To Wiki or not to Wiki
As does DPF, I like the Wikipedia, in my case because it provides a ready reference for linking to complex concepts. In recent weeks I’ve been able to refer to it for things like the Precautionary Principle and moral panic.
However the Seigenthaler story has given me pause. The BBC reports:
The man behind a fake posting on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia that linked a journalist to the Kennedy assassinations has apologised.
Tennessean Brian Chase said he added to the entry to trick a co-worker.
The discovery of the fake data in journalist John Seigenthaler’s biography started a debate about the online reference work’s reliability.
The prank caused Wikipedia to change its policy so only registered users can create entries.
Thought you should know that to manage the releative reliability of the Wikipedia, I make a point of not linking to Wiki entries that are marked as contested. However, I suspect that that wouldn’t have helped in the case of the Seigenthaler entry.
How skeptical are you when you see a link to a Wiki entry? Can it be *generally* trusted as a reference source? What should our BS detectors be set to?
December 13th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
As with any other source, you ought to cross check.
The item on global warming effects in different latitudes which Frog mentioned a few days ago is a case in point. Every university department throughout the world which studies this effect will be busy trying to replicate or prove wrong the research. We all have to do our own research on every subject, and Wikipedia is no better or worse than other sources: possibly better because “contesting” is much easier and quicker than for a printed encyclopedia.
After all, there was a time not so long ago that continental drift was considered scientific heresy. and this applies to many othet topics.
“Piltdown Man” was another spoof and didn’t need the Internet to be perpetrated.
December 13th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
I can’t imagine a world without wikipedia. It would seem that neither can many of my (former) students who commonly copy whole passages from wikipedia in the absense of actually writing their essays themselves.
I think it is fine to link to or quote from wikipedia, on a blog. So long as everyone that uses it understands that it gives an overview and you have to actually follow the links at the bottom to the sources, then all is well.
Some of the problems with wikipedia are listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia
And no doubt the satirical anarchist-friendly frog would love:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncyclopedia
http://uncyclopedia.org/
December 13th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
As a frequent user and contributor to Wikipedia, I’m impressed (and sometimes surprised) at how well it generally works. Wikipedia can give you a useful broad overview of a topic, and the internal links let you explore related topics very easily. However I still wouldn’t bet my house on anything in it without checking other sources. While there are a lot of people working earnestly to improve it, there are also plenty of vandals and people pushing an agenda. Bad edits seem to get corrected fairly quickly in most cases, especially on topics of broad interest, but some incorrect information can linger for a while in less frequented areas. So some suspicion is probably warranted, i.e. “trust, but verify.”
December 13th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
Wikipedia is the invention of the decade. For starters, it’s free, unlike almost every other major encyclopedia. It’s also far more massive than all the others. I can also use it on my PDA, again for free.
Sure it’s not guaranteed to be true. Nothing ever is. But it’s pretty close on most things. Hate entries do happen all the time, and they get edited out. I recall making an edit to say Winston Peters was now part of the government. Just happened to be looking him up there, and realized I actually knew something that Wiki didn’t, so I popped it in there, the work of a minute. About an hour later I noticed someone had tidied my entry, making it more encyclopedic. And 20 mins later someone else had added that Winston was last seen somewhere like a bar or whatever - clearly a joke entry getting bitter on Peters for being news. It was gone within a few minutes.
I find it an excellent starting point for information on something. It’s not a definitive source and is not intended to be - you get the main points, the main controversies, and a bunch of links. Then look up as you see fit.
I’m surprised this Siegenthaler thing is news. Why didn’t he just edit his entry? Hasn’t he got better things to do than get bitter on something that has brought free information to millions, if not billions of people? Now he’s gone and made it just that one little bit less user friendly. Cheers mate. For god’s sake this phenomenon has managed to discuss far more controversial subjects than one man’s joke bio. I suspect this thing’s only news because the competitors are bitter.
December 13th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Wikipedia is pretty good at correcting wrong info - this case was rare in that is was a very obscure person on a page not linked to by any other page. The more read the page the more likely it is to be fairly good.
I don’t tend to use Wikipedia much for controversial current issues - we have logs for that
But it is just amazingly invaluable on historical figures, on geography, and on popular culture. And the links to external sources often allow checking.
Would be very cool to get Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, out to NZ next year to talk about Wikipedia, Wikis and issues around them.
December 13th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
David - something to agree on - respectfully BJ
December 14th, 2005 at 9:12 am
David, if you can organize that, I’ll stop making upskirt jokes on your site.
December 14th, 2005 at 9:59 am
Wikipedia is a great idea - and it even seems to work in practice. I cite it a lot on some of my blogs. But I would never cite it as a serious source of research. Citing it in blogs or personal web pages is fine but the fact that journalists are now using Wikipedia for research is frankly alarming. It is good for personal education but not good enough for journalism or science… yet. It would need a *formal* review process of *recognised* experts before it could be regarded as a definitive source.
I know a number of people that have contributed to Wikipedia — and most of the time they are not experts but people that have Googled some subject and decided to write an essay about it — very nice of them, but not exactly guaranteed to produce insightful analysis. One Wikipedia contributor I know professes to add an entry whenever he looks up something on Wikipedia and finds no information about it…
December 14th, 2005 at 10:01 am
Perhaps Wikipedia needs some extra process that could use expert opinion to convert some entries to being labeled “definitive”. That would be cool, without strangling the massive good-will of the open knowledge community.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:14 am
Fine for blogging and background research. But NEVER source it in any academic pieces of writing. Or anything serious.
People can and do get things wrong. And, especially on minor topics, mistakes go un-noticed
December 14th, 2005 at 10:33 am
Yeah, I’m with the crowd here, itsd a source of information, and trusting a single source of information is not generally good practice. But I do disagree that it isnt good for current affiars - its coverage of the tube bombing in London was excellent, kudos to those authors.
You have to say though, the idea that a web site that anyone could edit actually becoming useful is a concept that on the face of it appears absurd - yet it really does work, not just in Wikipedia, but in Wiki’s across the ‘net.
In my opinion, the bad guy here is Seigenthaler, a bad guy ‘cos he’s stuck in the pre-electronic era and expects everyone else to be as luddite as him. Rather than figuring out how to use this stuff to his advantage, he prefers lynch mobs and axes. Shame.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:55 am
Also, I’m not the first person to note that the MSM isn’t exactly in the best position to ride the ethical high horse these days - hell, can you say John Manukia? Operation Leaf? DBP’s bad case of leaky office syndrome?
December 14th, 2005 at 1:33 pm
I’m in favour of the guy that writes something if it’s not there. It gets the ball rolling. It’s much easier to edit something existing than just make up your mind to write an essay for the common good. I find one of the biggest contributions I make is tidying up entries made by ESL people where the english was bad. Never had even one knocked back. Costs me nothing, since those kind of errors just jump out and hurt your eyes.
And any small inaccurate entry is better than no entry at all. It’s a start, information where previously there was only vacuum. That’s why it’s such a massive resource, because people aren’t afraid to just start something.
It really is a phenomenon, that something so useful could emerge from free contributions.
December 14th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
Ben - I am in favour of the guy who starts random articles as well — but it does mean that Wikipedia will never be definitive unless they have some extra processes that involve recognised experts. I think Wikipedia is fantastic, but it could also be improved.
December 15th, 2005 at 12:08 am
It’s the closest thing to a true on-line community of intelligence to appear so far, at least we should all be able to agree on that.
Open access, like open source, will continue to be debated, until something causes the shutdown of access to allcomers, then it will merely be mourned.
Make the most of it while you can!
December 15th, 2005 at 10:04 am
An interesting comment on this affair:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/index.php?p=524&tag=nl.e550
December 15th, 2005 at 11:17 am
Wikipedia is one of my favourite inventions ever, too. It’s a kind of OTT utopian wet dream of global community, teamwork, trust and freedom. I strongly believe that given perfect communication and broad education, the people of the world will unite and make the place as good as it can possibly be. Wiki embodies this.
And if you don’t like it, we invite you personally to bring it up to your standards
December 15th, 2005 at 1:51 pm
I agree that a special ‘certification mark’ against articles certified by some kind of board would not be bad, but I think the main thing is simply not to think of wikipedia as definitive in the first place. It’s just a good starting point for inquiry.
December 16th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
Apparently, according to a recent study published in Nature, as far as scientific content is concerned, Wikipedia is as good as the Encyclopedia Britannica! That is about as definitive as you need to get for the layman:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm
December 16th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
layperson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layperson
December 16th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
Interesting, this need to appeal to authority…
“Experts” need to “certify” stuff before it can be “trusted”…
this attitude is to be expected from academics, it’s a conditioned reflex. But I feel it’s rather missing the point about the nature of knowledge — this is the fascinating aspect of the Wikipedia phenomenon. It seems pretty subversive to me. By construction, academia can never accept it as authoritative.
Actually, everything in Wikipedia is peer-reviewed. The difficulty is that there is no hierarchy… everyone is everyone’s peer…
I have always instinctively felt that there are many paths to truth… maybe some shorter than others… but none are inherently invalid. It doesn’t surprise me at all that the collective intelligence, and power of synthesis, of an organic network like Wikipedia results in material which is about as accurate as a reference encyclopedia. And the thing is still young. I expect it will become more accurate.
But I think the notion of “certifying” articles is ideologically unsound.
The strength and the weakness in the system, of course, is that it’s a benevolent dictatorship. It will be fascinating to see how that evolves.
December 16th, 2005 at 9:54 pm
Layperson… the word is Layman.
that sort of plitical crectnis sets my teeth on edge (sorry ladies
)
I’ll try to explain why…
Really it’s because I’m an etymology freak. What’s a “layman” ? A non-ordained person, one who has not been initiated into the mysteries, a profane. Therefore, ignorant of the revealed truth, not qualified to speak on religious matters.
This, in the context of English/European cultural history, is necessarily a question of ordained / non-ordained men, because women’s opinions were of no account anyway.
That’s my first problem with “layperson”… it’s an etymological anachronism.
But in explaining it, I’ve realised that I’ve got a problem with the underlying concept… see previous post!
December 19th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Here is Nature’s own account of their study:
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html
December 19th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
Why are we discriminating against animals and aliens anyway. Shouldn’t it be ‘Laybeing’?
I agree with Alistair about the certification thing - Wikipedia is it’s own phenomenon, and I can’t see what would be gained from making it more like a normal encyclopedia - always out of date, boringly written, and full of rules about what can even be covered. I can’t imagine Brittanica having an entry on ‘ass to mouth’. Not that I was particularly interested, but I was interested that it was allowed, and that people put so much thought into such a strange matter. Good on them, if that’s their bag - better to be informed about it. I can’t attest to the veracity of that entry, and I challenge anyone from a big encyclopedia to do so. Or they can get on with their old skool way of doing things while the world rushes past.