The problem does seem worse in the US than elsewhere- the BBC Online are pretty good, and whilst Australia’s ABC Online news sometimes seems to lack polish, it’s still a lot better than the “Infotainment” coming out of the US.
Unfortunately, a lot of the US media trends seem to be filtering over here, which is especially concerning because it’s been pretty well established they don’t work…
As I’ve said before, on any scientific/medical topic that entails controversy, Wikipedia is untrustworthy because of the factions that believe that he who edits last, gets the final say. I’ve seen editors with crystalline clear, glaring conflicts of interest post tripe for eons until maybe some sanity re-enters the process.
This is the most depressing thing I’ve read in a long time.
Again - and this is bad compared to what? There is an enormous amount of this that has always gone on and will continue to go on, and it can’t be blamed on wikipedia. Its called dogma and traditional knowledge, and the world is rife with it. If you want to get past it you have to go back to deeper sources. This was true 20 years ago and it’s true now with wikipedia.
And there are numerous books espousing completely biased crap on controversial topics. They don’t have direct links showing other points of view that have been edited out of the front page, of course, so they are much worse.
Just to clarify the Debate a little here: is anyone arguing that Wikipedia provides a net detriment - that it obscures more than it illuminates - or are we merely lamenting that this vast, free resource isn’t as good as smaller commercial ones?
I personally read very few “controversial” wikis, and am savvy enough with online resources (look where this message is posted, for crissake) to know when something might well be fishy. I would guess that for every one time I have been misled by Wikipedia there will be over a thousand times I’ve been enlightened.
Regarding the Maurice Jarre incident, that’s not illustrative of something particularly wrong with Wikipedia. Rather, it illustrates what happens when someone misuses it (anyone can misuse anything, so misuse is not a particular Wikipedan problem), and it illustrates a problem with Journalistic practices.
Similar responses apply to all of your points. The problem isn’t with Wikipedia, it’s with the way some people misuse it.
Err, did you read my post? I don’t think I could be any more pro wikipedia; however, the format has flaws which ought to be acknowledged. That people have always gotten things wrong is no excuse – of course they did, and they will in the future; however, to just throw your hands in the air on that realisation is nothing but defeatism. The wiki architecture, great as it is, encourages the kind of self-referential error I mentioned due to its dynamic content; something of fixed content is far less susceptible to the same problem. We can try and make sure to minimize the amount of things gotten wrong – for instance, one could request cites to predate the original (wiki) article, which would eliminate the problem (though it would probably generate others).
It’s not a serious and reliable reference text. But again, compared to what? Would we be better off if the wikipedia servers were burned to the ground and the pieces buried in unconsecrated ground? Of course not.
Much of the “deletionist” mentality arises from resentment that “fluff” gets more development than Big Important Stuff. It’s reminiscent of the old joke that the difference between Americans and Russians is that if an American farmer’s neighbor has two cows when he has one, he’ll work harder to acquire another, while a Russian farmer in the same situation will respond by killing one of his neighbor’s cows.
Reliable reference texts?
Are you asking for specific reference texts that are quality texts, or simply asking if Wikipedia would cleave to the standard of a serious, reliable reference text even if every one we actually had was written by random monkeys on crystal meth?
Yes, and then we should salt the earth and prohibit anybody from approaching the site for 10,000 years.
Come on Lemur, you didn’t really mean to just set up a silly strawman and then do battle with it in order to rebut a point I never made… right?
Wikipedia is a decent enough spot to check out for an overview of opinions on certain topics, and if you’re lucky all the points in an article will be cited. If you’re really lucky they’ll be good cites and the people who cited them will describe them accurately. But that doesn’t change the fact that the proper way to use Wikipedia on most subjects is to get an overview of what the contributors have stated, and then go track down the cites they based their claims on. That’s my point.
In my personal experience, obvious errors have gotten removed quickly. There have been many, many times where I’ve seen errors and went to correct it, but before I submitted the change I refreshed the page and the error was gone!
Seconded; Wiki is a browser’s dream and a great way to waste time while learning a thing or two or twelve. I’ve written and edited a bit on Wiki over the years, and it’s the rare day online that I don’t go there at least once, but I don’t pretend that it’s the Encyclopedia Britannica. I would never cite a Wiki article as an authoritative, argument-ending source of The Truth. But for pop culture, entertainment and/or to get a quick overview of something I didn’t know before, there’s nothing better.
I mean, compared to other free online encyclopedias.
Encyclopedias in general aren’t authoritative. They are surveys of the conventional wisdom. I shudder to think of the errors and biases of the 1976 World Book Encyclopedia I used to read when I was a kid.
Wikipedia is not an authoritative collection of all human knowledge. It’s a free online encyclopedia. As a plain encyclopedia it is damn good and the fact that we can even debate whether it can be compared in quality to the Encyclopedia Britannica says that it’s damn good. Add in that it’s free, and available online (I can read a paper copy of several encyclopedias for free at my local library, but I’d have to go to the library), it’s updated frequently, it has articles on topics that traditional encyclopedias wouldn’t touch.
Wikipedia is awesome, as long as you realize that it isn’t a repository of authoritative truth, but a collection of articles written by some random guys. You know, just like books and newspapers and magazines and textbooks and science journals and, well, everything.
But then again, there’s no such thing anyway – Britannica can be wrong, too; so can articles in peer-reviewed journals, or anything else. I fully agree with those that say that it’s good as a jumping off point to start digging deeper into any given topic; but so’s every other reference text. It’s not a weakness of wikipedia, but follows from the fact that we have no ultimate and perfect arbiter of truth. That it works as such a jumping off point, and frequently as good as its competitors, is a testament to its quality.
You run into problems when you try to say “Wikipedia is” anything. Wikipedia is a vast collection of articles, which vary widely in accuracy, writing style, level, correctness, and completeness.
So, if it’s accessible and easy to use, that’s bad? Hell, no! When you make something easier to use, you make it easier to misuse, but that’s not a flaw in the thing that’s easy to use.
So flunk those students.
There are some things that Wikipedia does that no one else does as well.
There have been times when I’m reading the SDMB, for instance, and come across a reference to a person, or band, or TV show, or whatever that I’m totally unfamiliar with. How do I find out what that person is talking about? My first stop is often to look it up on Wikipedia.
Sometimes it’s me who makes a post with a reference to a person, place, or thing that I suspect will be unfamiliar to a substantial number of people. To avoid confusion, I’ll often check the Wikipedia link, make sure it’s understandable and accurate, and link to it. Or if I want to explain something, sometimes Wikipedia already has a really good explanation/description. If it meets my approval, I’ll link to it and/or quote from it rather than make something up myself.
Err, no its not, I had no idea who Abraham Maslow was I, now know he’s the guy behind the “Hierachy of Needs” (as it happens a theory I often quote). It was actually pretty useful to me, therefore IMHO the matter is settled, Wikipedia IS USEFUL.