Wikipedia…Friend Or Foe?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Education, Technology
Is it reliable? Can we trust it?
Well, head-to-head tests may show that the online encyclopedia (even though some dispute it) is just as accurate as its real world, hard-bound counterparts. But why? Because the collective experts in the world can make things right? Can’t vandals make changes? Yes, of course…but still…some change and some change it back.
Still, is it accurate? From the WSJ:
Wikipedia, the community-edited online encyclopedia, has blossomed. It has thousands of volunteers that have created more than five million entries in dozens of languages on everything from the Elfin-woods warbler to Paris Hilton.But the popular site has also been dogged by vandals and questions about its accuracy. In one high-profile flap, retired journalist John Seigenthaler Sr. assailed Wikipedia in an op-ed after discovering his biography had been altered to include a reference that linked him to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert. A recent study in the journal Nature, however, found few differences in accuracy between science entries in Wikipedia and the venerable Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica, which offers short versions of articles online for free and charges $70 a year for full access, disputed the study and issued a rebuttal.
Does Wikipedia’s open-editing approach yield better results than traditional encyclopedias? Participate in the Question of the Day.
At a gathering of Wikipedia contributors last month, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales urged them to put more emphasis on quality instead of quantity. In a bid to battle vandalism, the German version of the site is testing a new feature that will let administrators flag versions of articles as “nonvandalized,” and those are the pages that will be shown to most visitors.
Listen, Wikipedia is a very good source. I use it often, and they’re often right and updated on the very latest info…much like the blogging community offers. It’s not always right, but most of the entries shake out eventually.
My questions to you…do you use Wikipedia? Do you trust it?
Do tell…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 and is filed under Education, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 13th, 2006 at 1:20 am
I’ve actually found a lot of useful info on Wikipedia, but they do tend to vary quite significantly on the level of detail and accuracy from entry to entry.
Sometimes it’s about the only place you can find information on something…because some fanatic out there has a thing for beeswax butterfly sculptures or something equally obscure.
I haven’t really done any investigation into its editing capabilities or the ability to reject inappropriate edits, but I suspect being open source that methodology continuously improves…unlike Microsoft and its spawn.
September 13th, 2006 at 3:34 am
My respect for Wikipedia steadily grows. It is to the standard encyclopedia as the blog is to standard journalism.
There is no immediate editorial control over the content, but editors let all kinds of crap be published. On the internet, you can talk back to crap.
Take this wikipedia article on Philip K. Dick. It contains a lot of good information (some of which I contributed) but it suffers from inadequate sources and contains a few inaccuracies and lots of omissions. It’s a work in progress. I intend to contribute more to it and I’m sure a lot of other people do, too. You can peek under the hood of the process on the discussion page and see the problems involved in interpreting a very difficult subject. In fact, right at the top of it some nit-picker is quibbling over something I wrote. Good for him.
So you would learn a lot from this article, though you might be misled on a few points, and some dimensions of Dick are neglected. But buy a set of standard encyclopedias (obsolete by the time they ship) and see how much Dick you get.
September 13th, 2006 at 7:08 am
Wikipedia has already caused a bit of controversy here in South Dakota as a 17 year old New Jersey kid edited the Wiki entry of our Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth to say that she was pregnant by her campaign manager and was hiding it until after the election. The campaign manager for her challenger in November took it as being true and started a bit of a flap over it, that is until he was informed that it was a fake entry.
Wiki can be an excellent source of information but it something you read there sounds fishy, it probably is. After all anyone can add to it.
September 13th, 2006 at 8:07 am
I’ve found the wikipedia articles on science and nature to be excellent in general. The history articles are also generally good. For news and politics, I’ll use it to confirm a date or to back up something I already know. It seems like those are the articles most subject to vandalism, so I’m careful not to take them for gospel truth.
September 13th, 2006 at 9:21 am
For looking up “fun facts,” Wikipedia is useful. But for anything requiring serious analysis of controversial topics, such as politics, history, philosophy, or economics, I would suggest that the reader approach Wikipedia with extreme caution. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has surrounded himself with an inner circle of administrators that he initially dubbed “the cabal,” and they ruthlessly enforce an institutional bias in favor of neo-conservatism, laissez-faire economics, and related outlooks. Wales himself is a devotee of Ayn Rand. Caveat emptor.
September 13th, 2006 at 9:22 am
I usually use it as a starting point for research or to back up something I already know. I don’t generally use it for “modern” information, but the history and science entries are as others have metioned excellent.
September 13th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Trusting Wikipedia is a decision to discard the current paradigm of what we know and how we know. Its a choice to adopt a methodology spawned from a technological advancement rather than a methodology proven by centuries of scientific advancement.
I’ve blogged further on this at http://www.vertabase.com/blog/wikipedia-knowledge-or-hype/
September 13th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Mark, you suckered me into reading your blog article and I can only conclude that you or someone you know had their entry deleted from wikipedia. I’m going to go out on a limb here and call you a little biased on this one.
September 13th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Generally a good source. Reliability and accuracy? Generally as accurate as any of the media.
As has been said, apply common-sense filters…
September 13th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Not only do I use it, I’m a semi-regular contributor (although I mainly edit and add to existing pages rather than make new ones, and most of my contributions have related to music and other pop-culture stuff).
September 13th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Krusty:
Absolute lap-drooling nonsense, and anyone who thinks a cabal directs Wikipedia has no idea what Wikipedia is.
Jimmy Wales, whatever your personal opinion of the man, has been a champion for the rights of pro-democracy bloggers in China.
Unlike Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and people who complain about “laissez-faire economics”.
September 13th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
BTW, Krusty - When your ban at wiki has expired, why don’t you try writing for yourself instead of Lyndon LaRouche?
September 13th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Kevin,
Sorry you feel that you were suckered. That was not my intention at all.
My point is that its very easy for information to be manipulated on Wikipedia -either on the inclusion or exculsion side. Just because a lot of people believe it doesn’t make something a fact. Look at the recent flap over Bree/lonelygirl15 on YouTube.
Inaccuracies and mistakes may be corrected over time by the Wikipedia community. But that is only useful to people who repeatedly check an entry or who follow a subject.
The person who uses Wikipedia one or two times to research something for a book report, say, or who just wants quick background, will take the inaccuracy as fact. The editorial process involved in putting together a traditional encyclopedia is meant to catch these errors. The final published product should be more reliable for quick facts.
Further, the research process (by which knowledge on the subject comes to be know) used by the contributors to traditional encyclopedias has proven to work very well for our society. It is also a well-vetted, agreed upon standard for our society.
September 13th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
Use it often.
September 13th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
I contribute to Wikipedia occassionally and I began doing so mainly to eliminate biased distortions of truth in topics that I am knowledgeable in. Can Wikipedia be trusted? Not always. Many of the articles are painstakingly researched and well documented but in regards to modern history many articles are edited weekly to one biased POV or another.
Having said that I do however greatly appreciate the intent and goal of Wikipedia.
September 15th, 2006 at 1:40 am
Heh, I think I remember seeing flame wars over Herschel’s edits on LaRouche related topics, fun times.
As for wikipedia, it’s like the internet. It’s a fantastic reference if you know something about the subject before reading about it, because then you can filter out dodgy statements and biased points of view. The problem is, of course, if you don’t know anything about a subject and are using Wikipedia to educate you, then you’re succeptible to various biases and inaccuracies which inevitably slip in.
Having said that, there are articles there which are truly fantastic, pages like the one on global warming and other science related topics which are fastidiously referenced and edited/monitored by people very knowledgble in their fields. The process also does lend itself to continuous improvement. A recent example, I went to Wikipedia a week or so ago to get some background on Gonzales v Raich, the Supreme Court medial marijuhana case from last year. The page at the time was appallingly biased (this version) and terribly incomplete. Now, having monitored and been involved in edit wars on other Commerce-Clause related topics I knew libertarian types had a habit of inserting their POV into those articles. I’m an Australian law student so I knew enough to recognise the POV, but not enough to edit it myself so I sent a shout out to another user I had seen editing US commerce clause topics. Within 2 days he had done a ~1000 word re-write with good references and it’s now a reasonably good article.
Long comment! Short answer, I use Wikipedia but it’s not a source to be trusted. But if you don’t trust it, it can be useful :)
September 18th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Almost every Wikipedia article I’ve ever read this has been very poory written, although largely technically correct for the most part, in most cases, and providing that you keep clear of anything political.
I still wouldn’t rely on it for anything more than providing a brief overview of a subject for recreational purposes.
September 19th, 2006 at 8:00 am
[...] Donklephant - Sep 12, 2006… short versions of articles online for free and charges … the German version of the site is testing … the very latest info much like the blogging community offers … Continue… [...]
September 21st, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Personally, I have no idea why people would not understand how to do this.
January 11th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Any know whatever happened to this article?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton_controversies#Anti-Semitic_slurs