# Is Wikipedia all that bad as a reference source? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 18, 2011, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862 "2011-02-18T22:59:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/61 "2011-02-20T17:30:59Z")
In fairness, I should mention that after seeing the topic of Wikipedia’s reliability being raised again, I checked on several medical topics on Wiki notorious for infiltration by woo/quackery promoters. In the limited number of topics I looked at, Wikipedia has done a good job in editing out the nonsense and presenting evidence-based articles. Whether this reflects a permanent state of affairs or a period of sanity in between edit wars I can’t say for sure. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/62 "2011-02-20T19:17:31Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > I honestly don’t see any such consensus on this thread or elsewhere. Wikipedia certainly has its faults and others have said it’s best used as a first read to get a general idea of a subject but on the whole it’s not a lot less accurate than other encyclopedias. I had a look at the Phillippines war article and this is what it said: > > The 1.4 million number is mentioned as a specific allegation and not as a statement of fact. And it’s not as if it’s easy to get accurate figures of civilian casualties in a war that happened more than 100 years. After all nobody knows for sure how many civilians have been killed in the Iraq war Then I recommend you reread Boot’s article from my earlier post. Moreover, as your excerpt shows wikipedia claims 34,000 Filipino soldiers were killed, even though every reliable historian of the conflict that I’m aware of lists the actual number at 16,000 which includes people like Stanley Karnow and Walter Lafeber, neither of whom are huge fans of the idea of the American Empire. Moreover, wikipedia treats that 1.4 million figure as if it’s a serious claim rather than a ludicrous charge put forth by an activist who pretends to be an academic. It also at the top of the page claims that historians have estimated that as many as a million civilians died during the conflict when no serious historians, not even Howard Zinn and Gabriel Kolko have made such claims. By such standards, on the page regarding the Middle Passage it should contain charges that 100 million people died during the crossing. The Armenian Genocide page is even worse where the 1.5 million figure, which even the historians who label it a genocide have abandoned. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/63 "2011-02-20T20:51:44Z")
Here is a [statement](http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F03E6DD1139E733A25751C0A9639C946097D6CF)in the NYTimes by a US general in 1901 that one sixth of the population of Luzon died in just two years which I believe turns out to be 600,000 people. If that was true it’s not crazy to believe 1 million or 1.4 million Phillipino civilians died in the duration of the war. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/64 "2011-02-20T21:02:04Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > Here is a [statement](http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F03E6DD1139E733A25751C0A9639C946097D6CF)in the NYTimes by a US general in 1901 that one sixth of the population of Luzon died in just two years which I believe turns out to be 600,000 people. If that was true it’s not crazy to believe 1 million or 1.4 million Phillipino civilians died in the duration of the war. Considering the fact that neither Gabriel Kolko nor Howard Zinn thought the actual figure was remotely that high, yes it is. If there was evidence that the total number of civilians who died of cholera was remotely that high, Howard Zinn would have claimed that in his A People’s History of the United States. Remember, this was the guy who was so eager to paint the US in a bad light that he used David Irving as one of his sources for the chapter on WWII. Give me the name of a single serious historian who claims the death toll is remotely that high. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/65 "2011-02-20T21:12:25Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > Here is a [statement](http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F03E6DD1139E733A25751C0A9639C946097D6CF)in the NYTimes by a US general in 1901 that one sixth of the population of Luzon died in just two years which I believe turns out to be 600,000 people. If that was true it’s not crazy to believe 1 million or 1.4 million Phillipino civilians died in the duration of the war. This to me is precisely the indictment of Wikipedia. That you can “credit” a figure that comes from extreme fringiness and that is being validated by Wiki (_“teach the controversy” as American creationists like to argue I believe; I am presuming Ibn Warraq is right in his characterisation here,he seems a stickler, so I shall go with that_) -only highlight how problematic it is. Useful, but very problematic and terrible as any kind of serious reference (but useful in a sort of Pub Fact book sort of sense for non-serious applications). ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/66 "2011-02-20T21:13:00Z")
So you think General Bell was just making things up? Look, the fact is no one knows how many civilians died during the war. Like I said, it’s really hard to measure these things today let alone 100+ years ago. There are also different definitions of civilian casualties; for example do you count people who die of indirect causes because of the disruption caused by the war. So I doubt that the “serious historians” you are talking about are making anything more than loose guesses about casualties. And if that statement in the Wiki article about the population of the Philippines falling from 9 million to 8 million is correct that is another data point suggesting that the 1 million number isn’t crazy. In short mentioning the 1.4 million as an allegation isn’t the massive error you are making out to be. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/67 "2011-02-20T21:27:31Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > So you think General Bell was just making things up? I have no idea. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. That’s what proper historians are for, rather than some drunk wankers speculating in a pub. The rest of your post is just argument to ignorance. Ibn Warraq is advancing the argument that proper historians, including those with every reason to advance large numbers, have worked on the issue and found plausible figures to be significanlty lower. > [@](#): > > In short mentioning the 1.4 million as an allegation isn’t the massive error you are making out to be. \*\*It is if \*\*proper historians have found it to be so, our naive Pub and a Beer analysis aside. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/68 "2011-02-20T21:39:40Z")
Ok, so you’ve declined to list a single major historian who agrees with the one million figure. Beyond that, General Bell was saying only that one out of six people in Luzon had died, not one out of six people in the Phillippines. Also, where do you get that 600,000 figure from? Are you saying that 3.6 million people lived in Luzon? According to, ironically enough, wikipedia just 50,000 people now live there. Is the current wiki article on Luzon grossly inaccurate? ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/69 "2011-02-20T21:42:03Z")
Yes, thank you Wmfellows. You explained that better and more succinctly than I could have. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/70 "2011-02-20T21:43:17Z")
Here is an [entry](http://books.google.com/books?id=8V3vZxOmHssC&pg=PA478&dq=philippines+american+war+1+million+casualties&hl=en&ei=qIlhTZiPO5DQrQe0zLXVAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=philippines%20american%20war%201%20million%20casualties&f=false)in the Encyclopedia of the Spanish American and Phillipine-American War which says that estimated of civilian deaths in the first phase of the war range from 250000 to 1 million. And frankly none of what I have read in this thread suggest that either you or Ibn Warraq have anything more than a superficial knowledge of what “proper historians” have written about this issue. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/71 "2011-02-20T21:47:10Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Ok, so you’ve declined to list a single major historian who agrees with the one million figure. > > Beyond that, General Bell was saying only that one out of six people in Luzon had died, not one out of six people in the Phillippines. > > Also, where do you get that 600,000 figure from? > > Are you saying that 3.6 million people lived in Luzon? > > According to, ironically enough, wikipedia just 50,000 people now live there. > > Is the current wiki article on Luzon grossly inaccurate? Hilarious, just hilarious. The actual population of [Luzon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luzon)today is 46 million. Frankly that just says it all about both your knowledge of the Philippines and your general reading skills. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/72 "2011-02-20T21:57:57Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > Hilarious, just hilarious. The actual population of [Luzon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luzon)today is 46 million. Frankly that just says it all about both your knowledge of the Philippines and your general reading skills. You’re correct I clearly misread that part. I was under the impression that personal attacks are supposed to not be used in GD, but if that’s not the case and it’s ok to attack a person’s “reading skills” it’s perfectly ok to accuse some of agressively denying reality and being massively anti-intellectual as you have been since you’re claiming that every proper historian who’s examined the conflict, including those who have every reason to come up with high numbers has grossly undercounted the number who died. For your sake, I hope you’ve never ridiculed either the birthers or the truthers because you’re acting very much like them. If you disagree with me, please explain why you’re right and Stanley Karnow, Max Boot, Walter Lafeber, Gabriel Kolko, and Howard Zinn are wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/73 "2011-02-20T22:06:51Z")
I have already given you an article from an encyclopedia which says that estimates of deaths go up to 1 million and that too just in the first phase of the war. Can you please give me citations from the “proper historians” that you keep mentioning. Have you even read what they have written or are just going by that article by Boot who is hardly an academic historian himself. If you have read the actual works please explain what the evidence for the 200000 number is. What are the documents that they use? Do they discuss the Bell quote and how do they explain it? ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/74 "2011-02-20T22:22:42Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > I have already given you an article from an encyclopedia which says that estimates of deaths go up to 1 million and that too just in the first phase of the war. > > Can you please give me citations from the “proper historians” that you keep mentioning. Have you even read what they have written or are just going by that article by Boot who is hardly an academic historian himself. If you have read the actual works please explain what the evidence for the 200000 number is. What are the documents that they use? Do they discuss the Bell quote and how do they explain it? Historians are generally considered more reliable than Encyclopedias. Please name a historian who supports the figures you support and why he or she is more reliable than Boot, Karnow, Lafeber, Kolko, and Zinn. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/75 "2011-02-20T23:08:13Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Historians are generally considered more reliable than Encyclopedias. > > Please name a historian who supports the figures you support and why he or she is more reliable than Boot, Karnow, Lafeber, Kolko, and Zinn. How about [Spencer C. Tucker](http://www.isi.org/bios/bio.aspx?id=9849a6d3-c6c9-4080-9eb9-55693b833eb0&source=Books&select=true&detail=1), editor of the Encyclopedia of the Spanish American and Phillipine-American War? > [@](#): > > He taught for thirty years at Texas Christian University before holding for six years the John Biggs Chair in Military History at the Virginia Military Institute Sure, I don’t know who the author of that piece is, but the editor is responsible for its contents, and presumably wouldn’t put something in there that’s completely wingnuttery. Of course, if the VMI is too left-wing, I understand… ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/76 "2011-02-20T23:31:07Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > How about [Spencer C. Tucker](http://www.isi.org/bios/bio.aspx?id=9849a6d3-c6c9-4080-9eb9-55693b833eb0&source=Books&select=true&detail=1), editor of the Encyclopedia of the Spanish American and Phillipine-American War? > > Sure, I don’t know who the author of that piece is, but the editor is responsible for its contents, and presumably wouldn’t put something in there that’s completely wingnuttery. > > Of course, if the VMI is too left-wing, I understand… Has Spencer Tucker made such a claim and does he have specialized knowledge on the conflict and did he do original research on it? If so, then it would be interesting to know why his figures are vastly higher than Karnow and Lafeber who are two of the most widely regarded historians in the US and Kolko and Zinn both of whom are leftists and well known for, if anything, exaggerating atrocities committed by Americans. Frankly, if there was evidence that 1-1.4 million Phillipino civilians died of disease during the war, then it would have appeared in the chapter on that war in A People’s History of the United States. However, it doesn’t. Sorry, but historians are more reliable, generally speaking than Encyclopedia articles. Of course if not only Stanley Karnow, but Howard Zinn is too right-wing for you ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/77 "2011-02-20T23:58:17Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Has Spencer Tucker made such a claim and does he have specialized knowledge on the conflict and did he do original research on it? At this point, if your claim is that Wikipedia’s military history is no more accurate than an encyclopedia produced by a dude that holds a seat in military history at the Virginia Military Institute, I’ll concede the point to you. Fair enough? > [@](#): > > Frankly, if there was evidence that 1-1.4 million Phillipino civilians died of disease during the war, then it would have appeared in the chapter on that war in A People’s History of the United States. However, it doesn’t. You keep saying variations on this, and I’m starting to think you consider it a valid point, not just a snarky flippancy. On the off-chance that you think it’s valid, I’ll point out that there are myriad reasons why it might not appear in Zinn’s book, starting with the possibility that Zinn may have been unfamiliar with these alternate estimates about the war dead. In any case, this bizarre variation on appeal to authority is totally baseless. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2011, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/78 "2011-02-21T03:28:10Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > We seem to have achieved a broad consensus that, at least on controversial topics, such as the Philippine-American War, the Vietnam War, the Armenian Genocide, and just about anything relating to the ME, wikipedia is not that reliable a source. WHAT!?!?! Where the heck do you get the impression there is consensus about that? I think Wikipedia is a good enough source for things like Great Debates that if someone cites a wiki article, then in my mind, there is a rebuttable presumption that the wiki article is correct. You can come up with a better source that contradicts wikipedia but you can’t dismiss wikipedia out of hand. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2011, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/79 "2011-02-21T04:07:07Z")
Well, wherever he got that impression, we all know that it couldn’t be as reliable as a cocktail party. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2011, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862/80 "2011-02-21T05:11:22Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Historians are generally considered more reliable than Encyclopedias. > > Please name a historian who supports the figures you support and why he or she is more reliable than Boot, Karnow, Lafeber, Kolko, and Zinn. You do realized that specialized encyclopedias on historical topics are written and edited by historians don’t you? The fact that you didn’t even know that Luzon was the main island in the Philippines and believed it had a population of 50,000 doesn’t inspire much confidence in your credibility in making judgment calls about Philippines history and historians writing about it. In any case you keep repeating those names like a mantra. Have you even read their books on the Philippines war? Can you explain their arguments about the casualties and what their sources are? How do we even know that you are accurately describing their conclusions? All we have are statements from Boot who is a conservative writer not a professional historian. And as mentioned someone like Zinn is hardly an expert on the Philippines war and may have simply been unaware of conflicting estimates. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-all-that-bad-as-a-reference-source/571862.md?page=5)