The question is why anyone relies on Wikipedia. As the first draft of history in many cases, and the only draft for vast portion of the public that relies on it, it's an obvious target for propaganda (both organized and ad hoc).
Anyone who has tried to edit a page that's politically contentious, or that anyone cares about, knows that what's written depends almost completely on who has the most time and patience.
It's an easy, obvious means of manipulation by those who have the resources to do it.
Because it's an incredible resource. It's unfortunate that there isn't an embrace of it in schools so that we can teach kids from an early age how to use it properly.
For instance, don't use it as a primary source. Evaluate the "talk" pages and history. Consider the controversiality of the subject.
Other convenient sources of information are typically no less riddled with propaganda. If you had no idea who Eric Garner was, where else would you begin your investigation?
That's a serious question; if there is a better alternative I'd like to know about it.
Cable news? Any online news/link aggregator. Newspapers.
Newspapers may have an edge up, but are less convenient than wikipedia. They are also pretty bad at providing concise overviews for somebody who hasn't been following the story since the beginning. This is particularly true when you're looking something up months or years after it happened.
For certain issues (and probably this particular one, to be fair) newspapers like the New York Times will often have a webpage dedicated to giving an overview of the entire series of events, but that only gets done in a select few cases.
Wikipedia is certainly flawed, but what do you suggest I use instead? Unless you have some actual suggestions, then your complaint isn't really useful. I already know that wikipedia is flawed.
IMO, most of the serious professional media (i.e., publications like the NY Times; I'm not sure cable news qualifies) is far more reliable than Wikipedia. If someone from the NYPD secretly edited a NY Times article, it would be a shock. At Wikipedia, it's a dog bites man story, with similar things happening every hour of every day.
> They are also pretty bad at providing concise overviews for somebody who hasn't been following the story since the beginning
I strongly agree and would go further: The Times pages you cite are inadequate to the task. They are stuck in the print media past. They should be updating their own public knowledge base; I think it would generate quite a bit of traffic on its own, and they could link to it from each relevant article to provide context (and save a few redundant paragraphs of writing in each story). Also, the way many reporters write, unaware of key developments, history, or issues, they could use it internally. I'd much rather read the Washington Post's knowledge base page on ISIS than Wikipedia's, for example.
> what do you suggest I use instead? Unless you have some actual suggestions, then your complaint isn't really useful. I already know that wikipedia is flawed.
It may be so flawed as to be useless, at least for any situation where accurate information is valuable to you. A lack of accurate information does not make false information a useful alternative. I do think Wikipedia is good for the links and references.
By the way, for everything but current events and pop culture, Encyclopedia Britannica is excellent. Concise, authored by actual experts, and usually well-written.
"In matters of science the authority of thousands is not worth the humble reasoning of one single person." - Galileo (maybe apocryphal)
In the case of this example, where would I go to get an overview of the Eric Garner case? Newspapers tend to report day to day news, not give overviews. How do I know who is a domain expert? How do I verify that?
Although we don't have many posts about Garner, my site, Newslines, attempts to build up a news archive about people, companies and news events that is free from the many biases that cause trouble in Wikipedia.
It's hard to find domain experts and newspapers that print about the sheer amount of content that is in Wikipedia. For example, this article on display resolutions. Are there many domain experts who keep a page regularly updated or newspapers that write up to date articles on it?
> Writings of domain experts who are not anonymous. Newspapers with good reputations.
Those are good secondary sources. Tertiary sources like Wikipedia aggregate information from and references to secondary sources. They aren't really substitutes for each other, in either direction.
It's obviously folly to rely on the text of Wikipedia entries, which, aside from being liable to contain any arbitrary content at any time that you happen to read them, are hotbeds of plagiarism. But it's an excellent source of references and a convenient repository of public domain or CC images. Also, articles on technical subjects tend to be useful, aside from the plagiarism problem.
There have been numerous studies[1][2][3][4][5][6] which have consistently shown Wikipedia as a reliable source of information. Nobody is suggesting it's 100% accurate, but it's accurate enough that it shouldn't be dismissed as unreliable.
> it's accurate enough that it shouldn't be dismissed as unreliable
Which articles, or which statements in which articles, are reliable and which are unreliable? Which have false statements and which significant ommissions?
The problems is, you don't know which articles or statements you can depend on unless you have expertise in that area.
>> "The problems is, you don't know which articles or statements you can depend on unless you have expertise in that area."
> How is that not true of most sources?
I'm not sure how to take your statement. It clearly is not true of many sources. Some sources have proven expertise (something Wikipedia effectively never has), some have a proven track record of reliability.
Reliability isn't binary, either 100% or nothing (or random). Analogously, all people lie to some degree but clearly some I trust and some I do not.
Fair enough. I just like that on wikipedia you can look behind the curtain and see who is editing what and see the discussion leading to what is in the articles on controversial topics so you can attempt to weigh what biases are in play. I guess I could see someone make an argument about "what if you don't even know its a controversial topic?", but I don't think that happens enough to hurt wikipedia's value. Of course that might just be my personal biases messing with me.
The transparency is great, and would be a valulable addition to more professional sources, but in the end I don't think there is a lot to be found there ...
> on wikipedia you can look behind the curtain and see who is editing
You can't see who it is, just some psuedonyms (possibly muliple ones for same person) and ip addresses. That's why somenone had to trace edits back to the NYPD, and even then we don't know the people. How many other things have we read in Wikipedia written by NYPD employees, for example -- we have no idea!
> ... and see who is editing what and see the discussion leading to what is in the articles ...
That's a lot to ask. Some of the discussions are very long and convoluted, and most are filled with noise (arguments on rules and conduct), and misinformation worse than the article, because the standards for the Talk pages are much lower.
Wikipedia itself isn't bad. The issue is that as a result of its structure and Wikimedia's various overlapping efforts, a lot of people simply don't recall that encyclopedias aren't meant to be a universal resource for detailed research (but rather introductory), and worse they don't tend to follow references or citations.
Resources for obtaining special-purpose knowledge have just about been washed up in favor of skimming Wikipedia's generalities, which may foster incomplete or incorrect understanding of complex topics, in turn leading to memes that people regurgitate in other contexts.
In this way Wikipedia has the potential of becoming Minitrue. I've pondered on the implications of systemically planting subtle factual distortions in tens of thousands of articles over periods of time, but since you hear about some edit war or pompous bureaucrat imposing their agenda every other day, it might already be happening in a less dramatic fashion.
One of the major problems that is that Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia, but is also used as a news archive. These two different products have different audiences and should have different features. For example, an encyclopedia usually is a fact-checked summary of events, whereas a news archive is a stream of all news events, that doesn't require factchecking. Much of the complaints above arise from powerful groups in Wikipedia trying to control the fact-checking aspect of the site, when all most people need is the news archive part.
I think that's the point though... Wikipedia at least attempts to solve the byzantine general problem by allowing anyone to edit/review articles... I doubt the same could be said for Encyclopedia Britannica (which I suspect had more than just a little pro-British propaganda in it when it was published). At least with Wikipedia there is some transparency into the editorial process.
By the way, get your shit together NYPD. Use a VPN next time you fascist dinosaurs.
> Encyclopedia Britannica (which I suspect had more than just a little pro-British propaganda when it was published).
I don't see any basis in your statement in your post or in reality. AFAIK Britannica has been owned by Americans for over a century. It's propagandists include Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Lord Kelvin, T.E. Lawrence, Douglas McArthur, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, etc.
Would you rather read Einstein's article on Space-Time or the one by random members of the public?
My apologies, sometimes I forget we all come from different backgrounds. But if you start by reading Cecil Rhodes' will and think through what that might mean, you might start to understand why I think it doesn't matter if it is an American company or not.
> Anyone who has tried to edit a page that's politically contentious, or that anyone cares about, knows that what's written depends almost completely on who has the most time and patience.
I saw Wikipedia grow from a playful listing of facts and "did you know?"'s to what it is today. I came to rely on the Wikipedia facts and trust was very high.
It took joining and partaking in the creation of a "politically contentious" article when I realized just how organized, blatant and scary these propaganda efforts are. You have it easier when you are a crackpot, than when you play by the rules and source all facts, because then you force them to earn their pay using more drastic measures. Yet, I can recommend this revelation to everyone.
Also remember that Wikipedia is in a lot of countries. Some of those countries have governments and companies which are more blatant or forceful dealing with unpleasant information in the open than say, an American company. It is also easier for those editors to form cliques.
The underlying assumption here is that there's some better source of truth. That, say, the news media or what-have-you are less prone to the same sorts of corruptions and errors. That belief is a myth based on our need to feel trust in those institutions, it has little basis in reality. The fact is that these sorts of issues are just as prevalent with the media, with the educational establishment, and so on, we just generally haven't been as cognizant of them.
> The fact is that these sorts of issues are just as prevalent with the media, with the educational establishment, and so on, we just generally haven't been as cognizant of them.
What is the basis of this fact? Yes, there is bias everywhere, but it's not at all binary, 0 or 100% bias. Everyone has violence in them, but they won't all kill you.
The media is one of the faultiest institutions in history. It suffers from biases pulling it in every direction, not the least of which is the bias to protect "access", as the story I linked illustrates.
Point being, the idea that it's easy to find sources of information which are more reliable than wikipedia mostly rests on a false idea of how faulty, biased, incomplete, and in some cases outright corrupt every other source of information tends to be.
Some of the edits are obviously bad, like attempting to delete an article on notability grounds. But many of the others look like they're correcting or tempering bias from the "other side". I don't see those as problematic. In fact, that's exactly what Wikipedia needs to maintain NPOV, a balance from each "side".
37 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 92.0 ms ] threadAnyone who has tried to edit a page that's politically contentious, or that anyone cares about, knows that what's written depends almost completely on who has the most time and patience.
It's an easy, obvious means of manipulation by those who have the resources to do it.
Because it's an incredible resource. It's unfortunate that there isn't an embrace of it in schools so that we can teach kids from an early age how to use it properly.
For instance, don't use it as a primary source. Evaluate the "talk" pages and history. Consider the controversiality of the subject.
That's a serious question; if there is a better alternative I'd like to know about it.
Which sources are you talking about?
Newspapers may have an edge up, but are less convenient than wikipedia. They are also pretty bad at providing concise overviews for somebody who hasn't been following the story since the beginning. This is particularly true when you're looking something up months or years after it happened.
For certain issues (and probably this particular one, to be fair) newspapers like the New York Times will often have a webpage dedicated to giving an overview of the entire series of events, but that only gets done in a select few cases.
Wikipedia is certainly flawed, but what do you suggest I use instead? Unless you have some actual suggestions, then your complaint isn't really useful. I already know that wikipedia is flawed.
> They are also pretty bad at providing concise overviews for somebody who hasn't been following the story since the beginning
I strongly agree and would go further: The Times pages you cite are inadequate to the task. They are stuck in the print media past. They should be updating their own public knowledge base; I think it would generate quite a bit of traffic on its own, and they could link to it from each relevant article to provide context (and save a few redundant paragraphs of writing in each story). Also, the way many reporters write, unaware of key developments, history, or issues, they could use it internally. I'd much rather read the Washington Post's knowledge base page on ISIS than Wikipedia's, for example.
> what do you suggest I use instead? Unless you have some actual suggestions, then your complaint isn't really useful. I already know that wikipedia is flawed.
It may be so flawed as to be useless, at least for any situation where accurate information is valuable to you. A lack of accurate information does not make false information a useful alternative. I do think Wikipedia is good for the links and references.
By the way, for everything but current events and pop culture, Encyclopedia Britannica is excellent. Concise, authored by actual experts, and usually well-written.
"In matters of science the authority of thousands is not worth the humble reasoning of one single person." - Galileo (maybe apocryphal)
What would you suggest as an alternative?
http://newslines.org/eric-garner/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_display_resolution
Those are good secondary sources. Tertiary sources like Wikipedia aggregate information from and references to secondary sources. They aren't really substitutes for each other, in either direction.
Best result is "The Militarization of the Police in the U.S.: Year In Review 2014", which mentions Eric Garner in passing.
Except when they contain serious errors and omissions, and which articles are those? Nobody knows, except someone already expert in that area.
For example, I would have no idea there were problems in these mathematics articles:
http://wikipediocracy.com/2013/10/20/elementary-mathematics-...
There have been numerous studies[1][2][3][4][5][6] which have consistently shown Wikipedia as a reliable source of information. Nobody is suggesting it's 100% accurate, but it's accurate enough that it shouldn't be dismissed as unreliable.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm
[2] http://chnm.gmu.edu/essays-on-history-new-media/essays/?essa...
[3] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
[4] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=978177
[5] http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/93908,wikipedia-uncove...
[6] http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/wikipedia-vs-ency...
Which articles, or which statements in which articles, are reliable and which are unreliable? Which have false statements and which significant ommissions?
The problems is, you don't know which articles or statements you can depend on unless you have expertise in that area.
How is that not true of most sources?
EDIT:s/any/most/
> How is that not true of most sources?
I'm not sure how to take your statement. It clearly is not true of many sources. Some sources have proven expertise (something Wikipedia effectively never has), some have a proven track record of reliability.
Reliability isn't binary, either 100% or nothing (or random). Analogously, all people lie to some degree but clearly some I trust and some I do not.
> on wikipedia you can look behind the curtain and see who is editing
You can't see who it is, just some psuedonyms (possibly muliple ones for same person) and ip addresses. That's why somenone had to trace edits back to the NYPD, and even then we don't know the people. How many other things have we read in Wikipedia written by NYPD employees, for example -- we have no idea!
> ... and see who is editing what and see the discussion leading to what is in the articles ...
That's a lot to ask. Some of the discussions are very long and convoluted, and most are filled with noise (arguments on rules and conduct), and misinformation worse than the article, because the standards for the Talk pages are much lower.
Resources for obtaining special-purpose knowledge have just about been washed up in favor of skimming Wikipedia's generalities, which may foster incomplete or incorrect understanding of complex topics, in turn leading to memes that people regurgitate in other contexts.
In this way Wikipedia has the potential of becoming Minitrue. I've pondered on the implications of systemically planting subtle factual distortions in tens of thousands of articles over periods of time, but since you hear about some edit war or pompous bureaucrat imposing their agenda every other day, it might already be happening in a less dramatic fashion.
My site, Newslines, is an attempt to build a new archive without Wikipedia's biases. You may be interested in this analysis: http://newslines.org/blog/wikipedias-13-deadly-sins/
By the way, get your shit together NYPD. Use a VPN next time you fascist dinosaurs.
I don't see any basis in your statement in your post or in reality. AFAIK Britannica has been owned by Americans for over a century. It's propagandists include Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Lord Kelvin, T.E. Lawrence, Douglas McArthur, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, etc.
Would you rather read Einstein's article on Space-Time or the one by random members of the public?
[Citation Needed]
It took joining and partaking in the creation of a "politically contentious" article when I realized just how organized, blatant and scary these propaganda efforts are. You have it easier when you are a crackpot, than when you play by the rules and source all facts, because then you force them to earn their pay using more drastic measures. Yet, I can recommend this revelation to everyone.
See also another scuffle which relates to these current wiki-astroturfing campaigns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology_editing_o...
Also remember that Wikipedia is in a lot of countries. Some of those countries have governments and companies which are more blatant or forceful dealing with unpleasant information in the open than say, an American company. It is also easier for those editors to form cliques.
What is the basis of this fact? Yes, there is bias everywhere, but it's not at all binary, 0 or 100% bias. Everyone has violence in them, but they won't all kill you.
I mean, is this good enough? http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/opinion/the-news-we-kept-t...
The media is one of the faultiest institutions in history. It suffers from biases pulling it in every direction, not the least of which is the bias to protect "access", as the story I linked illustrates.
Point being, the idea that it's easy to find sources of information which are more reliable than wikipedia mostly rests on a false idea of how faulty, biased, incomplete, and in some cases outright corrupt every other source of information tends to be.