Wikipedia overtaking major news sites

CNN Money ^ | September 6, 2005 | Staff Writer

[CreviceTool]

Wikipedia overtaking major news sites Traffic to the multilingual network of sites has grown 154 percent over the past year. September 6, 2005: 5:21 PM EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Wikipedia, which has surged this year to become the most popular reference site on the Web, is fast overtaking several major news sites as the place where people swarm for context on breaking events. Traffic to the multilingual network of sites has grown 154 percent over the past year, according to research firm Hitwise. At current growth rates, it is set to overtake The New York Times on the Web, the Drudge Report and other news sites. But the rising status of the site as the Web's intellectual demilitarized zone, the favored place people look for background on an issue or to settle a polemical dispute, also poses challenges for the volunteer ethic that gave it rise. "We are growing from a cheerful small town where everyone waves off their front porch to the subway of New York City where everyone rushes by," said Jimmy Wales, the founder of the volunteer encyclopedia. "How do you preserve the culture that has worked so well?" p>

[Tim Long]

shouldn't conservatives take notice…or better yet, action?

It's not a bad idea, but the fact is liberals have nothing better to do than keep going back to pages and re-editing them. Most of the time they don't even offer a biased re-edit. They just erase your new text.

[Arkinsaw]

Wikipedia is dubious at best on a lot of information. It is frightening that history and facts are now subject to even more revision and altering on a grand scale.

I have about decided, that the best tactic, is to go there and help them make it as blatantly liberal moonbat as possible until it is so obvious that it is useless as an information source. You will have a lot more success doing that than you will inserting anything balanced in there.

[pepperhead]

Should a Rapid Response Team be assembled, if not already?

Look up what they say about Free Republic and then think about how fair they are going to be.

[SteveMcKing]

I am not skilled with their format, but I did in fact write a revision and submitted it. No clue what became of it.

(The specific entry made reference to Mass. congressman Peter Blute's radio career, in which a brief but egregious remark was made against him.)

[pepperhead]

Fake but accurate? ;)

[pepperhead]

You should go and see what they did.

[Arkinsaw]

Most of the time they don't even offer a biased re-edit. They just erase your new text.

You are right. Those who are in the "circle of friends" can revert, edit, do whatever without any real debate or explanation unless they are egregious. A new editor's contribution is at the whim of the powers that be.

I finally quit when I fought someone inserting an anti-Iraq war screed into the article about the long-dead J. William Fulbright, positing that he would be against it. My argument was that J. William Fulbright was DEAD long BEFORE the war and that an encyclopedia had no business channeling the dead. I got no support for that position. However, if I had channeled Thomas Jefferson and posited that he would have been for the war, it would have been reverted as foolishness without any consideration whatsoever.

It's pointless. The Wikipedia community has a view of what reality is and they are much more leery of facts that tend to oppose that view than they are of facts that tend to support it.

[kpp_kpp]

if half the freepers that bashed wikipedia as a leftist site spent half as much time there as they do here it would make a huge difference. yes it is a lot of work and yes libs are going to try revising truth out of the picture but with the number of visits that occur over the the message is worth maintaining.

certainly more worthwhile than the silliness of "freeping" an online poll.

(i won't believe it is "leftist" until i start hearing loads of stories of freepers being banned from editing -- so far i don't think that is the case, it is just that the libs are more diligent)

[sourcery]

Look up what they say about Free Republic and then think about how fair they are going to be.

Better yet, go edit the Free Republic entry so that it better reflects reality as you see it.

And remember that the "they" who you fear may be unfair are simply the public at large--and the "public at large" includes all Freepers who care to serve as editors.

[pepperhead]

Do you think that hasn't been tried?

[Arkinsaw]

if half the freepers that bashed wikipedia as a leftist site spent half as much time there as they do here it would make a huge difference. yes it is a lot of work and yes libs are going to try revising truth out of the picture but with the number of visits that occur over the the message is worth maintaining.

You will just end up getting your IP blocked if you seriously try to veer the content back to more middle ground. You will be a "problem user".

[the invisib1e hand]

Big-Orwellian-Mistake alert. crowd mentality mistaken for authority and every bit as reliable as the wind.

[strategofr]

"Any 6-year-old can contribute to Wikipedia. All anyone has to do is write a page. Of course they reserve the right to "edit" anything they wish. I don't consult Wiki ... it's usually trash."

I use it for general definitions, though I was unaware of the "news" side. The definitions I get seem pretty good, as far as I can see.

[AntiGuv]

Once you submit revisions, they appear immediately. So long as no one else has changed it, then it's still there. You should go check and report back!

[SamAdams76]

I've been hearing a lot of yammering about Wikipedia here on Free Republic but quite honestly, I have yet to encounter a liberal bias there. True, the site is maintained by many thousands of volunteers with the authority to revise and change any article. But they police themselves pretty well. If somebody was to edit an entry with a lot of crap, it usually gets fixed within a few hours, if not minutes.

I find the site pretty amazing myself. For example, the day after the new iPod (Nano) was launched (last Thursday), the entry for iPod was already updated with the Nano fully integrated into it and by reading it, you'd think the Nano had been out for years already!

It might never be as accurate and as thorough as the Britannica or Encarta, but is sure is more up-to-the-moment.

[strategofr]

"The original title is misleading. As the article says "The Wikipedia... has ... become the most popular reference site on the Web, fast overtaking several major news sites." The article confuses information reference and news - which is a failing of the news media itself. It does not help that Wikipedia actually has news on its front page - a business it should stay strictly out of."

Thanks for the clarfifying (and good) analysis.

[sourcery]

Do you think that hasn't been tried?

I'm sure it has. But it's a numbers game. I've found that Wikipedia entries generally reflect the consensus view of society at large. What your attitude about Wikipedia says to me is that either 1) your views do not reflect the consensus of society at large, or b) those who have self-selected themselves as diligent editors of pages on subjects you care about generally disagree with your opinions. In either case, the way to fix the problem is get more people who agree with you to diligently edit the relevant entries.

Discalaimer: I use Wikipedia for research on technical issues, not for research on political issues.

[AntiGuv]

PS. I commonly edit Wikipedia for grammar and spelling, but I've never added anything substantive. I've thought about it though, but the topics I considered modifying would've required some research, and I was too busy. I would never modify if for ideological reasons, but that's just me. I think Wikipedia's a great concept at least in principle.

[SteveMcKing]

Wonderful... they cleaned it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAAF-FM (scroll to "John Osterlind" or "Peter Blute")

[Junior]

Actually, for most general research, it's fairly accurate. I use it quite a bit in my classes, and the pages usually have external links for further study.