Wikipedia is not God
 

I find it really tiresome that Wikipedia is used in every other forum conversation (not just on this board, mind you) as some kind of reliable and definitive source. Sure, I've admired the idea of a free source encyclopaedia ever since I learnt about it, and more often than not it works, but remember that God (which Wikipedia ain't ;) ) is in the details.

This is, of course, a part of a more general problem with people not being skeptical enough about factoids read on the Internet in general, and on the websites created by a crowd of loosely supervised volunteers in specific, but Wikipedia, covering as wide range of subjects as it does, is the most common victim of such misunderstandings.

Please, if you intend to use Wikipedia as a source of argument or information, try to do the following:

• Check if the article names its source. If it does, link to the original source instead. It will be easier to rate its credibility.
• Wikipedia has the talk page and the edits' history for a reason. Consult them. Maybe the content has aleady been questioned by Wiki contributors themselves, in which case helping it spread it any further is perhaps not a reliable thing to do.
• If you are referring to just a small excerpt of the article, quote it here in addition to linking to it. Someone might delete it by tomorrow.
• The more controversial the topic at hand, the more reconsider bringing up Wikipedia at all (especially if you are looking for a definition or an analysis rather than facts). If something starts a heated debate in here, there is no reason to assume that Wiki updater isn't a side in this argument as well.
• As far as rumours and speculations are concerned, simply don't use it. (That's why :D )

I'm sorry, I just had to vent.

Point taken.

But I think in general, people should be careful with what they read.

I take everything I read with a pinch of salt unless I witnessed it personally.

You old salt, you *pokes*

Blasphamy!

Urg..I had to do it.

Ah, yes, wikipedia. I love it, mainly because I can screw around with everyone on it. I behave, mind you, but it doesn't change the main reason why I love it. Not to mention I love cleaning up information. The Urban Dead wiki is one where I even pretend to have ownership of a page (Bug Reports) and keep it cleaned up - it's due for an overhaul when I'm done studying, an overhaul I'm looking forward to... *evil grin*

Seriously, though, wikis are the workaholic heaven.

As for wikipedia specifically, I use it to help myself studying. The articles on computer science topics are particularily reliable (comparing them to what I learn shows this, at least), but I've also seen other topics, where the article didn't even make sense to me. I'm in complete agreeance with you, AFGNCAAP - one should be careful.

But equally, I think, trusting one's gut is something that should not only be tolerated - but encouraged, exactly because it's hard to tell if someone is just bullshitting around in the five minutes you look at the article or nay. A bit of instinct, I find, seems neccessary. I go almost entirely by instinct. For example, if I find the article is being vague or oddly formulated, I avoid linking to it. Beyond that, I do it with childish glee and passion. ;)

*giggle*

I don't recall seeing anyone quote Wikipedia as the voice of God, unless it was me in my argument about vampires not casting shadows. :D But I do think you're making a great point here, AFGNCAAP, and you're right that people need to take care in making sure they're evaluating and using its information responsibly.

I don't think Wikipedia is any sort of authoritative source, but it can be useful. It's up to the reader to decide whether the information therein is accurate, by checking out the sources and applying one's own BS and bias detectors judiciously. For matters that are at all controversial - eg., politics, history - one probably needs to take the information therein with more than a grain of salt, perhaps even a few salt shakers' full, but on other less touchy matters it often serves as a useful survey of a topic.

Some people dismiss Wiki out of hand just because anybody can be author an article, whether they're particularly qualified to do so or not, but then anybody can put up a webpage, too, saying whatever they want (within the confines of their own country's laws). Unlike most websites, though, many wiki articles are open to editing from other users, and all articles are open to dispute and comment. And much like a forum adds to the value of sites like AdventureGamers.com (sorry, I do like the reviews and news and all, but I'd find this site a lot less interesting without any chance to talk about those same topics), discussion and peer review can greatly add to the value of a wiki. For instance, on the Japanese wiki about the Nanking Massacre, while the author tries to survey the variety of views on the matter, the article is marked as being in dispute and has a healthy discussion going on from all angles on the talk page, with some of the suggestions already being incorporated into the wiki to correct or balance what's there. The author even links to several good resources about historical revisionism and such, despite sometimes being accused of it himself. This is in contrast to many webpages which pretend to present accurate information but offer no easy way to dispute what's presented.

I certainly don't think Wikipedia is God, but it succeeds pretty well at what it's capable of being. It's no more flawed than we are.

Cheers,
doroposo

Pretty soon it will be God, though, and will destroy us when we are no longer needed. EDIT: Oh Wiki, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, hey Wiki! Hey, Wiki! D*mn this peer editing principle. Maybe it's not such a good idea after all. EDIT: Wiki is great. Do not fear Wiki! Oh, shut up.

I think it's more important to realise nothing is god.

I feel duty bound to point out, by way of moderation, that a study concluded that Wikipedia was not significantly less accurate than the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and that they in fact both contained a lot of faults.

Anyway, it's always foolish to accept a single reference source as fact. Not that people aren't guilty of doing it all the time, mind you...

:) Hold on, lemme throw a couple things into this discussion...

http://anon.npr-www.speedera.net/ano...con_listen.gif Assessing Wikipedia's Accuracy | National Public Radio


Wikipedia survives research test | BBC News online

My own conclusion is to institute a little system of checks and balances, i.e. if whatever you're researching in wikipedia is of utmost importance in terms of accuracy (for example, if you're writing a research paper for class), double-check the information by consulting another established source, such as Encyclopedia Britannica and at least one or two other sources. :)

And if you're writing a proper academic paper always go to sources like journals and published books, rather than just cribbing the encyclopaedia. But then, the encyclopaedia would be likely to be way to basic anyway...

My boss warned me about using it at work, even though all I was doing was looking up what a Hospitalist was for a story I was doing. Turns out, it's not even a word, just something the hospital made up.

it seems to contain everything I've searched for.......amazing to me when I first used it.....

but I can't understand the rationale it lets anyone edit it: can anyone delete anything or add something only? just wonder what if the useful info is deleted by mistake or on purpose?

Well, Wikipedia stores previous versions of the article, and those can be restored. So if someone deletes something the next person can just add it back in. Which is basically what the discussion pages are for: arguing over whether or not something should be in there.

And, temps, using an encyclopaedia to provide a general introduction to something has always struck me as perfectly acceptable. Just so long as you don't assume that what it says is entirely accurate without checking elsewhere there really shouldn't be a problem :).

So I made all the sacrifices for nothing?

Sheesh...

Some comments here, and at least one comment in a different thread, make me think I wasn't entirely understood. I'm not dissing people who contribute to Wikipedia (bar the occasional vandal), let alone the Wiki itself. It's the people who read it who too often seem confused about its usage and purpose.

As an encyclopaedia, it's reasonably accurate, and I am glad Nature's test confirms that (however, in all honesty, with a difference of 30% more errors and omissions it's not fair to call it "about as accurate" as Britannica). I'm not subscribed to Britannica, but judging from many other "serious" encyclopaedic publications I'm familiar with, be it paper or web-based ones, I'd hazard a guess it even surpasses it in many areas. (For example, the authors of mathematical entries don't go out of their way to avoid any formulae or symbols whatsoever. This is in stark contrast to rival publications, which, in my experience, try to be more accessible, ending up too superficial for my needs and arguably still too confusing for a layman.) That's not to mention how Wiki covers areas of human activities its highbrow peers simply ignore (I remember spending an entire afternoon reading useless trivia about secondary Batman characters once :D ).

However, it is just an encyclopaedia, nothing more. The creators make such disclaimer whenever they can, so I wish the readers acknowledged that, too. As doroposo says, the closer we drift to the treacherous seas of personal opinion, leaving the land of objectively verifiable facts somewhere in the distance*, the more caution is advised. Yes, there are inexplicably few vandals and trolls interfering with a hard work people invest there (probably because "hacking" Wikipedia is hardly a challenge at all). But while it takes a true troll or moron to edit "Earth" to say that it's a flat disc placed on elephants' backs, it takes just a misguided and stubborn person to insist on adding not well-researched factoids or overly opinionated pieces to entries on, say, politics.

And relying on it for rumours about unannounced game sequels is just silly.

*Wow. :P

PS. I think I should make clear that the title of this thread is a reference to this famous editorial. :)

Good comment. I generally stick to using it for finding items of unquestionable fact. (Where in the world a particular area is for example) You should always verify your facts whatever references you use though.

I think Wikipedia gets a lot of flak for no very good reason. Yes, it's unreliable. So is everything else. No, not all articles actually improve over time, but the overall tendency is positive.

I find Wikipedia immensely useful on pretty much a daily basis. I recently had to do some application development with a VOIP ("Voice over IP", or in other words Internet telephony) component. The problem: I didn't know a thing about VOIP. I started researching different technologies, and was buried in technical terms: PBXs, SIP stacks, IAX, speex codecs... Every technical reference assumed that I already knew what all this stuff meant. I was completely lost, until it struck me: Try Wikipedia! I found detailed, readable and understandable articles on not only VOIP, but on every single term I didn't know. Also a list of VOIP systems, and links to specialist websites. Within a few hours I was up and running.

Perhaps there were some errors in what I read. It didn't really matter. The point was that I learned enough to be able to go out and do my own research. An encyclopedia is only supposed to be an introduction to a subject, after all.

Two other reasons make the errors in Wikipedia much less of a problem than you might think.

The first is that the way it's created means that the mistakes you come across are likely to be common misconceptions. Let's say the article on Vikings says that they wore helmets with horns in battle. That's wrong, but it's a common stereotype. Even if it's unfortunate that readers are misinformed, it can also be useful to know about commonly held beliefs that happen to be wrong. It this case, it might help a reader make sense of those annoying Capital One commercials, for instance.

The other reason is that an intelligent reader can usually gauge the quality of an article, or even a particular paragraph, and apply the appropriate amount of skepticism. Problematic claims are often signalled by sudden digressions, non-encyclopedic language, spelling and grammar errors, or plain wtf-ness. Take a look at this old version of the article on the Minoan civilization, and see if you can detect any hints of bias. Not too hard, eh? If you take every word of that article as the god's honest truth, you've frankly only got yourself to blame.

Is Wikipedia good enough to cite in your PhD thesis? No way. But, hell, how many academic papers cite any encyclopedia, anyway? Is it good enough to use as supporting evidence in an Internet discussion? You betcha!

:) Let's just put it this way. Research work using Wikipedia doesn't guarantee you the fast lane to a PhD any more than any other encyclopaedia can. It's reliable enough for most general purposes, but when you need to do much more demanding and pinpoint accurate research you'll have to plunge into seriously deep and specialized academia.

So I agree with Snarky. Wikipedia is awesome that way as a daily tool, or even as a bit more of an intermediary research tool depending on what you're working on.

They even have info on my town!