Do you trust Wikipedia?

[davebg 0]

Very shady.

A few months back, The New Yorker published a long piece about online encyclopedia Wikipedia. This week, the magazine ran an editors' note detailing a problem with one of the sources in the article.

 

The Web encyclopedia's management team recommended a Wikipedia administrator, known to the Wikipedia community and to the article's author only as "Essjay," as a source for the story. According to the article, the source, who described himself online as "a tenured professor of religion at a private university" with "a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law," remained anonymous on Wikipedia and to the magazine because he was concerned about retribution from people he ruled against.

 

It turns out, however, that Essjay is a 24-year-old named Ryan Jordan, who is not a teacher and holds no advanced degrees. Jordan was recently hired by Wikia, a commercial company co-founded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Wales told The New Yorker that he didn't "really have a problem with" Essjay's online profile, and regarded it as a "pseudonym."

 

The incident had bloggers buzzing trying to decide where the bigger problem lay: Was Wikipedia to blame for allowing administrators to lie about who they are? Or should the reporter have been more thorough in checking her sources?

 

http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6163357.html?tag=nefd.aof

[surferskin 30]

i thought it was common knowledge that half of what you read on wikipedia is garbage?

[gocolts 300]

i thought it was common knowledge that half of what you read on wikipedia is garbage?

same here

[Patriotsfatboy1 1,432]

i thought it was common knowledge that half of what you read on wikipedia is garbage or stolen from other sources?

Fixed

[kutulu 1,551]

I believe every single thing that I read.

[davebg 0]

i thought it was common knowledge that half of what you read on wikipedia is garbage?

This goes further than that. Normally, you read something on Wikipedia and it's up to you to decide whether you believe it to be credible or not. The primary method of doing this is to look to see what credentials the person who entered it has. The story I posted gives an example of one such contributor posting completely false information regarding his expertise on the subject at hand...and goes on to show how senior management at Wikipedia not only knew of this, but condoned it.

[hellothere 1]

I believe every single thing that I read.

 

 

Fact: dancing banana's are in-fact... not cool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

did i just crush your reality?

[football_scooter 0]

i thought it was common knowledge that half of what you read on wikipedia is garbage?

 

'zactly....half of the stuff on Wiki is true, half is garbage, and the other half isn't good at fractions.

[Vikings4ever 496]

Wiki is fine for everyday stuff you're just curious about. But if you're doing something important, find another source.

[kutulu 1,551]

Fact: dancing banana's are in-fact... not cool.

did i just crush your reality?

 

You

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can't

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bring

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Down

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[surferskin 30]

Wiki is fine for everyday stuff you're just curious about. But if you're doing something important, find another source.

like FFToday.

[frank 2,147]

Fact: dancing banana's are in-fact... not cool.

 

 

You must get your information from wikipedia.

 

[swirvenirvin 25]

i thought it was common knowledge that half of what you read on wikipedia is garbage?

 

 

yeah it is the is a stupid thread

[Strike 3,980]

This goes further than that. Normally, you read something on Wikipedia and it's up to you to decide whether you believe it to be credible or not. The primary method of doing this is to look to see what credentials the person who entered it has. The story I posted gives an example of one such contributor posting completely false information regarding his expertise on the subject at hand...and goes on to show how senior management at Wikipedia not only knew of this, but condoned it.

 

Doesn't bother me. I'd never use Wikipedia for critical research. I've never even looked at the credentials of the person writing the articles. I take everything I read with a grain of salt. Usually the information seems pretty good so it's useful but that's about as much credibility I give it.

[Chronic Husker 85]

I tell you what. Their entry on Red Dawn is pretty sweet.

[akaoni 0]

Just for the point of discussion, I submit this for your approval. From Nature.com:

 

Why is Wikipedia as good as it is? While the debate about precisely what level of goodness that entails has been heated, the free online encyclopaedia offers a better standard of information than many would have expected from a resource that absolutely anyone can write and edit.

 

Three groups of researchers claim to have untangled the process by which many Wikipedia entries achieve their impressive accuracy1, 2, 3. They say that the best articles are those that are highly edited by many different contributors.

 

And does this increased attention make them better? So it seems. Although the quality of an entry is not easy to assess automatically, Wilkinson and Huberman assume that those articles selected as the 'best' by the Wikipedia user community are indeed in some sense superior. These, they say, are more highly edited, and by a greater number of users, than the less visible entries.

 

The main lesson for tapping effectively into the 'wisdom of crowds', then, is that the crowd should be diverse. In fact, in 2004 Lu Hong and Scott Page of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor showed that a problem-solving team selected at random from a diverse collection of individuals will usually perform better than a team made up of those who individually perform best — because the latter tend to be too similar, and so draw on too narrow a range of options5. For crowds, wisdom depends on variety.

 

So perhaps the mob trumps the occasional fraud, or so this research says...

[Chiefs04 0]

Wik is for elementary knowledge, and some of the more obscure topics are poorly edited. You may get some of the basics but Encarta, Britannica, and even Dictionary.com are much better, more reliable resources imo.

[IGotWorms 3,317]

Who the hell doesn't know that Wikipedia is not entirely reliable?

[kutulu 1,551]

You must get your information from wikipedia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[D_House 0]

Wiki is fine for everyday stuff you're just curious about. But if you're doing something important, find another source.

 

i've actually been kind of a wiki-aholic lately. been reading a lot outside of work and often what i read leaves me with questions. it's handy having a website for quick referencing. i like that many posts are flagged for issues with neutrality and sourcing. lets me know right off the bat to not take what i'm reading too seriously.