What makes Wikipedia reliable?

[Galahad]

OK, so if essentially anybody can update an entry in Wikipedia, what acts to ensure it is reliable. Is the theory that with so many people updating entries that they would tend toward accuracy by shear virtue of numbers? It would be interesting to know if somebody has added something to an entry that is pure B.S. and then "watched" to see how long it took to correct itself.

 

[Cindy B]

Nothing really... anyone can add/delete info.

I tell my students up and down that Wiki should not be considered a reliable source.

 

[cardaway]

Nothing. Same with Snopes. Cases of who checks the amateur fact checkers.

I also can't stand the writing style of the majority of entries.

 

[lindalinda]

Nothing, its a horrible source. I chuckle a little when I see people on these boards cite this site to "prove" their theories.

 

[wvrevy]

I'm just curious...can any of you cite something on Wiki that IS incorrect? Most of the times that I've seen it - or used it - I've verified the information through other sources. So...what did I miss? Is there a single article on there - right now - that is incorrect to your certain knowledge?

 

[Galahad]

Nothing, its a horrible source. I chuckle a little when I see people on these boards cite this site to "prove" their theories.

Oh, I agree it's a horrible source. DS has also been told by is teachers that they can't use it. I'm just wondering why folks that make entries there would bother using it for anything. Wouldn't you realize immediately as you're typing your entry how utterly unreliable it would be?

 

[Cindy B]

As for incorrectness:

There was a Terrell Owens entry which had his birth and death date. The wiki "writer" stated that his death was result of a suicide attempt.

This was on either the local news or radio a few days after the supposed suicide attempt. I did see the Wiki entry that day, but I'm certain it has been changed now.

 

[wvrevy]

As for incorrectness:

There was a Terrell Owens entry which had his birth and death date. The wiki "writer" stated that his death was result of a suicide attempt.

This was on either the local news or radio a few days after the supposed suicide attempt. I did see the Wiki entry that day, but I'm certain it has been changed now.

Which - and again, I'm just mostly playing devil's advocate here - argues for exactly what Galahad was stating...that people coming through reading the entries will later make changes to correct them.

I wouldn't trust Wiki as a complete authority on anything. But as a "general knowledge" base, it's better than most anything else out there that I can find.

 

[Bob Slydell]

As for incorrectness:

There was a Terrell Owens entry which had his birth and death date. The wiki "writer" stated that his death was result of a suicide attempt.

This was on either the local news or radio a few days after the supposed suicide attempt. I did see the Wiki entry that day, but I'm certain it has been changed now.

Sounds like the media in general -- quick to make statements and even quicker to correct them. That's not necessarily saying that the information on Wiki, over time, is not reliable, especially for basic information.

 

[Deb in IA]

I've wondered that too, Galahad.

I look it Wikipedia as very similar to the DIS boards.

If something wildly inaccurate is posted on the DIS, ie. Space Mountain is in Epcot, it will quickly be corrected, because so many people are reading/posting here.

I think that is the same way Wikipedia works?

 

[sodaseller]

It's as accurate as any source

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia/6

Early detractors commonly made two criticisms of Wikipedia. First, unless experts were writing and vetting the material, the articles were inevitably going to be inaccurate. Second, since anyone could edit, vandals would have their way with even the best articles, making them suspect. No encyclopedia produced in this way could be trusted. Last year, however, a study in the journal Nature compared Britannica and Wikipedia science articles and suggested that the former are usually only marginally more accurate than the latter. Britannica demonstrated that Nature's analysis was seriously flawed (“Fatally Flawed” was the fair title of the response), and no one has produced a more authoritative study of Wikipedia’s accuracy. Yet it is a widely accepted view that Wikipedia is comparable to Britannica. Vandalism also has proved much less of an issue than originally feared. A study by IBM suggests that although vandalism does occur (particularly on high-profile entries like “George W. Bush”), watchful members of the huge Wikipedia community usually swoop down to stop the malfeasance shortly after it begins.

There are, of course, exceptions, as in the case of the journalist John Seigenthaler, whose Wikipedia biography long contained a libel about his supposed complicity in the assassinations of John F. and Robert Kennedy. But even this example shows that the system is, if not perfect, at least responsive. When Seigenthaler became aware of the error, he contacted Wikipedia. The community (led in this instance by Wales) purged the entry of erroneous material, expanded it, and began to monitor it closely. Even though the Seigenthaler entry is often attacked by vandals, and is occasionally locked to block them, the page is more reliable precisely because it is now under “enough eyeballs.” The same could be said about many controversial entries on Wikipedia: the quality of articles generally increases with the number of eyeballs. Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow.

New Yorker

Wales also appointed an arbitration committee to rule on disputes. Before a case reaches the arbitration committee, it often passes through a mediation committee. Essjay is serving a second term as chair of the mediation committee. He is also an admin, a bureaucrat, and a checkuser, which means that he is one of fourteen Wikipedians authorized to trace I.P. addresses in cases of suspected abuse. He often takes his laptop to class, so that he can be available to Wikipedians while giving a quiz, and he keeps an eye on twenty I.R.C. chat channels, where users often trade gossip about abuses they have witnessed.

Five robots troll the site for obvious vandalism, searching for obscenities and evidence of mass deletions, reverting text as they go. More egregious violations require human intervention. Essjay recently caught a user who, under one screen name, was replacing sentences with nonsense and deleting whole entries and, under another, correcting the abuses—all in order to boost his edit count. He was banned permanently from the site. Some users who have been caught tampering threaten revenge against the admins who apprehend them. Essjay says that he routinely receives death threats. “There are people who take Wikipedia way too seriously,” he told me. (Wikipedians have acknowledged Essjay’s labors by awarding him numerous barnstars—five-pointed stars, which the community has adopted as a symbol of praise—including several Random Acts of Kindness Barnstars and the Tireless Contributor Barnstar.)

Is Wikipedia accurate? Last year, Nature published a survey comparing forty-two entries on scientific topics on Wikipedia with their counterparts in Encyclopædia Britannica. According to the survey, Wikipedia had four errors for every three of Britannica’s, a result that, oddly, was hailed as a triumph for the upstart. Such exercises in nitpicking are relatively meaningless, as no reference work is infallible. Britannica issued a public statement refuting the survey’s findings, and took out a half-page advertisement in the Times, which said, in part, “Britannica has never claimed to be error-free. We have a reputation not for unattainable perfection but for strong scholarship, sound judgment, and disciplined editorial review.” Later, Jorge Cauz, Britannica’s president, told me in an e-mail that if Wikipedia continued without some kind of editorial oversight it would “decline into a hulking mediocre mass of uneven, unreliable, and, many times, unreadable articles.” Wales has said that he would consider Britannica a competitor, “except that I think they will be crushed out of existence within five years.”

It's a market based approach to knowledge, to an extent, flawed but still reliable in that sense

 

[RadioNate]

Isn't this what Stephen Cobert did? with Wikiality?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness#Wikiality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmHm0rGns4I

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1537865/20060803/index.jhtml?headlines=true

So MTV isn't the best news source but it was high on the list and I didn't want to search.

 

[grlpwrd]

Well, there is a man in Hawaii whom I have known to make entries in regards to Hawaiian issues and was "called out." I guess someone reported it and he was banned from making any additions to Wikipedia. Of course, I followed a link that had an entry saying he was banned on that site itself. I don't understand the procedure, though, as I don't see it as a reliable source anyway. I may take a look, but then I go on to "real" sources.

Of course, I already have an issue with the name as I think it derives from the word wiki wiki or "fast" which is really not a genuine Hawaiian word at all. Very appropriate name, though... it's not an authentic word and it contains unauthentic info! (Side vent - stop co-opting the language, people! ... )

 

[wnissen]

So, to summarize, no one here can point out anything that was innacurate on Wikipedia, except for the Terrell Owens thing which was widely reported and then retracted the next day. Stephen Colbert (and his imitators) did make a number of changes, all of which were quickly corrected. Accuracy on the Wikipedia is not a problem, any more than it is in the newspaper.
There was an incident where an article on a Kennedy aide was vandalized to implicate him in the JFK asassination. That was certainly a serious, glaring error that should have been caught. And, you'd never see that sort of thing in Britannica or the New York Times, because they employ fact checkers to help them avoid libel suits! But that kind of error is extremely rare on the Wikipedia, and to my knowledge, it's the only one of that magnitude.
The problem with the Wikipedia is that it's not selective enough. The articles go on and on about peripheral or unrelated subjects rather than sticking to the important parts. So yes, Wikipedia is not a very good source for teaching yourself about a topic. However, it is as accurate as anything else out there.

Walt

 

[Frantasmic]

Zeitgeist most likely.

It basically is the equivalent of the vulgar Latin. The theory is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. I guess it basically boils down to an example of some sort of evolutionary process solely on the internet. The strands of knowledge will always be challenged.

All of us are smarter than some of us. At least that is the basic thought. But, like all things human, it can depend on what the word "is" is.

Truth like history is subject to the threads of meaning and the layers of deconstructive thought.

 

[sodaseller]

Zeitgeist most likely.

It basically is the equivalent of the vulgar Latin. The theory is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. I guess it basically boils down to an example of some sort of evolutionary process solely on the internet. The strands of knowledge will always be challenged.

All of us are smarter than some of us. At least that is the basic thought. But, like all things human, it can depend on what the word "is" is.

Truth like history is subject to the threads of meaning and the layers of deconstructive thought.

Jacques Derrida, ain't no writer