# More wikipedia wackiness **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 13, 2011, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297 "2011-04-13T23:04:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/21 "2011-04-14T02:37:54Z")
That list does appear to be screwed up since in a few cases the actors in the best picture winner are listed in the hosts column. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/22 "2011-04-14T03:10:22Z")
> [@sqweels](#): > > That list does appear to be screwed up since in a few cases the actors in the best picture winner are listed in the hosts column. Prolly because **John** “corrected” things. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/23 "2011-04-14T03:27:30Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Also, I love the wikipedia classifying the Battle of Kosovo “as a draw”. > > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Kosovo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kosovo) > > It was mourned for centuries as the crushing defeat of Christendom in the Balkans and the battle which forced Christians in the Balkans to submit to the Ottomans and Wikipedia claims it was “a draw”. > > That’s certainly not the way Serb nationalists have traditionally viewed it. Has it been edited since you posted? Here’s what’s there as I read it: > [@](#): > > Reliable historical accounts of the battle are scarce; however, a critical comparison with historically contemporaneous battles (such as the Battle of Angora or Nikopolis) enables reliable reconstruction.[8] The bulk of both armies was wiped out in the battle;[2] both Lazar and Murad lost their lives in it, and the remnants of their armies eventually retreated from Kosovo. The battle was a draw,[2] yet in the wake of it the Serbs were left with too few men to effectively defend their lands, while the Turks had many more troops in the east. Consequently, the Serbian principalities that were not already Ottoman vassals, one after the other became so in the following years.[2] I know nothing of the battle, but it does read as a “won the battle; lost the war” kind of things. It also explains why the battle was the turning point down the centuries-of-mourning thing. ---
**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:** [April 14, 2011, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/24 "2011-04-14T04:07:47Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > Has it been edited since you posted? Here’s what’s there as I read it: > I know nothing of the battle, but it does read as a “won the battle; lost the war” kind of things. It also explains why the battle was the turning point down the centuries-of-mourning thing. You’ll notice in the part you quoted it specifically calls the battle “a draw” and does so earlier, despite the fact that the Christians were crushed by the Ottomans. I’m also not sure how it could be described as a “won the battle, lost the war” situation when they lost both the battle and the war. ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/25 "2011-04-14T04:12:49Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > Has it been edited since you posted? Here’s what’s there as I read it: > I know nothing of the battle, but it does read as a “won the battle; lost the war” kind of things. It also explains why the battle was the turning point down the centuries-of-mourning thing. This caused me to go to the book I will probably never finish, “The History of the Ottoman Empire: Osman’s Dream” by Caroline Finkel. Apparently they had won: “Although Kosovo Polje cost the Ottomans their sultan, the price paid by Serbia was far greater. Bayezid’s victory signalled the end of the Serbian kingdom…” (p. 21). Bayezid was Murad’s son and took over the Ottoman army. The Serbs lost the battle. It was not a draw. Of course, it may be that different historians see things slightly differently and the records are not very good. On a side note, the rest of the paragraph makes it clear that the Serbs view this battle as extremely important. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Nader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Darth\_Nader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Nader)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/26 "2011-04-14T04:17:43Z")
Anyone remember the good 'ol days of usenet? When all you had to do was say “Turkey” or “Armenia”, and everything would go completely kerfuck? Google “Serdar Argic” sometime. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/27 "2011-04-14T10:46:10Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > That’s hardly a compelling defense of wikipedia. > > There’s a reason it’s nearly universally regarded as an extremely undeniable (sic) source. I disagree. Wikipedia actually came out very well in a head-to-head comparison/competition with Encyclopedia Britannica (in a study organized by Nature, arguably the most credible scientific journal in the world) ([cite](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm)). And that was five years ago - I suspect that its content has actually improved overall since then. ---
**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/28 "2011-04-14T10:56:36Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Yes, but encyclopedia’s with reliable editors aren’t at the mercy of activists with axes to grind. > > Moreover, most encyclopedia’s at least have some regulations to control the quality of their sources. > > Wikipedia certainly doesn’t and that’s why it’s utter shit when it comes to just about any remotely controversial topic. > > There’s a reason high school teachers and college professors usually forbid it being used as a cite, which is not necessarily the case with more reliable encyclopedias. Regarding your last paragraph: my lecturers told me _never_ to cite an encyclopedia, even print ones. At the very most, I should be using it to get an overview of the subject and then following the sources given by the article, which is also the way I use Wikipedia for anything more serious than looking up who Wolverine’s daughter is. My Anglo-Saxon History lecturer actually _recommended_ the Wikipedia page on charters as a good starting point for understanding them (and for added hilarity, he did it while the writer of the article was in the room, unbeknownst to the lecturer :D). We also had a dedicated study skills session on how to use Wikipedia, from the lecturer who would always know if we read the Wiki page first because of the spelling conventions we would then use 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/29 "2011-04-14T11:04:01Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > I disagree. Wikipedia actually came out very well in a head-to-head comparison/competition with Encyclopedia Britannica (in a study organized by Nature, arguably the most credible scientific journal in the world) ([cite](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm)). And that was five years ago - I suspect that its content has actually improved overall since then. No it didn’t. They were classing minor typos in EB as equivalent to major mistakes in Wikipedia, and describing overviews in EB of controversial subjects that even experts cannot agree on as incorrect. The study even went as far as handing articles that didn’t appear in the EB to the referees! [EB crushed the study in their rebuttal.](http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/30 "2011-04-14T11:05:26Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > From a friend. > > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile\_Galle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Galle) > > An article on a French artist in 1904 mentions that he “publicly condemned the Armenian Genocide”. > > Of course the Armenian Holocaust(which may have constituted a genocide) didn’t occur until almost eleven years later. > > Also, I love the wikipedia classifying the Battle of Kosovo “as a draw”. > > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Kosovo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kosovo) > > It was mourned for centuries as the crushing defeat of Christendom in the Balkans and the battle which forced Christians in the Balkans to submit to the Ottomans and Wikipedia claims it was “a draw”. > > That’s certainly not the way Serb nationalists have traditionally viewed it. What’s your point here? If you find a mistake in Wiki then edit it. Welcome to the Internet. ---
**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:** [April 14, 2011, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/31 "2011-04-14T12:54:13Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > What’s your point here? If you find a mistake in Wiki then edit it. Welcome to the Internet. What’s my point? My point is that wikipedia is inherently unreliable because anyone can edit it, so when reading it you’re at the mercy of ax-grinding partisans. The case of some activist slipping a reference to “the Armenian Genocide” into an article on a French artist who died eleven years beforehand is pretty blatant. A friend of mine is the Chair of Rutgers Middle Eastern Studies department and he said the next wikipedia article he reads on the Middle East that’s any good will be the first. Obviously that’s especially true for any wiki article related to Israel. Unfortunately far too many people think that wiki is a reliable source and behave as if it is. ---
**Author:** ![Wheelz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wheelz/32/5718_2.png) [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/32 "2011-04-14T13:09:24Z")
I am shocked – _shocked!_ – to learn that there is inaccurate information on Wikipedia! Does anybody else know about this?? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/33 "2011-04-14T13:21:30Z")
You want Wikipedia wackiness? Look at this thread of mine from last year: > [@](#): > > The thirty-three anonymous Homeric Hymns celebrating individual gods are a collection of ancient Greek hymns, “Homeric” in the sense that they employ the same epic meter— dactylic hexameter— as the Iliad and Odyssey, use many similar formulas and are couched in the same dialect. They were uncritically attributed to Homer himself in Antiquity—from the earliest written reference to them, Thucydides (iii.104)—and the label has stuck. “The whole collection, as a collection, is Homeric in the only useful sense that can be put upon the word;” A. W. Verrall noted in 1894,[1] “that is to say, it has come down labeled as ‘Homer’ from the earliest times of Greek book-literature.” **Homeric Hymns were usually composed by cats that ate cereal.** [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=541920&highlight=homeric+hymns](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=541920&highlight=homeric+hymns) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/34 "2011-04-14T14:06:45Z")
Sure, Wiki is wrong a lot, but I bet Britannica never had a Captain Caveman entry. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/35 "2011-04-14T14:14:28Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > [EB crushed the study in their rebuttal.](http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf) [Hardly](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7084/full/440582b.html). ---
**Author:** ![Scuba\_Ben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Scuba\_Ben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scuba_Ben)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/36 "2011-04-14T14:15:47Z")
Do I need to drop {{uw-vand2}}, {{uw-hoax}}, or [[WP:NOT]] on the lot of you? How bout [[WP:SOFIXIT]] instead? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/37 "2011-04-14T14:27:41Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > [Hardly](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7084/full/440582b.html). You might want to read _both_ links. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/38 "2011-04-14T15:04:24Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > [Hardly](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7084/full/440582b.html). Nature issuing a statement saying that some of EB’s criticisms of the story were “too specialised” for an immediate response, but, hey, everything was great with our analysis is complete and utter bullshit. Further, the EB rebuttal makes it clear that they’re only sampling faults in the Nature article. Nature claiming that EB only criticises less than 50% of the reported errors is incorrect. That’s just the number they could be bothered to actually look at in detail. Sample “error” that the Nature reviewers found in EB: > [@](#): > > Nature’s review of the Britannica article “Pythagorean theorem” claimed the Britannica misspelled an Italian town that the reviewer said should be spelled “Crotona.” However, according to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, the preferred spelling is in fact “Crotone,” as Britannica spelled it. Other reliable sources also give “Crotone” as the right spelling. For > Nature’s editors to have ruled this an error on one reviewer’s say-so, without confirming the spelling, was inexcusable. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/39 "2011-04-14T15:36:24Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Also, I love the wikipedia classifying the Battle of Kosovo “as a draw”. The “draw” comes from John Fine, who is a respected historian and the book it comes from is actually a pretty decent survey ( I have a copy on my shelves ). He concludes that the battle was technically a tactical draw because the Ottoman army withdrew from the field almost immediately ( but _after_ the remnants of the Serbian army had withdrawn because they were losing - the left wing and center were buckling ). But he also notes that Bayezid had pressing reasons to do so - to secure the succession against his brothers. He also notes that Serbian resistance was pretty much exhausted after the battle, such that while it required further campaigns to finally secure submission, in strategic terms it was a victory. I think he is a _little_ generous calling it a draw, but not completely out of line per se if you take a narrow view. The Ottoman army does seem to have taken heavy casualties, it did retreat and it did take a few more years ( until 1392 ) to secure local dominance. But it is obvious in the aftermath that Serbian resistance was doomed. Tactically a slight victory, strategically a decisive victory is how I would cast it myself. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297/40 "2011-04-14T15:50:37Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > What’s your point here? If you find a mistake in Wiki then edit it. Welcome to the Internet. I don’t think this is a good response to a comment that Wikipedia has errors. If Wikipedia has errors, it doesn’t seem significant to me that I could edit the article and fix the errors. What about all the people who read the article and don’t know that there are errors? I also hear the argument that Wikipedia has cites for (most of) its information, but if the article content is full of errors, then the article would be better if it consisted solely of a list of citations for you to go look up the information yourself. This is assuming that Wikipedia is wrong more often than not, which I don’t think is true. You can say that due to its community editing style, the information you can find there will reflect popular interest more than scholarly interest (i.e. comic book heros getting more space than leaders of the Mongol empire), but in general I find the articles useful. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-wikipedia-wackiness/578297.md?page=3)