Do you state that all truth is subjective as an objective truth?
That said, when you look at Wikipedia, you should be checking the references. If there are no footnotes or a references section on a Wikipedia article, read the article with interest but don't trust it for anything.
I had the exact same issue when I got onto #debian on FreeNode to ask about CUPS for a Wikipedia article I eventually wrote and got featured.
I think the note I left on the talk page is instructive as to how even someone who does eventually work out how things go together can feel:
"I suggest that noone tries to get help on #debian on the Freenode IRC server. I went there looking for a bit of assistance, and immediately got mistaken for another user and got told to piss off. Then when I asked for help about the CUPS filtering system, or a pointer to info, I got told to RTFM. I have. Extensively. So I told them that I had and I was just a bit confused about the filtering system and what calls it. Then I got told that it was a debian channel and not a cups channel. At about that point I noticed that they were abusing some other user, so I said my goodbyes and left the channel. So basically, #debian appears to be filled with elitist knob-heads. I would advise that you leave them to their own little world. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:03, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)"
It is wrong because you are not arguing a valid point. Wikipedia doesn't ever aim to be completed. It does aim to have a large subset of its articles to be of a high standard. There are of course articles that are very fanboyish and probably not that notable. That's OK you know, it hasn't hurt anyone and somebody out there might find them useful. Obviously none of those articles will ever go out on CD/DVD/Print media.
Of course, those articles you give an example about can't hurt someone. The Brian Peppers one can. Same with the Star Wars Kid and Numa Numa kid articles, if they are done badly. That would be the main difference. I applaud Jimbo's action on that article: it was the only sensible course to have taken.
Well, firstly, I don't believe for a second that David Gerard did this. I suspect that right now David is at home asleep or away on holidays. The site notice that appeared had a quote from me that I made on IRC about 10 minutes after I said it. DavidGerard was not online at the time.
Secondly, it is not possible to tell who owns the domain wikitruth.info as it is registered by Domains by Proxy (just do a whois).
It does appear that an admin has gone rogue however. This is another issue we'll have to deal with: possibly by keeping a log of all people who view deleted articles.
A bunch of us (well, I made the original proposal which fell flat on it's face, then another person came along and reproposed it independently) is a proposal for stable versions. We've already started with one article: Wikipedia. There is a box on the main Wikipedia article that directs the reader there.
Interested to know what you think of this idea as it directly addresses your concerns.
If so, I'd read his articles with a lot of skepticism. While Orlowski does have some valid criticism, by and large I personally find him unreasonable and rarely pay him much heed. He quite likes attacking Wikipedia every opportunity he gets, so he's hardly an unbiased source. My suggestion is to take what he says with a grain of salt: he's not the most reliable journalist about.
Speaking as one who has several FAs under my belt, this is all fine and dandy, but we only have 1 in 1000 articles reaching FA. Can you imagine submitting all 800,000 articles to FA at once?!:)
The reason wehatetech people are called sockpuppets is a bit confusing: really they were orginally being mistaken for sockpuppets, when really they were meat puppets, or those ring-ins who were brought to the articles for deletion page to try to keep an article, wehatetech.
It is not Wikipedian editors who are being unreasonable here: you guys just aren't notable enough for our website. However, we have numerous instances of vandalism from wehatetech - a lot of it proudly being noted on wehatetech's front page.
Resistance is futile, incidently. We will track down any nonsense and erradicate it. If you think wehatetech is notable, then you would have been better off going to articles for undeletion. Incidently, I've seen the original article, and to be frank it's crap. It would need to be severely modified if it was undeleted.
For the record, this is a post by someone from wehatetech, a reasonably non-notable site that we have deleted from Wikipedia after determining that we don't really need an article about their organisation. They been trying to recreate the article, and have been doing other... interesting... disruptions to the site. What can we say? Either we do add material, and we get crapped on, or we don't add information, and we get crapped upon. You just can't win.
Redirection just points to de.wikipedia.org - does this mean that it is now illegal to link to de.wikipedia.org from within Germany? Sounds pretty bizarre.
Actually, the two issues are related. The GFDL requires people to source where the material was from, if they don't then it becomes a copyright violation.
Has anyone else noticed the media constantly writing about how Wikipedia is blocking ALL editing to the site from anonymous editors? This is just one example of them getting it wrong. And lest you think it was a minor online paper that makes this mistake: the first paper to get it wrong was the UK's Guardian. The other big mistake they constantly make is that they believe that we are going to accept advertising, soemthing that Jimmy Wales has been repeatedly misquoted on.
I also noticed the NYTimes mention a difference in dating between EB's article and our own on Hwang Woo-Suk. I agree with the way that we correct things is modest: we listened to the NYTimes writer, George Johnson, and explained that it was a difference between the Korean calendar and the Gregorian calendar in a footnote.
Sorry, I can't work out if you are responding to the Roman Catholic church or Wikipedians when you say "you guys"... I suspect you are referring to the RC church, though. Is this the case?
... out of interest, did you actually donate money to stop the child dying of AIDS? If so, how far do you think it went? AIDS in the 3rd world is largely caused by ignorance. If the parents of the child were better educated, don't you think that AIDS would be reduced by a large degree?
The Wikipedia article on AIDS is very good. Perhaps that would go some way to dealing with the problem?
Slashdot Mirror
I could not agree with you more :-)
Do you state that all truth is subjective as an objective truth?
That said, when you look at Wikipedia, you should be checking the references. If there are no footnotes or a references section on a Wikipedia article, read the article with interest but don't trust it for anything.
I think the note I left on the talk page is instructive as to how even someone who does eventually work out how things go together can feel:
It is wrong because you are not arguing a valid point. Wikipedia doesn't ever aim to be completed. It does aim to have a large subset of its articles to be of a high standard. There are of course articles that are very fanboyish and probably not that notable. That's OK you know, it hasn't hurt anyone and somebody out there might find them useful. Obviously none of those articles will ever go out on CD/DVD/Print media.
TBSDY
Of course, those articles you give an example about can't hurt someone. The Brian Peppers one can. Same with the Star Wars Kid and Numa Numa kid articles, if they are done badly. That would be the main difference. I applaud Jimbo's action on that article: it was the only sensible course to have taken.
You know, the number of times I hear someone tell me what an encyclopedia is for is quite amazing.
TBSDY
LOL!!! That is just too funny!
TBSDY
Well, firstly, I don't believe for a second that David Gerard did this. I suspect that right now David is at home asleep or away on holidays. The site notice that appeared had a quote from me that I made on IRC about 10 minutes after I said it. DavidGerard was not online at the time.
Secondly, it is not possible to tell who owns the domain wikitruth.info as it is registered by Domains by Proxy (just do a whois).
It does appear that an admin has gone rogue however. This is another issue we'll have to deal with: possibly by keeping a log of all people who view deleted articles.
Ta bu shi da yu
A bunch of us (well, I made the original proposal which fell flat on it's face, then another person came along and reproposed it independently) is a proposal for stable versions. We've already started with one article: Wikipedia. There is a box on the main Wikipedia article that directs the reader there.
Interested to know what you think of this idea as it directly addresses your concerns.
TBSDY
We are talking about the same Andrew Orlowski that fabricated an email from Robert Scoble to try to make Microsoft look stupid? The same Andrew Orlowski that wrote a fake article reporting Jimbo Wales was shot?
If so, I'd read his articles with a lot of skepticism. While Orlowski does have some valid criticism, by and large I personally find him unreasonable and rarely pay him much heed. He quite likes attacking Wikipedia every opportunity he gets, so he's hardly an unbiased source. My suggestion is to take what he says with a grain of salt: he's not the most reliable journalist about.
TBSDY
Speaking as one who has several FAs under my belt, this is all fine and dandy, but we only have 1 in 1000 articles reaching FA. Can you imagine submitting all 800,000 articles to FA at once?! :)
TBSDY
"Wikipedia's status as "authoritative" is questionalbe at best, given its current editorial policies."
Where does Wikipedia position itself as being authoritative?
TBSDY
My point is now recorded on slashdot.
I am an admin on the site.
The reason wehatetech people are called sockpuppets is a bit confusing: really they were orginally being mistaken for sockpuppets, when really they were meat puppets, or those ring-ins who were brought to the articles for deletion page to try to keep an article, wehatetech.
It is not Wikipedian editors who are being unreasonable here: you guys just aren't notable enough for our website. However, we have numerous instances of vandalism from wehatetech - a lot of it proudly being noted on wehatetech's front page.
Resistance is futile, incidently. We will track down any nonsense and erradicate it. If you think wehatetech is notable, then you would have been better off going to articles for undeletion. Incidently, I've seen the original article, and to be frank it's crap. It would need to be severely modified if it was undeleted.
TBSDY
For the record, this is a post by someone from wehatetech, a reasonably non-notable site that we have deleted from Wikipedia after determining that we don't really need an article about their organisation. They been trying to recreate the article, and have been doing other... interesting... disruptions to the site. What can we say? Either we do add material, and we get crapped on, or we don't add information, and we get crapped upon. You just can't win.
TBSDY
... kind of. Nothing happened due to Seigenthaler's comments. We are still around, albeit somewhat embarassed by the vandalism.
Redirection just points to de.wikipedia.org - does this mean that it is now illegal to link to de.wikipedia.org from within Germany? Sounds pretty bizarre.
Actually, the two issues are related. The GFDL requires people to source where the material was from, if they don't then it becomes a copyright violation.
Guess you've never edited Arab Israeli confict or Armenian genocide then!
Has anyone else noticed the media constantly writing about how Wikipedia is blocking ALL editing to the site from anonymous editors? This is just one example of them getting it wrong. And lest you think it was a minor online paper that makes this mistake: the first paper to get it wrong was the UK's Guardian. The other big mistake they constantly make is that they believe that we are going to accept advertising, soemthing that Jimmy Wales has been repeatedly misquoted on.
I also noticed the NYTimes mention a difference in dating between EB's article and our own on Hwang Woo-Suk. I agree with the way that we correct things is modest: we listened to the NYTimes writer, George Johnson, and explained that it was a difference between the Korean calendar and the Gregorian calendar in a footnote.
Sorry, I can't work out if you are responding to the Roman Catholic church or Wikipedians when you say "you guys"... I suspect you are referring to the RC church, though. Is this the case?
How would you know that? Have you done a statistical sample before and after the rise in article numbers?
TBSDY
... out of interest, did you actually donate money to stop the child dying of AIDS? If so, how far do you think it went? AIDS in the 3rd world is largely caused by ignorance. If the parents of the child were better educated, don't you think that AIDS would be reduced by a large degree?
The Wikipedia article on AIDS is very good. Perhaps that would go some way to dealing with the problem?
TBSDY
You are the first person in 2006 to point out to another person that they are a geek. Now let's all move on.
"39. Australians host barbecues at polling stations on general election days." That's something people didn't know already? Wow!
Well, pornography has a far more detrimental effect on a society than does stealing software.