Actually me this time. I’m a prolific contributor to Wikipedia. Check it [url=“http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Montrealais”]out[/ur]. I also contribute to the French and Esperanto WPs.
Hey, thanks. Now I have somewhere ELSE to go read for hours and hours and hours on end…
Given the nature of its compilation by individuals and that there does not appear to be anyone ultimately responsible for its accuracy, why (and especially on this board) do people put so much stock in it?
I’ve actually been quite surprised with how accurate the articles I’ve looked at have been. (I had low expectations, for basically the reasons you mention.) I think it benefits from the fact that most people are only interested in writing about the things they really know a lot about, and also there are a lot more people who want to make it good than who want to screw it up. So even if someone were deliberately posting false information (as I’m sure a few people do), they’d probably be fighting a losing battle in the end.
I’m not sure that people put more stock in it than a regular encyclopedia – it’s just that it contains a lot of entries for things you just can’t find in a regular encyclopedia. Plus, it often treats obscure topics in a lot more detail than you’d see in a regular encyclopedia – because what a normal encyclopedia’s editors would consider obscure and unimportant may be the area of expertise of the person who wrote its Wikipedia entry.
At any rate, I’d say believing what you read on Wikipedia is no worse than believing what you read on this message board. In both cases, there’s bound to be some bull, but it’s generally not very hard to tell who actually knows what they’re talking about and who’s full of it.
Oh, and two other advantages of Wikipedia – it’s free and we can link to it.
Sure, I can go read the encyclopedia at my local public library for free, but saying something like “Encyclopedia Britannica page 1296” isn’t very useful for an online discussion. And most online encyclopedias I’ve seen require you to purchase a membership if you want to view complete articles. Again, not very useful for online discussions, because even if I’m willing to pay, the people I’m talking to won’t be able to see what I’m linking to unless they pay too.
I love Wikipedia and I contribute quite a bit. My name is Bean_shadow on it. I gravitate towards first century Rome and odd pop culture.
Another nice thing they have is a Talk page. If there is something wrong with an article, users often discuss it. Wiki reminds me a lot of the SDMB in that you should be ready to provide a cite or else your info gets thrown out.
Yeah, there are times when the articles are crappy or the info is crap but there’s usually a well educated person to come along and fix it.
I’ve written and contributed to a number of things focusing mostly on New York City and the US gummint. Here is my page with links to my major contributions. Most of my time, though, is spent doing general cleanup, fixing grammar, spelling, and assholery.
Heh, even before Hamish came in to say that was really him writing, I knew that couldn’t be you, matt. You’ve contributed a pretty significant chunk of Wikipedia’s content there.
I haven’t contributed a lot, mainly because of laziness, but I am trying to post some articles about the “Halifax Scene” of the mid-90’s. Here’s a typical one, about the band Jale.
I love wikipedia! And this thread has inspired me to work on the financial aid page. I was kind of surprised how bare-bones it was. It’s nice to be able to contribute some knowledge and maybe help out some folks 
That’s not always true. Last week, IIRC, there was a link on /. to an article by a former Encyclopedia Britannica on Wikipedia. He was fairly critical of it. He used for example the article on Alexander Hamilton. There were small factual errors, like dates not matching, that would have been impossible for regular readers to spot. What was particularly interesting about that article, he said, is that if you look at the edit history, it started out okay and was edited into mediocrity, with small errors, clunky grammar and spelling mistakes gradually introduced into the text.
Now, not all articles are like that, but I’ve found that the quality and accuracy varies greatly, not only from one article to another but even within the same entry. There are tons of small inconsistencies out there that are near impossible to spot.
This is a little bit why I asked about fact checking. As a reader, I would hope that any edit, with the exception of grammar and spelling fixes, no matter how trivial or “general knowledge” would be backed with a reputable cite. I.e. I expect at least the same level of research as I would from a student paper.
This isn’t to say that I don’t use Wikipedia. I check it out almost every day as a matter of fact. However, I’ll never use it as the final authority on anything.
And yet, if you check the Encyclopedia Britannica’s article on (say) the free software movement, you’ll be even more disappointed… because there is no such article. It’s a tradeoff between breadth and accuracy.
I’m not so sure that’s such a good tradeoff. While I will forever be thankful for Wikipedia teaching me what Tubgirl is without me having to actually see it, accuracy is the most basic requirement of any encyclopedia.
I’m with you there, so it is a reservation I have whenever I read a wikipedia article. I’m pretty certain that none of my contributions have been erroneous, but I have occasionally been too vague & had that corrected by others in edits.
Wikkit has created a page on Wikipedia that will hopefully become a list of all the dopers who contribute to the site. See http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=5571283
I didn’t notice this thread, or I would have just posted here. <smacks self for not searching>
I’ve added most of the people who have posted to this thread.
I’ve edited a few things… but usually only really small changes for clarity.
I don’t visit wikipedia on my own, and I haven’t been passed the random link to anything I feel expert on enough to correct for accuracy.
I have edited one page, ever, and it was to add the penguin in 8 Ball Bunny to a list of related facts about Hoboken, New Jersey.