I sympathize with Una. I used to be a regular contributor to Wikipedia but I’ve stopped. I got tired of the battles.
But getting back to the column, there’s one area where Wikipedia is the clear winner and that’s staying up-to-date. Compare the Wikipedia on James Eagan Holmes with the Britannica one.
And this is an adequate defence of Wiki’s lack of provenance and veracity, how, precisely? My information was merely incidental.
And that is where Wikipedia falls over in a heap. It’s persistance that wins out in Wikipedia, not expertise. And the people that are most persistent are cranks and those with a vested interest. You need look no further than the article on Scientology to see that. The same effect applies throughout the site, to a greater or lesser degree.
You can never know why any particular material in Wikipedia was put there, but you always know it was put there by someone who wanted their version to be the one you read. Consequently Wikipedia is no more reliable than the web as a whole.
It’s not a defence of anything, it’s simply saying your information doesn’t say anything about Wikipedia’s reliability. If it was just an interesting fact then fine, but I got the impression it was supposed to be a reflection on Wikipedia’s reliability in some way.
Yes it is. Since I’m talking in the context of my personal experience, what’s your evidence that I’m incorrect?
Isn’t this the case for every form of media?
Obviously not.
For the vast majority of media their aren’t any other versions you can read. There isn’t another version of an article in “The Lancet”, nor is their another version of Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”.
If only a single version of a Wikipedia article existed then you would be correct in claiming that it s no different to an academic journal or textbook. But that is not the case for the articles such as those o Hemp or Scientology, where there have been literally hundreds of thousands of version.
As engjs points out, the problem with Wikipedia is that the version of the article that exists when it is read is there because someone who wanted their version to be the one that *was *read. they din;t just want you to read their article, as is the case with “The Lancet” or “A Brief History of Time”. They wanted you to read a specific version of the Wikipedia article.
That is a huge difference. People can evaluate other media for the credibility of the author, editor or publisher. With Wikipedia that is not possible because the only factor that determines what author you are reading is how persistent they are.
I was not referring to your personal experience, but rather your prediction of what would happen in the future, which contradicts the available historical data.
Powers &8^]
As you point out, though, there are thousands of versions available. The history is freely accessible to anyone who wants to look at it. That makes it possible (though not simple) to figure out who added a particular statement.
Powers &8^]
In context though, they intended for their works to be read, which in no way detracts from the truth value of their claims. engjs seems to imply that it does.
Yes, but that defeats the utility of Wikipedia as a work of reference. If I need to quickly get some facts about, let’s say, Scientology, I emphatically do not want to sort through thousands of versions and try to decipher who’s who in a long-running debate.
Well, firstly very few people understand Wikipedia well enough to look at the history or the talk page and check out where stuff comes from. They see an article in Wikipedia, they think it’s the only version.
But more importantly, if I see something in Wikipedia that was written by SplodgeWins, who the * is SplodgeWins and what qualifies him to comment? If I see something in someone’s blog, I can judge it in terms of the prejudices of the person who writes the blog and thus assign a level of credibility to it. If I see something in Wikipedia I have no idea who wrote it or why, and so how can I give it any credibility? A blog is more reliable than Wikipedia.
Yes. But with most media you can look at who wrote it and figure out where they are coming from. Even when you don’t know the actual authors you can look at the source of the material or for themes in the material and get some idea of what biases to expect. If I see a story about a local historical figure in a brochure put out by some town’s tourist board I know there will be some level of exaggeration involved. If I see the same story in EB, I would give a lot more credence to it. If I see it in Wikipedia, how can I tell whether it is fact, exaggeration, or pure fantasy?
One often needs to report such editors to the Wikipedia Admins for punishment to be issued. Found that out after one persistent vandal had received multiple warnings but was never blocked from editing. Now I know where to report vandals and suspected socks.
ETA: if you spot a vandal, you can issue a warning on their talk page yourself. Start at level 1 and and progress if they don’t get the message; if their behavior continues after level 4, report that vandal.
If the vandalism continues after the editor is unblocked? Report 'em again! They’ll be re-blocked for a longer duration. Here’s one for six months and one for a year.
So for Wikipedia to remain reliable, the experts not only know about their field, they have to be expert at negotiating the arcane processes of reporting troublemakers, and be prepared to persist for months while the same user gets repeatedly investigated and warned and banned and investigated and warned. There’s no simple and obvious way to actually report someone and have the admins take a look at it like the “report” button on this message board.
The dispute resolution process is frankly one of Wikipedia’s biggest flaws. There are Admins/Mods, so the project isn’t truly open slather,. But exactly how the Admins function, what they are supposed to do and even the rules are incredibly complex and difficult to negotiate. Wikipedia experts know the rules comprehensively and can post cute little hotlinks to every single obscure policy and standard. Experts in actual subjects on Wikipedia don’t, and so end up having no chance of comng out ahead in disputes.
I remember back when I first started posting to Wikipedia, I got into a dispute with someone who reverted my edits. I read the rules, which say that you can revert something twice in a day. I did so an reported the other poster when they made three reverts. We were then *both *suspended for a couple of days. When i queried the suspension, I was told by another admin, not the one who suspended me, that although the main rule was two reverts, that was just a guideline and it was considered against the rules to revert even twice. On later occasions I reported the other poster after two reverts, and not a damn thing happened. No reply form the admins, and teh vandals kept reverting.
This is precisely the type of crap that I have seen several times drive off expert contributors. There is a labyrinth of rules that nobody who hasn’t spent years learning the gazillion pages could ever hope to comprehend. There is no feedback from the admins, no way to discuss a decision and no hard and fast rules.
Needless to say, actual experts have better things to do with their time, and Wikipedia ends up being overwhelmed by people whose primary expertise in in gaming Wikipedia.
This conclusion, however, contradicts Nature’s conclusion. In the end I think Wikipedia ends up being as good a general resource as there is, including EB. It definitely has its problems (as Una described) but unlike traditional resources like EB it also has a way to determine what some of the problems are.
I think about it another way: Wikipedia is pretty reliable when you want information about totally non-controversial topics, like the properties of vanadium, or the Toronto subway system. But I would never trust it for information about anything remotely controversial, such as anything political, or anything currently in the news.
I disagree to a point. One must tread carefully with controversial topics but Wikipedia (often) allows the reader to understand the controversies in a way that traditional references don’t. For example, a while ago I was reading Abraham Lincoln’s page and there was controvery regarding his legacy: the economist Thomas DiLorenzo wrote a biography of Lincoln that was cited by some wikipedians to criticize Lincoln’s presidency. I was able to read about the controversy on the “talk” page and came to the conclusion that DiLorenzo was a hack historian with an economic axe to grind. I therefore ignored anything based on his book. This kind of research process is not possible with traditional references.
I note that today DiLorenzo is no longer cited on the main Lincoln page.
No it is not. A blog might be easier to evaluate for prejudices of the author, but that does not have any effect on the reliability of the material or on blogs in general.