The Register Takes Aim at Wikipedia Again 630
Syberghost writes "The Register has fired off another salvo in their long-running war of words with Wikipedia, in the form of an article about the lack of "moral responsibility" from the operators of Wikipedia. Wikipedia users fired back less than an hour later, making the Register headline obsolete."
Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
And then what? Does that make the Register story obsolete too?
While I don't think Wiki should worry about all these whingings (does TheOnion have moral responsibility to warn its readers?), Wiki users might get more out of the whole ordeal by asserting (via an entry) the unnecessity of moral responsibility in Wiki.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:4, Funny)
Daniel
Two-word response (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Two-word response (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Two-word response (Score:4, Informative)
I'm probably wasting my time, but:
--MarkusQ
Here, just so it's not a waste. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you have missed the point.
I think it's obvious that it's not worth the paper. I submit that you have never even attempted to ask for authorship information from an encyclopedia. I had a physics science project I failed in
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
That does clearly not fit wikipedia as it is now.
It clearly doesn't fit traditional "encyclopedias" either, as it's an impossible criteria to meet.
Of course, if you read the definition as it is actually intended to be read, it fits wikipedia pretty well -- a reference work that contains somewhat comprehensive information on selected topics, and c
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I think that is a bit of overstatement. I don't think wikipedia is invaluable at all. I almost never use it and I get along fine without it. In fact, when doing google searches I avoid wikipedia articles because I simply don't trust anything written there. It is not worth my time to have to go to alternate sources to verify the information only to find that the wikipedia article was largely plagarized anyway. Granted, mu
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
You said it more clearly than I did, and that is what I meant when I called wikipedia a broadaxe being used as a scalpel. My impression, and it is no more than that, is that many people use it as the definitive source and go no further.
Using wikipedia is like being handed a list of import regulations for every country on the planet but being told that 5% are wrong. At first you might think it was was a really useful tool, but I suspect that after realizing you still had to look up every country's rules anyway to make sure it wasn't one of the 5% you would soon decide it wasn't worth the effort. That's pretty much me and wkipedia.
I will grant you this: because the information on wikipedia at least has the CHANCE of being verified by others it is more likely to be trustworthy than most of the unattributed information floating around on the internet.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
Because articles in newspapers and magazines usually have a byline. If an article is by a writer with a long history of well-researched articles or who clearly has knowledge of the subject matter then there is a low chance that the article is bogus. Newspapers also do not assign shipping clerks to write science articles, while anyone can writ
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
But i think:
a) Wikipedia's idea is great, the process needs a bit polishing but the idea is stil great
b) A public FREE book of knowledge is good (i won't call it an encyclopedia
c) People should stop whining like women and children and produce solutions to problems instead.
d) World changes every day, thats why you can't have an accurate encyclopedia ever.
e) Wikipedia is the fastest changing book of knowledge available for free.
f) Your en
Re:Moral Victory (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia is a wiki - quite obviously, the system is not perfect and it has its benefits and its downfalls. They are not claiming otherwise, either.
Now, what is the Register's alternative? Rather, what's Andy Orlowsku's alternative? That dude seems to rate a classic
Wikipedia isn't perfect, and there are always morons out there who'd do some nasty things. If you're using Wikipedia for your research, you must be nuts. However, it is a starting point.
In fact, in some domains (e.g. Physics), Wikipedia has oodles of good information that it becomes an excellent reference. Is it a 100% reliable reference? No. But it is a reference, and like anything else, it has its pros and cons.
These guys sound like little whiners - who just know a wee little and go on and on about something. Reminds me of the case with Al Fasoldt who kept doing the exact same thing.
Wikipedia is a dynamic, free, open encyclopedia that is more sophisticated and more comprehensive than a lot of encyclopedias out there. And this dynamicism brings with it a small price - brainless morons and vandals who, like in every other system, have no moral scruples or accountability.
That does not mean the system is flawed - that means some of the people are.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please do not use the word "troll". (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia has its problems, indeed and it is good to see someone willing to go against the flow and point out the system's short-comings. Sadly Orlowski's invective (for me at least) got ol
If the troll label fits (Score:5, Insightful)
Andrew Orlowski is a troll.
Re:If the troll label fits (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If the troll label fits (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new to British tabloid journalism.
--Rob
Don't you know how the Register is funded? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they keep him on; he represents income. If you don't like it, don't read him and don't post links to him on Slashdot. You're just falling for his act.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Which may explain while the Register feels compelled to slag them.
Wikipedia, for all it's flaws, is vastly more successful than the Register is. Wikipedia scares the mainstream media --which in this context includes (beleive it or not) the Register--cross-eyed.
If you don't understand how Wikipedia is produced, and by whom, you're unlikely to be able to judge its reliability. Of course the same is true of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the New York Times, CNN, DailyKos, moveon.org, FreeRepublic and Little Green Footballs.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Funny)
victory to vulture central
agreed (Score:3, Funny)
And now people are trying to use slander and legal tactics to damage them, a non-profit, free online resource, made up of volunteers. Humanity doesn't get any lower than that.
It's hilarious, or not; Wikipedia's critics are exactly what they claim to oppose, unaccountable slanderous bastards.
untrue (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, damage control, by controlling other people.
but if I disagree with some whacked out wiki-fiddler my information (if there is any) could very easily be altered to harm my chances for success in the REAL world.
You still have the same recourse you've always had against slander and libel, file a lawsuit. It may be hard now, in this day and age where anyone can post anything, *anywhere
flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been trying to figure out why this issue is getting people so worked up (myself included), because it's all about some random website claiming to be a sort of encyclopedia. People claim to be experts all the time, and they lie or misinform out of ignorance; it's not a new phenomenon. Why then, do we have articles written like the one at the register, urging a call to arms over "moral responsibility?
It's all over one word: Encyclopedia. If wikipedia called itself the "Unreliable Encyclopedia", would this article have been written? I suppose the author would have had a hernia over what he considered the contradiction in terms. And yet, there do exist unreliable encyclopedias I suspect: those published in the 1950s do not contain up-to-date political and scientific information. They are unreliable, although I would not like to try and guess if they are more or less reliable than wikipedia.
I think that responsibility is the heart of this issue, and is why so many people get worked up about it. It's about who is to be assigned blame if wikipedia is inaccurate.
The author of the register article obviously wants the administrators of wikipedia to be held responsible, as if it was a top-down heirarchy. But it's not: it's more of a sort of p2p encyclopedia. It's not useful to blame wikipedia for being irresponsible any more than it is to blame gnutella for having illegal media on its network.
And the problem with attacking wikipedia and saying its not only useless, but it is harmful, is that it is not only attacking those people who spread disinformation. It is also attacking smart people who have a lot of worthwhile knowledge, and have carefully attempted to transfer this knowledge to an online medium that they knew people would use.
Now, maybe those people who write good articles for wikipedia shouldn't do so, because it'll only confuse people into thinking that wikipedia is more than a mountain of lies.
But I think that the answer lies in finding a way to hold individual wikipedia authors more accountable for their actions.
Hopefully as the internet grows up, people will go from thinking "I have to be careful in believing what I read on the internet" to "I have to be careful in what I say on the internet, because it represents me". We should start believing that it is a serious offense to spread disinformation on the internet, so that people will hold themselves to higher standards.
I say we need secure, historied, online personae.
Re:flamebait (Score:3, Funny)
And yes, I am smarter than you and my dick is bigger than yours.
Re:flamebait (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been trying to figure out why this issue is getting people so worked up (myself included), because it's all about some random website claiming to be a sort of encyclopedia. People claim to be experts all the time, and they lie or misinform out of ignorance; it's not a new phenomenon. Why then, do we have articles written like the one at the register, urging a call to arms over "moral responsibility?
It's all over one word: Encyclopedia. If wikipedia called itself the "Unreliable Encyclopedia", would this article have been written? I suppose the author would have had a hernia over what he considered the contradiction in terms. And yet, there do exist unreliable encyclopedias I suspect: those published in the 1950s do not contain up-to-date political and scientific information. They are unreliable, although I would not like to try and guess if they are more or less reliable than wikipedia.
I think you have hit the nail on the head dead-on in terms of the "Encyclopedia" distinction. I teach a Research Methods class for a small liberal arts college in the U.S. and the frustration that occurs from students citing wikipedia as an authoritative source can be overwhelming. It is difficult enough to teach students that the first source they find on the web is not the best source - you would be stunned by how many papers I receive (and correct, and correct again in subsequent revisions) where students cite unaccredited geocities websites, bulletin board posts, etc. in their papers. Wikipedia presents a whole new onion to peel - students see the word "Encyclopedia" and associate it with what they've been taught in primary and high school education systems: The information you find in an Encyclopedia is valid.
That being said, sure, other Encyclopedias become dated or contain inaccuracies, but the fundamental difference is that someone is accountable and culpable for correcting those mistakes or lack of updates. When information in Encyclopedia Brittanica goes out of date, someone corrects the information. With Wikipedia, there's no accountability. There's no impetus for someone to go back and fact check. Wikipedia relies on other users to "pipe up" when they feel its necessary to - and even then those who pipe up may or may not be a qualified source on a particular issue.
Granted, not every article on Wikipedia suffers from these problems, and not every article needs a "qualified source," (for instance, what are the necessary qualifications for an article outlining the history of the Smurfs?) but the "encyclopedia" distinction is one that almost implies that the information contained within is credible, reliable, and subject to qualified review. Wikipedia is just as flawed as slashdot.
Hell, it's only a matter of time before I'm referring to Wikipedia articles written by **Beatles-Beatles** with edits and updates from Scuttlemonkey.
Research (Score:3, Interesting)
But wikipedia is an encyclopedia going by all definitions of the word I could find. People trust untrustable sources all the time (e.g, newpapers, teachers, salesmen). That does not make the source worthless.
Re:flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that's what the "Wiki" in Wikipedia means. Along with a lot of good things, like freedom, up-to-date-ness, etc., but unreliability is in there too.
Re:flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
But it is.
It's not a book, but I think otherwise it fits. The above is from the Oxford Dictionary; that's my first resort for defining a word. But when I come across a usage that hasn't made the OED, I resort to less formal sources. For instance, the term "cameltoe" can be found in the Urb [urbandictionary.com]
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
I think wikipedia is a perfect example of democracy and what happens within. The people that use the site must police the site. Or do you want to elect a governing body to determine what goes in and what does not go in? And who controls that body?
Wikipedia works perfectly. The only flaw I see is that they even bothered to remove that offensive article. That sets an unfortunate precedent for wiki. They should have l
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if the federal government worked like Wikipedia. I could log on to wiki.gov and add new laws and edit existing ones at will, but so could anyone else.
It would be pretty cool to see how that would turn out, if you didn't have to live there.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Interesting)
Though there is quite a bit of unpolished stuff, there is also a surprising amount of good ideas. Anarchy? I would say not, though perhaps not as organized as some might like. Makes for an interesting read in any case, especially given your post.
Wikipedia ! = Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet this one of the most commonly accepted beliefs regarding Wikipedia. Some people on Slashdot alone have gone so far as to claim that Wikipedia is public domain and have gotten modded up for it.
Its no longer about whether or not the government can control the information, its now a matter of whos controlling the spread of disinformation. If 'anyone can edit' entries, who's monitoring the monitors? At least with the government its this big huge target we can all see and gang up against. With Wikipedia, we're staring at a bunch of easily masked IP addresses, false user ID info and the complete anonymity (for anyone determined) of the internet. I'd take the lesser of two evils and stick with the big, mean, elitist, capitalist run governments.
Re:Wikipedia ! = Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst Wikipedia can do is call you a chicken fucker, and you can very easily erase that insult.
The worst the government can do is disappear you, torture you, or kill you. If you try to "gang up" on it, odds are very good that at the very least you will be herded into a cage at gunpoint.
Pardon me if I find the notion that the government is "the lesser of two evils" in comparison with a website, an incredible conclusion.
Re:Readers please note (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you think I posted what I posted? The levels of meta were too delicious to ignore. A pedantic correction of the definition of anarchism in the discussion of an article about wikipedia editing woes, using one of the most contentious wikipedia articles as backup, which in its discussion page has similar pedantry.
I tried, but frankly, I was too weak to resist it. :-D
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is just worse than most because it's essentially a peer reviewed group without actual peer control. That means it's prone to myths within the community and ignorances from the original writers of the articles, as well as political and religious biases brought from outside the community.
I completely agree it's a fascinating experiment in electronic democracy and group hive minds. It's just not a repository of facts or anything resembling facts.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Human beings are incapable of being objective
Dogmatic nonsense. In my experience, plenty of human beings are capable of being objective within specific realms of knowledge. You can ask them to be objective about "is it day or night" at noon; but perhaps not at astronomical twilight.
Here's how "authority" works: an authority is someone who tells you things that check out. Over time, you trust them to continue to tell you things on the same subject that check out. If you are curious about an aspect of a subject on which your "authority" has tended to tell you things that seem to have worked out, you are more likely to consult that authority.
Academic authority is merely an attempt to create a web-of-trust relationship that models that kind of authority, so you can trust people whom you have never previously consulted and had an opportunity to verify. That's what a degree is: a bunch of folks who have previously been certified (with their degrees) to know what they're talking about agree to certify that yet another person knows what he's talking about. You could say that it's a house of cards; but the point is that these folks are subjected to tests of their reliability throughout their careers. The more unreliable they are, the less often they are relied upon, and ultimately, the less likely that they will be in a position to certify others as authorities.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
But if Wikipedia is intended to be so unreliable that it is worthless for debating purposes (which are pretty trivial compared to, say, public safety), then is there any point to having it at all?
Personally, I love Wikipedia and would be very happy if it found a way to be both open and reliable.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
Reliability and quality come from accountability. (Score:5, Insightful)
An engineer who makes one mistake, even if it is not fatal, will lose his license. Why is that? Because said mistakes cannot be tolerated.
The same goes for an encyclopedia. If a high degree of quality is wanted, then people will have to pay severely when they make a mistake. Of course, that's very difficult to accomplish in an online setting, especially one like Wikipedia.
Re:Reliability and quality come from accountabilit (Score:3, Informative)
Were that the case, there would be no Professional Engineers. The mistake must rise to the level of "gross negligence" as defined by state law - and a complaint must be filed. And even then, license revokation is only one of many penalties available.
People, even engineers, make mistakes all the time.
-h- (PE)
Re:Reliability and quality come from accountabilit (Score:3, Funny)
Is this erroneous information something you picked up reading Wikipedia, or is it just a product of your own personal ignorance and stupidity?
Re:Reliability and quality come from accountabilit (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I suspect that Wikipedia's method is a somewhat viable way to shuffle out the stupids, as true statements will be less likely to be edited than untrue statements, so gradually over time Wikipedia will tend to be more and more likely to contain true statements. But eh, you might be right.
Re:Reliability and quality come from accountabilit (Score:3, Funny)
I don't know... it worked pretty well when I tried it.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:5, Interesting)
Then down the bottom of that article, there's a list of reference books and external sites, which I can then go and check out. At this point, I can make the transfer between the "unreliable" Wikipedia into the "reliable" medium of published literature. But using Wikipedia, I now have a good idea of just which books to look up, and a basic understanding of some of the things I'm likely to encounter.
Now, this example is probably not the best, as Edgar Allen Poe will probably be listed in most print encyclopedias. But say I wanted to find out about some wierd race from Babylon 5 [wikipedia.org]. Good luck finding that in a print encyclopedia. But if I check Wikipedia, I can get the basic facts, and some links to more authoritive sources.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Informative)
Citing Wikipedia is perfectly reasonable. It's like saying "the facts are such-and-such, here's a place to start investigating these facts". Most of the time I see Wikipedia being cited, it's as a convenient link for more information, not "proof".
Sure, some of the time the facts might be wrong, but in that case, the other person is free to counter it with a more authorative source. It's only when the citer then responds "that can't be right because Wikipedia says otherwise" that it becomes a problem.
Re:Moral Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
About 20% of the debates I've been involved in end with that statement, and a link to the "relevant" wikipedia article. Of course, I have a tendency to flamebait in an effort to get people to think,
Ha (Score:2)
Re:Ha (Score:5, Funny)
UGH, it's wikipediPWNED! I'm so sick and tired of poor spelling on
relevance (Score:2, Funny)
Ironically (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ironically (Score:2)
You misinterpret what they wrote. (Score:3, Informative)
They're obviously not referring to MMORPGs as shoot-em-ups. They're saying it's not a "massive, multiplayer shoot-em-up game" nor is it a "MMORPG". It's neither on
Re:Ironically (Score:2)
Get some perspective! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get some perspective! (Score:2)
To expand on your point... it seems like the detractors to wikipedia don't seem to understand it's purpose. Articles with misinformation continue to have misinformation because very few people are reading them. It all balances out in the end. Have they heard the phrase, "don't believe everything you read"?
Re:Get some perspective! (Score:3, Insightful)
Fired back? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fired back? (Score:3, Insightful)
NPOV (Score:2)
See also:
The Register is a bunch of hypocrites (Score:5, Funny)
Founded in Nazi Germany by Adolph Hitler they were used to register all Jews marked for death in concentration camps. During the 60's, they supported neo-Nazis in America and were involved in the Kennedy Assassination. In the 90's they started covering IT news.
- From WikiPedia
Pot.. Kettle.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Any intelligent netizen takes a variety of sources (e.g. Wikipedia, El Reg, Slashdot, Digg, the BBC etc) and forms their own opinions.
Yes, Wikipedia has grown up, and I think it needs to tighten up procedures. But The Register's bizarre vendetta against what the term "wiki fiddlers" is annoying. Perhaps The Register needs to grow up a little too?
Re:Pot.. Kettle.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. Wikipedia is a tool, similar to almost all sites presenting information on the internet: good for a quick reference, but not authoritative. And I think most people realize that.
A few weeks ago I was writing a paper on Thelonious Monk [wikipedia.org]. Wikipedia says he started playing piano at age six, but, for example, this site [monkzone.com] says age nine. So Wikipedia has a 50% chance of being wrong on that point. But really I don't mind, and I'm not going to stop using it, because Wikipedia is more of a springboard and a starting place in exploring a subject, rather than an etched-in-stone authority. And I think most people "get" that. The Register, apparently, does not.
Re:Pot.. Kettle.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's something that often gets lost in Wikipedia debates. In that respect, it is very much like the Internet as a whole: The best thing about it is that anyone can publish. The worst thing about it is that anyone can publish.
Re:Pot.. Kettle.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I go with honesty
Speed of Response (Score:5, Insightful)
But also a weakness (Score:2)
However.... the great strength of Wikipedia is in how quickly it is able to recover and self-heal from these sorts of problems. It's far from perfect, but it is damn useful nonetheless.
Jolyon
Re:Speed of Response (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Speed of Response (Score:3, Interesting)
Mr. Seigenthaler's page's problem is that it is relatively obscure. He isn't a guy anyone outside of 1960s politics or the newspaper industry would know about, if I understand correctly. Wikipedia tends to be better at article
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Regs moral responsibility? (Score:2)
What the fuck? (Score:2, Insightful)
The key question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The key question (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, this is as it should be. If you leave the responsibility for verifying credibility with the author, well, then, thats just like interogating a criminal suspect, and then asking him if he's lying. You verify that by looking at other
Some truisms (Score:5, Insightful)
People ask, "Where will Wikipedia be after five years." The real question is, "Where will the world be after five years of Wikipedia?"
Re:Some truisms (Score:3, Insightful)
If, indeed, no one was reading it, it would not matter. But even in your example you guess that "less than a thousand people" read the Siegenthaler article. When does it matter that material is incorrect? When more than one thousand people will see it? Ten thousand?
Re:Some truisms (Score:3, Insightful)
A) Publish the number of people who have read the current revision so that users can get a rough heuristic of quality.
B) Educate users about what Wikip
Agreed. Try this experiment. (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. Here's an experiment: Go to Wikipedia, click on "Random article". Look at the history for that page, and determine how long it has existed, and how many edits it has had. Now, compare to the Seigenthaler article:
1st edit: 13:53, 15 September 2004. Created with only the contents, "John Seige
Call me a paranoiac... (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything you read is suspect! You'd better duck!
Only a paranoiac, or a mad person, can sustain this level of defensiveness for any length of time however, and to hear a putative "encyclopedia" making such a statement is odd, to say the least.
This is just plain bullshit. My grandfather had a saying he taught me(and pardon me for some downhomey common sense), but it was popular among he and his friends, and they were very well adjusted people:
Believe half of what you hear, and nothing that you see.
This isn't paranoia. This is reality. Individuals, corporations, governments, etc... tend to be bullshitters. Half the time, they don't even realize they're spreading bullshit. The reason is too many mistake their opinion for fact, because most people don't go deep enough to care what the difference is.
The INSTANT you identify a source as something you can believe is honest and accurate without you having to verify facts or take with a grain of salt, is the instant you've set yourself up to be misled and enter a state of dogmatism.
You question everything. You question what you see, you question what you hear, you question it all. Not out of some hysterical paranoia, but out of rational observation of the reality that we live in a bullshitters paradise.
This article should get -1, Ministry of Truth publication. Believe half of what you hear, nothing that you see, and be happy and secure doing it.
The Blame Game (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll probably be modded down for saying so, but that one sentence nicely sums up Wikipedia's philosophy.
One is that Seigenthaler should have corrected the entry himself...
See, they even blamed Seigenthaler for the libel against him!
What's up with with the Reg these days? (Score:5, Interesting)
The blog attacks were kind of amusing last year, when the blogging hype was at it's most ridiculous, the snarky Wikipedia articles were occasionally entertaining, though I've never really understood the motivation in attacking that project (unless you happen to be an encyclopedia publisher). But it now just seems to be axe-grinding for no obvious reason than to bait various predictably-easy-to-bait groups of people, and the writing itself is less subtle and much less entertaining.
How long can you keep generating sparks from that axe you're grinding when there's no axe left?
Human Nature is the Issue Here (Score:2)
Lawsuit (Score:5, Informative)
oh, shut up already (Score:5, Insightful)
I think people who criticize Wikipedia for the way its entries are created are living in a world where they assume that just because an information resource is well known or popular, it must be accurate. That wasn't true when companies like the New York Times and ABC had a near monopoly on information dissemination, and it sure isn't any more accurate today.
What needs to change is not Wikipedia, it's people's naive notions about epistemology. Or, to put it more bluntly: don't trust any information unless it either doesn't matter, or you can verify it from multiple independent sources yourself. Popularity, trust, and reputation of a source are very unreliable guides to the validity of information.
Re:oh, shut up already (Score:3, Insightful)
It's too bad we don't see this in the mass media. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the world will never see NBC Dateline truly questioning what is said on FOX News, nor will the New York Times truly question the reporting of the Washington Post.
Internet Content (Score:5, Insightful)
The American Revolution
Student Works
Browse Purdue's Student Archives
Browse Stanfords' Student Archives
and so forth.
If peer review is good enough for science, medicine, and open source it is certainly good enough for history as well.
My 2cents
Re:Internet Content (Score:4, Insightful)
They may have missed moral responsibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank goodness for The Register (Score:4, Funny)
I attribute this scandal to the streak of rugged individualism present in American culture. When will you Yanks learn that the truth is decided by experts, and that expertise is determined by well-known and respected members of a field?
Wikipedia abused Andrew Orlowski as a child (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia must have abused Andrew Orlowski as a child, because I can't think of any good reason for him to keep harping on it. Check out the Register's archives. All of the Wikipedia bashing is from Orlowski. Wow, Andrew, great reporting. I totally didn't know that some things on the internet are false. Way to go on the investigative reporting! Could we maybe get a twenty part series entitled, "Shock! Falsehoods found on internet!"
Some Wikipedia fans are little overenthusiastic. Wikipedia's lack of review is a weakness. But just because it's a weakness doesn't make it useless. Indeed, most of the internet is full of unreviewed crap, yet we all still use it. While Wikipedia would like to think of itself as challenging traditional encyclopedias, I don't see it happening. But compared to doing research on the internet as whole (say, via Google), it's a definate win. Wikipedia is, compared to the general internet, better organized, more neutral, and better reviewed. For a quick overview of a topic I find it an extremely valuable resource. I accept its weaknesses, help flesh stuff out as I can, and get on with my life. If Orlowski thinks Wikipedia is unredeemable crap, so be it. He's reported that. Now move the fuck on. Reposting "Wikipedia has some errors and is therefore completely useless" every week is hardly a good use his time or The Register's money.
Epistemology vs. Review Process (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that we have two separate issues to deal with. One is the theoretical limits of epistemology that Wikipedians must cite when defending errors in the Wikipedia. The other is the difference between an honest mistake and deliberately misleading content. The Register, I think, is correct to say that the former is no excuse for the latter.
So the real problem is not that the Wikipedia cannot achieve a higher level of factual rectitude. The real problem is that the Wikipedia has no facility to help novices establish the authority of an article of the Wikipedia. The best science can offer us [laypeople] is a bunch of journals that practice a complicated protocol of anonymous referees from a select bunch of supposed "experts" in the journal's field. If you want to don the scientist hat, you can always try to replicate the results of someone's journal article. I leave it as an exercise for the reader, but plenty of crap, for various reasons, has slipped through the journals' sacred peer reviews.
The real problem here is that the Wikipedia puports to be peer-reviewed, but each article has its subscribers, and it isn't clear whether an article has been tacitly approved by innumerable readers, or quietly corrupted out of salutary neglect. This ambiguity is the real failing of the Wikipedia, but it should be easily corrected by applying something similar to Slashdot Karma--just to show whether any editorial attention has affected any given article or not.
The real problem with the Register's scathing polemic is that it is just scathing polemic. The Wikipedia and the Register are apples and oranges. The authority of the Register's criticism cannot really be levelled with the Wikipedia, though its argument has a resounding us and them posture. It conveniently ignores the wealth of good content in math and science and that traditional encyclopedias get historical biography just as wrong (Christopher Columbus is a good candidate for this angle). So the punk teenager straw man at the conclusion of the Register article could just as well have been a fat, lazy armchair anthropologist to characterize the racist crap in the encyclopedias I grew up using.
In the end, I think the Wikipedians are right. "The price of liberty is vigilance." The Register is also right. This is one thing that will happen if we're asleep at the wheel. However fiery the iconoclasty makes you feel, do we throw the baby out with the bathwater? No. We take what we have and make it better.
Why Use Wikipedia? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether it's accurate or not is completely up in the air. Many articles are read by many people, so hopefully errors are weeded out. Some articles are rarely read, and errors in those will stay for a long time before being noticed.
And then there are topical articles, which may just end up reflecting popular points of view rather than definitive information. That's also worthwhile, but it seems that Wikipedia can be used to 'shout down' dissent by editing articles you disagree with.
Who is responsible when an article is incorrect? The users apparently, but who are they? Just people on the Internet. You, me, that guy over there, people like us. So who is responsible for ensuring accuracy and quality? No-one, really. It's so distributed that there's no real focus, and the end result is the cry of "do it yourself!"
Well, I have a job, a fiancee, hobbies and many things I prefer doing rather than watch Wikipedia articles for changes. That answer screams out "broken process!" to me.
What happens if I make a change to an article and someone maliciously alters it again? Am I really supposed to continually edit an article, and if not, who do I apply to for a final version to be locked?
So what is Wikipedia? Well, it's not correct enough to be a solid source of information. It's not stable enough to be reliable. It's not actually a good source, because nothing you read may actually be correct!
It may be, but the prevalent feel around here is to take everything with a grain of salt. That's all well and good, but if you have a child researching something, how can they do that? Even as an adult, I recognise that while we add filters of perception to events, there is one thing that actually happened, and many accounts of it. Can't we at least find the objective case in the subjective perceptions?
Lastly, people say that Wikipedia is the starting point for research. Well, if it doesn't point you in the wrong direction it may be, but if I have to go to other more authoratative sources, then why bother with Wikipedia at all?
I won't use it, for those reasons. If I need an encyclopedia, I'll buy Encyclopedia Britannica which is a much more reliable source and actually has a solid process for reviewing information. It's a shame, because I like the idea, but I can't see where any value comes from with Wikipedia.
If you don't like it... (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect that the battle over Wikipedia is really a debate over the future of cognitive authority in general. All of the publishing industry has a vested interest in making sure that they stay authoritative. This is combined with the fact that many publishers (disclaimer: I work for a publisher) gear the material around what's marketable. This practice is so entrenched in publishing now, I don't think publishers even see what's wrong with it. I think in a battle between truth and money, money wins.
Wikipedia may have some unique challenges, but at least they are free from this problem.
Published Encyclopedias Unreliable (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. He is correct. Despite his sarcasm, users ARE silly for believing things at face value. Just because a work is published does NOT make it the definitive source for all accurate knowledge. How many scientific findings have been published, and later discovered to be inaccurate.
He seems to think that because a work is put to paper that is must have more accuracy than a work such as wikipedia. I challenge this: Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia has the opportunity to be both free and more accurate than any printed work. Even an encyclopedia, devoting resources to topics they are not experts in get things wrong, such as some of the items on the list above. Wikipedia gives those out there directly working on it -- Subject Matter Experts -- to contribute their knowledge for others to share.
In regards to the fears of lawsuits, obviously due diligence would be given to review the content of articles before put to paper and widely distributed. What more can be asked for? This is the same thing that Britannica does.
Until Wikipedia is making some claim to take authority over content -- they are just like the post office, the telephone company, or xerox. They are providing a service. Just as Xerox is not responsible for people violating copyright law with their copiers, Wikipedia is not responsible for the accuracy of information on their site. If you ask me, the rules, regulations and procedures they have come up with are an amazing effort at being open to respecting others, and cooperating with them. Similar to the post office working with police to track packages.
I think something commonly being overlooked here is -- Who exactly was affected by this article? The article apparently wasn't link to from other pages -- meaning that it wasn't seeing much attention, which is why it hadn't been changed. Who cares if it was there for months, if only 5 people saw it, was he really severely hurt by this? When he came across it, fix it, move on. Hes actually created a much larger problem by bringing so much attention to this.
Re:Morals? (Score:2)
Re:57 electoral votes... (Score:4, Funny)