Yes .. in part.
The facts are that the "newscasters and journalists" have, besides "telling the part they want to and leaving out the rest" been also using bogus information, which makes them exactly like Wikipedia.
Posted on 12/05/2005 4:53:16 AM PST by Panerai
For Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, last week was a tough one. And he's going to change the ground rules for the popular anyone-can-contribute encyclopedia because of it.
First, in a Nov. 29 op-ed piece in USA Today, a former administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy lambasted the free online reference work for an article that suggested he may have been involved in the assassinations of both Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy.
Then, on Dec. 1, a new flurry of attention came when former MTV VJ and podcasting pioneer Adam Curry was accused of anonymously editing out references to other people's seminal podcasting work in an article about the hot new digital medium.
To critics of Wikipedia--which, in a spin on the open-source model, lets anyone create and edit entries--the news was further proof that the service has no accountability and no place in the world of serious information gathering.
"Wales, in a recent C-SPAN interview...insisted that his Web site is accountable and that his community of thousands of volunteer editors...corrects mistakes within minutes," former Robert Kennedy aide John Seigenthaler wrote in USA Today. "My experience refutes that...For four months, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin."
Wales has dealt with criticism for years, and he's sensitive to it. He knows that many people worry that Wikipedia's self-policing process can't possibly keep up with the massive number of new articles that crop up on the site, and the edits that appear in existing entries. The cybertome, after all, is home to millions of articles--nearly 850,000 in English alone, with many other entries in dozens of additional languages. In October, the English-language site hosted 1,515 new articles per day.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
Pretty much my position since I understood the "business model".
Anyone setting up such a service based on both its usefulness and the assumption that the users/editors will be 100% honest and not exploit and abuse the system is a fool...
But what puzzles me is how Wikipeda (still) gets top, or near top, billing when you look up something like "Irish setters" or "Afganistan", or "Carrie Nation" or whatever on darn near any search engine.
I get a kick out of Wikipedia. It is a sign of our times.
Anybody can write anything, and someone will take it as fact.
If folks understand what Wikipedia is and is not, then I see no harm, no foul.
Haven't the newscasters and journalists been doing the same thing for years, telling the "part" they want to, and leaving out the rest?
Pretty much my position since I understood the "business model".However, we can probably trust this encyclopedia more than any other out there. I would rather have a hard copy of this encyclopedia than any other out there.
Anyone setting up such a service based on both its usefulness and the assumption that the users/editors will be 100% honest and not exploit and abuse the system is a fool...
Yes .. in part.
The facts are that the "newscasters and journalists" have, besides "telling the part they want to and leaving out the rest" been also using bogus information, which makes them exactly like Wikipedia.
Well, I have a simple way of dealing with that.
Ignorance is rampant and too may actually believe that "instant in-depth" knowlege is actually possible.
I simply tell them to quit wasting my time... and move on.
Well, I am not surprised.
Your name says it all...
You hit the nail on the head!
I think most reasonable people, when they discover that Wikipedia articles can be edited by anyone anonymously, will instantly conclude that the accuracy and objectivity of its contents is subject to question, particularly in any area where a hidden agenda may have an influence.
And it only takes a few seconds more of critical thinking to conclude the same about the MSM. I can see why they don't like it. Competition!
Wikipedia: You can count on it being correct
until just before you read it.
Wiki puts up a headline that tells you the veracity is in dispute whenever there is controversy over accuracy in the attached editing discussion for an article.
A FReeper here had it right once. He saw the Wiki on FR was left-leaning. He didn't complain, he just went in there and fixed it.
defamatory comments aren't part of free speech. Well you can say it, but you can get sued too. Who do you sue for defamatory comments on wikopedia?
No kidding. "If it's on the Web, it must be true." I'll give Wikipedia this much; it does keep a history of the edits for all to see. But overall, it just doesn't have the credibility that some want to claim it has.
I, too, have groin pains.
I guess if wikipedia had a big disclaimer on every page you visit saying what the site is (and is not), then I guess it would be ok.
But as it is now, you can have people send you a link to wikipedia and if you don't know what wikipedia is, you'd think it was an authentic truth type website. When in fact it's mostly truth, but can be easily exploited to defame someone.
When I first came across it, I had no idea it was just open to public postings. Not until much later did I realize what it was.
Wikipedia is what happens without peer review.
And if you aren't smart enough to deal with that, you need an information nanny. Which is what, I suppose, the Left is screaming about.
I'm endlessly amused by the MSM myth that you can read a news story and get, in that one story, THE TRUTH about something, because it was written by a (drumroll) PROFESSIONAL JOURNALIST who has a (drumroll) EDITOR. As if you get in journalism school some esoteric anointing that makes you ever after able to tell truth from fiction better than the common people, who suffer the disadvantage of just being educated in an actual subject.
They either want to think that way, or the complete opposite, which is that there is no such thing as truth, and these are the two lazy approaches to thinking. It's a simpering, nannyboy approach to reality.
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