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Wikipedia-Sponsored Pilot Study Lauds Wikipedia Accuracy
netbuzz writes "The Wikimedia Foundation today is releasing the results of a 'pilot study' it commissioned last year to assess the accuracy and quality of Wikipedia in such a way that it would provide a methodology blueprint for others do more thorough reviews of online encyclopedias. The results are in, and despite ready acknowledgment of the small sample size and paragraphs worth of other caveats, the parents of Wikipedia can't help but note that its baby was judged to have outperformed other online encyclopedias, including Encyclopedia Britannica, in three different languages. Britannica, which disputed the Wikipedia-friendly results of a much-cited Fortune comparison report back in 2005, has yet to offer a reply to this one."
In before 'citation needed'!
And water wet.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
The quality and accuracy of some articles is great. I would think that most "core" subjects that get a lot of viewers will tend to be of high quality. However look at the entry for so meting obscure, like the town I live in, and you might find something strange. At times there have been mistakes, now corrected - but there is still an odd balance. There is a lot of detail on railway lines that used to go to the station, and what destinations you could reach from the trains.There is a lack of detail on the current geography and economy. Things are driven by people's interests.
Unfortunately the study has been deemed Not Noteworthy by one of Wikipedia's editors and been removed.
If Wikipedia did this study and kept the results to themselves there would be criticisms regarding transparency. Parties who have a self-interest in damaging Wikipedia would have new ammunition.
Well, 50 millions smokers can't be wrong!
The quality and accuracy of some articles is great. I would think that most "core" subjects that get a lot of viewers will tend to be of high quality. However look at the entry for so meting obscure, like the town I live in, and you might find something strange. At times there have been mistakes, now corrected - but there is still an odd balance. There is a lot of detail on railway lines that used to go to the station, and what destinations you could reach from the trains.There is a lack of detail on the current geography and economy. Things are driven by people's interests.
Also, any subject (such as, say, Presidential candidates) that is/can be politicized is likely to be suspect
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
found that cigarettes do not cause cancer. Additionally, smoking cigarettes has the following benefits, probably demonstrated by Tobacco research:
They increase your coolness factor by 5 points.
They increase your expected annual salary by 15%
They increase the likelihood that you will get laid on any given night by 23%
They decrease the risk of looking like an idiot, since nobody standing around smoking a cigarette can look like an idiot.
They cause weight gain or weight loss, depending on whether you want to gain or lose.
They cure the common cold, reduce flu symptoms to 1 day, and potentially cure cancer (we're still checking on that one).
They inhibit the AIDS virus, no seriously.
They also increase lung capacity, so if you want to be an Olympic athlete, you should smoke cigarettes!
In all seriousness, what self-funded studies that find negative things are actually published? You should expect that a headline saying "X funded self study Y" where X is some business that is commonly cited to have some problem and Y is some contention to that commonly held problem. I'm citing this as jMerliN's law of headlines.
Well, duh, of course they're going to make cigarettes safe. Think about it. Why would they want their best customers dying off?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Yeah, I would say that on articles that have attracted enough attention to have multiple knowledgeable editors, quality is quite good. Exceptions for some rough spots in very hot-button areas, like Israel-Palestine, where sometimes editors with the wrong motives are attracted.
What I like compared to Britannica is that it's less likely there will be a whopper of an omission in a high-profile article. Some Britannica articles, especially on science/math topics, just have really puzzling stuff missing, or stated incorrectly, while those tend to get found on Wikipedia.
Of course, they're a bit biased with their list, but a few smug Wikipedians actually maintain a list of Britannica errors that Wikipedia has fixed.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
That's what they should do, though! Wikipedia isn't a place to publish your own personal knowledge, but a place to publish information that can be cited, ideally to peer-reviewed articles or books. Half the point of a Wikipedia article is being able to look up the references for further reading, and citation where [3] resolves to "[3] Personal experience of Wikipedia user Ancient_Hacker" just isn't very helpful for that.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Here's a Wikipedia meta-page on that last problem you mention, which they call "fact laundering".
(Incidentally, happens outside Wikipedia too, especially among circularly-referencing newspapers.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yep, because wikipedia makes so much money off of everyone using all their bandwidth with no ads.
Yow dun be mean tow Dimmy.
http://www.addfunny.com/funnypictures/hodgepodge/48/4chan039stakeonwikipedia03.png
I think we know the rules. The issue is that they are foolish. They do no ensure accuracy, in fact, in the case you are responding to, it ensures that is it IS NOT accurate.
Other than that, well done.
No. They are arguing that verifiable information is better then "Take my word for it" information.
In an ideal world, if the "take my word for it" information is true, then it should get tested, verified, and published somewhere so that it can move into the "verifiable" information category.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
No, the theory is that it is OK, as long as there are people not in anyway connected or related to the author being able to continue the maintenance of the article. The problem with personal knowledge is that it gets lost as soon as the person loses interest in wikipedia or is run over by a bus (which in turn also causes a sudden loss of interest in maintaining wikipedia articles). That's the same reason original research is frowned upon - there should always be at least a second person being able to continue where the original author as left. And it helps if you can make yourself knowledgeable about the subject without being referred to Wikipedia articles, if you want to edit Wikipedia articles.
Wikipedia isn't a place to publish your own personal knowledge, but a place to publish information that can be cited, ideally to peer-reviewed articles or books.
If you really believe that, they may not be hope for you.
Wikipedia is all about certain people taking over articles and, accuracy be damned, making sure those articles reflect the viewpoints of those people.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Precisely - outside of geek culture, pop culture, and the sciences... Wikipedia has some pretty severe quality problems.
Not to mention the traditional Slashdot lament "who is surprised that a study sponsored by Wikipedia finds Wikipedia is accurate?".
This does not in any way prohibit him from "getting all pissy" about it.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Think of it as the Bob Lazar rule. You can't have people adding their weird theories based on unverified personal experience.
And, IMO people tend to over-value certain bits of information based on personal opinions founded at the time. You see this all the time on Slashdot where a poster tries to pull rank by saying stuff like "I was there, I worked at a computer shop in 1998!". They then proceed to get basic facts incorrect (common one: the order of Windows releases), or just parrot some conventional wisdom.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Obligatory Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/wikipedia-celebrates-750-years-of-american-indepen,2007/
Dear sir, are you fucking serious?
In case you have not already been informed, jews were the last thing that you and your ilk blamed all of your problems on. As there are many fewer jews now and you evidently still have the same amount of problems, I would have to therefore assume that your problems are unrelated to jews or any other religious sect, and therefore self made, rather than caused by another party. I would further like to say that I would not use the same words as you to describe the motivations of even a savage crocodile, much less another human being.
In order to charitably appeal to your intellect, I will say perhaps the traits you are so desperate to ascribe to jews are in fact traits of all mankind, that it so dearly would like to hide, and that perhaps simply mankind itself is its own worst enemy, in the absence of any other. Only the likes of you could believe that everything would be completely fine if it werent for those 'pesky kids.'
In summary, go and choke on a dick you shit stirring pseudo intellectual prick, the words that spew from your mouth are a waste of fresh air that none alive wish to hear aside from your own pathetic self.
This is certainly true, but only half the issue. Wikipedia is justly distrusted because, at any given moment, an article may have been subtly vandalized, astroturfed, tilted in tone, or just plain wrong. Far more important is the ludicrous idea, central to Wikipedia, that any given editor is just as likely to be accurate as any other, without regard to knowledge or experience, that any editor may edit anonymously, and that any system for establishing identity, real-world reputation and (crucially) expertise (even if it is only expertise in interpreting the citations) is anathema.
This gets you teen-agers arguing with Math PhDs about math, and zealots and partisans of all stripes arguing with everyone. Expertise is central to the concept of an encyclopedia, and Wikipedia and its community thoroughly reject and repudiate it. This, indeed, may be well-adapted to some things, but writing a true encyclopedia is not one of them. As someone once said, on Wikipedia, twenty teenage idiots and one expert are indistinguishable from twenty-one teenage idiots.
Wikipedia is a big old pile of trivia, opinion, gossip, libel, and misinformation. That it is sometimes correct is happenstance, not planning.
How is the name "Genesis" "wrong" in any sense at all? One sentence up you said it was the correct name used in "North America".
So the article is filed under "Genesis", there's a working redirect from "Megadrive", and the article correctly mentions the dual-naming issue at the very top.
There is nothing factually incorrect about any of that. Furthermore, I'm not aware of any Wikipedia policy that has any opinion on which of the two names should be preferred for the article title.
If you want a REAL example of Wikipedia's problems, try the Fractal Antenna article, which has been jealously guarded by employees of "Fractal Antenna Systems" run by "Nathan Cohen" for YEARS and YEARS. Do a geoIP lookup of the anonymous editors, or read some of the crap that's gone on in the talk page of that article, and you'll see a flood of damming evidence. References that dispute the effectiveness of fractal antennas over conventional antennas, and links to competitors like Fractus, have been repeatedly removed by same said editors.
Admins have stepped-in and blocked anonymous edits from time to time, but once the ban is lifted, bias-pushing continues. Admins generally refuse to step-in for anything other than the most flagrant vandalism, which isn't the case here, and reclassify it as a content dispute, which has a remediation process that will kill you of old age before anything is accomplished, and that's for EACH INCIDENT, and each different editor.
So what do we do with Wikipedia? Try to get competitors to have their own shill compete with FAS? Balance it out with mutual combat, or will the one willing to spend the most money just win, and turn it permanently to his POV?
WIkipedia's policies are an unbelievably ineffective, bureaucratic mess, that will never handle POV-pushing such as this. Instead, the "good" articles on wikipedia just happen to have WP admins interested in them, and willing to completely ignore WP policies to block such subtle vandalism. This is an incredibly inefficient process, and one doomed to ultimately fail under it's own weight.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That is the key
Popular topics are better than Britannica because of the many eyes business
Less popular topics are better than Britannica because Britannica has no article.