Posted on 08/31/2006 6:05:48 AM PDT by steve-b
For some time the people behind Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia assembled from reader contributions and edited and maintained by those who care to get involved, have been coping with the fallout from a widely-publicised failure of their quality control mechanism.
Last November US politician John Seigenthaler took Wikipedia to task in the columns of USA Today over a false and defamatory biography of him that had been posted on the site.
The biography, it eventually emerged, had been written as a prank, but it remained online for four months before it was noticed and removed.
Since Mr Siegenthaler Sr was neither controversial enough to merit consistent attention, or interested enough in what happened online to bother to Google himself regularly, his biography simply sat there unremarked, although we have no way of knowing how many school essays mention his entirely fabricated involvement in the assassination of Robert and John Kennedy....
But it necessarily contains errors, some placed there deliberately by writers with a specific agenda and others simply mistakes that have gone unnoticed.
Sometimes the errors are entirely frivolous, of course, as happened earlier this month when fans of US comedian Stephen Colbert followed his joking suggestion and edited pages on elephants to say that their population had recently tripled.
The errors are not a reason to dismiss the site's usefulness or importance. While Wikipedia should never be the last place one looks for information about a specific topic, I increasingly find that it is the best starting point for an exploration of a new subject.
However the nature of the "Wikipedia" itself seems to be shifting, largely as a result of policy decisions made since the Seigenthaler case, and this may well affect its continued usefulness....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Agreed. I use Wikipedia for subjects that do not involve any emotion. People are unlikely to lie about programming languages or obscure tv shows from the 70s or stuff like that. I never assume that wikipedia is correct, but occasionally use it as a starting point.
I had to write a short paper on something in my Western Civ class. I can't remember what it was right off of the top of my head, but Wikipedia had more detailed info on it than my textbook did.
I hadn't bought the stupid flyer booklet yet that the professor put together for the class, so I went almost exclusively from Wikipedia.
I got an A too :). This guy never gives A's either.
It was accurate there at least.
I'd put Wikipedia's batting average up against CBS, the Boston Globe or the New York Times, any day of the week ending in a "y".
Also, Wikipedia is self correcting, for the most part. I find a good test for any encyclopedia is the Sacco and Vanzetti case. I personally am convinced that they were justly convicted after a fair trial. I find Wikipedia's treatment far more evenhanded than the dead tree Britannica, or any other dead tree encyclopedia I've ever consulted.
>>I find it very useful and they generally do a good job of staying neutral.
You're kidding, right?
I find them far more even handed than most of the MSM, and certainly miles ahead of academia.
If you cannot get emotional about Bayes Theorem better put a mirror to your nose. A truly wonderful treatment.
You set an extremely low bar.
Wiki content needs to be seriously questioned on any subject that is remotely political.
Uggh, now my brain hurts. :)
True, which is why I rarely turn to them. I gotta give them major props for their treatment of Sacco and Vanzetti, however. They give "both sides"; they did a far better job than the History Channel, for instance.
Actually, I needed to "solve" a problem for work. I researched textbooks, googled, Eric Weisstein, etc., but that Wikipedia artical came through for me.
"Solve" in quotes, because I actually had to unravel a somewhat botched analysis - the author, a Ph.D. physicist, could not explain his assumptions, he had relied on his own infallible intuition - and that article (and second edition Papoulis) provided me the key insights. Turns out, his intuition was plain wrong, but gave unfortunately plausible results.
They'll always be a tender spot in my heart for Wikipedia.
Wow. That's incredible.
Wikipedia = Web 2.0 garbage.
I increasingly find worthwhile Wiki entries returned in Google searches for technical subjects.
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