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How Many Hoaxes Are On Wikipedia? No One Knows
An anonymous reader writes The Washington Post's Caitlin Dewey has written a lengthy feature covering one of Wikipedia's most intractable problems: carefully inserted hoax information that is almost impossible to detect. Dewey's investigation starts with the recent discovery of the nonexistent Australian god "Jar'Edo Wens" (which lasted almost ten years), and discusses a Wikipediocracy post about a recent experiment by critic Greg Kohs, in which 30 articles received cleverly-chosen minor falsehoods. More than half survived for more than two months. Included is also a chart showing that editing participation in Wikipedia has "atrophied" since 2007. It is quite rare to see a feature in a major media outlet as critical as this, of Wikipedia and its little-known internal problems. Especially on the heels of a very favorable CBS 60 Minutes report. As Kohs says, "I think this has proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it's not fair to say Wikipedia is 'self-correcting.'"
pointing to corrections that haven't been done yet doesn't mean anything. if something is obscure and unimportant it can persist for years, with no impact. and then it's corrected. if it's important, it will probably be corrected in days or minutes
can anyone point to any other media that this isn't true about? (i'm not talking about corrections, that may never be made, simply that all media has a backlog of errors that need correcting)
and questioning wikipedia's veracity, alone, has no value
judge it against other options and their veracity
the traditional encyclopedia is subject to the editorial whims of professionals, and professionals can have agendas and are not automatically superior to a mass of impartial folk. emphasis on "mass." as thousands of editors, even if there's been a drop in participation, is superior to an overworked few with questionable biases
and please note we're talking about brief introductions to topics, not deep dives into esoteric academic specialties. wikipedia is never intended as a replacement for serious texts on topics. and if someone is relying on wikipedia alone for vital topics, that's the reader's fault, not wikipedia
wikipedia's innate superiority is the same reason we have juries instead of professional judges. professional judges can start deciding cases based on having something to prove: "i'm finding this guy guilty because i made the previous guy innocent" or "this guy is clearly innocent, but it's important to send a message, so i'm finding him guilty"
certainly, a million examples of bad juries can be found. we can find problems with the jury system that are truly horrible
as if that means anything. because all other options are worse
this is classic form of propaganda, half-truth, cognitive fallacy: criticism in a vacuum
outside of the context of other choices, anything can be made to look like shit
for example, we can criticize all sort so problems with democracy. there are many problems with democracy and they are real and major. it's just that our other options are clearly worse
likewise with wikipedia: you can list thousands of things wrong with wikipedia, some truly horrendous
but it's still superior to what came before and other current options
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
.
It is easy to use Wikipedia,
It is that ease to use, rather than accuracy, that has made Wikipedia as popular as it is.
The obnoxious cliques of senior editors with god complexes make it virtually impossible to correct anything of substance. And Jimbo cares fuck-all about it as long as enough people click the donation button.
Sure, you can get into revision wars over whether to use the word "which" or "that" in a given context; but fixing a factual error? Good luck!
"Citation needed!"
"But the old, wrong version didn't have a cite either."
"Doesn't matter, it stays, and my minimum wage burger flipping ass has just banned you for daring to challenge me, you pompous PhD-wielding expert in this particular field!"
Wikipedia's problem is the Napoleon problem - there are a bunch of self-important "editors" who want to exercise extreme control over everything so you get a lot of people who would contribute who are just turned off by the political factors involved in editing Wikipedia.
Wikipedia created this problem for itself, and now they are learning that they won't get people involved or to donate when they are treated poorly.
The underlying problem is that it's possible for a single person to essentially "own" an article and reject any changes they don't like and perpetually block anyone else from contributing. This has led to a large collection of petty fiefdoms across the site and many of the local lords getting cozy with one and other so that if anything does get run a little further up the flagpole it still has a chance of being outright ignored or buried under bureaucracy and rule lawyering.
Wikipedia needs to change how their system works to allow for more collaboration and participation. I'd suggest a system where anyone can propose changes that are collected over a period of time until a group of individuals can work together to create new revisions of an article. Have other teams that are devoted solely to improving the grammar or readability of articles and others that are just looking to fact check the existing information to recommend removal of fallacious information. Perhaps even go so far as to assign people randomly to different teams and articles to mix it up and prevent the same kind of agenda-driven article ownership that we see so often now.
It's more a case of editors selecting the sources that confirm their point of view, and attacking the ones that don't as either not reliable enough or by relegating them to an opposing view footnote somewhere.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
As soon as politics enter it, nothing is reliable.
Technical subjects on wikipedia are never clear. They are jargonated, use obscure notation and never have a simple illuminating example.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.