily beleive it. I made a slight edit to an article on an obscure folk album I own; it was swiftly reverted, and being bored, I edit-warred for a bit until I finally gave up. Apparently owning the album counts as original research. Sigh.

Re:Can the man, himself, correct it?

[geekoid]

Yes, and that's the only way it can be, otherwise ANYONE could say they're anybody.

Most of the article in Wikipedia are excellent.

Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[RobotRunAmok]

I mean, sure, if you need a handy re-cap of the fifth season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or a quick history of some server-side scripting language, you can't do much better than wikipedia: "by Geeks, for Geeks." But geo-politics? Current events? Stop. Wikipedia plays around in these and all areas, of course, but any student or journalist who uses it as source should be ridiculed, then shot.

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[owlnation]

if you need a handy re-cap of the fifth season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

In that case, you definitely can. Most wikipedia articles on Film and TV contain stolen content from IMDB, or from labors-of-love fan sites that depend on page views and micro-ad revenue for survival. (Amazon, the owners of IMDB, really should sue Wikipedia sideways over this). By choosing wikipedia over them you are NOT helping the shows you love. Plus, most film and TV wikipedia pages contain spoilers without any warnings -- as well as synopses that breach the rights of the creators.

Joss Wheedon in particular has suffered a lot of cancellations of his work -- by working with fan sites of his shows you are showing that his work is popular. By using wikpedia you are not, as well as simply encouraging people to steal from him.

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[amilo100]

WP goes further than that. They take content from Wolfram's site.

They also take content from PlanetMath. While this is legal it is sad - a nicer resource is raped by WP.

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[jank1887]

sorry. Wikipedia's easier. It wins.

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[mdwh2]

The media make a false claim without attribution or fact checking, and you're complaining about Wikipedia?

The question should be: Who takes the media seriously. They're great if you want a bit of pop culture or celebrity gossip, but geo-politics? Current events? Stop.

any student or journalist who uses it as source should be ridiculed, then shot.

The same goes for any encyclopedia, of course. But the problem isn't that they cited Wikipedia as a source (if they did, it would've been clear not to use the article in Wikipedia as a source), the problem is that the article made false claims without attribution. At that point, Wikipedia reporting that spiegel.de claimed his name was such-and-such was an entirely factual statement (since it was attributed), and the false claim lies with spiegel.de.

What about all the other times when someone makes a false claim, and it gets repeated around the media like some bad game of chinese whispers, without attribution? There, we never hear about it, or even find out it's happened in the first place. The fact that Wikipedia's edit history allows us to see it happening here is a step upwards.

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[xappax]

First of all, chill. Nobody's stealing from Joss Wheedon on Wikipedia - synopses and frame grabs are so solidly fair use it's not even debatable. Well...maybe by the MPAA...

Secondly, Wikipedia is /very/ against infringing on the copyright of other sources. They're kind of paranoid about it, if you ask me. If you see non-fair use content that's from a copyrighted source and it upsets you (as it clearly does), just leave a note on the talk page pointing out the violation.

Keep in mind, of course, that it's possible permission for the copy has been granted. But if not, Wikipedia editors will remove it.

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[u38cg]

Mmm. I find it pretty hard to believe that your rabid fanboy-ism really affects what gets cancelled more so than such mundanities as viewer numbers and demographics. Also, welcome to slashdot, where information wants to be free. What, exactly, is being stolen? If it's copyright, flag it and get it out.

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[Marcika]

You use the word "steal" a bit too enthusiastically, I think...

• Most wikipedia articles contain "stolen" content from IMDB? (I guess you mean copyright infringement?) Tag it, remove it, kill it with fire... Wikipedia doesn't want illegal content. (And I am fairly certain that "most" articles are fine, contrary to what you say...)
• Synopses breach the rights of creators? Don't make me laugh. It is now illegal to summarize the plot of a movie/TV series/book in your own words? CliffsNotes won't be happy to hear it...
• Creating highly-visible and extensive articles about Wheedon's work (as opposed to creating these articles on a niche fansite) is encouraging people to "steal"? Again, your leap of logic is dizzying me...

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[JohnFluxx]

And yet WP is a lot more readable than Wolfram. Wolfram is completely inaccessible for non-mathematicians. (e.g. physicists, engineers, cosmologists, etc who use math but aren't mathematicians)

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[amilo100]

Not at all (I use Wolfram a lot and I am not a mathematician).

I would not differ with you that WP is not readable - it is extremely readable. The editors of WP plagiarise from the best places. ;)

My problem is that the good stuff from all the other sites gets copied to WP. WP authors are not the people who create the information - they just copy it from various resources.

There are numerous articles in WP which does this. It is also detrimental to other open content endeavours (such as PlanetMath).

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[Scrameustache]

Most wikipedia articles on Film and TV contain stolen content from IMDB, or from labors-of-love fan sites that depend on page views and micro-ad revenue for survival. (Amazon, the owners of IMDB, really should sue Wikipedia sideways over this). By choosing wikipedia over them you are NOT helping the shows you love.

If they quote their source and link back to them, then they'll get traffic from people who might never have been t their site had it not been linked to by their preferred collaborative encyclopedia.

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

By that metric, your mom...oh, never mind.

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[skeeto]

Most wikipedia articles on Film and TV contain stolen content from IMDB, or from labors-of-love fan sites that depend on page views and micro-ad revenue for survival.

I call bullshit on this. Find us an example if one even exists. Wikipedia is very paranoid about these things, so I doubt you can find one. And no, getting information like dates and names are just facts, not subject to copyright.

In fact, I have always seen it the other way around. Ever search for something and find the Wikipedia echo chamber? All kinds of websites copy-paste Wikipedia articles, and then don't indicate the GFDL license its under, which is copyright infringement.

By choosing wikipedia over them you are NOT helping the shows you love.

Bullshit. People probably go to the Wikipedia article because the fan sites suck ass.

Plus, most film and TV wikipedia pages contain spoilers without any warnings

Wikipedia doesn't do disclaimers, not even spoiler disclaimers. If you are worried about spoilers don't read past the first paragraph in the article.

as well as synopses that breach the rights of the creators.

Bullshit.

Joss Wheedon in particular has suffered a lot of cancellations of his work

Right, that's Wikipedia's fault. Bullshit.

By using wikpedia you are not, as well as simply encouraging people to steal from him.

That doesn't even make sense.

Re:Who Takes Wikipedia Seriously?

[JohnFluxx]

The wikipedia version usually has much more info than the wolfram version. So I don't see how you can say they've just copied.

Take Pauli Matrices just as the first example I thought of:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PauliMatrices.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_matrices

Wikipedia has lot more information

Mistaken identity

[PopeRatzo]

I'll bet Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg is pissed about this.

He's the loser cousin of Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg who sells weed in a park in Munich.

By the way, their great great great great great great uncle developed the first samizdat.

Possibly another example?

[dreemernj]

I noticed this the other day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296

It doesn't site any legitimate sources, and links to a youtube video of a plane crashing, but that particular plane crash has also been showed on TLC and Discovery and described as being an unmanned, computer controlled plane.

Re:Possibly another example?

[CraftyJack]

You would think that an article like that would cite some sort of FAA or JAA report on the incident. It's a great example of an article put up by someone with an axe to grind, but I don't think it's an example of recursion.

Re:Possibly another example?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember this footage from the French TV news when this accident happen. 3 people died in this crash and there has been extensive hoopla surrounding it's investigation since. This was not an unmanned flight, although maybe someone got confused when writing the script or watching the film, since it could be described as the first fatal crash of a commercial fly-by-wire (ie. computer controlled) plane.

Re:Possibly another example?

[Fzz]

Well, for what it's worth, this crash is listed here:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19880626-0

Re:Possibly another example?

[dreemernj]

Yes, thats one of a few sites that lists it. But not are actually official sites so its hard to say how legitimate the info is on there.

Recorded History

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of our recorded history is made up of cases such as this? Wiki may have not been around forever, but cases such as this have surely occurred.

Could be worse. Could be quoting Conservapedia.

[VShael]

Then the circle would be something like

1) Redneck in bar
2) Conservapedia
3) Bill O'Reilly
4) Goto 1.

Re:Could be worse. Could be quoting Conservapedia.

[kcdoodle]

Add

Rush Limgaugh

Ann Coulter

Fox News

Paul Gigot

Religious Right

Re:Could be worse. Could be quoting Conservapedia.

[VShael]

Yup.

And did you hear Obama is a Muslim? And he doesn't have an American birth certificate?

Sack the reporters

[SirGarlon]

The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia -- including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung.

A reporter who quotes facts from Wikipedia, when those facts are not directly supported by another source (specifically, by a citation), should be fired. The job of a reporter is to obtain, verify, and evaluate information. For obtaining information, we now have Wikipedia and Google, which beat any newspaper for availability and breadth of coverage. So the remaining useful parts of the reporter's job are to verify and evaluate. A reporter who fails to do those has made himself obsolete. A middle-school kid could do the job of searching the Web and copying and pasting the findings together into an article (in fact, I understand that's how kids write research papers these days).

Re:Sack the reporters

[darthwader]

The job of a reporter is to obtain, verify, and evaluate information.

Nope, the job of a reporter is to write enough column-inches per day to fill the newspaper, and to make it interesting enough that people buy the newspaper and read the advertisements. Reporters are judged firstly on the amount they produce, and secondly on how interesting the writing is. Correctness only factors in because a correct article may be more somewhat interesting than an incorrect one.

"Eyes on Ads" is all that really matters to any media company. Having correct news may help to get eyes on ads, but it is not the objective. And if a reporter takes twice as long to write a correct story, but only delivers 10% more eyes on ads, then it's not cost-effective.

If there is any factor other than pure profit controlling what gets reported, then it is the ideology of the owner of the media outlet (e.g. Fox News).

This is the harsh reality that the "news professionals" don't want to admit. It will remain this way until we get news sources that are paid for by the readers, not the advertisers.

Re:Sack the reporters

[SirGarlon]

Reporters are judged firstly on the amount they produce, and secondly on how interesting the writing is. Correctness only factors in because a correct article may be more somewhat interesting than an incorrect one.

I agree that correctness isn't the first priority, but I think it is more important than you suggest. If the newspaper loses credibility, it will correspondingly lose circulation, and advertising revenue.

It is hard work to write the required number of column-inches before the deadline, while being interesting and accurate at the same time. That's why journalism is a profession. Any amateur can get 2 out of those 3.

b3ta

[littleghoti]

http://www.b3ta.com/links/Lazy_Journalist - "A small but loyal group of fans are lovingly called "The Zany Ones" - they like to wear hats made from discarded shoes and have a song about a little potato."

Re:And this differs from other bad media facts how

[Anonymous Coward]

6. ???
7. Profit!

Re:I also hear...

[GreatBunzinni]

Is it? Or is it that nowadays, thanks to the internet (ability to everyone connected to communicate freely and quickly among each other) makes it a whole lot easier to uncover problems, errors and lies in poorly put together stories? Nowadays it's possible to publicly debunk stories as soon as they pop out while in the past if someone happened to know the truth he couldn't possibly communicate that info to a relevant amount of people.

This reminds me of the

[justthinkit]

"Buick invented the assembly line" false fact. Ask anyone (as I did to /. some time back) and they will rush to "prove it" with a wikianswer.

Re:This reminds me of the

[Wovel]

Of course any US history book or even a non-retarded 10th grader could have solved that dilemma for you.

Re:This reminds me of the

[geekoid]

So?

FACTS are ALWAYS TRUE.

[Anonymous Coward]

If information is false, it cannot be fact, by definition.

This "your facts are all wrong" routine is itself an example of truthiness.

Which goes to show....

[worip]

You shouldn't believe/trust:

a. Journalists
b. Politicians
c. Human beings
d. Online encyclopedias
e. Slashdot articles on April the 1st
f. CEOs (especially of banks)
...
z. George Bush

Mortgage documents

[furby076]

Since you are required to use your full name when signing a mortgage document, this guy's home buying must be a BITCH!

Re:Mortgage documents

[LandDolphin]

Having recently purchased a home, I was worried. My Signature is rather short, and you cannot easily see my "full name". I was worried I would have to make a new signature showing my full name. In short, I did not have to. They wanted the same signature that was on my driver's license, bank account, and pass port.

So, based of my experience, he would not have to sign anything different then he normally signs.

Hmmm ...

[OneSmartFellow]

... could (and probably has) happen with almost any source. The advantage of Wikipedia is that it's self-correcting (not the same as auto-correcting), and shows a history, something not (freely) available with other private knowledge-bases.

Yet another attempt to discredit Wikipedia - Oh well, I know I'll keep using it, as long as it's available, in the same way I use any source of information - with due skepticism.

This happens every day on Fox news

[zerofoo]

Falsehoods portrayed as truth happens every day on the Fox news channel. Why is this news?

Re:This happens every day on Fox news

[Anonymous Coward]

...and basically every other news channel as well. If you think Fox is at all alone in this, you're deluded. It's not even the worst offender.

This is how the US Press works.

[ACMENEWSLLC]

One news organization will falsely report a fact, others will pick it up, and the original will state the fact as (post) verified by those who also are reporting the fact.

Perhaps Wikipedia needs WIPO oversight on factual information? (That is meant as a joke.)

This happens rather too often anyway

[David Gerard]

This is far from unheard of. Every journalist uses Wikipedia as their handy background file. Why not - a journalist's job can pretty much be described as turning useful but unreliable information into something more reliable. However, they can also slip up. Then someone investigates the reference, then the journalist is contacted and everyone goes "ah, whoops." Then it's fixed and a note's put on the talk page.

It's part of the joy of a live-ish website ...

Flagged revisions won't help here, since the circular references problem comes from the process of Wikipedia editors bothering to reference stuff. Thankfully it's catchable. Of course, it's not possible to gather statistics on circular references (they're an unknown unknown).

In Zoviet Germany

[Chemisor]

In Zoviet Germany ze vikipedia edits you!

read it again?

[Mathinker]

The post you critique claims that Josephus quoted the Tanach, not the other way around.

Re:read it again?

[blind biker]

The post you critique claims that Josephus quoted the Tanach, not the other way around.

I am well aware of that. And I tried to say that there is no circular citation. Thanks also to the fact that the Tanach predates Josephus by about a thousand years (for the newer books).

WikiPedia does not strive for the truth

[SpinyNorman]

It's been pointed out on /. a number of times before, so I'm not going to dig up the link, but WikiPedia explicitly states that their standard of inclusion is not truthfulness but verifiability - and they are acknowledging the difference. Of course it's rather amusing when the truthless but verifyable (i.e. printed elsewhere) fact originated on WikiPedia itself, but it doesn't reflect a weakness in WikiPedia that you may interpret it to; this is the way that WikiPedia is meant to work (presumably for the simple reason that verifyability as defined is objective, whereas the absolute truth is much harder to nail down - who determines it?!).

Re:WikiPedia does not strive for the truth

[BorgCopyeditor]

Of course it's rather amusing when the truthless but verifyable (i.e. printed elsewhere) fact originated on WikiPedia itself, but it doesn't reflect a weakness in WikiPedia that you may interpret it to; this is the way that WikiPedia is meant to work

So, you're saying it's not a weakness that it promulgates falsehoods because that's the way it's meant to work?

Re:WikiPedia does not strive for the truth

[SpinyNorman]

No - what I's saying is this is a non-story. It's mildly amusing, but it tells us nothing about WikiPedia that WikiPedia hasn't already extremely explicity told us about itself.

The way the story is presented is as-if this circularly self-referential "verification" exposes a flaw in WikiPedia, but it doesn't. WikiPedia is just applying their usual standard of verifyable rather than truthful, which has always been the case - hardly "news for nerds".

If anything this exposes a flaw in the regular media who likely would claim to shoot for the truth but have been caught copying from a source that explicity says it does not!

***

Of course it would be nice if WikiPedia did strive for the truth, but I'm not sure that's really possible. Does something like the Encyclopedia Britannica actually do any better? Do they actually dig up the guy's birth certificate to check his legal name, or do they in fact just get the information from some other source. Maybe they got it from the guy himself who decided to adopt some middle name without it actually being on his birth certificate - what's the truth about his name, then? If you havn't fact checked it on his birth certificate then how can you say that's his legal name rather than a nom-de-plume, or some crap someone found on the internet for that matter?

I think WikiPedia's verifyable basis of admission is actually a strength rather than a weakness - they don't claim to be authoritive unlike other sources that do but really arn't. At least with WikiPedia the correction cycle is extremely fast so if there is evidence of anything being false it can be corrected rather than being frozen in print for 10 years.

Re:WikiPedia does not strive for the truth

[BorgCopyeditor]

No - what I's saying is this is a non-story. It's mildly amusing, but it tells us nothing about WikiPedia that WikiPedia hasn't already extremely explicity told us about itself.

I agree with you so far, and your point about quick self-correction is right, at least about well publicized and verifiable errors, but I still don't see how the "reference loop" is an example of "how [Wikipedia] is supposed to work."

Also, pointing out that encyclopedias and newspapers don't always do any better does not prove this is not a problem for Wikipedia.

Re:WikiPedia does not strive for the truth

[scaryjohn]

It's been pointed out on /. a number of times before, so I'm not going to dig up the link, but WikiPedia explicitly states that their standard of inclusion is not truthfulness but verifiability - and they are acknowledging the difference.

I find it hilarious that the Slashdot Fortune is: "Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence." One could say the same thing about Wikipedia. (And I'm a sorta-proud, formerly regular contributor.)

Just one more reason Wikipedia is crap

[Cyberfed]

I have never used or trusted Wikipedia and this is a perfect example. Last time while bored we looked up "President of the US" and found to the qualifications to be at least 135 years old and a citizen and resident in South Africa.. Wikipedia is garbage

Re:Just one more reason Wikipedia is crap

[shentino]

You probably made that edit yourself beforehand.

On a more serious note, WP vandalism tends not to stick around, neither does misinformation, for long.

I recently reverted someone making inappropriate non-g rated comentary in an article.

Vandals are probably out numbered by good editors and even casual readers, neither of which put up with vandalism for long. WP tends to stay accurate because it effectively hires its readership as an army of proofreaders.

An example of crowdsourcing at its finest.

Re:Just one more reason Wikipedia is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so, I've seen vandalism and misinformation last on Wikipedia for months, even years. Sometimes it's even been reverted back as part of an edit war, or cycles back in when an incorrect source gets cited again.

Re:I also hear...

[Anonymous Coward]

there is less time for good journalism and instead we have good-enough journalism

We've always had "good-enough" journalism. Most famous articles and examples from the past are good because the crap has been filtered out. There's usually no reason to show the mediocre stuff.

Get a few newspapers in your hands from the 50's and take a look at all the biased, censored crap. And it was worse 50 years before that, and so on, all the way back to when the printing presses hit mainstream.

Our brains (and current media) have a tendency to remember the good things about daily life from the past more than the daily crap. (Which is good in a way. Those are the things I'd rather look back on.) But don't let that give you the illusion of superb journalism everywhere. It was pretty much the same as today.

80th Anniversary of the World

[Anonymous Coward]

I have it on good authority that the world started sometime in the 1920's.

As that has been marked as +5 Informative, we now have it on good authority that the world's 80th anniversary is sometime now.

My wife is an editor

[bleh-of-the-huns]

At a major news outlet (they own both papers around the US, and newswire services). They are not permitted to use wikipedia for anything, not even casual references. Any story that comes across her desk (or her co workers), that has wikipedia anywhere as a mention of a source, gets dumped, or additional research to find a non wikipedia related source is done if the story is important enough.

That said, I use wikipedia all the time, when it comes to technical related things, the specs and such are usually correct based off manufacturer or developer specs. Anything that is subjective, and wikipedia is useless..

of Primary Sources

[Anonymous Coward]

so are we faulting Der Speigel for using wikipedia as a source, or wikipedia for accepting Der Speigel as a verification?

People are talking of "primary sources", but an encyclopedia is supposed to be a compilation of information FROM primary sources. If we can make that assumption, then the encyclopedia itself can be considered a primary source.

OTOH, news outlets in no way limit themselves to "primary sources" to obtain their information, they'll consider most anything a "source", and as such cannot be considered a primary source themselves.

I'd use that logic to say that Wikipedia was a valid source for Der Speigel to use, and Wikipedia accepting Der Speigel as verification was in error, while at the same time accepting that the Wikipedia model itself was responsible for the mistake both on their page and at Der Speigel. (but these are really two separate issues)

This has happened before.

[Nick Ives]

A user from B3ta pulled this off ages ago. In that instance it was made up facts about a football teams' supporters getting printed in the Daily Mirror.

...so 80's .. see Brazil!

[nevdullc]

The evil of the government in this film is driven not so much by cruelty as by bureaucratic incompetence, much of which is played for laughs. But some of the scenes look eerie today, in our post-9/11 world, and are good fodder for conspiracy theorists. Pay particular attention to the scene where the official boasts that the government is winning its war against "the terrorists." The movie is ambiguous as to whether there are any real terrorists, and we have a sneaking suspicion that the explosions are caused by the government itself. The plot is set in motion by a typographical error leading an innocent man to be arrested instead of a suspected terrorist. The movie is not about this man but about a meek government worker, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), who's observing from the sidelines. Robert De Niro has a cameo as the wanted "terrorist" whose crime, from what we see, consists of doing home repairs without the proper paperwork. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/

"reputable media outlet"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact"

They didn't confirm facts in any way? or a simple google search?

I hardly consider any of these media outlets reputable, they're garbage. If this shows anything, it provides a list for people to view so they know which media outlets are crappy and to stop reading them.

Idle this shit

[Anonymous Coward]

yawn

I changed it.

[Inda]

I changed a lot a things.

Re:I also hear...

[BigAssRat]

there is less time for good journalism and instead we have good-enough journalism but they still maintain a front of source authority.

Lately what is deemed "good journalism" seems more like an affront to source authority.

email OTRS

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia almost always avoids original research, because original research requires that they have staff on hand who will vet the information, and Wikipedia doesn't have the staff on hand to do this.

Biographical mistakes are one of the few cases where Wikipedia makes an exception. Please email OTRS, and they'll make sure that a trusted person reviews the information, and corrects the article. The fact that people who contact OTRS provide their email address (and possibly more contact info) means that you (for once) have more credibility than some random anonymous vandal.

Re:email OTRS

[osu-neko]

Wikipedia almost always avoids original research, because original research requires that they have staff on hand who will vet the information, and Wikipedia doesn't have the staff on hand to do this.

However, Wikipedia is quite happy to allow users to do original research, provided they first post it on a website somewhere, then "cite" the website.

Re:email OTRS

[Splintax]

It happens, but it's generally against Wikipedia policy and discouraged.

Re:email OTRS

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia almost always avoids original research, because original research requires that they have staff on hand who will vet the information, and Wikipedia doesn't have the staff on hand to do this.

No -- Wikipedia doesn't allow original research because it's an encyclopedia. Original research is disseminated through academic publications (scientific journals, etc).

German names "von und zu" meaning?

[dwalsh]

I am not a German or a German-speaker, but most of in the English speaking world have seen "von" in front of a German surname. It seems similar to the suffix "son" in English/Scandinavian surnames or the prefix "Mac" in Irish/Scottish surnames.

However "von und zu" translates as "from and to". Does this refer to some inbreeding problem in the German aristocracy? :-)

Re:German names "von und zu" meaning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not inbreeding - merely time travel.

Re:German names "von und zu" meaning?

[vispillo]

'von' should be translated as 'of' or 'from' and indicates where the (noble) family was originally from. 'Zu' was sometimes added to show where the family resided at that time, so you could be 'von' one place, but currently living 'zu' somewhere else. A combination of 'von' and 'zu' (as in Mr von und zu Guttenberg's case) thus shows that when the special privileges of the nobility in Germany were abolished in 1919 and titles were converted to plain old surnames, the family still resided at their original ancestral home.

obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Create fake website to back up your facts.
2. Make Wikipedia page reference your fake page.
3. ???????
4. PROFIT!

and also...
"In Soviet Russia, Wikipedia article write YOU!"

Re:I also hear...

[cgenman]

Are you referring to the period in the 20's and 30's where news was mostly tabloid muckraking? Or the 50's when news was essentially government propoganda?

Re:Not news

[thannine]

This is an example of why Wikipedia is fundamentally flawed, and in my job as a university lecturer, I grade essays that cite Wikipedia no higher than 2:2.

No, that is not an example of why Wikipedia is fundamentally flawed. It's an example of how the newspapers don't do their job right. It's their job to check their facts and not use Wikipedia for that. And definately you should give low credits to (or even fail) any essays that cite Wikipedia. But even that doesn't mean Wikipedia is flawed. I just means it should not be used as a authoritative source of information.

Re:Wikipedia is redefining what knowledge is

[thannine]

We're getting to the stage where all human endeavors have to be proven in fact, or they're considered worthless.

Excuse me, but I don't believe you. Where's the proof? Show me the proof!

Re:Not news

[mdwh2]

This is an example of why Wikipedia is fundamentally flawed

I hope you don't lecture logic - the problem here isn't specific to Wikipedia; the problem here is the media not checking facts, and not attributing their sources.

and in my job as a university lecturer, I grade essays that cite Wikipedia no higher than 2:2.

And for anyone who cites any encyclopedia, I hope.

(What about someone who cites spiegel.de?)

You're ALL missing the point

[meist3r]

The terrible thing about this situation is NOT that the degrading print media and others took their information from Wikipedia which would expose their lack of journalistic precision.

What NO SINGLE FUCKING ONE has mentioned so far is that this guy has just been appointed minister of economic affairs in my country AND NO ONE KNOWS WHO HE IS for fuck sake. They all got his name(s) wrong because this guy hasn't achieved anything yet. They looked him up on Wikipedia because our awful government has just appointed a nameless aristocrat to the most important position in the state during times of an economic crisis.

That, my friends, I find far more disturbing than a few journalists looking up an unimportant guy with way too many names on Wikipedia.

Re:You're ALL missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're worried about his lack of accomplishments, just go add some to his Wikipedia page.

I'm sure Der Spiegel will pick it up in a matter of days, and then it will become reality, and you can relax.

Re:You're ALL missing the point

[bgray54]

That's all right. Our Secretary of the Treasury doesn't know how to pay his taxes.

Re:You're ALL missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

... a nameless aristocrat ...

That's hardly fair. He has way more names then most folk. And we've been trying to give him even more!

Re:You're ALL missing the point

[F-3582]

Well, he was Secretary-General of his small bavarian split-party. Which means that he might at least be able to talk. I don't recall those secretaries having to be able to think by themselves and/or having to be an expert in their ressort. Either this or someone explain to me why someone formerly responsible for agriculture suddenly becomes Secretary of Education (talking about Steffen Flath, by the way).

Re:You're ALL missing the point

[DNS-and-BIND]

Nah. Incompetent, unqualified politicians come and go. The journalists (who are supposed to be our "guardians" of democracy) that can't even bother to fact-check a story are a much, much bigger problem. You see, they're not elected, nor appointed, nor answerable in any way to the people...only management.

Re:You're ALL missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh - so you are the guy from Spiegel

Re:You're ALL missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

What NO SINGLE FUCKING ONE has mentioned so far is that this guy has just been appointed minister of economic affairs in my country AND NO ONE KNOWS WHO HE IS for fuck sake.

Maybe because that is not what this Slashdot article is about.

Re:You're ALL missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

No. That's NOT the point.

Re:You're ALL missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in /. comments would someone call a guy with 12 names "nameless".

House is right.

[some old guy]

Everybody lies.

bildblog.de did it

[Anonymous Coward]

the writer of the bildblog claims[1] he did it.
in order to demonstrate how research-lazy german`s media are

[1]http://www.bildblog.de/5695/wie-ich-freiherr-von-guttenberg-zu-wilhelm-machte/

Obvious solution

[Sanity]

Any reference used to substantiate a fact added to a Wikipedia article must pre-date the addition of the fact.

Re:Obvious solution

[F-3582]

I smell a god-awful pun here.

Irresponsible Journalists

[Wovel]

Just because these "Journalists" were lazy and irresponsible does not mean there is something wrong with Wikipedia. How do you even know the problem originated in Wikipedia. It may have been a newspaper article that prompted the initial edit to wikipedia.

No, that would be 1983

[Anonymous Coward]

1984 never existed. Now don't bug me while I edit a few more WK articles.

Qwglhm?

[FiloEleven]

Reminds me of the Duke of Qwglhm, Graf Heinrich Karl Welhelm Otto Friedrich von Ubersetzenseehafenstadt, in Cryptonomicon. This guy has him beat for length but not, IMO, absurdity. Plus, "Ubersetzenseehafenstadt" is just fun to say.

Google to the Rescue

[innot]

Google results without "Wilhelm" = 236 results.

Google results with "Wilhelm" = 2060 results.

With so many sources agreeing that "Wilhelm" is one of his first names it must be right!

So, Mr. von und zu Guttenberg: You better get your passport checked, there seems to be one name missing on it!

BTW if you can read german you can find a anonymous blog entry from the guy who added the "Wilhelm" to Wikipedia.

On that page I loved the quote from the "Süddeutsche" newspaper which translates into something like:

"...and his ten first names. Somtimes Guttenberg lists them. If you really ask him: Karl(1) Theodor(2) Maria(3) Nikolaus(4) Johann(5) Jacob(6) Philipp(7) Wilhelm(8) Franz(9) Joseph(10) Sylvester(11)"

(emphasis & numbers mine) So they knew he had 10 names, but never bothered to count the names they copied from Wikipedia)

obama inauguration estimate

[Straif]

Same type of 'fact checking' happened with the Obama inauguration estimate.

1) News papers reported an estimate of 2 million people.

2) Parks service (which stopped counting crowds after the Million Man March a few years back after their analysis was way below the politically correct estimate) quotes the newspapers.

3)When asked for verification of their numbers the newspaper points to the Parks Services numbers.

Most independant analysis of satellite photographs pegs the number at somewhere between 800k-1.2m ; including estimates for people in transit. Still a very impressive number but nowhere near the hyped multimillions the press had been pushing for weeks so essentially ignored.

The Washington Post did do a follow up piece which exposes some of the problems (after it was pointed out to them that they were the Parks Services source for the 1.8 figure in the first place) but even though they still headline the 1.8m figure it doesn't seem any of their other sources come withing 500k of that number.

In the new age of media, speed of data, and it's ability to match expectations, sadly far outweigh accuracy.

Re:obama inauguration estimate

[sheldon]

It's interesting the conservatives are jumping up and down because the estimates are larger than the politically correct number. :-)

Re:obama inauguration estimate

[Straif]

Almost universally the independant estimates are, as I've said, all in the neighbourhood of 800k -1.2m. The 1.8m number is the very definition of a PC value because it is almost entirely derived from beurocrats and people who want to push the "largest gathering ever" narrative with no regard to actual analysis of the data at hand.

I personally have no stake in whatever the real number was, I was just using this as an example of how fiction can become truth using circular verification, as was the case in the actual post.

All media need to cite sources, not just Wikipedia

[Aristos Mazer]

It just means that ALL media, not just Wikipedia, need to be using "citation needed".

Re:I object!

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, how can the first post be redundant?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

True Fact

[Morosoph]

Unfortunately for the author, this sequence of events does not show that false facts get established as truth, for the simple reason that your name is the name that you use.

*pop* goes the entire basis for the article.

This isn't a Wikipedia problem...

[ThinkDifferently]

It's a moronic editor problem. Everyone should know that you can't cite a source that was published later than the work that you are editing. DUH!

I think we may have to update the old adage "cite your source" to "cite your prior source".

Google has been known to reconsider ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... its position on such things. When Google first started doing math, I threw the usual trip cases at it and Google confidently reported that 1/0 = 0. I duly reported that here at Slashdot (don't ask me to find the post) and much laughter and derision (and division) ensued.

Google later decided to take time to reconsider its position and has been reporting the answer as undefined ever since. When it will reach a conclusion on this, I don't know.

There is no false fact.

[jmichaelg]

If a statement is true, it's a fact. If it's false, it's not a fact.

A false fact doesn't exist. Just because a statement is asserted as a fact does not make it a fact.

BTW, anyone who uses wikipedia as an authoritative source is an idiot.

Re:There is no false fact.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you fucking autistic or what?

False fact?

[richmaine]

Is the poster trying (somewhat lamely) to be amusing? Or, as seems more likely, is he unaware that "false fact" is an oxymoron?

Re:I also hear...

[darthwader]

Notice that the parent starts his post with "Once upon a time", which is the standard opening for fairy tales.

News has always been mostly biased and sloppy. The "good old days", when men were men, everyone was honest, people didn't get sick, child abuse didn't exist and everyone loved their spouses never existed. It's just a romantic notion, best viewed in sepa or black-and-white.

Also, nowdays we have the technology (access to other sources of news) to know when the a particular source of news is wrong, so we are often disgusted at how wrong the news is. Back then, the average user had no way of knowing if the news was correct or not, so they just trusted it. That is why the news appears more incorrect now than in the past.

Or, as some like to call it...

[F-3582]

Prior Art®

Not a problem with wikipedia

[LateArthurDent]

And therein lies Wikipedia's problem.

Not at all. Everything was correct on the Wikipedia side. The erroneous entry was removed, someone found a reputable source that backed up the erroneous entry, and they put it back. Then it was found that the reputable source had it wrong, so it was changed again.

The problem lies entirely with the newspapers who went for wikipedia as their source. You never use an encyclopedia as your source, EVER. The last time I was allowed to use an encyclopedia as a source was in third grade, and even that shouldn't be allowed because it teaches bad research habits to kids who will grow up to be journalists. You use the encyclopedia to satisfy idle curiosity and to start your research (not to gather facts, but to figure out what questions you should be asking and what directions your research will take).

Be part of the solution!

[timc]

I created the article at Citizendium and a talk page. I also mentioned this /. article on the WP talk page. At least Citizendium editors can be reached for comment regarding the articles they edit. Who's UweBayern? Probably not even his real name.

Follow the bouncing ball...

[zztong]

Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg,
His name is my name too.
Whenever we go out
The people always shout,
"There goes Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Jingleheimer_Schmidt

Re:I object!

[SBrach]

Duh, he uses the word "I" twice, the word "Object" twice, the word "Of" twice, and the word "The" a whopping three times. You can't get much more redundant than that.

Point wikipedia to slashdot!

[rlseaman]

The OTHER point everybody is missing is that wikipedia is likely to be more trustworthy on such issues than the corporate media. Some pundit asserts a completely unsubstantiated interpretation of the facts, and not only does this dominate the current news cycle as it gets repeated over-and-over by "reporters" who are too lazy to check the facts or their interpretation, and not only does the same vapid nonsense get dredged up whenever the story pops to the top of future news cycles, but it back propagates to revise what the facts were in the first place. At least wikipedia has a mechanism for attempting to make corrections - for instance, has anybody edited the page to point to this slashdot thread?

Dumb question

[Ant2]

Did anyone think to ask Karl what his full name is?

The edit was approved by a Wikipedia user

[RockMFR]

The change that originally introduced "Wilhelm" to the German Wikipedia article was approved by the user "Gamma9" about 12 minutes after the edit was made. As you may know, the German Wikipedia has a "sighted revisions" system that requires registered users to approve edits made by anonymous users. This is the system that has been proposed for the English Wikipedia that is supposed to stop this shit. I find this to be hilarious.

Simple solution

[DragonWriter]

On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia.

Any outlet which uses Wikipedia as a source, rather than a research tool to find other sources, should, ipso facto, not be considered a "reputable media outlet" for any purpose, especially as a valid source of citations in Wikipedia.

Just a matter of hours

[Otis P. Foont]

... until this shows up on the Colbert Report.

HHGTTG

[bkirkham]

Wikipedia is turning into the Hitchhiker's Guide.

"Where it is inaccurate, it is at least definitively inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it is always reality that's got it wrong."

secondary v. tertiary sources

[DragonWriter]

That's what you get if you discourage the use of primary sources in favor of secondary sources.

No, its what you get when you fail to distinguish secondary sources from tertiary sources. Any source which relies on any encyclopedia directly for information, rather than using it as a research tool, is at best a tertiary source (and arguably worse than that), and should not be given the weight of a reliable secondary source in assembling an encyclopedia or similar tertiary source.

Der Spiegel superficially seems to meet the criteria of a secondary source, but the fact that they are using material from Wikipedia without any independent verification means they are, in fact, no better than a tertiary source, and therefore not the kind of source a Wikipedia article should rely on (even if the tertiary source they were using on wasn't Wikipedia, but was instead, e.g., Britannica.)

Wilhelm ist Correct!

[Anonymous Coward]

ACHTUNG:

Ich bin Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.

Ich have been trying to change the Wikipedia entry fur months zu properly include mein middle name, "Wilhelm".
Every time, reverted reverted reverted!

Finally, the newspapers call me up to confirm my full name, und now they too are ridiculed!

many editors make for greater accuracy

[Bootsy]

Anything published anywhere is bound to have errors, look at technical books, corrections get made through revisions. Wikipedia corrections get found and corrected faster because it is used and edited more than perhaps any other source. Newspapers are thrown together with such short deadlines they are littered with errors, but once printed can't easily be corrected

But 2+2 does equal five...

[solder_fox]

> Wikipedia now creates the truth. If they say 2+2=5, then 2+2=5. You will learn to love Big Wiki.

2+2 does equal five, though.

let x = 1
The derivative of x is 1. The derivative of 1 is zero. Therefore the derivative of the equation == 1 == 0.

2+2 = 2+2+0, by additive identity.
but 0=1.

Therefore 2+2 = 2+2+1.

Therefore 2+2=5.

2+2=5

Doh

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember a thrilling exchange of truth on the intellectual property talk page some time ago (emphasis added):

Prevailing does not always equal correct. To invoke Goodwin's Law and get over with, just consider Nazi Germany as an example of how prevailing definitions are not always morally correct, and how minority POVs (anti-Nazi within Germany at that time) need to be given due consideration. I recognize the criticisms included in the article, and in fact I join Curmudeon in feeling that they are too long-winded and the article could benefit tremendously from paring down. Lastly I am not editing WP articles, I am discussing same before doing so, and my expectation was the discussion could be a bit free flowing and forgiving. I could provide citations to back up my claim regarding natural rights. The supreme court has been consistent in this regard, so it is not so much personal conviction as a matter of public record. As to the spirit of copyright law, that also is set forth clearly in the Act, and has been confirmed by numerous supreme court judgments. a possible reason why it remains a minority POV is that not too many people are familiar with the Act or with the jurisprudence. Adam.Wasserman (talk) 20:23, 2 February 2008 (UTC)Adam

And by tradition, the first to demonstrate Godwin's Law is presumed to have lost the argument. :) But seriously, you're overlooking the context of my remarks. You say, "Prevailing does not always equal correct." That's true... but it does here. Wikipedia doesn't care what's "morally correct". It doesn't even take a position on whether Hitler was evil. As far as WP is concerned, the facts are whatever verifiable and reliable independent sources say they are. When the sources disagree, it gives prominence to the prevailing view and acknowledges other views to the extent that they're significantly represented among those sources. The "information wants to be free" doctrine certainly warrants coverage, but I think you're selectively reading the case law to give it more support than it does (e.g. I read the majority in Eldred v. Ashcroft as an indifferent "who cares?" about the public domain). So it comes down to what I think vs. what you think... which is why we're supposed to go only to outside sources for that kind of analysis. - JasonAQuest (talk) 23:39, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a beautiful statement of our policy. Wikipedia is not a forum for original research, let alone moral reform. We simply follow reliable sources. Cool Hand Luke 01:39, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Mainstream media is filled with errors

[pubwvj]

And the point? People, especially those in the mainstream media, keep making out like only Wikipedia has mistakes. I find a dozen or more errors in every edition of our daily newspaper and more in the Sunday paper. The nice thing about Wiki is there is the ability to correct things and there is a history of edits. If only the mainstream media were so good.

spam spam spam eggs and spam

[Hierophant7]

There's a Monty Python skit where they interview an old man with a ridiculously long German last name. I think the man dies while being interviewed because the interviewer has to take so long to say his name.

Just sayin', it probably affects this guy's time-effiency. I'm not voting for him.

Happened before - and mentioned on Slashdot

[RmB303]

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/19/1452244

This is a common problem with WP

[geohump]

WP, while a useful web site, tends to promote "popular opinion" into "psuedo fact". As long as enough people who edit WP believe something to be true, the entries about that item will promote the popular belief as fact. Eventually, due to WP's popularity, the psuedo fact becomes accepted as an actual fact.

Example: according to linguistics, there are no rules about what words can be added to the English language. Indeed English is the least pure, most widely hybrized language on the planet and new words are added to it daily. For example the verb "slashdotted" :-) or the verb "google" etc.. Nowhere are there any rules saying "these specific things cannot be added to the english language because they don't meet criteria 'x'." According to linguistics, the only rules used to determine if something is actually a word or not are these two:

A: Is the word being used?
B: Is the meaning of the word as used agreed on?
If those two requirements are metthen the word in question is a legitimate word.

The example peevologists hate the most: "virii" (yes, it meets the requirements. Therefore it is a word, despite being desperately hated by peevologists :-) So use it often! ;-)

Instead of following these rules, WP indulges in what linguists call "peevology" which is the process whereby a language myth becomes accepted as "fact" due to aggresive "enforcement" of the myth by people who actually have no idea what they are talking about.
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&hs=q9z&q=peeveology+OR+peevology+OR+%22peeve-ology%22&btnG=Search

Fortunately even the mainstream peevologists are realizing that language just isn't used the way the 18th century grammarians (who started the whole myth of "standard english) think it ought to be used. In fact it wasn't used that way back then, and never has been from then until now.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507EFDA113AF93BA2575BC0A9649C8B63

The biggest issue with peevology is that many copy editors have been mis-educated about these very issues and go forth laying waste to perfectly good writing because they (incorrectly) believe said writing is not following "the rules". (the article refers to prescriptivists who have some overlap with peevologists but are generally less harmful, just annoying.)

Examples from the language log http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/
"Singular they" is illegal. http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/003572.html
"Split infinitives" are not allowed. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=515
"That isn't a Word." http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001652.html

David Crystal, in his new book How Language Works, says "Language change is inevitable, continuous, universal and multidirectional. Languages do not get better or worse when they change. They just -- change." http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=How+Language+Works&x=15&y=17

Geoffrey K Pullum:

I was walking across campus with a friend and we came upon half a dozen theoretical linguists committing unprovoked physical assault on a defenseless prescriptivist. My friend was shocked. Sh

MR? von und zu Guttenberg ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Herr von und zu Guttenberg !!!

There, fixed that for yer....

The wiki in question

[duckInferno]

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg

The "Wilhelm" has been removed.

Its been going on for centuaries

[pfafrich]

The circularity we are seeingin wikipedia is really nothing new. Indeed this cyclic confirmation of ideas have been going on throughout human history. Much our our beleifs are the result of Chinese whispers with one source quoting another source and the original being lost in history, if it ever existed. Astrology and conspiracy theories are prime examples of this basing whole beleif systems on what others have said.

It is one of the reasons we have profesional historians whose job is to untangle a complex web of documents to find the reality behind a situation.

Re:Not news

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

I've no idea if this is the one that you're thinking about, but it's "something to do with football":

http://www.b3ta.com/links/227296

(and yes, that's b3ta rather than the Eye, but I'm sure the Eye will have covered it).

and in my job as a university lecturer, I grade essays that cite Wikipedia no higher than 2:2.

What? I got a 2:2 - you mean I could have stayed down the pub and nicked it all off Wikipedia (had it been invented at the time)? Kids today....

New meme?

[DinDaddy]

So do we now refer to this type of occurrence as getting Wilhelmed?

Silly Bloke has too many damn names anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell can remember that many names anyway. Even his mom probably wouldn't notice slotting a few more in there.

Furthermore...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it shows that sources like German newspapers that were previously considered reliable sources cannot be cited in Wikipedia anymore, because they generally copy things from Wikipedia without checking the real source.

Yes, Wikipedia's and Spiegel's editors' fault.

[DrYak]

The problem isn't that Wikipedia provided bad info

Yes, it is a case of bad work from the editors of both Wikipedia and der Spiegel.

In a complicated case like this one (the name is indeed long and as such it's very easy to make a mistake), both should have went for an actual definitive first-hand source :
- official registered name in the guy's birthplace City Hall.
- official registered name in the guy's university
- other census data
- the guy's ID card or passport if he accept to publish a picture of it.
etc.

They should have for some official source which should have the full name recorded.
Not for some newspaper/encyclopedia who would have it recorded second hand.
In worst case, they should at least have checked where the second-hand source did get its information :
- der Spiegel should have realized that wikipedia's information was unsourced and thus unreliable.
- the Wikipedia user should have realized that der Spiegel got its info back from Wikipedia and thus can't be used as a source.

..and?

[Niobe]

So what, intelligence communities have been using this technique for years.

MOD PARENT FUNNY PLEASE

[tlambert]

MOD PARENT FUNNY PLEASE

Re:I also hear...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.conservapedia.com/Elephant

Name Check

[Imazalil]

Good plan, until the clerk at city hall does a name check and sees that some guy on wikipedia is already using it.

Reliable 3rd parties?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I want an article about what reasonably reliable third parties report about him.

The biggest problem we have is that such things don't actually exist.

Nurse & Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

I once phoned up my doctor and go the after-hours nurse. I asked her a question and she appeared absolutely clueless and said that she was going to do a search. When I asked her what she meant with "search" and if this by any chance involved the use of Google and/or Wikipedia, she replied "yes." I was flabbergasted. When I then told her that she was probably going to end up reading the Wikipedia article I had edited just 30 minutes earlier on the subject in question because it had been in such a bad state and that my edits should really be reviewed by someone who knows the subject better than I, it was her turn to be flabbergasted. She then started to understand that anyone can edit an article and that what one reads on the Internet may not necessarily be correct!

P.S. What Wikipedi needs is for edits to go to a reviewer instead of taking effect immediately.

Bindun... "hats made from shoes"

[ReginaldSlapknackers]

El Reg reported a similar incident a few months ago: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/17/wikipedia_and_the_mirror/

NO

[/dev/trash]

That would be original research.

This has happened before...

[Taed]

I'm positive that is not the first case, and I would assume that there are many others.

The one that I'm directly aware of was a few years ago, circa July 2005. See this nice writeup for detail.

I contribute to a web site called Gullible.Info, which, as you might guess from the name, is 100% anti-fact-checked information. That is, guaranteed false.

The site had posted a "fact" that Timothy Leary claimed to have discovered a new color called "gendale". This "fact" eventually made its way into the Wikipedia article about Leary by someone who didn't understand the background of Gullible.Info. From there, it made its way into the large UK newspaper The Guardian (within an article about Leary). By that time, it had been removed from Wikipedia due to lacking a source. However, after The Guardian publication, it was then added back in since there was now a "good" source. (Although it was later removed when the owner of Gullible.Info pointed out to the folks involved that Gullible.Info was hardly authoritative and no information coming from it can be trusted.)

Note that at no time was anyone intentionally causing incorrect information to appear on Wikipedia. In each case, the people involved were acting in good faith, albeit with misplaced trust.

ATTN SLASHDOT MODERATORS

[martin-boundary]

Please mod grandparent post funny, as it is considered to be funny by a slashdot reader named tlambert. Evidence for this can be found in a comment on slashdot.com, which is considered a trusted site. Also, the comment is in all caps, which counts twice as much.

Not exactly news...

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't really news. Wikipedia has acknowledged this effect for a while. Look at this article. Down in the "Miscellaneous" section, you'll find this paragraph (unless some smartass removes it): Because Wikipedia is widely used, often showing up high in Google searches, and its dangers are not well understood by many people, misinformation in Wikipedia articles can easily spread to other external sources. In turn, the external source (which may not have cited the Wikipedia article) may be used as justification for the misinformation in future revisions of the Wikipedia article. This is sometimes called an echo chamber, and some well-known Wikipedians including Wales have done it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Truth

[mahadiga]

Truth is above everything.
And truth is nothing but verifiable past and present.

Where is the reference for "von und zu Guttenberg"

[findoutmoretoday]

"Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage"

Names from "old and noble lineages" behave differently from more "common names".  Where over time some names disappear, the same way some genes get lost over a number of generations,  noble names are immortal. [citation needed (von Klausewitz is a good start;)]

A   possible way to compensate this, is to ad a probabilistic expression to old names;  the older the name, the less probable it becomes.  Quantum physics notation could come to help as a name becomes probabilistic entity.

Ah, sorry

[Mathinker]

> I tried to say that there is no circular citation

Ah, I think you should have been more explicit for us slower-on-the-uptake and/or telepathically-challenged Slashdotters. Or us just being used to have random posters make mistakes. You are correct, the original post was off-topic, actually, for it not being a circular fact-laundering. (Sorry you can't get the karma back, if it mattered to you).

Oh my god

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god someone got someone's comically long name wrong off of Wikipedia! It's the end of the world! I bet this is how the Iraq war started!

Wikipedia must become a primary source

[Anonymous Coward]

It is important to understand what Wikipedia is. It is an encyclopaedia and a secondary source, which means it merely retransmits information that is already published elsewhere. Wikipedia does not aim to include any original information.

As Wikipedia has decided to be a secondary source, this means it does not aim to find what the truth is, but merely to retransmit what other sources say about the truth, and only select these sources that it finds more reputable (but not necessarily closer to the truth).

Therefore, if you understand Wikipedia as I do, there is absolutely no breach of Wikipedia policy to include the wrond name as long as it is published as such by a source which is considered reputable, as by doing so Wikipedia correctly follows its policies and practices.

The problem, therefore, must be either in the source which is considered reputable (it should not be viewed as reputable anymore) or in the general spirit of the Wikipedia policy to be a secondary source (it should re-examine this and become a primary source).

In my opinion Wikipedia should stop being an encyclopaedia and become a primary source. Only primary sources can find the truth. The moment you limit yourself to a secondary source, you effectivelly stop seeing the truth and only see what other sources say about the truth (which is probably not the truth).

Unless Wikipedia allows original content to be added this problem, finding the truth among other sources and trying to spot which ones are reputable, will always happen.

The only solution is for Wikipedia to become a primary source and seek to find out what the truth really is, rather than merely reflecting the viewpoints various other publications have.

This could be implemented easily, by cutting each article into three sections: one section will reflect what other publications say, the other section will include opinion and essays (personal viewpoints on perceived or built truth), and the last section will include proved truth (information that is scientifically true because of statistics, data collection, or experiements, like what the scientific journals do).

not primary, secondary sources are the best

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia's reliable source criteria, primary sources aren't as good as secondary peer-reviewed sources, such as peer-reviewed literature reviews published in an academic journal.

Is this Wikipedia "playing around?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, sure, if you need a handy re-cap of the fifth season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or a quick history of some server-side scripting language, you can't do much better than wikipedia: "by Geeks, for Geeks." But geo-politics? Current events? Stop. Wikipedia plays around in these and all areas, of course, but any student or journalist who uses it as source should be ridiculed, then shot.

It "plays around" with geopolitical subjects, does it? Check out this randomly-selected feature article on the Azerbaijani people. Does it read like it was written by goofy geeks?