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Wikipedia As a "War Zone," Rather Than a Collaboration

Posted by timothy on from the one-way-to-look-at-it dept.

horselight writes "A new study by sociologists studying social networking has determined that Wikipedia is not an intellectual project based on mutual collaboration, but a war zone. The study finds that although the content does end up being accurate as a rule, it's anything but neutral or unbiased. The study includes extensive data on access and editing patterns of users related to major events, such as the death of Michael Jackson and the edit storms that ensued." The article explains that the research (here's the paper at PLoS One) looked in particular at controversial entries, not ones about obscure duck-hunting equipment or long-settled standards.

6 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Whua! by masternerdguy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Editing wars on wikipedia? Say it ain't so!

    --
    To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
    1. Re:Whua! by Alex+Belits · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Holodomor" articles in multiple languages directly contradict each other (and one in English contains nothing but US propaganda and baseless accusations of Robert Conquest).

      As a rule, Wikipedia articles about all historical events in 20th or 21st century are heavily colored by propaganda, and likely to be wrong in all but most basic aspects (time, location, few associated political figures, reaction of the media in the country where prevailing editor happened to be located, etc.)

      --
      Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
    2. Re:Whua! by KingAlanI · · Score: 4, Informative

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Coatrack
      Has to do with an article going off-topic in a biased manner

      --
      I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
    3. Re:Whua! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Informative

      I mostly use mine for games

      and furry pr0n.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. It's a start by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wikipedia is a starting point for research. It isn't the final word on anything. And it does really well at being a starting point, better than anything else before it.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Summary makes bits up, as usual by ras · · Score: 4, Informative

    Typical inflammatory Slashdot story that gets it so wrong you have to wonder whether the submitter read TFA. The Slashdot summary says:

    sociologists studying social networking have determined that Wikipedia is not an intellectual project based on mutual collaboration, but a war zone.

    What the paper actually says:

    Usually, different editors constructively extend each other’s text, correct minor errors and mistakes until a consensual article emerges – this is the most natural, and by far the most common, way for a WP entry to be developed. ... As we shall see, in the English WP close to 99% of the articles result from this rather smooth, constructive process.

    The paper does say there are some articles are the subject of what appears to be permanent edit wars. But they are a tiny proportion:

    it is a credit to the WP community that such cases are kept to a minuscule proportion of less than 100 in the entire set of 3.2 M articles

    The summary says:

    The study finds that although the content does end up being accurate as a rule, it's anything but neutral or unbiased.

    The paper is a study of human interaction in social media. It is not a study into the quality of Encyclopeadia's. It draws no conclusions on the accuracy, neutrality, or bias in of Wikipedia's articles whatsoever. Nonetheless when they set the scene in the introduction they quote this result from another paper:

    independent studies have shown that, as early as in 2005, science articles in WP and Encyclopedia Britannica were of comparable quality