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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."
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!"
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.
That's what you get if you discourage the use of primary sources in favor of secondary sources.
Sounds more like a failure of investigative journalism, not Wikipedia.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
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.
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.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My blog
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.
http://transformativeworks.org/
The experiment succeeded, most people just don't know how to interpret the results.
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.
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.
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.
Funny? More like insightful..
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).
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
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.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
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.
I thought the story was that Wikipedia verifiability over truth policy is retarded!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I seriously hope you are kidding. None of those names stand out as odd to anyone more than a few hundred miles from there.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
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.
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.
I hate printers.
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.
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.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
IANYL, IANAL, TINLA, IANAMD, IANAP,
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.
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.
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.
Any reference used to substantiate a fact added to a Wikipedia article must pre-date the addition of the fact.
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.
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.
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
Thanks for making your bias clear.
The pot calling the kettle black.