Slashdot has a roundup of criticism of the Wikipedia, including a pointer to a Kuro5hin article by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of the Wikipedia, making three strong criticisms of the Wikpedia as it stands.
The first criticism is that the Wikpedia lacks the perception of acccuracy:
My point is that, regardless of whether Wikipedia actually is more or less reliable than the average encyclopedia, it is not perceived as adequately reliable by many librarians, teachers, and academics. The reason for this is not far to seek: those librarians etc. note that anybody can contribute and that there are no traditional review processes. You might hasten to reply that it does work nonetheless, and I would agree with you to a large extent, but your assurances will not put this concern to rest.
This analysis seems to be correct on the surface, and at the same time deeply deeply wrong. Of course librarians, teachers, and academics don’t like the Wikipedia. It works without privilege, which is inimical to the way those professions operate.
This is not some easily fixed cosmetic flaw, it is the Wikipedia’s driving force. You can see the reactionary core of the academy playing out in the horror around Google digitizing books held at Harvard and the Library of Congress — the NY Times published a number of letters by people insisting that real scholarship would still only be possible when done in real libraries. The physical book, the hushed tones, the monastic dedication, and (unspoken) the barriers to use, these are all essential characteristics of the academy today.
It’s not that it doesn’t matter what academics think of the Wikipedia — it would obviously be better to have as many smart people using it as possible. The problem is that the only thing that would make the academics happy would be to shoehorn it into the kind of filter, then publish model that is broken, and would make the Wikipedia broken as well.
Sanger’s second complaint is about governance:
Far too much credence and respect accorded to people who in other Internet contexts would be labelled “trolls.” There is a certain mindset associated with unmoderated Usenet groups and mailing lists that infects the collectively-managed Wikipedia project: if you react strongly to trolling, that reflects poorly on you, not (necessarily) on the troll. If you attempt to take trolls to task or demand that something be done about constant disruption by trollish behavior, the other listmembers will cry “censorship,” attack you, and even come to the defense of the troll.
This complaint is right, I think, inasmuch as it hits the core problem of Wikipedia (and of social software generally), namely governance. How do you take a group of individuals who disagree and get them to co-create, and to agree to be bound by a decision-making process that will assure that no one gets everything they want? And how do you also make that system open?
However, Sanger gives Wales and the Wikipedia contributors too little credit here, I think. Governance is a certified Hard ProblemTM, and at the extremes, co-creation, openness, and scale are incompatible. The Wikipedia’s principle advantage over other methods of putting together a body of knowledge is openness, and from the outside, it looks like the Wikipedia’s guiding principle is “Be as open as you can be; close down only where there is evidence that openness causes more harm than good; when this happens, reduce openness in the smallest increment possible, and see if that fixes the problem.” Lather, rinse, repeat.
You can see this incrementalism in the Wikipedia crew’s creeping approach to limiting edits — not allowing edits on the home page, paragraph level edits on long articles, etc. These kinds of solutions were deployed only in response to particular problems, and only after those problems were obviously too severe to be dealt with in any other way.
This pattern means that there will always be problems with governance on the Wikipedia, by definition. If you don’t lock down, you will always get the problems associated with not locking down. However, to take the path Sanger seems to be advocating — lock down more, faster — risks giving up the Wikipedia’s core virtue. The project may yet fail because there is no sweet spot between openess and co-creation at Wikipedia scale. But to lock down pre-emptively won’t be avoiding that failure but accelerating it.
Sanger’s final point, that the Wikipedia is anti-elitist, is quite similar to his first complaint. Yes, it is impossible for experts on a subject to post their views without molestation but that’s how wikis work. It’s certainly easy to imagine systems where experts are deferred to mechanically. Much of the world, including, significantly, the academy, works that way. But if you want a system that works that way, you don’t want a wiki, and if you want a wiki, you won’t get a system that works that way.
In place of ordained expertise, my guess is that the Wikipedia will move further towards a ‘core group’ strategy, where there will be increasing separation of powers between committed and casual users, and the system will gain a kind of deference, not for expertise (a fairly elusive quality that Sanger invokes but never defines)
It’s been fascinating to watch the Kubler-Ross stages of people committed to Wikipedia’s failure: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Denial was simple; people who didn’t think it was possible simply dis-believed. But the numbers kept going up. Then they got angry, perhaps most famously in the likening of the Wikipedia to a public toilet by a former editor for Encyclopedia Brittanica. Sanger’s post marks the bargaining phase; “OK, fine, the Wikipedia is interesting, but whatever we do, lets definitely make sure that we change it into something else rather than letting the current experiment run unchecked.”
Next up will be a glum realization that there is nothing that can stop people from contributing to the Wikipedia if they want to, or to stop people from using it if they think it’s useful. Freedom’s funny like that.
Finally, acceptance will come about when people realize that head-to-head comparisons with things like Britannica are as stupid as comparing horseful and horseless carriages — the automobile was a different kind of thing than a surrey. Likewise, though the Wikipedia took the -pedia suffix to make the project comprehensible, it is valuable as a site of argumentation and as a near-real-time reference, functions a traditional encyclopedia isn’t even capable of. (Where, for example, is Britannica’s reference to the Indian Ocean tsunami?)
The Wikipedia is an experiment in social openness, and it will stand or fall with the ability to manage that experiment. Whining like Sanger’s really only merits one answer: the Wikipedia makes no claim to expertise or authority other than use-value, and if you want to vote against it, don’t use it. Everyone else will make the same choice for themselves, and the aggregate decisions of the population will determine the outcome of the project.
And 5 years from now, when the Wikipedia is essential infrastructure, we’ll hardly remember what the fuss was about.
1. simon tzu on January 3, 2005 5:55 PM writes...
Here is the basic concept. We use direct democracy a la california ballot initiatives. That is anything of any significance is put to a public vote.
Now you would say that on first viewing this makes things worse as we have obvious non-experts making decisions in various areas. This is where the concept of delegated voting comes in.
I can delegate my vote on any area to someone else. If I vote on a topic my vote is counted if I do not bother to vote and I have delegated votes on that topic to someone else then my vote is added to their tally.
Some examples:
- My mother runs a recruitment firm and recently did her PHD in industrial psychoology on unemployment. I trust her judgement in this area therefore any votes on employment she can cast mine along with hers.
- My friend Chris knows a lot about markets and I think has a good balance between social justice and economic growth. I would delegate my economy votes to hiom in most instances. I don't trust him as much as I trust my mother though so in some key insances I may decide to vote myself.
- If friends decided to delegate their votes to me on certain areas where I feel confident (community, education, religion) I would be honored to vote on their behalf.
I think something like this could work for wikipedia. If you are a trusted member of the community you can give your votes for deletion in an area to a certain trusted person.
Remember you can alwats still vote yourself and you can always move your vote from one person if you feel they no longer adequately rtepresent you.
Permalink to Comment2. simon tzu on January 3, 2005 6:23 PM writes...
The previous comment was with respect to the hard problem of governance.
Permalink to Comment3. Zbigniew Lukasiak on January 3, 2005 6:53 PM writes...
One thing that bothers me most with wikipedia is that you cannot use it in an argument, because your adversary can allways say that you have written the text yourself. But I hope it can be fixed with voting. There are ways to extend the voting mechanisms - currently only editing works as voting, but viewing without editing (that is restraining from editing) could be a kind of voting as well. So articles could be marked by number of views since the last edition to show how many people agrees on the subject.
Permalink to Comment4. Nick Douglas on January 3, 2005 8:22 PM writes...
Zbigniew: If you need a second source, just Google facts you find in Wikipedia. Then Wikipedia serves as a "first reporter" which can be bolstered with more sources.
All: I posted this rebuttal of Sanger's piece on my site.
Permalink to Comment5. Aakash on January 3, 2005 9:41 PM writes...
I was just using Wikipedia a few hours ago, and yesterday night (soon after I just got back from Floriday). That online encyclopedia is a great resource that is freely available to anyone in the world internet access. There are some shortcomings of Wikipedia (for example, it may be a good idea to create a separate Wikipedia which excludes the 'adult'-oriented encyclopedia entries), but overall, it is a very useful, educational, and entertaining tool. And the good thing is, more information and articles can regularly be added to it, and those that have already been written can be edited, amended, or modified (though for some, I wish that they would remain the way they are, without changing).
I think that the Wikipedia articles on foreign policy-related topics have been especially fair and balanced, and have helped to give a more balanced perspective on these subjects and issues than that which has been portrayed in the pro-state, anti-liberty media, and which has been promoted by the government. The advent of the online community and the information superhighway since the mid-1990s has done wonders for the cause of traditional conservatism and pro-liberty causes, and has allowed so many of us to get a great deal of information and insight. I hope that this continues for a long time to come.
Permalink to Comment6. Nate W on January 4, 2005 3:01 AM writes...
Decentralization and anarchy make the wiki idea (including wikipedia) powerful, but they also limit that power. Disputes will often be settled in favor of the side with the greatest enthusiasm and persistence, which does not necessarily correlate with accuracy.
That's unfortunate, and in my opinion it is the biggest problem with wikipedia. However I have no doubt that a better form of governance will be developed for collaborative projects. Perhaps even by the powers-that-be at wikipedia - they definitely have the means, motive, and opportunity to test a lot of ideas.
One of Sanger's main complaints is that errors are obvious to experts but invisible to nonexperts. Funny thing is, mainstream media is exactly the same. Who among us doesn't see newspaper and magazine articles related to our areas of expertise, with blatant errors reported as fact? Wikipedia may be no better but I'm not convinced it's any worse, either.
Permalink to Comment7. Jordan on January 4, 2005 3:12 AM writes...
Finding examples of trolls hitting Wikipedia is not very hard. One only has to look as far as the Republican party (US) entry and click on history. Note all the reversions for vandalism.
Most of them are fairly harmless. It seems coming up with well thought out misinformation is beyond the grasp of most of these vandals. However, if you run through them, there are a few cases of serious misinformation. Some of the more dangerous instances can be found in the Homosexuality like this gem.
Various highly charged subjects are full of these types of revisions. What's impressive is how quickly most of these changes were caught. Most were caught in ten minutes and the worst I can find were caught in a few hours.
All things considered, a few hours really is unacceptable since there may be someone actually looking at it for information during that time.
Still, I fail to see why having two versions of each page... one "approved" by some number of registered users and one "pending" that has revisions on it is that big of a deal. After some period of time if not enough people vote on it, it can be bumped to approved and the only harm is that it takes ten minutes before changes are propagated out.
Permalink to Comment8. Jason Scott on January 4, 2005 3:43 AM writes...
Clay, Larry wrote his essay partially spurred on an article I wrote on my weblog here. Be sure to read that and the clarification I wrote later.
Permalink to Comment9. Simon on January 4, 2005 3:49 AM writes...
"Of course librarians, teachers, and academics don’t like the Wikipedia. It works without privelege, which is inimical to the way those professions operate."
Just FWIW, librarians *do* like Wikipedia. Not all of us, certainly, but there are plenty of us who do. If I was looking for information I wouldn't rely solely on a Wikipedia entry - but then I wouldn't rely solely on any other information source either.
Permalink to Comment10. pete on January 4, 2005 3:49 AM writes...
I'm not saying "filter, then publish" is all that great but do we really need to call the existence of an alternative "the Big Flip"? "The Great Depression" definitely deserves an adjective in there but when we see slashdot.org and kuro5hin.org offered up as the two examples to show how this Big Flip was a watershed moment in the history of publishing, I'm not sure the online community should really be criticizing academia for its self-importance.
And isn't trying to assess the overall quality of Wikipedia and then snickering over how much hand wringing the professors are doing kind of missing the point of Wikipedia? I just went to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia few minutes ago and here's what it said:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
[edit]
PUT5 OF THE CTO GOONIES
Is a bucket of information edited by the public an eductional resource? Maybe but unless I keep it in its proper context ("public information bucket") I end up thinking Wikipedia means put5 of the cto goonies. What about the idea that good teachers are the keys to good educations and the idea that all information needs to be filtered by our own educated minds to be truly useful?
Permalink to Comment11. Ricardo Galli on January 4, 2005 5:17 AM writes...
I agree with this article, although I think it is unfair to accuse to "academia" of being "inimical privileged system".
I'm an "academic" (I hope so) and I don't think so, but in the "there is no holy cow" feature of science. Of course, like the rest of the world, there is a fair number of academics that are against wikipedia, free software and every collaborative and open project (they happen to be the elitists), but that does not mean it's the "academia model".
OTH, the cited "Are Google's New Libraries a Good Thing?" letter is a piece of crap. Nobody goes to libraries to discuss with librarians. To discuss and learn from your peers, you can do it by email. Before email, all scientist based their information on regular, snail mail letters and even so they even wrote relativity or quantum theory.
I remember very well when most of my colleagues told me that GNU/Linux was going nowhere due to its amateurishm, "unprofessional" and no elitist development and management model.
They were wrong, but only *they*, not the academy.
Permalink to Comment12. rob on January 4, 2005 8:11 AM writes...
I have no idea how to trackback this entry. Am I being really dense? Google Search suggests I'm not the first.
Anyway, I have a response.
I think Ricardo's point is very important in this discussion, and all discussions on academia and free software, to be more subtle when using phrases like "THE academic model," when it really is much more diverse.
Permalink to Comment13. mackinaw on January 4, 2005 8:48 AM writes...
seems to me there are a few points not made above:
1. wikipedia is FREE ... I was recently doing a research project, relying heavily on internet sources, and was constanly frustrated by finding sources (eg britanica) that wanted me to pay. wikipedia is democratic because it costs nothing.
2. wikipedia is the best FREE first source... for my (no)money on the web. yes you need to check it elsewhere, but that, as a librarian said above, is true of any source. I check ANYTHING I find on the web elsewhere. also much of what I have used wikipedia for is contributed by people who ARE experts, whether professional or amateur.
3. wikipedia encourages sharing ... as I was searching all over the web for info, much of what I found I put back into wikipedia, to give back. We are increasingly seeing "IP" encroachment on public domain, and it's easy to imagine a time in the future when information itself is available for use only with payment of royalties. wikipedia goes the other direction. kudos.
4. wikipedia removes control on info flow...britanica and harvard will be worried because their control of info gives them power; wikipedia undermines that control. an interesting project is MIT's pledge to put all its course material online, see OCW. removing controls on information has dangers, but so do electricity, and printing presses, and automobiles.
The danger I see is TOO much use of the wikipedia!
Permalink to Comment14. Tim on January 4, 2005 10:13 AM writes...
As far as I know* the Google thing is not to do with elitism - or snobbish academia - it's that the cost of the new Harvard digital system (for books and magazines isn't it?) is going to be SO high that it's an exclusive club of people who can afford it. Librarians* AFAIK don't like this either as even universities can't afford it.
I'll ask him about Wikipedia, the only problem I can see as with many sites is that it's not really indexable or savable, which would annoy most librarians or academics working over a longer timespan.
But a system that can tell you about podcasting and the tsunami about 2-3 years before anything else is great, people just have to be more critical of their sources, which they should be anyway if they are in the academic field?
Name *one* academic or librarian that goes to the Britannica or any published document and takes that verbatim? If they do they're a pen pusher and NOT an academic, who questions the veracity, bias and truth of sources(hence attribution and cross-referencing?). If an academic took only one entry in the Britannica or Wikipedia to prove a thesis he/she would get laughed out of school.
So the problem is NOT with Wikipedia, it's with people being drip-fed information and expecting it automatically to be true. Why as I see is a habit they need to get out of, especially if they want to graduate or get degrees, or well, think?
Even a voting system would be flawed as it could be a popular misconception...you should stress that people should cross-reference and use several sources, no matter what the publication.
Tim
* I admit I know this from my librarian/info sys academic partner who works at a university who *can't* afford that proposed system...information in libraries should be open like Wikipedia, no?
Permalink to Comment15. Tom Cross on January 4, 2005 10:26 AM writes...
Shirky's response is entertaining and well written and completely misses the point. There is an argument between internet people and people who like the way books smell about how to build information resources. There is a completely different discussion that says, we like wikipedia and believe in this model, but we acknowledge that its not perfected. How do you make wikipedia more useful then it is. Its more useful if I don't have to worry about the information being edited by a troll right before I check it. It would be more useful if the data in the articles was referenced. To discuss how to make it more useful is not to say it isn't useful now or that the internet and openness are bad. The thing has flaws and we ought to work on addressing them. If we're not willing to think critically about things that we are building that have become popular simply because we're afraid of conceding a point to the "other guys" everything we build is going to fail.
Permalink to Comment16. Seth Gordon on January 4, 2005 10:42 AM writes...
Trolls are only a problem on wikis because users see, by default, the most recent version of a page, and trolls can create junk faster than non-trolls can correct it. If there were a way to set a flag to say "show the most recent version that was endorsed by someone whose judgement I trust", and if new users were given a default list of trustworthy people, then trolls would not have such a damaging effect on the wiki's credibility.
I proposed a modification to the MediaWiki software that would permit this kind of process, but I don't have time right now to implement it.
Permalink to Comment17. Neschek on January 4, 2005 10:52 AM writes...
I'm a librarian -- or rather, I'll be one in six months when I get the degree -- and I personally think the Wikipedia is badass. I gave a talk about it on a job interview that culminated in me being hired for the position -- at an academic library. It's unfortunate that Clay feels the need to further the stereotype of librarians as shushing, elitist bun-ladies wanting to raise as many barriers as possible to scholarship so that only "real" people can learn. I personally don't know any librarian like that, although I'm sure a small minority exists. Somewhere. Far away from me, preferably.
As a librarian my job -- my passion -- is the dissemination of information, and the connection of people to that information. My only misgiving with Wikipedia is if someone relied on it as a source to the exclusion of all others while doing research -- but that's my misgiving about nearly *any* information source, be it electronic or traditional.
Other than that, I agree with Clay -- Wikipedia's wiki-ness is indeed a feature, not a bug.
Permalink to Comment18. Patrick McLean on January 4, 2005 11:23 AM writes...
Maybe this is only obvious to me-
Any encylopedia, of any kind (Britannica, Wiki or Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) is a horrible place to get the whole story on any subject.
What an encylopedia does well is give you the topline. It's the Reader's Digest of deep knowledge. Very good at answering questions like, "What's the deal with Pottery?" or "Who were the Aztecs?"
It would be insane to expect an encyclopedia article to give you chemical formulas for pottery glazes or a detailed description of Aztec cosmology and calender systems. But for what most people use an encyclopedia for, I would argue that Wikipedia is far better.
Perhaps that is why it is thriving?
Permalink to Comment19. Tom on January 4, 2005 1:08 PM writes...
Kindly allow me to add my voice to the chorus of librarians who use and appreciate the Wikipedia, although I'd like to note that Shirky was responding to Sanger's comment that Wikipedia "is not perceived as adequately reliable by many librarians"; "many", of course, could mean "four".
Generally, librarians don't make those sorts of binary, worthy/not worthy decisions about most information sources. They may have to about some of the sources that they have to purchase--you can't half-buy the World Book--but any number of other factors come into play in that decision, including the needs of the patrons of that particular library, the library budget, and even available shelf space. That's a moot point when considering free and non-space-occupying web sources. Librarians should be capable of making nuanced and multifaceted evaluations about the quality of online sources (and, really, should be teaching the same evaluation skills to their patrons), rather than making blanket judgements like some bibliophilic version of Steve Ditko's Mr. A. As Tim noted above, that's as true for the EB as it is for any given Wikipedia article.
A small note to Neschek with regards to connecting people with information: about ten years ago or so, I was starting my library career in Brooklyn and had just signed up with Panix as my ISP. I was having trouble downloading and opening some utilities, and one of the members of Panix volunteered to deliver a floppy of the utilities to me via sneakernet, free of charge. Thanks again, Clay!
Permalink to Comment20. Nick Douglas on January 4, 2005 11:52 PM writes...
Seth: Wikipedia has a change log, constantly monitored by members. I can restore an article's previous state in ten seconds. Thus it is easier to help the article than to hurt it.
Shirky's point is grand but not the straightest answer to Sanger's article. The most direct answer is that yes, Wikipedia has already addressed these problems. IP banning and user tracking look like proper elitism to me: trolls do get blocked, and people can find trustable users. The elitism of trusted sources is left to the reader rather than the publisher.
Permalink to Comment21. Robin on January 5, 2005 4:45 AM writes...
Seth Gordon wrote:
If there were a way to set a flag to say "show the most recent version that was endorsed by someone whose judgement I trust"
I was thinking of a Dead man's switch:
Permalink to Commenthttp://rym.waglo.com/wordpress/index.php?p=272
but Seth's suggestion is more complete - I like it!
22. Carl Beeth on January 5, 2005 3:25 PM writes...
Patrick you say an encyclopedia is only good for the topline information but is that not just a old fashion spacial restriction, look at this entry for a "soda can stove" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_can_stove. There can't be much more to say about this topic and it would not even be worth a mention in any print encyclopedia. My hunch is that there is reason to restrict the depth of information once online.
Permalink to Comment23. Carl Beeth on January 5, 2005 3:30 PM writes...
that should have been "My hunch is that there is NO reason to restrict the depth of information once online."
Permalink to Comment24. soobrosa on January 5, 2005 3:57 PM writes...
[PDF] Wikipedia as Participatory Journalism: Reliable Sources? Metrics ...
Permalink to Commenthttp://journalism.utexas.edu/onlinejournalism/wikipedia.pdf
25. David Bigwood on January 5, 2005 5:04 PM writes...
Statements that begin "of course" are often baseless and this one concerning librarians and Wikipedia is. Most of us seem to consider it a valuable resource in some instances. See the review at http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ4i12.pdf for example. It concluded that for some topics, many technical or of interest to geeks, Wikipedia was a better more current source than many other for-cost resources. In other instances is fared less well. That may change over time.
Indeed, in a bibliography for a recent talk I cite Wikipedia ftp://www.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/bigwood/TLA.html as a place for more information.
It might be fun to take an us-against-them attitude and set up strawmen to knock down, but the reality is different.
Permalink to Comment26. John Morse on January 5, 2005 5:59 PM writes...
Wikipedia has every advantage as a first stop for information. It has amazing coverage, relevancy, depth and breadth of information. It is up-to-the second current and has areas of expertise all but inaccessible from any other source. The only thing it lacks is authority, and I think that is by design, and not a problem to correct. If you need authority, then follow up with other, more authoritative sources.
One problem that does need correcting is the fact that Wikipedia is washing out other sources of information. It is reducing the usefulness of Google, even. What happens is that dozens (if not hundreds) of commercial portals use Wikipedia content (freely and legally, of course) and republish it with or without attribution.
So when you search Google for some obscure term that Wikipedia knows about, you might get two dozen results that all say the same thing -- seemingly authoritative until you realize they all spread from a snapshot of Wiki -- one that is now severed from the context of editability and might seem more creditable than it really is.
Maybe this is a problem that will take care of itself as the online universe continues to expand (Three cheers for Google library!). Or maybe it's a potential pandemic that allows single-source information (or even misinformation) to gather steam and crush other sources.
Permalink to Comment27. M. O'Connor on January 6, 2005 6:11 AM writes...
I'm not sure that ALL librarians don't like Wikipedia. I actually tell students who are looking for information to try a variety of sources and of course to take into account the author(s)/producer(s). As for librarians and privileges, I think you haven't been around too many librarians lately.
Permalink to Comment28. Wild & Wiki Journalist on January 7, 2005 1:22 AM writes...
Clay said: "And 5 years from now, when the Wikipedia is essential infrastructure, we’ll hardly remember what the fuss was about."
We'll hardly remember because in 2010 Wikipedia will be essential infrastructure exclusive to The Way Back Machine.
Permalink to Comment29. Patrick McLean on January 7, 2005 3:57 PM writes...
(response to Carl)
I whole-heartedly agree that there's no technological limit on the depth of information - but there is a cognative limit on information. Or a commonsensical one.
Take the total set of information known to everyone everywhere. It's useless. It's not searchable, it's not digestible. If you filter it into something like an encyclopedia or a dictionary, now you have a handy shorthand - An index to all the rest of the knowledge. Too many perspectives erodes the primary usefulness of the thing.
The most seminal and useful filters have this point of view. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, the original Encyclopedia Britannica, more recently the DSM (directory of mental illness)
I guess my point is - plurality is wonderful except when you're in a hurry.
Does that make sense or am I oversimplifying?
Permalink to Comment30. Michael on January 7, 2005 4:47 PM writes...
Whether you love or hate Wikipedia, the fact remains that it contains a wealth of incorrect information, and therefore is not a valid reference source.
Someone suggested googling to determine the accuracy of facts found in Wikipedia. But what happens if the source you find "confirming" Wikipedia's assertions got their information FROM Wikipedia?
There's nothing wrong with using Wikipedia as a starting point for finding information, but using it as a source for any sort of paper (or decision), at any grade level, is ridiculous. Fortunately for the illiterate masses who can't muster the energy to find a REAL source, their teachers/professors are probably equally stupid.
Permalink to Comment31. 808blogger on January 8, 2005 3:24 PM writes...
I think possibly the problem is to much anti-elitism ELITISM. Wikipedia will never be 100% perfect or 100% accurate. it is not an academic publication. is there some expectation that wikipedia would be the defacto source of all information? wikipedia is more a social experiment is collective data creation and management. The moment wikipedia tries to pull the 100% open level of the site off it will die. The reason it works is becuase anyone can commit data TROLL or not. if people REALLY cared about the data that is trolled or incorrect FIX IT.
Permalink to Comment32. Tim on January 9, 2005 12:08 AM writes...
Yes I spoke to my partner (reader in info sys and qualified librarian) and he loves Wikipedia.
You know the ironic thing is that Wikipedia is according to him based on the 1911 Brittanica...:-D Which is of course out of copyright...
Oh and anyone see Thursday's FT article based on all of this? Lazy journalist just typed up all of the debates here, off boingboing and on Kuro5hin, threw in a few choice quotes, but of *course* didn't link to these blogs. And I thought journos disliked blogs because it puts them out of a job?...grrr.
Said partner had saved it and circled - you guessed it - the main points included here including mine about academics checking their sources, all present and correct, almost verbatim.
I expected better of the FT, tho. Very naughty.
Permalink to Comment33. Tim on January 9, 2005 12:16 AM writes...
Here's that article:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:Ip5DgoNn_XkJ:news.ft.com/cms/s/eb842390-5f88-11d9-8cca-00000e2511c8.html+wikipedia+site:ft.com&hl=en&start=2
or type wikipedia site:ft.com and click on 'Cached'
Permalink to Comment34. Patrizia on January 12, 2005 2:56 AM writes...
I think it is great.
A P2P of every possible knowledge.
It is the best Internet expression.
It is what Communication means: exchanging thoughts, ideas, knowledge, wisdom...
A little glimpse of what Future will give to Future generations, the ones born in the Internet time.
There is a huge world down there at a mouse click...and the Internet Generations can have access to it, be an active subject, in good and in bad of course, but that is life...
The Internet is made by humans and consequently a virtual mirror of the real life, with a lot of good and a lot of bad.
You must take both and choose.(if you can)
Of course a librarian encyclopedia will look better, will definitely be better, because they invest a lot of money in it.
It will be more precise, more reliable more of everything.
As much as a compressed (good or bad) movie is NOT like the original.
But of course it is up to the user to choose.
One has a better this and a better that, but the other is free.
Would you sacrifice quality to price?
When something is free it is always worth to try...
Anyway, you are always free to say no.
Patrizia
Permalink to Commenthttp://www.worldonip.com
35. Dr David Hill on June 8, 2007 11:27 AM writes...
Up to 9 months ago we financially contributed funds to Wikipedia but no more, for we thought that it was a good idea and where its thinking was in unison with our own at that time - using knowledge for the good of humankind. When we as novices tried to place our Swiss charity within Wikipedia we were absolutely savaged by the editors. They in fact blocked our right of reply, which is documented by themselves.
Thereafter we even sent our registration documents via email to the then executive director of Wikimedia, the holding organization, to prove that our international group was registered as a Swiss charity. He did nothing at all. A few months later he resigned with another top Wikimedia executive, 'Jimbo's second in command. The greatest problem with Wikipedia that we now find is that they are highly selective in who should place information and where therefore they will never really have a web-based encyclopaedia that is unbiased and totally factual. It is totally at the whims of the few enlightened ones who control what should be a great reference. Unfortunately we now see that it is not.
For anyone interested further on how Wikipedia editors work, the full account including all emails will be part of our next web newsletter 'Scientific Discovery'. It will be on-line by the end of July 2007. Overall, It is time we feel that Wikipedia looked internally at itself and that they concluded that they have major problems with the way they treat new entrants. This analysis should especially be directed towards the attitude of their editors, who remove the right of reply and delete super-quick for reasons not based on evidence but only hearsay. By the way also, the Wikipedian Editor Zoe who first blocked us and the initial instigator of all the basic trouble, fell out with 'Jimbo' and where she as well left a few months later. Apparently she had made a vendetta against a certain professor according to 'Jimbo's' opinion. Thereafter she took her bat and ball away and has never been seen since. I believe she also threatened the embattled professor at the time - the web link is http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:dUfUXyA24wwJ:www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Zoe+zoe+wikipedia+professor+change+wikipedia&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk.
Permalink to CommentDr. David Hill
Chief Executive
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland
36. Chris Sherlock on July 11, 2007 12:41 AM writes...
I notice that Dr. Hill has spammed over 20 blogs and news sites with his comment, but I figured that I should respond anyway. :)
For some reason, it appears that Dr. Hill believes that if he provides the Wikimedia Foundation with money, then his charity will be automatically guaranteed a spot on Wikipedia. I am happy to say that this is not the case. While I have nothing personally against World Innovation Foundation Charity, Wikipedia's neutrality and impartiality is very important.
I have reviewed the original article. There are absolutely no references in the final revision before it was deleted. The main reason that it was deleted was because we didn't believe that the organisation was notable enough to be listed on Wikipedia. This was done through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/World_Innovation_Foundation - I will let the reader judge whether this was a fair process. I should also note that if someone believes and can demonstrate that they are notable, then there is a deletion review process.
Dr. Hill should also be aware of our suggested guidelines that deal with potential conflicts of interest - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest Though it isn't prohibited on Wikipedia, it is clearly a conflict of interest to write about your own organisation. It is thus frowned upon. I think that given the goals of Wikipedia, this is pretty reasonable.
Personally, I don't believe that Wikipedia editors or the Wikimedia Foundation has anything against this charity. In my dealings with Wikipedia and the WMF, I have always found that they welcome contructive dialogue with organisations and individuals.
Chris Sherlock
Permalink to CommentUser:Ta bu shi da yu
English Wikipedia Administrator (writing in personal capacity)