# Is Wikipedia more reliable ...? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [July 13, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134 "2012-07-13T19:18:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Full\_Tilt\_Boogie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/2acd7d/32.png) [@Full\_Tilt\_Boogie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Full_Tilt_Boogie)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/21 "2012-07-16T15:20:38Z")
Is Wiki more reliable…? As an ‘add-two-sugars-and-stir’ approach, Wikipedia is an OK starting point for further research, nothing more; but its single biggest failing is that anyone who wants to can edit it - whilst you’re reading it - and these ‘editors’ are of invariably unknown, and therefore questionable, provenance and indeterminate expertise. Add to that the fact that its [Wiki’s] founder, Jimmy Wales, went on record in 2006 to say that he “[didn’t think anyone should cite Wikipedia as a source](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1505569/Everybody-is-an-expert.html)…” and I’m inclined to agree. Finally, I was researching the [then] Director General of [ASIO](http://www.asio.gov.au/) a few years ago, only to be regaled - by Wiki - that he was, indeed, a “raging queen, who preferred ‘cottaging’ to doing any actual work - and that’s when he wasn’t at the ballet…” The post got re-edited a full 48 hours later (by persons unknown) to reflect the news that the DG was, in fact, a happily married man with children, albeit it one with no great passion for ballet. Whilst it’s not as bad as those poltroons who cite Creationism as actual “science”, it’s not my first port of call when needing peer-reviewed information with its concomitant sound provenance and veracity. ---
**Author:** ![srzss05](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@srzss05](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/srzss05)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/22 "2012-07-16T16:11:28Z")
> [@Full\_Tilt\_Boogie](#): > > but its single biggest failing is that anyone who wants to can edit it - **whilst you’re reading it** - and these ‘editors’ are of invariably unknown, and therefore questionable, provenance and indeterminate expertise. This can’t be over-emphasized, especially the bolded part. All the wikipedia apologizers seem to forget this part when they claim that mistakes are often caught and corrected. That doesn’t help the reader that read before the correction. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/23 "2012-07-16T16:22:25Z")
I tried to crush a cockroach with Wikipedia and my laptop broke. Encylopedia Brittanica is much more reliable for that purpose. Even World Book does a better job there. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/24 "2012-07-16T16:54:35Z")
> [@Full\_Tilt\_Boogie](#): > > Finally, I was researching the [then] Director General of [ASIO](http://www.asio.gov.au/) a few years ago, only to be regaled - by Wiki - that he was, indeed, a “raging queen, who preferred ‘cottaging’ to doing any actual work - and that’s when he wasn’t at the ballet…” The post got re-edited a full 48 hours later (by persons unknown) to reflect the news that the DG was, in fact, a happily married man with children, albeit it one with no great passion for ballet. Do you mean to tell me that the head of the Australian National Security Intelligence Service is _ **not** _ a raging queen who likes cottaging and ballet? :eek: Have you colonials retained _ **none** _ of the cherished traditions of the mother country?!! ---
**Author:** ![Full\_Tilt\_Boogie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/2acd7d/32.png) [@Full\_Tilt\_Boogie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Full_Tilt_Boogie)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/25 "2012-07-16T18:14:41Z")
> [@Christopher\_K.Starr](#): > > Two parts of your reply are open to improvement. First, specialist encyclopedias tend to comprise articles written by identified experts, so that they are certainly more reliable than general encyclopedias such as the Brittanica. As an example, the University of California Press’s recent Encyclopedia of Islands (disclosure: to which I contributed) amounts to a multi-author review of the area, as reliable as any scholarly work. > > Second, and more importantly, Wikipedia is quite uneven in its reliability in different areas. I have found it a good source in history, biography and art, for example, but often poor in biology and some other areas. The most likely reason for this is that those with expertise in some areas are more willing than experts in other areas to take Wikipedia seriously and to make the effort to improve it. > > My advice to students is that Wikipedia can be used – criticallly and with caution – as a study source, but that it may not be cited, as we don’t know who is contributing what. This is a very unfashionable view, at least in my area of academia, where I see a lot of pretentious turning up of noses as Wikipedia, like affecting to despise airplane food or wine in boxes. I well recall the sharp intake of breath when I first suggested to a class that they read the Wikipedia entry on a particular topic, as they had all been told that the gentleman’s door must remain forever closed to that low-class source. > > Christopher K. Starr > University of the West Indies For further reading… [Wikipedia Watch](http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/): > [@Wiki Watch](#): > > We are interested in them [Wikipedia] because they have a massive, **unearned influence on what passes for reliable information**. And apropos students and Wiki: [Half of Cambridge students admit cheating](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/half-of-cambridge-students-admit-cheating-980727.html) Snip: “A_ccording to the survey, 82 per cent of essay plagiarists used internet site Wikipedia as their source_.” ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/26 "2012-07-17T07:18:50Z")
If you see any dubious information, it’s rather simple to check the history of the site and revert it to the previous version. It’s rather depressing you waited 48 hours for someone else to do it in order to complain about it when you could have reverted the vandalism yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/27 "2012-07-18T21:42:49Z")
[quote=“njtt, post:10, topic:628134”] Well, in order to notice them you would have to _not_ be a victim of the popular misconception yourself, and, of course, many or even most people _are_ victims of popular misconceptions. That is what “popular” means. [quote] Yes, I realize this of course. > [@njtt](#): > > Unfortunately, the only people who can (reasonably) reliably identify popular misconceptions are subject experts Not true at all. Also, references to literature by subject experts that refute a popular misconception carry more weight than references to a hundred mentions of said misconception by non-experts. > [@Una\_Persson](#): > > I had one decidedly negative experience with Wikipedia very early on. I’m trying to remember the chain of events, but to tell the truth my memory has faded a bit. So this may not be 100% reliable (like Wiki 😛 ) > > One day at work I was reading an article which was related to coal, and found some facts about coal which were clearly incorrect. IIRC there are at least a dozen major errors, and a handful of things which needed more clarification or were misleading by omission. So I spent about an hour and fixed everything, and added citations to academic papers or textbooks to support each change. > > The next day I went out to look at the article again - out of vanity, because I was proud I had helped out - and every single one of my changes had been removed. I thought that it just somehow hadn’t “taken”, so I laboriously re-typed everything back in. This time I was smart enough to save the webpage after I was done. > > That night, almost all my changes were gone. So I looked into it and discovered that someone had been responsible for both edits. So I tried talking on the discussion page, asking why my additions had been removed. The first few responses were very rude and unhelpful - people posted that my additions had been removed because they weren’t cited (which was a lie, and clearly visible in the logs), that the article was “established” and thus shouldn’t be changed by any random dumbass like me, etc. I argued with them and dug up multiple cites to support why my changes were correct - and really folks, the things I was changing were so clearly wrong, it was ludicrous. > > And so I changed it back and the same used removed my changes. So I opened a dialogue with the user who kept undoing my edits. Allow me to summarize a week of psychodrama with the person: > > 1. They were a 2nd-year engineering student in Germany. > 2. They had not even taken a class on power plants, but one day in class their professor “told them some things” about how “power plants really work.” > 3. They refused to give the name of their professor. > 4. They refused to admit that they had even possibly misunderstood the professor. > 5. All the things I found which were wrong with what they had posted were in fact wrong, despite me being able to have 10 cites for their hearsay cite they had. > 6. Even extremely blatant logical mistakes they made were still “right.” > 7. They refused to even read my cites, claiming that I probably had “faked” them (I faked peer-reviewed technical papers and got them published in the ASME and at EP/Power-Gen? Really? _Really?_) > 8. The Wiki people on the discussion page claimed that “a professor’s word is worth an awful lot!” When I pointed out that it was not the professor posting, but a student acting on incorrect hearsay, they fell back on how the student was a frequent contributor whereas I was just some newbie. I pointed out that I had been a professor myself, and was called a liar. I was even accused of being a “vandal.” I noticed when I looked at IP addresses of some of the commentators that they were exactly the same as that of the shit in Germany. :rolleyes: > 9. When it came down to it, the last exchange with this little shit in Germany involved them telling me flat out they had more time and more energy to undo my edits, and so I was going to lose. > > So yeah, why bother editing it? > > Still, many years later on - I think it was last year, in fact - I was reading an article and found they had badly misspelled the name of a famous female fencer. The spelling of her name is not in dispute, and the Olympic Committee website had her name spelled right. So I changed it. > > Guess what? A week later, the misspelling was back. So I changed it and added the cite to the Olympic website. The next day, the misspelling was back. And this wasn’t a case where it was a foreign name or a name of questionable spelling, it was along the lines of “Ellen” spelled “EllnE.” Yet my changing of the text was seen as a “challenge” or “insult” to some vandal, and so it stayed misspelled for months. I checked this morning and it’s spelled right now. > > Wikipedia needs some sort of vetting process for its editors. I’m sorry, but my opinion and citations on some issues are worth a fucking lot more than some random person who comes by after Googling around, and until there’s some sort of rating for editors, Wiki is always going to be treated with suspicion by me. The vandals and termites have to be reduced, if they can’t be eliminated. Sounds like an annoying experience, but the people who were “edit warring” with were not acting according to Wikipedia guidelines, and there is more you could have done to ensure your improvements were recognized, had you known about it. Apart from anything else, you could have reverted back to your improved version of the article in a few clicks, without re-writing it 😛 > [@Full\_Tilt\_Boogie](#): > > Snip: “A_ccording to the survey, 82 per cent of essay plagiarists used internet site Wikipedia as their source_.” But this means nothing except that plagiarists are (pretty much by definition) lazy and that Wikipedia is a popular site. Also 82% of essay plagiarists _who are caught_ used Wikipedia, and they were probably caught because Wikipedia is the first place any sensible person would compare an essay to when looking for plagiarism. ---
**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/28 "2012-07-20T01:14:34Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Hey, it’s THEIR web site. They don’t have to keep anything I write. They’re free to remove or edit anything I give them. > > But the competence of the people making those decisions is, uh, highly questionable, at best. You seem to be under the misconception that someone with more authority than you is making decisions that override yours. There is no such person; there are simply people who come by after you and make changes, just as you did. Their decisions bear no more weight than your own. Powers &8^] ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/29 "2012-07-20T02:18:55Z")
[quote=“Bozuit, post:27, topic:628134”] > [@njtt](#): > > Not true at all. Also, references to literature by subject experts that refute a popular misconception carry more weight than references to a hundred mentions of said misconception by non-experts. Not on Wikipedia it doesn’t. All that is required is that the claim be verifiable. No status is given to the credentials of the source. The best you can hope for is that some expert has specifically addressed the misconception, then someone can add a rider of “This claim has been dismissed by experts”. But if an expert hasn’t specifically addressed it, all you can do is add the correct information _as well_ as a competing version… and someone will delete it within a couple of days. I speak from experience. I had a prolonged battle years ago to try to correct the popular the misconception that forests produce oxygen from a Wikipedia article. I has 6 months of constantly battling against “everyone” as in “everyone knows forests produce oxygen”. And every idiot “citing” Greenpeace or similar organisations repeating the misconception. No matter how many references I provided to top quality expert sources including senate inquiries, “Nature”, University textbooks and so forth stating explicitly that forests do not produce oxygen, the crap came back. When I checked back years later the article still said that forests produce oxygen. Editing Wikipedia is like fucking a porcupine: one prick working against thousands. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/30 "2012-07-20T05:55:57Z")
> [@Powers](#): > > You seem to be under the misconception that someone with more authority than you is making decisions that override yours. There is no such person; there are simply people who come by after you and make changes, just as you did. Their decisions bear no more weight than your own. > Powers &8^] It’s precisely because the controls are so loose that, in the end, the more persistent person wins regardless of who is actually right. How many times do you expect **astorian** to revert to his version before he says, “Ah, the hell with it”? ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/31 "2012-07-20T11:33:35Z")
There’s a system of arbitrage that can be utilised in the discussion page. The actual article need not be warred over, just put a boilerplate warning at the top of an article or a citation needed point near a claim. Those familiar with wikipedia will head to the discussion page to see what the dispute is about. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/32 "2012-07-20T15:31:42Z")
[quote=“Blake, post:29, topic:628134”] > [@Bozuit](#): > > Not on Wikipedia it doesn’t. All that is required is that the claim be verifiable. No status is given to the credentials of the source. > > The best you can hope for is that some expert has specifically addressed the misconception, then someone can add a rider of “This claim has been dismissed by experts”. But if an expert hasn’t specifically addressed it, all you can do is add the correct information _as well_ as a competing version… and someone will delete it within a couple of days. > > I speak from experience. I had a prolonged battle years ago to try to correct the popular the misconception that forests produce oxygen from a Wikipedia article. I has 6 months of constantly battling against “everyone” as in “everyone knows forests produce oxygen”. And every idiot “citing” Greenpeace or similar organisations repeating the misconception. No matter how many references I provided to top quality expert sources including senate inquiries, “Nature”, University textbooks and so forth stating explicitly that forests do not produce oxygen, the crap came back. > > When I checked back years later the article still said that forests produce oxygen. > > Editing Wikipedia is like fucking a porcupine: one prick working against thousands. The quote you attribute to me is not from me but from **Bozuit** ’s reply to me. I guess your tags got confused somehow. My view is much the same as yours (and I have had a similar experience). Mind you, although I am sure you know a lot more about these matters than I do, I am rather surprised to hear that forests don’t produce oxygen. They are certainly doing a lot of photosynthesis, and we are always hearing about how they sequester carbon dioxide, which should, surely, be balanced by oxygen production. If forests are not producing net oxygen, where is all the oxygen produced by their photosynthesizng going? (And come to that, where is all the oxygen we do have coming from? Grasslands? Algae?) ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/33 "2012-07-20T15:55:49Z")
> [@gamerunknown](#): > > There’s a system of arbitrage that can be utilised in the discussion page. The actual article need not be warred over, just put a boilerplate warning at the top of an article or a citation needed point near a claim. Those familiar with wikipedia will head to the discussion page to see what the dispute is about. Maybe so, but most people don’t know this, or do not know how to utilize it. This is just another factor that tilts the balance of power towards those who are not subject experts but who spend a lot of time editing Wikipedia and learning its ins and outs. I have tried with leaving a note on the relevant discussion page when I have noticed an error, but do not want to put in the (sometimes quite considerable) time it takes to edit the actual entry, and find and correctly format the relevant citations. I doubt if that does much good, though (although at least notes on the discussion page are unlikely to simply be disappeared). ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/34 "2012-07-20T16:55:14Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > The quote you attribute to me is not from me but from **Bozuit** ’s reply to me. I guess your tags got confused somehow. My view is much the same as yours (and I have had a similar experience). > > Mind you, although I am sure you know a lot more about these matters than I do, I am rather surprised to hear that forests don’t produce oxygen. They are certainly doing a lot of photosynthesis, and we are always hearing about how they sequester carbon dioxide, which should, surely, be balanced by oxygen production. If forests are not producing net oxygen, where is all the oxygen produced by their photosynthesizng going? (And come to that, where is all the oxygen we do have coming from? Grasslands? Algae?) Don’t forget you need to close _both_ quote tags. Anyway, I believe essentially it is that, firstly, plants respire like animals do (they take in oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide) as well as photosynthesizing. Also, you ask where the oxygen they produce goes. You could ask the same question about where the carbon from the carbon dioxide goes, if they are net consumers of that. I believe it can be used in growing or stored as carbohydrates but of course a rainforest that stays the same size cannot be growing constantly at the same time. Things must be dying too. So I suppose it’s a combination of respiration (plants using the carbon they stored in photosynthesis) and decay. Not certain though, awaiting a better answer. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/35 "2012-07-20T19:34:40Z")
> [@Bozuit](#): > > Don’t forget you need to close _both_ quote tags. Tell **Blake** , not me. I got the effect I wanted (and the unclosed quote tag in my post was a quotation from his). > [@Bozuit](#): > > Anyway, I believe essentially it is that, firstly, plants respire like animals do (they take in oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide) as well as photosynthesizing. Also, you ask where the oxygen they produce goes. You could ask the same question about where the carbon from the carbon dioxide goes, if they are net consumers of that. I believe it can be used in growing or stored as carbohydrates but of course a rainforest that stays the same size cannot be growing constantly at the same time. Things must be dying too. So I suppose it’s a combination of respiration (plants using the carbon they stored in photosynthesis) and decay. Not certain though, awaiting a better answer. Typical Wikipedian! You clearly know less about this than I do. Normally growing plants most certainly do not use up as much oxygen in respiration as they release in photosynthesis (if they did, they would not be able to grow). I was hoping for an answer from **Blake** , who probably actually knows. (And I did _not_ ask about where the carbon goes.) ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2012, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/36 "2012-07-20T22:37:51Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Tell **Blake** , not me. I got the effect I wanted (and the unclosed quote tag in my post was a quotation from his). > > Typical Wikipedian! You clearly know less about this than I do. Normally growing plants most certainly do not use up as much oxygen in respiration as they release in photosynthesis (if they did, they would not be able to grow). I was hoping for an answer from **Blake** , who probably actually knows. (And I did _not_ ask about where the carbon goes.) You obviously didn’t read what I wrote properly. You might want to try doing that before writing a rude reply next time. First of all, I know you did not ask about where the carbon goes and that is clear from what I wrote. To paraphrase, I said “_if_ you ask ‘where does the oxygen plants produce go if a forest isn’t a net producer of oxygen’ you _might as well ask_ ‘where does the carbon plants take from carbon dioxide go if a forest _is_ a net producer of oxygen’”. Secondly, I am also aware that _growing_ plants do use more carbon dioxide than oxygen (and I addressed this above too) but unless a rainforest is expanding in size, there is as much death/decay going on as there is growing. If the plant biomass stays the same it can’t take more carbon out of the atmosphere than it releases which means it’s also not releasing more oxygen than it uses. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/37 "2012-07-21T07:09:15Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > This is just another factor that tilts the balance of power towards those who are not subject experts but who spend a lot of time editing Wikipedia and learning its ins and outs. I don’t think an editor without a proxy would survive for very long adding uncited material without bothering to check discussion pages, especially if they ignore the comments left on their own IP/user page. The oxygen question is given a treatment [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=287426). ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/38 "2012-07-21T12:18:52Z")
> [@Bozuit](#): > > Sounds like an annoying experience, but the people who were “edit warring” with were not acting according to Wikipedia guidelines, But there was no punishment for not acting according to the guidelines. So what was their incentive to stop? > [@](#): > > and there is more you could have done to ensure your improvements were recognized, had you known about it. Apart from anything else, you could have reverted back to your improved version of the article in a few clicks, without re-writing it In case it’s not clear, that’s what I did after the first couple of times. Look, I’m going to appeal from authority here - on the subject I was editing, _I_ am an authority. I’ve written at least 10 books on the subject, authored or co-authored about 300 or more technical papers, and traveled to 4 continents and I don’t know how many countries to lecture on this subject. People pay me an awful lot to do this because it’s been my area of specialty for more than 2 decades and I kick ass at it. And I simply do not have the time to keep logging in every 8 hours to check and revert all the changes from some pissant little piece of shit troll who is fucking around with me by undoing my edit, while taunting me over it. I did try contacting the Wiki administration at the time and received thundering silence. Wikipedia’s very structure is set up to allow trolls to prosper until they finally get tired of playing with you. Every single week I find an article which is vandalized, sometimes very badly, and I know if I spend time trying to fix it (and unless you know the article well, you might inadvertently revert something you shouldn’t have) the troll is likely to come back and just vandalize it again. When Wiki works, it works well. I actually do like Wikipedia much better than Cecil does (or at least I believe I do after chatting with him about it on numerous occasions…) But it has far too much authority attached to it. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2012, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/39 "2012-07-21T18:09:31Z")
Wikipedia is probably most useful as a starting point for people who are already well educated enough to sniff bullshit. It seems like a pretty dangerous “tool” for, say, an earnest 14 year old who may look at a page once and never realize that that was the day the page was full of nonsense, or have the discrimination to see that the page is obviously maintained by, perhaps, the person who is the subject of the page. And it’s surprising–I just looked at the page about James Schlesinger, the former secretary of defense etc. It’s clearly kept up by him or by his office. I mean, he is a vain and prickly man, but…Jim Schlesinger? Point being, anyone looking for information about, say, his tenure in the Ford Administration, without already knowing something about him, is going to be misled. I choose Schlesinger because, perhaps, he doesn’t have the same emotional valence as forests and global climate concerns, but the same point applies more broadly. ---
**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2012, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134/40 "2012-07-24T23:43:45Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > Every single week I find an article which is vandalized, sometimes very badly, and I know if I spend time trying to fix it (and unless you know the article well, you might inadvertently revert something you shouldn’t have) the troll is likely to come back and just vandalize it again. That’s not true. The vast, vast, vast majority of vandalism cases are simple drive-by one-time deals and easily (and usually quickly) reverted. Ongoing, persistent, non-obvious vandalism is, of course, a tougher nut to crack, but it is, fortunately, far less prevalent than anecdotal evidence reveals. Powers &8^] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wikipedia-more-reliable/628134.md?page=3)