The Register Takes Aim at Wikipedia Again 630
Syberghost writes "The Register has fired off another salvo in their long-running war of words with Wikipedia, in the form of an article about the lack of "moral responsibility" from the operators of Wikipedia. Wikipedia users fired back less than an hour later, making the Register headline obsolete."
Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
And then what? Does that make the Register story obsolete too?
While I don't think Wiki should worry about all these whingings (does TheOnion have moral responsibility to warn its readers?), Wiki users might get more out of the whole ordeal by asserting (via an entry) the unnecessity of moral responsibility in Wiki.
Morals? (Score:1, Insightful)
Ironically (Score:5, Insightful)
Get some perspective! (Score:5, Insightful)
Speed of Response (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
What the fuck? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Get some perspective! (Score:3, Insightful)
Some truisms (Score:5, Insightful)
People ask, "Where will Wikipedia be after five years." The real question is, "Where will the world be after five years of Wikipedia?"
Call me a paranoiac... (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything you read is suspect! You'd better duck!
Only a paranoiac, or a mad person, can sustain this level of defensiveness for any length of time however, and to hear a putative "encyclopedia" making such a statement is odd, to say the least.
This is just plain bullshit. My grandfather had a saying he taught me(and pardon me for some downhomey common sense), but it was popular among he and his friends, and they were very well adjusted people:
Believe half of what you hear, and nothing that you see.
This isn't paranoia. This is reality. Individuals, corporations, governments, etc... tend to be bullshitters. Half the time, they don't even realize they're spreading bullshit. The reason is too many mistake their opinion for fact, because most people don't go deep enough to care what the difference is.
The INSTANT you identify a source as something you can believe is honest and accurate without you having to verify facts or take with a grain of salt, is the instant you've set yourself up to be misled and enter a state of dogmatism.
You question everything. You question what you see, you question what you hear, you question it all. Not out of some hysterical paranoia, but out of rational observation of the reality that we live in a bullshitters paradise.
This article should get -1, Ministry of Truth publication. Believe half of what you hear, nothing that you see, and be happy and secure doing it.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:2, Insightful)
The Blame Game (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll probably be modded down for saying so, but that one sentence nicely sums up Wikipedia's philosophy.
One is that Seigenthaler should have corrected the entry himself...
See, they even blamed Seigenthaler for the libel against him!
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
I think wikipedia is a perfect example of democracy and what happens within. The people that use the site must police the site. Or do you want to elect a governing body to determine what goes in and what does not go in? And who controls that body?
Wikipedia works perfectly. The only flaw I see is that they even bothered to remove that offensive article. That sets an unfortunate precedent for wiki. They should have left it, and let the community do the job they are charged with. Wiki must encourage/force/let the community to do its job.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
But if Wikipedia is intended to be so unreliable that it is worthless for debating purposes (which are pretty trivial compared to, say, public safety), then is there any point to having it at all?
Personally, I love Wikipedia and would be very happy if it found a way to be both open and reliable.
Re:Fired back? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pot.. Kettle.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. Wikipedia is a tool, similar to almost all sites presenting information on the internet: good for a quick reference, but not authoritative. And I think most people realize that.
A few weeks ago I was writing a paper on Thelonious Monk [wikipedia.org]. Wikipedia says he started playing piano at age six, but, for example, this site [monkzone.com] says age nine. So Wikipedia has a 50% chance of being wrong on that point. But really I don't mind, and I'm not going to stop using it, because Wikipedia is more of a springboard and a starting place in exploring a subject, rather than an etched-in-stone authority. And I think most people "get" that. The Register, apparently, does not.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if the federal government worked like Wikipedia. I could log on to wiki.gov and add new laws and edit existing ones at will, but so could anyone else.
It would be pretty cool to see how that would turn out, if you didn't have to live there.
Re:Speed of Response (Score:3, Insightful)
oh, shut up already (Score:5, Insightful)
I think people who criticize Wikipedia for the way its entries are created are living in a world where they assume that just because an information resource is well known or popular, it must be accurate. That wasn't true when companies like the New York Times and ABC had a near monopoly on information dissemination, and it sure isn't any more accurate today.
What needs to change is not Wikipedia, it's people's naive notions about epistemology. Or, to put it more bluntly: don't trust any information unless it either doesn't matter, or you can verify it from multiple independent sources yourself. Popularity, trust, and reputation of a source are very unreliable guides to the validity of information.
It's too bad we don't see this in the mass media. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the world will never see NBC Dateline truly questioning what is said on FOX News, nor will the New York Times truly question the reporting of the Washington Post.
Re:Speed of Response (Score:2, Insightful)
I think this episode also shows what I see as the fundamental problem of Wikipedia... the assumption that, somehow, articles will get better over time is in my opinion just flawed. To really get better, they have to be read by people who know the stuff anyway and who are willing to correct mistakes. Now granted, there will be experts on topics out there that do this, but your average guy will not look up things he already knows to see if they need checking - he will look up things he only has a vague or perhaps no idea about. He will not necessairly notice mistakes or omissions. He might add things he believes to be true but are in fact wrong, simplified or otherwise inadequate. If no expert on the topic comes along, these erroneous facts will simply stay there.
Just like the allegations against Seigenthaler did.
For me, this whole episode just solidifies my belief that, while I can use Wikipedia for a quick checkup on a topic, I cannot use it if I really need accurate information. There is no guarantee for me that what I'm being told on Wikipedia is accurate and complete.
So no, I acknowledge that the quick fixing of problems is a strength, but ultimately, I don't think this episode shed a good light on Wikipedia, in spite of this.
The key question (Score:5, Insightful)
Internet Content (Score:5, Insightful)
The American Revolution
Student Works
Browse Purdue's Student Archives
Browse Stanfords' Student Archives
and so forth.
If peer review is good enough for science, medicine, and open source it is certainly good enough for history as well.
My 2cents
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
About 20% of the debates I've been involved in end with that statement, and a link to the "relevant" wikipedia article. Of course, I have a tendency to flamebait in an effort to get people to think, so I'm involved in more online debates than most people. I consider *anybody* refering to an authoritative source rather than actually thinking the situation throught themselves to be a failure in that.
Especially since it's rare that any of the debates I'm involved in are fact based to begin with. I've even been known to deny that facts actually exist- at best we have models of myths that represent facts, human brains aren't capable of getting closer to truth than that. Wikipedia is just a peer review system- and as such is prone to the same mistakes of all peer review systems- mythology in the community.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oh, shut up already (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Moral Victory (Score:2, Insightful)
Many sources may individually lack authority, but when each independant source is consistent with others, it can be assumed that they are accurate.
Re:Some truisms (Score:3, Insightful)
If, indeed, no one was reading it, it would not matter. But even in your example you guess that "less than a thousand people" read the Siegenthaler article. When does it matter that material is incorrect? When more than one thousand people will see it? Ten thousand?
Hey I've got an idea..... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's BORING.
Seriously, its like opening up Popular Science to see an article about how Scientific American discovered there were some factual discrepancies in Encyclopedia Britannica Vol 24 45th Edition entry on Underwater Basketweaving.
Re:What's up with with the Reg these days? (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides that I think people taking potshots at Wikipedia has just become the think to do. Wikipedia is more important than the Register and traffic stats prove it. I suppose that's not easy to take if you're a site with your income depending on drawing traffic. Wikipedia's traffic is rising at an enormous rate, and has actually made a leap since all this bad press has come out. http://noc.wikimedia.org/stats.php?period=monthly [wikimedia.org] (and yes that M is million). But what everyone should reallize is that it's a work in progress, it's certainly not ready for brick and mortar publication, and as a whole, it's contributors are just fine with that for now. But trolls like the register will keep claiming as this article does that Wikipedia supporters think it is perfect in order to get people riled up.
Re:oh, shut up already (Score:2, Insightful)
True, true. That's why NYT and ABC have been sued for libel so many times. See? That's how it works, and Wikipedia shouldn't be above it all just because it's geek.
Wikipedia abused Andrew Orlowski as a child (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia must have abused Andrew Orlowski as a child, because I can't think of any good reason for him to keep harping on it. Check out the Register's archives. All of the Wikipedia bashing is from Orlowski. Wow, Andrew, great reporting. I totally didn't know that some things on the internet are false. Way to go on the investigative reporting! Could we maybe get a twenty part series entitled, "Shock! Falsehoods found on internet!"
Some Wikipedia fans are little overenthusiastic. Wikipedia's lack of review is a weakness. But just because it's a weakness doesn't make it useless. Indeed, most of the internet is full of unreviewed crap, yet we all still use it. While Wikipedia would like to think of itself as challenging traditional encyclopedias, I don't see it happening. But compared to doing research on the internet as whole (say, via Google), it's a definate win. Wikipedia is, compared to the general internet, better organized, more neutral, and better reviewed. For a quick overview of a topic I find it an extremely valuable resource. I accept its weaknesses, help flesh stuff out as I can, and get on with my life. If Orlowski thinks Wikipedia is unredeemable crap, so be it. He's reported that. Now move the fuck on. Reposting "Wikipedia has some errors and is therefore completely useless" every week is hardly a good use his time or The Register's money.
Reliability and quality come from accountability. (Score:5, Insightful)
An engineer who makes one mistake, even if it is not fatal, will lose his license. Why is that? Because said mistakes cannot be tolerated.
The same goes for an encyclopedia. If a high degree of quality is wanted, then people will have to pay severely when they make a mistake. Of course, that's very difficult to accomplish in an online setting, especially one like Wikipedia.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is just worse than most because it's essentially a peer reviewed group without actual peer control. That means it's prone to myths within the community and ignorances from the original writers of the articles, as well as political and religious biases brought from outside the community.
I completely agree it's a fascinating experiment in electronic democracy and group hive minds. It's just not a repository of facts or anything resembling facts.
Re:Get some perspective! (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem isn't with Wikipedia, the problem is with how Wikipedia is used. The Wikipedia is not perfect. It is a source of information that just about anyone can add to / modify / whatever.
I don't buy the line that 'Wikipedia is no printed encyclopedia'. Print encyclopedias can get it wrong, get outdated, etc. They have editorial controls, but those are not perfect either.
No, the real problem is that people are far too inclined to look at one source and be done with it. Whether that one source is Wikipedia, a 'real' encyclopedia or the first Google hit doesn't matter. In the end, it is just a bad way of looking information up.
The other problem is that people will believe the information sources that line up with their world view over ones that don't. That's a different discussion entirely, but annoys me just as much.
Two-word response (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pot.. Kettle.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's something that often gets lost in Wikipedia debates. In that respect, it is very much like the Internet as a whole: The best thing about it is that anyone can publish. The worst thing about it is that anyone can publish.
Re:Some truisms (Score:3, Insightful)
A) Publish the number of people who have read the current revision so that users can get a rough heuristic of quality.
B) Educate users about what Wikipedia is and isn't. Wikipedia is not a list of facts, that is what an almanac is for. Wikipedia is a gateway to further information. If one occasionally runs into a "fact" that is PDOMA then it doesn't really matter. So you go to verify the fact, you find that it isn't really true, no harm no foul. This isn't "blaming the users," it's just using a source as it is meant to be used. You wouldn't use a plyers as a wrench and then sue the tool maker if you hurt yourself, nor should Wikipedia be liable for misuse. As the quality of Wikipedia improves, and stable versions of articles are phased in, then the way Wikipedia can be used will change. This is good. But currently Wikipedia only goes so far. Personally I think it is an extremely useful tool, but if you find the limitations of WP are too severe then just don't use it. It isn't really a big.
Re:Please do not use the word "troll". (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia has its problems, indeed and it is good to see someone willing to go against the flow and point out the system's short-comings. Sadly Orlowski's invective (for me at least) got old rather quickly, with more than a hint of spittle-flecked vehemence in his writing.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:2, Insightful)
I also find Wikipedia's entries on mathematical topics to be fairly useful, mainly because there is usually little or no controversy surrounding them.
Re:Please do not use the word "troll". (Score:1, Insightful)
In Internet terminology, a troll is a person who posts inflammatory messages on the internet, such as on online discussion forums, to disrupt discussion or to upset its participants./wiki
I could only read halfway through page two of TFA because the article was so trollish.
Self appointed experts do not like knowledgeable peasants treading on their turf.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
If the troll label fits (Score:5, Insightful)
Andrew Orlowski is a troll.
Re:Reliability and quality come from accountabilit (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I suspect that Wikipedia's method is a somewhat viable way to shuffle out the stupids, as true statements will be less likely to be edited than untrue statements, so gradually over time Wikipedia will tend to be more and more likely to contain true statements. But eh, you might be right.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when is a wiki "obvious"? Wikis are far too new for the *general public* that reads Wikipedia to be aware of their consequences.
Wikipedia markets itself as an encyclopedia and then wonders why (or passes the buck when) people get upset when the information is incorrect. Wikipedia needs to do a better job explaining to people where the information comes from and why it might not be accurate instead of patting itself on the back.
How about a disclaimer on *every single Wikipedia page*?
Re:Internet Content (Score:4, Insightful)
flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been trying to figure out why this issue is getting people so worked up (myself included), because it's all about some random website claiming to be a sort of encyclopedia. People claim to be experts all the time, and they lie or misinform out of ignorance; it's not a new phenomenon. Why then, do we have articles written like the one at the register, urging a call to arms over "moral responsibility?
It's all over one word: Encyclopedia. If wikipedia called itself the "Unreliable Encyclopedia", would this article have been written? I suppose the author would have had a hernia over what he considered the contradiction in terms. And yet, there do exist unreliable encyclopedias I suspect: those published in the 1950s do not contain up-to-date political and scientific information. They are unreliable, although I would not like to try and guess if they are more or less reliable than wikipedia.
I think that responsibility is the heart of this issue, and is why so many people get worked up about it. It's about who is to be assigned blame if wikipedia is inaccurate.
The author of the register article obviously wants the administrators of wikipedia to be held responsible, as if it was a top-down heirarchy. But it's not: it's more of a sort of p2p encyclopedia. It's not useful to blame wikipedia for being irresponsible any more than it is to blame gnutella for having illegal media on its network.
And the problem with attacking wikipedia and saying its not only useless, but it is harmful, is that it is not only attacking those people who spread disinformation. It is also attacking smart people who have a lot of worthwhile knowledge, and have carefully attempted to transfer this knowledge to an online medium that they knew people would use.
Now, maybe those people who write good articles for wikipedia shouldn't do so, because it'll only confuse people into thinking that wikipedia is more than a mountain of lies.
But I think that the answer lies in finding a way to hold individual wikipedia authors more accountable for their actions.
Hopefully as the internet grows up, people will go from thinking "I have to be careful in believing what I read on the internet" to "I have to be careful in what I say on the internet, because it represents me". We should start believing that it is a serious offense to spread disinformation on the internet, so that people will hold themselves to higher standards.
I say we need secure, historied, online personae.
Re:Please do not use the word "troll". (Score:2, Insightful)
In Internet terminology, a troll is a person who posts inflammatory messages on the internet, such as on online discussion forums, to disrupt discussion or to upset its participants./wiki
I could only read halfway through page two of TFA because the article was so trollish.
Self appointed experts do not like knowledgeable peasants treading on their turf.
Congratulations. You have won today's WHOOSH! Award.
Epistemology vs. Review Process (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that we have two separate issues to deal with. One is the theoretical limits of epistemology that Wikipedians must cite when defending errors in the Wikipedia. The other is the difference between an honest mistake and deliberately misleading content. The Register, I think, is correct to say that the former is no excuse for the latter.
So the real problem is not that the Wikipedia cannot achieve a higher level of factual rectitude. The real problem is that the Wikipedia has no facility to help novices establish the authority of an article of the Wikipedia. The best science can offer us [laypeople] is a bunch of journals that practice a complicated protocol of anonymous referees from a select bunch of supposed "experts" in the journal's field. If you want to don the scientist hat, you can always try to replicate the results of someone's journal article. I leave it as an exercise for the reader, but plenty of crap, for various reasons, has slipped through the journals' sacred peer reviews.
The real problem here is that the Wikipedia puports to be peer-reviewed, but each article has its subscribers, and it isn't clear whether an article has been tacitly approved by innumerable readers, or quietly corrupted out of salutary neglect. This ambiguity is the real failing of the Wikipedia, but it should be easily corrected by applying something similar to Slashdot Karma--just to show whether any editorial attention has affected any given article or not.
The real problem with the Register's scathing polemic is that it is just scathing polemic. The Wikipedia and the Register are apples and oranges. The authority of the Register's criticism cannot really be levelled with the Wikipedia, though its argument has a resounding us and them posture. It conveniently ignores the wealth of good content in math and science and that traditional encyclopedias get historical biography just as wrong (Christopher Columbus is a good candidate for this angle). So the punk teenager straw man at the conclusion of the Register article could just as well have been a fat, lazy armchair anthropologist to characterize the racist crap in the encyclopedias I grew up using.
In the end, I think the Wikipedians are right. "The price of liberty is vigilance." The Register is also right. This is one thing that will happen if we're asleep at the wheel. However fiery the iconoclasty makes you feel, do we throw the baby out with the bathwater? No. We take what we have and make it better.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Human beings are incapable of being objective
Dogmatic nonsense. In my experience, plenty of human beings are capable of being objective within specific realms of knowledge. You can ask them to be objective about "is it day or night" at noon; but perhaps not at astronomical twilight.
Here's how "authority" works: an authority is someone who tells you things that check out. Over time, you trust them to continue to tell you things on the same subject that check out. If you are curious about an aspect of a subject on which your "authority" has tended to tell you things that seem to have worked out, you are more likely to consult that authority.
Academic authority is merely an attempt to create a web-of-trust relationship that models that kind of authority, so you can trust people whom you have never previously consulted and had an opportunity to verify. That's what a degree is: a bunch of folks who have previously been certified (with their degrees) to know what they're talking about agree to certify that yet another person knows what he's talking about. You could say that it's a house of cards; but the point is that these folks are subjected to tests of their reliability throughout their careers. The more unreliable they are, the less often they are relied upon, and ultimately, the less likely that they will be in a position to certify others as authorities.
Re:The key question (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, this is as it should be. If you leave the responsibility for verifying credibility with the author, well, then, thats just like interogating a criminal suspect, and then asking him if he's lying. You verify that by looking at other sources. It's the responsibility of the reasearcher to establish his source's credibility. With Encyclopedia Britanica, people just make the assumption - and it's most often true, but not always, that an Encyclopedia Britannica article is credible. And that's because there's more accountability in the system: The author, the publisher, are all well known and subject to tort law in cases of libel. Wikipedia - not so much. But it's the responsibility of the reader to know that. Uphold that principle, and you don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater; Wikipedia is a great and useful tool. Not always perfect, but far better than nothing.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Why Use Wikipedia? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether it's accurate or not is completely up in the air. Many articles are read by many people, so hopefully errors are weeded out. Some articles are rarely read, and errors in those will stay for a long time before being noticed.
And then there are topical articles, which may just end up reflecting popular points of view rather than definitive information. That's also worthwhile, but it seems that Wikipedia can be used to 'shout down' dissent by editing articles you disagree with.
Who is responsible when an article is incorrect? The users apparently, but who are they? Just people on the Internet. You, me, that guy over there, people like us. So who is responsible for ensuring accuracy and quality? No-one, really. It's so distributed that there's no real focus, and the end result is the cry of "do it yourself!"
Well, I have a job, a fiancee, hobbies and many things I prefer doing rather than watch Wikipedia articles for changes. That answer screams out "broken process!" to me.
What happens if I make a change to an article and someone maliciously alters it again? Am I really supposed to continually edit an article, and if not, who do I apply to for a final version to be locked?
So what is Wikipedia? Well, it's not correct enough to be a solid source of information. It's not stable enough to be reliable. It's not actually a good source, because nothing you read may actually be correct!
It may be, but the prevalent feel around here is to take everything with a grain of salt. That's all well and good, but if you have a child researching something, how can they do that? Even as an adult, I recognise that while we add filters of perception to events, there is one thing that actually happened, and many accounts of it. Can't we at least find the objective case in the subjective perceptions?
Lastly, people say that Wikipedia is the starting point for research. Well, if it doesn't point you in the wrong direction it may be, but if I have to go to other more authoratative sources, then why bother with Wikipedia at all?
I won't use it, for those reasons. If I need an encyclopedia, I'll buy Encyclopedia Britannica which is a much more reliable source and actually has a solid process for reviewing information. It's a shame, because I like the idea, but I can't see where any value comes from with Wikipedia.
Wikipedia ! = Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet this one of the most commonly accepted beliefs regarding Wikipedia. Some people on Slashdot alone have gone so far as to claim that Wikipedia is public domain and have gotten modded up for it.
Its no longer about whether or not the government can control the information, its now a matter of whos controlling the spread of disinformation. If 'anyone can edit' entries, who's monitoring the monitors? At least with the government its this big huge target we can all see and gang up against. With Wikipedia, we're staring at a bunch of easily masked IP addresses, false user ID info and the complete anonymity (for anyone determined) of the internet. I'd take the lesser of two evils and stick with the big, mean, elitist, capitalist run governments.
Re:Readers please note (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you think I posted what I posted? The levels of meta were too delicious to ignore. A pedantic correction of the definition of anarchism in the discussion of an article about wikipedia editing woes, using one of the most contentious wikipedia articles as backup, which in its discussion page has similar pedantry.
I tried, but frankly, I was too weak to resist it. :-D
Re:flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that's what the "Wiki" in Wikipedia means. Along with a lot of good things, like freedom, up-to-date-ness, etc., but unreliability is in there too.
Re:flamebait (Score:2, Insightful)
From TFA:
The author of the register article obviously wants the administrators of wikipedia to be held responsible, as if it was a top-down heirarchy. But it's not: it's more of a sort of p2p encyclopedia. It's not useful to blame wikipedia for being irresponsible any more than it is to blame gnutella for having illegal media on its network.
The author wants the administrators to be held responsible, true, but not for the content of the site, as you seem to think; but rather, for the impression that Wikipedia gives that it is a reliable source of information. Personally, I think this is a valid argument. I know too many people who think Wikipedia is a reliable source of information. It really is not.
Further, the author is making a claim about the philosophy or theory or whatever you want to call it behind Wikipedia. There are a lot of people who view Wikipedia as a counter to capitalism, commercialism. I have seen it used to argue that anarchy "works." The author attempts to show that, in fact, it really does not "work"; that it may be an interesting phenomenon, but it is not an end, it is not a "solution."
The Gnutella analogy really does not apply.
But I think that the answer lies in finding a way to hold individual wikipedia authors more accountable for their actions.
I think you'll find that if you attempt this, Wikipedia will fall apart quite rapidly. No one wants to write an article if in the back of their mind they are thinking, "What if I get in trouble for this somehow?"
I really don't think there is an answer, except to somehow make it understood that Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia in any sense of the word. Wikipedia really is a new phenomenon. Of course, I have no idea how this should be done...
Re:Wikipedia ! = Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst Wikipedia can do is call you a chicken fucker, and you can very easily erase that insult.
The worst the government can do is disappear you, torture you, or kill you. If you try to "gang up" on it, odds are very good that at the very least you will be herded into a cage at gunpoint.
Pardon me if I find the notion that the government is "the lesser of two evils" in comparison with a website, an incredible conclusion.
Published Encyclopedias Unreliable (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. He is correct. Despite his sarcasm, users ARE silly for believing things at face value. Just because a work is published does NOT make it the definitive source for all accurate knowledge. How many scientific findings have been published, and later discovered to be inaccurate.
He seems to think that because a work is put to paper that is must have more accuracy than a work such as wikipedia. I challenge this: Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia has the opportunity to be both free and more accurate than any printed work. Even an encyclopedia, devoting resources to topics they are not experts in get things wrong, such as some of the items on the list above. Wikipedia gives those out there directly working on it -- Subject Matter Experts -- to contribute their knowledge for others to share.
In regards to the fears of lawsuits, obviously due diligence would be given to review the content of articles before put to paper and widely distributed. What more can be asked for? This is the same thing that Britannica does.
Until Wikipedia is making some claim to take authority over content -- they are just like the post office, the telephone company, or xerox. They are providing a service. Just as Xerox is not responsible for people violating copyright law with their copiers, Wikipedia is not responsible for the accuracy of information on their site. If you ask me, the rules, regulations and procedures they have come up with are an amazing effort at being open to respecting others, and cooperating with them. Similar to the post office working with police to track packages.
I think something commonly being overlooked here is -- Who exactly was affected by this article? The article apparently wasn't link to from other pages -- meaning that it wasn't seeing much attention, which is why it hadn't been changed. Who cares if it was there for months, if only 5 people saw it, was he really severely hurt by this? When he came across it, fix it, move on. Hes actually created a much larger problem by bringing so much attention to this.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
That does clearly not fit wikipedia as it is now.
It clearly doesn't fit traditional "encyclopedias" either, as it's an impossible criteria to meet.
Of course, if you read the definition as it is actually intended to be read, it fits wikipedia pretty well -- a reference work that contains somewhat comprehensive information on selected topics, and covers a very wide range of topics in a less comprehensive but still informative manner.
Indeed, the great thing about wikipedia is that it covers, even briefly, soooo many things that aren't in traditional encyclopedias, especially more obscure "local" (e.g., my local train line [wikipedia.org]) and technical (e.g. HDR imaging [wikipedia.org] -- this article is quite short, but provides a useful intro before following the link at the bottom to Greg Ward's excellent page discussing the gritty details) topics, in a manner that at least attempts -- and usually succeeds -- to be somewhat dispassionate and regular.
Wikipedia clearly needs more mechanism to establish lines of trust/authority that can be used to judge the trustworthiness of unusual or controversial topics, but I don't think anybody is denying that. What people are saying is that for typical uses, it's already an invaluable tool.
Re:flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
But it is.
It's not a book, but I think otherwise it fits. The above is from the Oxford Dictionary; that's my first resort for defining a word. But when I come across a usage that hasn't made the OED, I resort to less formal sources. For instance, the term "cameltoe" can be found in the Urban Dictionary [urbandictionary.com], which is written in a similar manner to Wikipedia, by anyone who cares to contribute. It suffers from a tendency to over-represent sexual fetish words, but among that you can find the meaning for most recent coinings; and as long as you understand the process, and most especially realise that the word "Dictionary" (or "Encyclopedia") in itself does not confer respectability or authority, but simply a method of organising knowledge; it is quite useful. The original dictionaries and encyclopedias came into print about 300 years ago, and were products of small groups, or single authors, often with strong opinions and disputable facts. It's down perhaps to door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen trying to convince you that they were the ultimate knowledge that they're treated with reverence now, but one always has to recall that they were all written by people with opinions, and they can be wrong. Learning not to blindly trust the written word, and how to weigh information's validity, is an important step in learning.Re:Internet Content (Score:2, Insightful)
Peer review in medicine and science is fundamentally different - the reviewing peers are sanctioned by established and authoritative bodies, and qualified by education, experience, and reputation (rather than by being the only other guy in the freshman dorm who can't sleep that night). The process isn't perfect, being susceptible to inertia, intellectual fashions, lassitude, and even occasional fraud. But it beats hell out of 'anyone can change it, knock yourselves out'.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Which may explain while the Register feels compelled to slag them.
Wikipedia, for all it's flaws, is vastly more successful than the Register is. Wikipedia scares the mainstream media --which in this context includes (beleive it or not) the Register--cross-eyed.
If you don't understand how Wikipedia is produced, and by whom, you're unlikely to be able to judge its reliability. Of course the same is true of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the New York Times, CNN, DailyKos, moveon.org, FreeRepublic and Little Green Footballs.
Re:flamebait (Score:2, Insightful)
Many people visit Wikipedia and don't understand the entire concept. They may understand that "anyone" can contribute, but not to what extent, or they may only understand that it is an "internet encyclopedia." I think these are reasonable misconceptions. I would be very wary of placing the blame entirely on these people.
And besides, I deliberately refrained from saying that Wikipedia should have some sort of warning, because I really don't think that would solve anything.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
But i think:
a) Wikipedia's idea is great, the process needs a bit polishing but the idea is stil great
b) A public FREE book of knowledge is good (i won't call it an encyclopedia
c) People should stop whining like women and children and produce solutions to problems instead.
d) World changes every day, thats why you can't have an accurate encyclopedia ever.
e) Wikipedia is the fastest changing book of knowledge available for free.
f) Your encyclopedias in your book shelf behind you are hopelessy outdated.
Everybody can whine, better go do something about it. Sit down and try to find a solution for wikipedia where it still could use user data and be accurate at the same time. Go raise funds to create a wikipedia supporter foundation that can keep up 100-200 paid people who will be live moderators for the whole thing and really working for it.
I think it can be done, but not by whining in slashdot.
Re:Wikipedia ! = Truth (Score:2, Insightful)
The answer surely must be yes.
Have stupidity and malice been completely eliminated from Wikipedia? Of course not; anyone who tells you otherwise is probably part of the problem. Wikipedia is the grand global equivalent of asking your friends what they know about something. Some will steer you right, some will steer you wrong, some will give you irrelevant anecdotes or misunderstand the question. But the Wikipedia balance shows that for information purposes, the wiki is your friend.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I think that is a bit of overstatement. I don't think wikipedia is invaluable at all. I almost never use it and I get along fine without it. In fact, when doing google searches I avoid wikipedia articles because I simply don't trust anything written there. It is not worth my time to have to go to alternate sources to verify the information only to find that the wikipedia article was largely plagarized anyway. Granted, much of what's there is true, accurate and trustworthy, and you seem to have cited some examples, but the big problem is that there is no way to tell which information is accurate and which is not.
I agree, Wikipedia is a tool - it's a broadaxe that most people mistake to be a scalpel.
Don't you know how the Register is funded? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they keep him on; he represents income. If you don't like it, don't read him and don't post links to him on Slashdot. You're just falling for his act.
Here, just so it's not a waste. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you have missed the point.
I think it's obvious that it's not worth the paper. I submit that you have never even attempted to ask for authorship information from an encyclopedia. I had a physics science project I failed in GRADE SCHOOL. This was primarily due to a failure to make the correct distinction between "potential" and "kinetic" energy. I was able to bring out the physical source. The project was given a revised grade after the instructor contacted the publisher who admitted it was a known misprint.
I think you can safely imagine that medical encyclopedias are fairly well documented, 30 years later (today). After 2 open heart surgeries and countless other illnesses encountered, I know so. My current views are based on my logical assumptions and experiences. YMMV.
I believe this is because, this rev. info is just as unreliable (in terms of determining accuracy or good judgement in deciding relevant content) as any single article currently displayed in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is now the only accurate word to describe this type of unwitting and part-time collaboration. An encyclopedia, it is not.
US media has been losing much of it's clout due to corrupting and scandal involving deliberate inaccuracy. Short answer, the news doesn't state the truth, but what their agents hear or see or what agenda they wish to promote. Attempts at stating facts of discovery (like the falsified Bush military records) have continued to be a sore spot, even with accountability.
Given the rate of decline in newspaper subscriptions in metropolitan areas, look for it on your handheld in the next 10 years. It will look a lot like network news looks. Newspapers can be queried for sources in most cases. The sources are often quoted.
Finally, are there sources of information that state they are authoritative, with a guarantee of accuracy? Why yes there is. Unfortunately, there are none that guarantee accuracy AND cover anything more than a very specific topic. (statistics on Federal wage rates, ballots, Grants, operating tolerances of a 1947 Chevy engine mount, etc.) I believe what you intended to ask was, "Is there a self-proclaimed authoritative source of general information?" Nope. You will find all publications (physical and virtual) cleverly have been reworded since, I presume the 1980's, to reflect the nebulous nature of "truth". Even Britannica now claims to be a "standard for reference" rather than a source of facts.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:2, Insightful)
And that's where I believe what the Register article is missing: sure you shouldn't be blindly trusting anything written in Wikipedia, but it's still good for what it is: a collection of articles presenting views on most interesting topics. In other words, it's a tool that requires some understanding to use it.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
You said it more clearly than I did, and that is what I meant when I called wikipedia a broadaxe being used as a scalpel. My impression, and it is no more than that, is that many people use it as the definitive source and go no further.
Using wikipedia is like being handed a list of import regulations for every country on the planet but being told that 5% are wrong. At first you might think it was was a really useful tool, but I suspect that after realizing you still had to look up every country's rules anyway to make sure it wasn't one of the 5% you would soon decide it wasn't worth the effort. That's pretty much me and wkipedia.
I will grant you this: because the information on wikipedia at least has the CHANCE of being verified by others it is more likely to be trustworthy than most of the unattributed information floating around on the internet.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
Because articles in newspapers and magazines usually have a byline. If an article is by a writer with a long history of well-researched articles or who clearly has knowledge of the subject matter then there is a low chance that the article is bogus. Newspapers also do not assign shipping clerks to write science articles, while anyone can write about anything in wikipedia. The byline also means that there are career and reputation consequences if the writer tries to mislead or makes stupid mistakes. Articles in newspapers also have clearly defined rules about what may be represented as fact vs opinion.
With wikipedia there is no attribution, no way to check on the qualifications or depth of knowledge of the writer, no way to separate opinion from fact, and usually no way to even identify the writer. The perfect example is the recent wikipedia article written by a shipping company employee who falsely linked a respected professor to the assasination of both Kennedys.
untrue (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, damage control, by controlling other people.
but if I disagree with some whacked out wiki-fiddler my information (if there is any) could very easily be altered to harm my chances for success in the REAL world.
You still have the same recourse you've always had against slander and libel, file a lawsuit. It may be hard now, in this day and age where anyone can post anything, *anywhere* on the Internet(ie. NOT JUST WIKIPEDIA). But that's life. Deal with it.
Oh, but you'll claim that because it's on Wikipedia, it's more damaging. Bullshit. Unless you're famous, very, very few people will read the entry about you. The damage will be just as limited as if they posted it on, hmmm, say, Slashdot, or anywhere else on the Web.
I guess my point is, the complaints leveled against Wikipedia apply not to Wikipedia, specifically, but to the whole of the Internet. So, the logical conclusion, by the logic of those who would attempt to force Wikipedia to make changes, would be to forcefully censor the whole of the Internet, for "damage control."