In this thread, there’s doubt about the accuracies of wikipedia. I know how it works, and do understand that one has to be wary about any information on the web posing as fact or truth. Wikipedia really doesn’t claim that, but says that I can challenge an article, if I think it’s wrong.
Basically, it’s the scientific method for an encyclopedia, and having a peer reviewed online encyclopedia seems like a really good idea in many ways. EB, prestigeous as it might be, is not open to challenge in such a direct way.
But there’s still a nagging suspicion in me, when I look up something in a field where I’m not an expert (which would be the only time I search for an answer), that this is, to put it in SDMB terms, more IMHO than GQ - in short, can I trust the info?
Can you trust ALL of the info? No, there are inaccuracies and outright lies sprinkled throughout it. Can you trust most of it? Probably. It is pretty unique as a data source but, if you are using it for scholarly or especially important work, you should get secondary reputable sources to back of the info. It is still useful as a starting point though.
I think you answered most of your own question in your OP.
My experience has been that the more popular (well-known) the topic of the article is (with certain exceptions*), the more people watch it, and the more people that watch it, the more accurate it’s likely to be.
If you write an article on a small, unpopular topic, many fewer people will probably be interested enough to fact-check and make changes.
*The exceptions being well-known but controversial articles, of course.
It should be noted that the administration of Wikipedia has had trouble controlling articles on politically hot topics. For instance, they had to freeze changes to the “John Kerry” article nine times during the election season because of attempts to edit it by people who didn’t exactly hold truthfulness as their highest priority. But we can hope that that’s an isolated case. I haven’t used Wikipedia all that often, but I find that the articles on obscure topics are usually very helpful because they’re written by people clearly obsessed with subject. My favorite example is that there’s an article on Nature’s Harmonious Timecube, which is almost as long as the original Timecube page itself.
No, you can’t trust online encyclopedias, if you believe information contained on the pages is incorrect you can have the pages removed without having to provide any type of validation of your assertions. I would find it very difficult to hold too much faith in the information from these types of reference sites.
I look at it as an evolution. Check out the history of Rwanda, according to Wikipedia. Should this same article be posted here, it will be bunked and debunked within a few hours. Unfortunately, revisions on such thorny topics occur at Wikipedia with the regularity of a hard-drinking Granny.
Wikipedia is a great place to start to research any topic, but it’s not the end. On a lot of topics, it’s fine, but to put it in SDMB terms, IMHO, a wiki quote is fine for CS or MPSIMS, but for GQ or GD, you’d best be ready with some primary sources.
I saw the wikipedia articles on String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity get tagged as “biased” a while ago, and that pretty much sealed it for me. I’d love to trust it completely, but I know I can’t, and hence I’ve pretty much stopped using it as a primary reference for anything. As said above, it’s a good first step, and usually primary sources are cited; so if I know virtually nothing about a particular subject, it makes for a useful jumping-off point. Beyond that, I no longer rely on it.
As far as articles with high traffic (top 5%) are concerned, Wikipedia is a reliable & useful starting point. This works out to the top 20,000 articles or so. The ‘featured articles’ are indicative of the higher quality.
A German magazine found the German Wikipedia to be mildly superior when compared against Brockhaus and Encarta.
One of Wikipedia’s founders has expressed concern about the direction WP ought to be taking.
There is an effort underway to create Wikipedia 1.0, a coexisting filtered version where all articles meet a certain quality and changes are vetted.
I’ve certainly found errors of fact and significant omissions before. That said it can still be useful. I’ll often check them first, at least for some things. Just take the entries with a grain of salt and don’t assume they are the last word on any topic. But then the same can be said for standard encyclopedias as well.
- Tamerlane
This is GQ man. What is this drivel? I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia deletion policy. You can’t just “have the pages removed without having to provide any type of validation of your assertions.” It’s a long drawn out processes ending in a community vote for articles containing substantial content. On the other hand, if it’s 8 year old Sally James who tried her darndest to objectively describe herself in an encyclopedic format, chances are it’s gotta’ go.
I don’t use it much, but did notice one thing.
A page of passing interest to me has an error, which I’ve corrected a few times (not with any great determination, just now and then).
However, ithe mistake is always re-introduced by the zealots who “maintain” the page, I can only assume to try and validate their own misguided views.
If this is widespread i.e. people watching a page like a hawk to make sure it reflects their ideas, it would make it less reliable.
True, you can’t just delete an article. You can, however, just “blank” an article, so there’s still an article but it has no content. Someone will likely come along shortly and undo this. You can also just change the content to anything you’d like, for example changing Sigmund Freud’s birthday to 1453 (please don’t do this). Vandalism like this is not a huge problem, but I’ve encountered a lot of bad information there in areas that I know about. There’s a lot of good stuff there too.
You do realise that they are saying exactly the same thing about you, don’t you.
The problem is an incorrect pronunciation of word (place name actually), where how it’s spelled is different to how it’s pronounced.
If you know this, it’s fine, if you don’t, you’re apt to pronounce it wrongly (and post it in a wiki, it seems, also)
A number of people have attempted to set it right, but as I say, the squatters will change it back.
I agree with Stirling Newberry when he talks about the shortcomings of Wikipedia.
http://www.bopnews.com/archives/002710.html
Wikipedia is not peer-reviewed, as the OP mentioned. Peer review means that people knowledgeable in a field review the article for accuracy. At Wikipedia, the article’s accuracy is determined by the community at large. Wikipedia takes things like link equity quite seriously.
For wrongheaded but still popular thinking, this can cause problems. Newberry’s example is Intelligent Design. He is quite active in maintaining the ID Wikipedia page, and is quite open about trying to label it as it is: it is not scientific thought, it is a fraudulent idea which aims to disguise religion as science and to discredit honest true science. To the mods if they take issue: I don’t believe this is a GD statement. I believe everything I’ve said is factually correct and indisputable.
Herein lies the greatest threat to Wikipedia. Uncorrected inaccuracies and vandalism are surmountable problems. But in order to have authority, you cannot present both sides of an argument without bias if one side is clearly wrong (but still popular). The setup of Wikipedia prevents it from ever being able to do this, and therefore it will never have true authority.
There was an article on Slashdot a ways back about someone who did an experiment on this. He deliberately inserted a handful of mistakes into Wikipedia, to see how long before someone corrected them. The results were rather disappointing.
Most of what needs to be said has been said, but since i teach a unit on how to do research, I’ll chime in.
If you’re tyring to find a source that backs up something you wish to claim, you need a credible source. I personally define a credible source as one that has someone’s reputation staked on it, that is, they are willing to put a name on it and have something to lose if they are found to have put forth false information or rely on less than credible sources themselves.
The sheer anonymity of Wikipedia renders it far less than acceptably credible as a rule, although specific articles have good info.
Keep in mind of course that information can be true or false regardless of the credibility of the source, but in the absence of knowledge of truth or falsehood, credibility is all you have to go on.
What I like about the Wikipedia is not its reliability but its content, which is determined by what members of the global online community are actually interested in. Conventional encyclopedias, whether print or digital, cover only what a staff of academic experts think is worth covering. Would any of them ever have thought to include an article about “sexual slang” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_slang) in the Britannica or the Encarta? 