Wikipedia - "I made it up"

[lionking]

A report in the Melbourne "Age" today about "one of the most prolific contributors and editors" to Wikipedia being not a professor in theology and law but an unqualified 24 year old. He contributed to 20,000 entries using such sources as "Catholicism for Dummies" to correct srticles.

Wikipedia is often used as a source in this forum. Perhaps now it should be treated cautiously - or not used at all!

[Kaylee]

Many people contribute to Wikipedia and the overall effect appears to be that it is mostly accurate and a good place to go to get introduced to a new subject and, most importantly, find references to learn more.

It appears to be a successful experiment and my opinion of its usefullness hasn't changed.

[tsg]

Originally Posted by lionking

A report in the Melbourne "Age" today about "one of the most prolific contributors and editors" to Wikipedia being not a professor in theology and law but an unqualified 24 year old. He contributed to 20,000 entries using such sources as "Catholicism for Dummies" to correct srticles.

Wikipedia is often used as a source in this forum. Perhaps now it should be treated cautiously - or not used at all!

As with any other reference, the articles in Wikipedia are only as good as their sources. Some are very well cited, others not so much. Be skeptical of any article which lists supposed facts without indicating where they came from, whether it's from Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

[lionking]

Originally Posted by Shera

Many people contribute to Wikipedia and the overall effect appears to be that it is mostly accurate and a good place to go to get introduced to a new subject and, most importantly, find references to learn more.

It appears to be a successful experiment and my opinion of its usefullness hasn't changed.

I've used it for this reason as well, and the links seem sound, but the extent of misinformation now seems a problem. I happily rely on what I consider reputable resources, but can Wikipedia be so described?

[c4ts]

Wikipedia often suffers from a dirth of information in factual articles and an abundance of material in fictional articles. Knuckles the Echidna has a bigger page than Herodotus, and there is more information on Star Wars than the Holocaust.

[PixyMisa]

Wikipedia is a great resource on pop culture and technology. It's generally fairly good for science, so-so for history, and lousy for anything that touches on any sort of politics.

But if you want an episode list for Kim Possible, Wikipedia is the place.

[geni]

Originally Posted by lionking

A report in the Melbourne "Age" today about "one of the most prolific contributors and editors" to Wikipedia being not a professor in theology and law but an unqualified 24 year old. He contributed to 20,000 entries using such sources as "Catholicism for Dummies" to correct srticles.

There are worse sources and his edit cound doesn't even put him in the top 300 editors.

[tsg]

Originally Posted by lionking

I happily rely on what I consider reputable resources, but can Wikipedia be so described?

It helps if you don't look at is as a single resource and more as a collection of articles that may or may not be reliable resources.

A good analog is "The Internet". There's a lot of good stuff, but a lot of crap as well. And "I read it on the Internet" is hardly an indication of reliability. As always, it is up to the reader to determine the worth of any information found in either.

[lionking]

Originally Posted by geni

There are worse sources and his edit cound doesn't even put him in the top 300 editors.

Is that right! And this guy spends 14 hours a day editing Wikipedia. It just shows how many people really have no lives......

Even if Wikipedia remains a reasonably good source, this story could do it serious damage. How many others would draw the conclusion, as I have, that this is a serious credibility problem?

[geni]

Originally Posted by lionking

Is that right! And this guy spends 14 hours a day editing Wikipedia. It just shows how many people really have no lives......

Record for a sustained editing perioid is over 24 hours.

Quote:

Even if Wikipedia remains a reasonably good source, this story could do it serious damage. How many others would draw the conclusion, as I have, that this is a serious credibility problem?

Various. Given that citeing cedentials isn't a brilliant way to win a debate on wikipedia the conclusion is flawed.

[Chupacabras]

What has the true identity of this individual to do with the reason or validity of his arguments? What if he was an impersonator?

The media is trying to make a case out of pure hype.

[gopi]

Originally Posted by Chupacabras

What has the true identity of this individual to do with the reason or validity of his arguments? What if he was an impersonator?

The media is trying to make a case out of pure hype.

He wrote an open letter to university professors and other academics citing his own credentials and using them to lend validity to Wikipedia.

He didn't just create an identity that was different. He explicitly added false details to try to lend credence to his positions.

I think that faking credentials goes fundamentally against the ethos of Wikipedia. It implies an acceptance of credentials as meaningful and relevant.

[~enigma~]

Originally Posted by geni

Record for a sustained editing perioid is over 24 hours.

Source?

[CFLarsen]

Anyone got a link to the story?

[eowyn]

Link to the story in "The Age"
http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/wi...166847205.html

[Dark Jaguar]

Originally Posted by c4ts

Wikipedia often suffers from a dirth of information in factual articles and an abundance of material in fictional articles. Knuckles the Echidna has a bigger page than Herodotus, and there is more information on Star Wars than the Holocaust.

There does need to be more information on historical stuff, but I hardly see the presense of extensive articles on fiction to be a bad thing. It's not like those articles are pressing against the articles on world war 2, crushing it. People aren't "flipping open the book" so to speak and landing on the page about Mario and Luigi. They get what they look for and they generally link to related stuff. Further, it's not like the people adding information to the fictional stuff are taking away time that could be spent boosting the other articles. Really, because those that do that, that's generally the stuff they know about. It's not like someone was faced with the choice "should I add this to the holocaust page or this to the Borg page?". They just happened to be reading one, noticed something, and added or altered something. Since the people editing wikipedia are a potentially endless font, there is no such thing as "wasted talent". Also, it's not like they are bumping up against the top of their server capacity. In other words, I can't think of a single reason why it shouldn't have extensive articles on Merry Poppins or the California Raisins.

[CFLarsen]

Originally Posted by eowyn

Link to the story in "The Age"
http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/wi...166847205.html

Thanks!

[Wudang]

And the Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03...ipedia_crisis/
And NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/te...ll&oref=slogin

[Brian the Snail]

Originally Posted by lionking

He contributed to 20,000 entries using such sources as "Catholicism for Dummies" to correct srticles.

Is this another name for "The Bible"?

Quote:

Wikipedia is often used as a source in this forum. Perhaps now it should be treated cautiously - or not used at all!

I definitively think Wikipedia should be treated with caution. Then again, all sources should be treated with caution. At least Wikipedia usually cites its original sources, so you can go back and check where they came from. That's more than could be said for many other places on the internet or in the meanstream media.

As someone else said a while ago: "Wikipedia is a good place to start, a really bad place to end."

As for the credentials bit, anybody who believes anything by an anonymous guy on the internet, without independent evidence, is being really dumb.

[Davidjayjordan]

Originally Posted by lionking

A report in the Melbourne "Age" today about "one of the most prolific contributors and editors" to Wikipedia being not a professor in theology and law but an unqualified 24 year old. He contributed to 20,000 entries using such sources as "Catholicism for Dummies" to correct srticles.

Wikipedia is often used as a source in this forum. Perhaps now it should be treated cautiously - or not used at all!

And yet the vast majority of you HERE, worship Wiki... as it is written by man, and changes with the mood of man, and is backed up by the worldly.

[MRC_Hans]

The Wiki is really peer review taken to totality. We share information, and it gets criticized, modified by our peers. Poorly supported information is weeded out, well supported information persists and enters our knowledge base.

Thus, the Wiki is a reliable source of knowledge over time, but we must be aware that any snapshot of it may contain worthless and even false information. Lacking a source of guaranteed true information, the Wiki is a very good substitute.

Hans

[Davidjayjordan]

Originally Posted by MRC_Hans

The Wiki is really peer review taken to totality. We share information, and it gets criticized, modified by our peers. Poorly supported information is weeded out, well supported information persists and enters our knowledge base.

Thus, the Wiki is a reliable source of knowledge over time, but we must be aware that any snapshot of it may contain worthless and even false information. Lacking a source of guaranteed true information, the Wiki is a very good substitute.

Hans

But then again, Hans, peer reviews can easily be based on peer pressure, and telling your peers what they want to hear, such as happens in universities where peer pressure determines most subjects.

But true skeptics can slice through the bogus to find facts upon which to build foundations of truths, whereas the false skeptics only want what is fed to them and that is acceptable in their peer groups as as to remain groupies within the group and continue in their group faith.

[Jeff Corey]

Originally Posted by Davidjayjordan

But then again, Hans, peer reviews can easily be based on peer pressure, and telling your peers what they want to hear, such as happens in universities where peer pressure determines most subjects....

Apparently you have never been involved in the governance of a university or have a bizarre idea of what "peer review" entails. Or both.

[andyandy]

Whether or not this chap lied about his qualifications is to me secondary to the accuarcy of his articles......if they were accurate and of a decent academic standard, then frankly i don't care about his qualifications

[JJM]

The Wiki can provide references to follow; but is, itself, useless for citation. Any "fact" in an article there can go permanently missing a minute after you cite it. Worse, many bogus topics are in the control of proponents. If you pick a quack topic (acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropracty) you might not realize that it is nonsense.

Wiki has an absurd policy of "neutral point of view." For some reason, the statement that "naturopaths have an education comparable to MDs" is neutral; but saying their education is vastly inferior is not neutral (despite being factual).

Wiki is junk.

[geni]

Originally Posted by JJM

The Wiki can provide references to follow; but is, itself, useless for citation.

Generaly you should not be citeing encyclopedias.

Quote:

Any "fact" in an article there can go permanently missing a minute after you cite it.

That depends on how smart you are in citeing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Cite?page=Egypt

[AgingYoung]

Originally Posted by Brian the Snail

I definitively think Wikipedia should be treated with caution. .

.
The first article posted stated:

Quote:

He was unmasked after The New Yorker magazine referred to Essjay's contributions to the site and how he would spend up to 14 hours a day editing, "correcting errors and removing obscenities".

Someone needs to tell The New Yorker that wiki isn't a reliable source at times.
.

Originally Posted by Brian the Snail

Then again, all sources should be treated with caution.

Particularly The New Yorker. Another egg-sucking source is Dan Rather. If he doesn't have a fact he pulls one out of his ....you know what.
.
.
In a phone interview with Ryan Jordan his only comment was...

Quote:

How dare they question my atha*ity!!

.
.
Gene

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by JJM

The Wiki can provide references to follow; but is, itself, useless for citation.

snip

Wiki is junk.

well sure, if you're writing any kind of academic paper then you're hardly likely to use Wiki as a cite. However, on a board such as JREF, wiki can provide a good paragraph or two with which to begin a discussion. I disagree that "wiki is junk" - if it's used incorrectly then it's junk - but that's the fault of the user, not the wiki project.

[JJM]

Originally Posted by geni

Generaly you should not be citeing encyclopedias.

School children are often allowed to cite authoritative encyclopedias; but many educators exclude wiki from that. I have never cited an encyclopedia in a publication. However, if I isolated a compound from a plant, I would have no compunction about looking in an encyclopedia (and citing it) so I could state the territory in which the plant grows.

The bottom line on sources, a point Feynman made, is that the more important a fact is, the more important it is to see the original literature.

I wrote "Any "fact" in an article there can go permanently missing a minute after you cite it" and you replied:

Originally Posted by geni

That depends on how smart you are in citeing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Cite?page=Egypt

I am afraid I don't understand your point. For example, when I looked-up naturopathy in 2005 it said "naturopaths are medical doctors" which is wrong. They think they are better than MDs. That claim (to being medical doctors) is no longer (or wasn't last I looked) in wiki. Many of the other grandiose claims remain.

[JJM]

Originally Posted by andyandy

well sure, if you're writing any kind of academic paper then you're hardly likely to use Wiki as a cite. However, on a board such as JREF, wiki can provide a good paragraph or two with which to begin a discussion. ...

But, that is one of my points- those paragraphs may be gone, or greatly revised, when a person looks them up. That could really confuse the discussion.

[Humphreys]

I don't know what anyone's issue with Wikipedia.

It's not perfect, but on the whole I've found it to be impressively reliable, accurate and fair.

[Psi Baba]

Originally Posted by Davidjayjordan

And yet the vast majority of you HERE, worship Wiki...

Examples, please?

[c4ts]

Originally Posted by Dark Jaguar

There does need to be more information on historical stuff, but I hardly see the presense of extensive articles on fiction to be a bad thing. It's not like those articles are pressing against the articles on world war 2, crushing it. People aren't "flipping open the book" so to speak and landing on the page about Mario and Luigi.

The problem, as I see it, is consistency. Sometimes the information I find useful is not as detailed as the information I find useless. Some areas are too complicated, and others are too scarce. Published encyclopedias usually have some sense of importance that Wikipedia lacks. It seems full of fanboys and amateurs who fancy themselves experts.

[prewitt81]

Originally Posted by Davidjayjordan

But then again, Hans, peer reviews can easily be based on peer pressure, and telling your peers what they want to hear, such as happens in universities where peer pressure determines most subjects.

Nope.

[Folly]

Originally Posted by Psi Baba

Examples, please?

Wikipedia doesn't say anything about itself in the article about worship, and I believe it with religious fervour, so there must be no one here that worships Wikipedia.


I have to agree with those that thingk that this particular event is yet another tempest in a teapot being exaggerated in the media. How surprised can anyone be that someone has falsely represented their credentials? Sadly, it's not like that practice is unknown in the rest of the world and there are enough people involved with wikipedia that this guy is probably not the only lying twit.

The only way I could see this changing someone's opinion on the usefulness of wikipedia is if someone knew so little about wikipedia that they did not know it could be edited by anyone. If you didn't trust it before, this probably doesn't help. If, knowing its nature, you trusted it before, what does this change? It's just one guy...


ETA This is not to say that I think that misrepresenting your credentials is not a big deal. I think catching anyone at that is a pretty good reason to never trust anything that person says again, no matter how contrite they seem. I don't think the media would have thought the story was as exciting if it turned out that a small fraction of the copy-editing done in the Encyclopedia Britannica was done by someone who lied on their resume.

[AgingYoung]

Wiki is a community effort in the sense of 'it takes a village.' What that means is any peer review includes the village idiot. You got to love democracy.

Gene

[Magic 8 Ball]

Always be skeptical of what you read. After all, the first book published using the printing press was the Bible.

[geni]

Originally Posted by JJM

School children are often allowed to cite authoritative encyclopedias; but many educators exclude wiki from that. I have never cited an encyclopedia in a publication. However, if I isolated a compound from a plant, I would have no compunction about looking in an encyclopedia (and citing it) so I could state the territory in which the plant grows.

Would be more logical to go to a primiary or perhaps secondary source for that information.

Quote:

The bottom line on sources, a point Feynman made, is that the more important a fact is, the more important it is to see the original literature.

Never seen a paper calculating the charge on an electron. Generaly I use data tables for that kind of thing.

Quote:

I wrote "Any "fact" in an article there can go permanently missing a minute after you cite it" and you replied:I am afraid I don't understand your point. For example, when I looked-up naturopathy in 2005 it said "naturopaths are medical doctors" which is wrong. They think they are better than MDs. That claim (to being medical doctors) is no longer (or wasn't last I looked) in wiki. Many of the other grandiose claims remain.

You cite the version (which is what the cite tool I linked to does for you) Wikipedia keeps pretty much every version of every article that has ever existed.

[skeptifem]

Originally Posted by lionking

A report in the Melbourne "Age" today about "one of the most prolific contributors and editors" to Wikipedia being not a professor in theology and law but an unqualified 24 year old. He contributed to 20,000 entries using such sources as "Catholicism for Dummies" to correct srticles.

Wikipedia is often used as a source in this forum. Perhaps now it should be treated cautiously - or not used at all!

i found mistakes in the 2nd article i ever saw on wikipedia. i fixed it only to have waaaay too much debate over a tv show article.

I think the problem with it is determining its accuracy at any given time. things change so much, and ive seen people change articles specifically to troll a forum and no one reverted the entries. it was something silly like 'authentic mexican food contains no cheese'.

Another thing I hate about wikipedia is that they break their own rules ALL THE TIME. the article for GNAA has been up for deletion way more times than allowed by wikipedias own rules, its just that GNAA is a trolling group that hates wikipedia. They have done some seriously famous trolls and so people keep voting to keep it because of that, but mods dont care. encyclopedia dramatica chronicles a lot of stuff on wikipedia that people arent supposed to see.

I dont know if I can paste the address for the votes for deletion page for GNAA (a record 18 friggin times, and deleted depsite no consensus being reached) because it contains the n word, but there is a link in this encyclopedia dramatica article: WARNING NOT WORK SAFE.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/ind...kipedia.2C_YHL

there is the problem of making tons of sock puppets to do whatever you want to wikipedia as well.

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by JJM

But, that is one of my points- those paragraphs may be gone, or greatly revised, when a person looks them up. That could really confuse the discussion.

but that's largely irrelevant. If you're basing your argument on wiki, well then that would be a problem.....but if you're just basing a discussion on it, it really isn't. Indeed, it would be of value to the discussion to ask why it had been edited, and to compare the two versions if they conflicted.