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

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.

Comments

Bullshit summary that mischaracterizes the article

[GreatBunzinni]

While the so called summary claims that wikipedia is supposed to be this "war zone", the article's fucking summary states that they have concluded that "edit wars are mainly fought by few editors only." The article then proceeds with statements such as:

"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.

and even

As we shall see, in the English WP close to 99% of the articles result from this rather smooth, constructive process.

So, fuck you slashdot for posting a story with such an inflamatory, patently wrong and misleading pile of crap which was supposed to be the summary. If you have to lie to desperately generate page hits then it's a clear sign that you are dead as a communications medium.

Is any of this news?

[skine]

Wikipedia is a great resource for getting a basic overview of topics that are essentially settled.

The problem comes in with new stories, whose only sources tend to be news articles that are written to evoke controversy. This is despite the fact that most articles don't really need any more information than is given in the headline, or because there is essentially no factual information available, so the "controversy" is just pure speculation.

The same thing happens with /. articles.

Just looking at recent ones, "Intel Releases Ivy Bridge Programming Docs Under CC License," really doesn't need any more information, unless you don't know what those words mean. And actually, this is a good time to check Wikipedia, because "Intel," "Ivy Bridge," and "CC License," are all fairly settled topics.

On the other hand, "SOPA Protests 'Poisoned the Well,' Says Congressional Staffer," is taking the personal opinion of someone who is employed by someone who was elected to congress, adding the statement that "the internet is at risk," to drum up controversy, and intentionally trying to split people into "us and them."

harshing the honey bee

[epine]

The copyleft allows *for profit* webpages to use my work. I find this intolerable; my hard work is used to make some loathsome 1%er rich?

In theory, but do you really think that's easy to pull off? Can they really charge more than their middle-man repackaging justifies? Repacking is a value add if done to high standards.

The mandate is to spread knowledge to the whole of the world's population. If middle-men can't make engage in any kind of fee-based recovery concerning editorial costs, you're not going to attract much participation with the dissemination task. I don't see many flowering plants harshing honey bees. I think you've got the wrong picture of the ecosystem.

I have to keep correcting, and recorrecting, and re re re correcting stuff

I learned that lesson early. It's a huge mistake to take pride in bunny-suited textual purity. Wikipedia is a pig farm. Even the most conscientious farmer gets shit on his boots. Also, Wikipedia doesn't exactly encourage subject matter experts to take on leading editorial roles. It's more into the kind of loose accuracy obtained at arm's length remove. I would almost say that Wikipedia actively resists excellence. This is hard concept for many people to comprehend. The highly cultivated "feature articles" are a bit of a Potemkin village. Featureness degrades rapidly after the parade moves on.

My sense is that you'd have been happier contributing to uberpedia. "wiki" is German for "I wouldn't go so far as to call the brother fat. He's got a weight problem. What's the nigger gonna do? He's Samoan." For all its warts, the constructive sentiment is loud and clear.

Re:Whua!

[benjamindees]

mostly in very gossipy articles that quote a lot of third parties but don't do any fact-checking

Wikipedia has a lot of problems, which is why I mostly stopped contributing years ago. But all the problems basically stem directly from their list of "policies" that were erected around the time that a horde of fairly obvious disinformation agents managed to wrest control away from Jimmy Wales. The new Wikipedia "democracy" now ensures that the government with the largest propaganda budget will always be able to control the tone and narrative of any controversial articles.

One of the worst of these policies is the idea that mainsteam media news sources should be given special status. This was obviously intentionally designed to steer the revolutionary capability of truly grass-roots, crowd-sourced intelligence back into the fold of the controlled narrative. And, unfortunately, one of the most blatant abuses of this policy is the way Wikipedia is used as a vehicle to slander controversial public figures.

Gossip is one thing; and perhaps the world is not much worse off when Wikipedia is used to spread tabloid trash. But the world absolutely is worse off when Wikipedia is used as a conduit to smear everyone from political prisoners to rogue investors who make enemies of the increasingly encroaching police state apparatus.