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]

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[MrNaz]

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

Re:1984?

[MrNaz]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[eln]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[Anonymous Coward]

... left-winger edit warriors ...

Thanks for making your bias clear.

... the sourcing is routinely biased ...

The pot calling the kettle black.

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

[History's Coming To]

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

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

[bruthasj]

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

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.

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"...

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..

[jsiren]

Under a tombstone that says [citation needed]?

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?

[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?

[oodaloop]

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

Re:This is a story?

[RiotingPacifist]

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

Re:This is a story?

[linhares]

not if the article is deleted by those fucks

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?

[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.

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.

ObPython

[Chris Tucker]

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

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.

People Fail

[MazzThePianoman]

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

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?

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.

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.

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?

[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: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.

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.

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?

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: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.

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.

Re:Wikipedia: a failed experiment

[Crumplecorn]

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

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?

[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?

[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: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?).

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: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.

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: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: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

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.

read it again?

[Mathinker]

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

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: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.

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.

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.

Obvious solution

[Sanity]

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

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: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?

Or, as some like to call it...

[F-3582]

Prior Art®

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

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.

New meme?

[DinDaddy]

So do we now refer to this type of occurrence as getting Wilhelmed?