When Wikipedia Fails

PetManimal writes "Frank Ahrens of The Washington Post looks at how Wikipedia stumbles when entries for controversial people are altered by partisan observers. Case in point: Enron's Kenneth Lay, who died of natural causes last week, shortly after being sentenced to prison. His Wikipedia entry was altered repeatedly to include unfounded rumors that he had killed himself, or the stress from his trial had caused the heart attack. From the article: '... Here's the dread fear with Wikipedia: It combines the global reach and authoritative bearing of an Internet encyclopedia with the worst elements of radicalized bloggers. You step into a blog, you know what you're getting. But if you search an encyclopedia, it's fair to expect something else. Actual facts, say. At its worst, Wikipedia is an active deception, a powerful piece of agitprop, not information.'"

How much editorial oversight is enough?

There are a number of sites that are based on user-submitted data. One that immediately comes to mind is the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com [imdb.com]). Now, I'm not intimately familiar with the workings of Wikipedia, but based on TFA, the main difference I see between them and IMDb is that IMDb has a more restrictive additions policy. With IMDb, any registered user can submit information, but every iota of information (aside from some user reviews/comments, which are presented as such) must pass through an editorial review.

Some will say that IMDb has the luxury of doing this, being owned by Amazon. But IMDb has been online since before there really was World Wide Web. It was started in the Usenet newsgroups back in 1990 and didn't get a web interface until a Welsh grad student built one in 1993. They have always exercised editorial oversight and did so even back when they were a loose group of volunteers with no funding to speak of.

It used to be that IMDb's structure made it less than nimble in responding to breaking news because of an involved and complicated build process. But over the years, more modularization and granularity have been built into their systems. But even if they're right on the forefront of a news event, their editors and data managers are scrutinizing what becomes part of their "official" record.

Now, people try to trick IMDb, flood them with wrong facts and bad info. Sometimes a bit gets by their editors. But the bits still have to go by an editor before they become publicly visible. AFAICT, this isn't the case with WikiPedia and that is its fatal flaw. And it's not just the wackos and those with an agenda that need to be guarded against. More damage can be done by a cadre of well-meaning fools than a handful of agitators. And it seems that even if they need to defend their systems against the axe grinders, they need to put double the effort into defending against fools.

Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges since IMDb is a lot more narrow in scope than WikiPedia. But they're both large repositories of user-submitted information, they both started as volunteer projects, and they're both widely regarded as great resources. The difference is that IMDb has always exercised more editorial oversight before letting user submissions go live, and IMO, that makes it more trustworthy. Perhaps Wikipedia should take a page from IMDb's book.

- Greg

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

I have a better idea, one that is easy for everyone to implement. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Treat it as such.

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

But then don't complain when it isn't held as authoritative as Encyclopedia Britannica

Authoritativeness of Britannica is more a perception than reality. Read the entries from the 80's on communism or from 70's on homosexuality. It was not as unbiased or authoritative as one might have expected. For all its failings, and there are many, with Wikipedia you get to know the other point of view and controversial topics are clearly highlighted (eg. LTTE, Taliban etc).

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

The point is, it's just as wrong as Wikipedia, if not more, for the reasons you just stated. It's just more clear on Wikipedia, arguably a good thing.

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

It isn't just "readers' bias" there is also "fashion" surrounding the topics themselves, influence of political lobbying groups, etc.

Well, can we agree that the encyclopedia's are completely failing at their job then? There's plenty of other sources you can use when you are looking for opinion on topics.

This is one of the things that the wiki has in it's favour. I quite like the "this topic is under debate" warnings and the associated discussion as it tells you that careful research will be required to get a fair view. It would be nice if the other encyclopedias allowed futher viewing into how they arrived at the current consensus.

I hate history revisionsim with a passion. I live in Scotland and much of hour history has been "revised" to keep us in check. To see it happening in renowned encyclopedias is pretty distrubing.

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

Ken Lay died at 10. By "Wednesday afternoon", according to TFA, the Wikipedia page had settled down and presented a reasonably accurate view. So what exactly is the point of TFA? It sounds to me like Wikipedia works just fine. Within hours, an informative, freely-accessible article was available to the whole world.

What everybody in the media seems to be missing about this story is this: where is the beloved Britannica's article on Kenneth Lay? You know, the authoritative source used to compare these things. The one used by Wiki's detractors to say, "Oh, look how inaccurate their initial drafts of the Ken Lay article are! That would never happen in traditional encyclopedias". I searched Britannica's site, can't seem to find it. Tried Kenneth Lay, Ken Lay, Lay, Kenneth, nothing. Maybe it's behind their paywall? Oh, wait, there is another point for Wikipedia: no paywall.

So when the author of the TFA writes "[u]nlike, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia has no formal peer review for its articles", I would counter with this: "Unlike, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia actually contains articles on the topic we're discussing. Oh, and it's free too."

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

Agreed.
Wikipedia is just as much susceptible to errors as humans are.
Once people encounter articles bering wrong information, instead of correcting them, they report it to papers and try to demote wikipedia merits. That doesn't proof Wikipedia failures, but humanity ones.
They have good mechanisms to prevent vandalism like: Posting a link in the discution tab to confirm your statements, or locking the edition by non wikipedians, if only people use them.

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

So look up pairs of movies in IMDB and Wikipedia and see which has the best coverage. I think Wikipedia wins every time...especially for new releases.

Movies are easy to get right - it's politics and religion and controversial stuff that's hard to do well. You can't get the sheer volume of stuff that Wikipedia has by reviewing everything. Wikipedia is growing at a rate significantly faster than a human can read - no one person could read it all - much less review it.

Wikipedia grows by 50,000 articles a month. If your hypothetical reviewer reviewed a couple of articles a day - Wikipedia would need over 1,000 reviewers - some of whom would have to be experts in extremely narrow fields. It's all very well to have a few movie buffs keep track of a few dozen movie facts per day - but the only way to handle a problem the size of Wikipedia is to have the general public do the reviewing as well as the writing - which is precisely what happens.

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

It's all very well to have a few movie buffs keep track of a few dozen movie facts per day...

Try a few thousand movie facts a day.

But there are ways to make this simpler. Enable trust scoring on contributors, add a value component to the trust score. Every contribution gets checked and scored on its validity/verifiability, then it also gets scored on how much value it added (i.e. a grammatical correction gets a 1, while a large passage of new information gets a 10). When editors are reviewing a contribution, they get a clue from the contributor's scores as to how deeply they need to check it. If the guy has a 98% validity record with an average value add of 7 over 150 contributions, the editor may be able to let some of the smaller things through with a quick read-over just to be sure it makes sense. An editor could clear 30 such items an hour rather than 2 a day.

Additionally, an invite-only peer-review area could be created. Someone who has contributed a minimum of 20 items on science with a 100% validity rate and average value add of 4 or higher might be invited to review items in the science category. When 2-3 volunteer peers give a new article or significant edit a thumbs up, it's incorporated.

Now, the methods I describe may not be how IMDb does it. I don't know their data management practices for sure. But assigning trust scores to longtime contributors... that's not hard. Look at Slashdot's moderation system. Adding a Contributor Karma system to the back-end management interface for the Wikipedia editors shouldn't be too tough.

- Greg

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

Ah yes... slashdot's moderation and karma system. It is excellent at producing . . . groupthink? Let's face it. There is a prevailing set of opinions on slashdot, and if you follow those opinions, then you get karma and mod points, thus reinforcing the groupthink, because only those who follow it can make their way into the (large) group of people who enforce it.

Now, you could say that with a larger group of people, this is exactly what you want in an encyclopedia: the collective thought of humanity. However, slashdot's groupthink is by no means equal to the collective thought of slashdot. I would wager (now, I freely admit that I don't have good empirical evidence for this, so take it with several large grains of salt) that the karma+moderation system has a significant narrowing effect on the thought expressed by high scoring comments here. That's ok here, but not in an encyclopedia. The downside of widening the thought for wikipedia is that there is a lot of crap to trudge through.

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

Again and again, we see these comments: "Groupthink". "Bias". "Narrowing of thought".

Continually modded up. Think carefully about what that means for a second.

For those of you that haven't been around long enough, the previous gripe was simply "anti-Microsoft bias". Those comments also very often get modded up. Every OS-related story of the past several years has dozens of posts modded highly that basically amount to "Red Hat 7 was hard to install, so Linux will never get anywhere on the desktop".

Personally, I find Slashdot's moderation system works far better than most people realize. If you step back I think you'll find the "prevailing set of opinions" is just that - the more commonly held belief. But implying that somehow lesser-held beliefs and opinions don't get their fair shake? Maybe the Slashdot hordes aren't the ones with the biases, because you must be very good at ignoring a LOT of highly-moderated posts each day.

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

Continually modded up. Think carefully about what that means for a second.

So... you're saying that the community has an ideological bias towards complaining about Slashdot's moderation system?

Wait, no, because your comment got modded up, too. Argh! Now I'm confused, which way is the bias?!

Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)

Editorial Oversight does not necessarily lead to fair and balanced articles, or even truthful articles. For a great living example of this statement, pick up a copy of The New York Post or tune into FOX News.

Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)

What distinguishes FOX News is that it reports both the Left and Right sides of issues.

You've got to be kidding me!

Fox News (pronounced "Faux News" if you want to use call by value) actively goes out of its way to suppress any news that it thinks could harm the current Administration, or the Republicans in general. Fox has shown absolutely no interest in presenting a balanced view, regardless of how often the mantras "Fair and Balanced" and "We report, you decide" are repeated.

For a very eye-opening documentary, see Fox News Techniques [throwawayyourtv.com].

I have been a newsjunkie for nearly 20 years. I consider myself middle-of-the-road, and take every news report with a grain of salt. Heck, I've voted for Republicans and Democrats about evenly. But I was shocked to see the blatant pandering and partisanship displayed by Fox News. It's like the Republican Party's permanent informercial.

Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)

Fox News (pronounced "Faux News" if you want to use call by value) actively goes out of its way to suppress any news that it thinks could harm the current Administration, or the Republicans in general.

I suppose we should take it for granted that it isn't just liberals, but that every fair-minded observer will label Fox News as "Faux News"?

Well, if your assertion is true, there shouldn't be any stories about Abu Ghraib [foxnews.com], the NSA surveillance [foxnews.com] program, or the CIA secret prison story [foxnews.com], and yet there are.

For a very eye-opening documentary, see Fox News Techniques.

I watched it. I'm underwhelmed. It "surprisingly" reveals that prominent liberal organizations and critics pan Fox News. I found it interesting that they focused so heavily on opinion / commentary segments for their claims of bias instead of actual hard news reporting. Stop the presses! People engaged in commentary have opinions!

I have been a newsjunkie for nearly 20 years. I consider myself middle-of-the-road, and take every news report with a grain of salt. Heck, I've voted for Republicans and Democrats about evenly. But I was shocked to see the blatant pandering and partisanship displayed by Fox News. It's like the Republican Party's permanent informercial.

Your stated view of yourself as "middle-of-the-road" strikes me as being similar to that demonstrated these days by many in the media [weeklystandard.com]:

THE ARGUMENT over whether the national press is dominated by liberals is over. Since 1962, there have been 11 surveys of the media that sought the political views of hundreds of journalists. In 1971, they were 53 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In a 1976 survey of the Washington press corps, it was 59 percent liberal, 18 percent conservative. A 1985 poll of 3,200 reporters found them to be self-identified as 55 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In 1996, another survey of Washington journalists pegged the breakdown as 61 percent liberal, 9 percent conservative. Now, the new study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found the national media to be 34 percent liberal and 7 percent conservative.

Over 40-plus years, the only thing that's changed in the media's politics is that many national journalists have now cleverly decided to call themselves moderates. But their actual views haven't changed, the Pew survey showed. Their political beliefs are close to those of self-identified liberals and nowhere near those of conservatives. And the proportion of liberals to conservatives in the press, either 3-to-1 or 4-to-1, has stayed the same. That liberals are dominant is now beyond dispute.

Well, I guess that Fox News will never be another New York Times [foxnews.com] with its fair mindedness [whitehouse.gov] and influence on policy [foxnews.com], or CBS News [foxnews.com] with its steady hands [nationalreview.com], or even a CNN [opinionjournal.com] with its thoughtful leadership [msn.com]. I guess they will have to live with that.

Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)

I have been a newsjunkie for nearly 20 years. I consider myself middle-of-the-road, and take every news report with a grain of salt. Heck, I've voted for Republicans and Democrats about evenly. But I was shocked to see the blatant pandering and partisanship displayed by Fox News. It's like the Republican Party's permanent informercial.

Your stated view of yourself as "middle-of-the-road"

No, he did not just state a view; he provided evidence. If he only thought he was a moderate, he would not have voted for Republicans or monitored all (not just liberal) news outlets for two decades. You do not seem capable of (or willing to) distinguish between opinion and fact.

strikes me as being similar to that demonstrated these days by many in the media

It would only strike you that way if you were eager to write off anyone who disagrees with you as a liberal and therefore "one of them". The original poster specifically demonstrated that he was a moderate, a position you apparently dismiss out of hand as not even existing. This indicates you are an extremist. The world is shades of grey, not all black and white.

Well, I guess that Fox News will never be another New York Times [foxnews.com] with its fair mindedness [whitehouse.gov]

Did you really just cite Fox News and the White House as authorities on whether or not the NYT is fair minded?!? Do you even comprehend the concept of bias, regardless of whether it is right- or left-wing? Those two "authorities" you refer to are the furthest it is possible to be from being disinterested 3rd parties with regard to the NYT. Fox has a monetarily-derived conflict of interest on this subject and the White House has a power-derived one. As I stated above, you seem unwilling to accept that there is such a position as a moderate, one that can understand both sides of an issue and report on them with minimal bias. If you did understand this concept, you would have cited one or more moderate references, not right-wing ones.

-Kurt

Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)

"What distinguishes FOX News is that it reports both the Left and Right sides of issues."

Yes for example it examines whether liberals hate america or whether they are merely terrorists.

I have also heard heated debate on fox news as to whether Hillary Clinton was "pure evil" or merely "very evil".

Finally I don't think anybody could argue that fox news gives both sides of the important debates on science such as "theory" of evolution vs creationism, the contrversy over global warming and such. Both sides of those issues are to be treated with the same amount of respect.

Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)

Jane Akre and her husband Steve Wilson are former employees of FOX owned-and-operated station WTVT in Tampa, Florida. In 1997 they refused to work on their story (about Monsanto's use of BGH [wikipedia.org]) after FOX tried to force them to include knowingly false information. They successfully sued under Florida's whistle blower law and were awarded a $425,000 settlement. However, FOX appealed and won, after the court declared that FCC policy against falsification that FOX violated was just a policy and not a "law, rule, or regulation", and so the whistle blower law did not apply.

FOX did not dispute that it tried to force Akre to broadcast a false story, but argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports.

In 2004 FOX countersued Akre and Wilson for trial fees and costs.

Was this one case the worst possible thing that could happen? Of course not. But doesn't it give you pause that the First Amendment was used as a public justification to lie or deliberately distort news reports? On how many other stories did they exercise this right?

Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)

Those links do indeed provide more information about the conflict and the initial trial itself. They say nothing about the appeal, which overturned the initial ruling. In that appeal, as I shamelessly copied and pasted earlier, Fox argued that broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports. The reasoning of course was that truth-telling is an FCC policy, not a law. Curious though how this "guideline" is deemed unenforceable and yet saying "fuck" or "shit" on the radio could potentially net you a fine of $30,000 per offense. (I volunteer at a radio station.)

From one of your linked articles:

The First Amendment dictates that the news media should regulate themselves. The judicial, legislative and executive branches must keep out of it.

Really? So newspapers should be allowed to commit libel with impunity? What about plagiarism? No? But who enforces those laws? It couldn't be the government, could it? The media has never effectively policed itself, at least not recently. If it were solely up to broadcasters, they would probably replace the news with game shows since game shows have better ratings and ad revenue by far. You think it's by accident that every major broadcaster has a news program? No, they are required to have one through terms with Congress and the FCC.

Who gave Fox and the other broadcasters those airwaves for pennies on the dollar in the first place, those public airwaves? The government. Why did the government originally give broadcasters this bandwidth allocation on the cheap? So that they would maintain certain standards, provide education, and news on current events. I'm not asking that government okay everything before it can be published. Quite the contrary. However, I am also quite certain that if a news organization using my public airwaves makes a conscious decision to distort, I want that news editor's head on a pike. There's a difference between a mistake and a lie. I see no reason why it shouldn't apply to the New York Times just as much as the New York Post, or Fox as much as CBS. It's not about liberal vs. conservative. It's about public trust.

Do you remember GI Joe and He-Man? Remember how cartoons like them had "educational" segments in the last few minutes of every show? The reason is because broadcasters are legally required to have certain minimum amounts of educational content. GI Joe and He-Man as they originally existed had absolutely no educational or socially redeeming value whatsoever. Therefore (rather than rework the shows to be better) segments were pasted on at the end telling kids not to talk to strangers and not to go swimming after a thunderstorm.

You want government out of TV broadcasting? Fine. Tell them to give back the airwaves, and we'll call it even.

Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)

yes Dan rather is just as bad as fox news. I recall clearly how dan rather shouts at his guests, calls them haters of america, shuts off their microphones, and berates them over and over again.

Oh wait a minute I think that was sean hannity. Never mind. Dan rather is nowhere near as biased as anybody on fox news.

It has safeguards already.

Wikipedia has already taken care of false information problems, in a variety of creative ways.

First, you have to remember that important article are hit thousands of times by various people, and since everyone has ability to edit, problems can often be quickly cleaned up. I feel that slashdot proves that if you though enough geeks at something, truth comes to the surface quickly.

Second, Wikipedia strongly supports citing sources. Try moving around Wikipedia, and you will soon find a header stating that "this article needs sources" and basically a warning that it may contain gibberish. When you are doing things of importance, you should always check sources. Especially when dealing with something like Wikipedia. This is also an advantage Wikipedia: unlike most encyclopedias, where you have to go find the sources, Wikipedia is point and click.

Wikipedia is the the greatest proof that the Market Place of Ideas works. It shows that when you throw enough ideas together, the truth will survive. Though we may have unfortunate events like the one in the article, almost all information is accurate, and problems are quickly solved.

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

Does a group of editors systematically tag all the articles at some point.

There is just too much stuff to do that methodically. 50,000 articles are added every month - just think about how many people would have be there to check them all!

Instead there are a few parallel 'top-down' efforts to make an extra-high-quality core by picking the key articles in every major subject area and flagging the stable versions. One effort is thinking in terms of a printed paper version of Wikipedia - another is looking into doing a CD-ROM version. The articles that make it into these special collections are carefully vetted and tagged - so you know that there is a stable 'known good' version backing up the latest version. However, these barely scratch the surface of the problem.

Additionally, there is a bottom-up process by which article authors can attempt to get their articles recognised for high quality. You first nominate your article for 'peer review' - reviewers monitor this list and come along to check your article. If you pass you can go on to request 'Good Article' status - another round of reviews. Next you can try for the coveted "Featured article" status (there are just over 1000 of these so far) - you get pummeled by English majors and pedants of every stripe - if you pass that then you can try to get your article into 'Article of the Day' - with yet another round of reviews.

Yet another layer is the 'Portal' system. Check out 'Portal:Automobile' for example - it covers the subset of Wikipedia articles about cars. Many portals have their own quality assurance methods and standards enforcement groups.

These quality processes work well - but there just aren't enough reviewers to effectively check the 1.2 million English language articles - let alone all of the ones written in French, Portugese...etc. Remember - English language Wikipedia is growing at a rate faster than any human can read. Nobody will ever be able to read all of it - even if they make it's their life's work.

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

What they should do is have a version of Wikipedia that has already been verified by a community of editors. So, a process similar to the following would take place:

1) General population would add/modify/remove entries on Wikipedia with public-editing capabilities.
2) A second Wikipedia would be set-up where only a group of editors would have write-access to the content. The editors would periodically compare the two versions of Wikipedia and commit the "good" information from the publicly-edited version to the restricted version.

That would not make any sense from a Wiki standpoint. The second is not a Wikipedia or Wiki at all, it's a private organization publishing information. Who gets access? "Scholars," "Historians," people with PhD's only? People with an IQ of 180 or more?

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

What they should do is have a version of Wikipedia that has already been verified by a community of editors.

Which part of 1.2 MILLION articles didn't you understand?

You have to understand the sheer size of the undertaking you propose...it's quite utterly out of the question:

340 million words.

50,000 articles added every month.

If you printed it out in the same format as the Encyclopedia Britannica it would fill 240 VOLUMES!

3.7 million changes every month.

How the heck do you review something that big?

The answer is that only a community the size of the Wikipedia contributors can possibly review something this big - so community review is the ONLY answer.

Since the number of changes per month (3.7 million) vastly exceeds the article creation rate per month (50,000) - you can tell that this process is in fact working.

Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?

Most professors I know would bitchslap a student six ways from sunday from using any secondary source whenever it was possible to reference a primary. Heaven help you if you referenced Britannica, never mind Wikipedia. The more enlightened and less cranky of them advised us that we should use Britannica and Wikipedia as a good way to get a quick overview of a completely unfamiliar or tangential topic, which in turn suggests what areas of primary research to pursue (as primary research is time intensive). I consider that to be good advice.

Too recent & controversial for an encyclopedia

I would agree that Wikipedia is poor at reporting stories that are both recent AND controversial - but to be fair, I don't think those are the kinds of things you should be looking up in an encyclopedia anyway. Look back at this same article in six months and I guarantee it'll be correct and unbiassed. It just takes time for the community to settle on the right wording.

Things that are NOT recent but ARE controversial ('Religion' or 'Area 51'for example) are generally well written, correct and take a carefully neutral stance. Things that are recent but NOT controversial (say "2006 World Cup Soccer") are well reported immediately and bang up to date with all the right facts.

It's the intersection of recent and controversial that messes up the system because too many people are editing at once and a lot of them are nut jobs. Once the topic gets old or becomes uncontroversial, the lunatic fringe loses interest and good writing can take place.

On the other hand, if you want to know the engine capacity of a 1963 Austin Min
i or the number of casualties in the RAF Faulds explosion or the exact nature o
f the student prank involving the Bridge of Sighs in Cambridge or the size of a
  litter of European Red Squirrels - things that I consult an encyclopedia for rather than a newspaper - then there is no other place (on the web or otherwise) to touch what Wikipedia has done.

Re:Too recent & controversial for an encyclope

Well said. Additionally, the article doesn't support the headline. There were only a couple of bogus entries and those were corrected within one or two minutes. The article also takes issue with statements like: "Speculation as to the cause of the heart attack lead many people to believe it was due to the amount of stress put on him by the Enron trial." Where's the problem with that statement? It's clearly labeled as speculation, and many people, rightly or wrongly, still believe the stress of the trial led to his heart attack. Perhaps such speculations are best left out of Wikipedia articles, but one can't reasonably argue that it's incorrect or misleading when it's clearly listed as speculation. In short, this is a desparate attempt to nit-pick Wikipedia and it even fails at that.

Re:Too recent & controversial for an encyclope

The sentence violates several of the Wiki community's guidelines for article authorship. Using the word "speculation" is not enough. There has to be a credible source cited to be behind the speculation so that the "fact" of the speculation can be established as either belonging to a majority or significant minority. Otherwise the sentence is reporting nothing more than an individual opinion(whether it is the author's or not, or whether it belongs to many people) and can slant the overall impartiality of the article - simply mentioning such speculation can skew a future reader's opinion of the subject of the article. In any case, it's way too soon to tell what the concensus is regarding Lay's death, so remarking on such speculation as fact is ridiculous.

The rules are useless

The sentence violates several of the Wiki community's guidelines for article authorship. Using the word "speculation" is not enough. There has to be a credible source cited to be behind the speculation so that the "fact" of the speculation can be established as either belonging to a majority or significant minority.

And how many Wikipedia authors follow these guidelines? From what I see, most have not even read them. Wikipedia encourages folks to jump in and start editing. Stopping to learn the rules is an optional step usually skipped.

And even if an author is motivated to read the rules, they're so complicated and disorganized, it's impossible to get a grasp on most of them.

Even when authors know the rules, they often don't have the background to apply them. When I used to play copy editor on WP, I would try to get authors to rewrite stuff that was clearly speculative — except to the author! One guy had written that a certain comic book character was obviously based on another character in a famous short story. The connection wasn't at all obvious to me, and he had no source for this information — he was just stating his own opinion. But I had a hell of a time convincing him to reword his statement: it was obvious to him what the facts were, and that was that.

One other note: you talk about "the Wiki [sic] community's guidelines" as if these rules somehow express a consensus of a large group of people. They do not. There is, in fact, little in the way of consensus building at Wikipedia. Most processes, including rule-making, are dominated by a few people. Sometimes those few people are just whoever's managed to bully everybody else into going away.

Re:The rules are useless

From what I see, most have not even read them. Wikipedia encourages folks to jump in and start editing

It's too friggin' easy. I've almost done it by mistake several times. I go to Wiki searching for something, find the article, and search for a specific keyword. For some reason (which isn't clear to me yet), sometimes hitting ALT-E will cause Wiki to let me start editing the article rather than opening up the drop-down Edit window (so I can subsequently hit 'F' for Find). So instead of searching for something on the page, all the sudden Wiki is offering to let me edit it. If I hit the wrong keystroke and caused that to be submitted, wow, talk about uncontrolled editing!

I think Wiki is great, there's a lot of good information. But there are some very significant biases. Kind of like Slashdot. There are a lot of smart people here, but there are some significant biases. Not all of them are reasonable. For what Wiki is, it's surprisingly good. You just have to be intelligent enough to recognize the bias and "correct" for it when necessary. But that's true whether you read Wiki, read Slashdot, read CNN, or listen to the president. Everyone has a bias--the best solution would be to know what the bias of the author is when you're reading it for those people who aren't perceptive enough to figure it out by reading the article.

At the very least Wiki gives you a heck of a lot of information on a topic which makes it a lot easier to refine your Googling efforts. Wikipedia entries are often near the top of Google results, so I usually read them first. That gives me enough knowledge on the topic that I then know what I really need to Google for.

Re:Too recent & controversial for an encyclope

I would agree that Wikipedia is poor at reporting stories that are both recent AND controversial - but to be fair, I don't think those are the kinds of things you should be looking up in an encyclopedia anyway.

The comment above is just the sort of comment that deserves a few 'insightful' mod points. Sometimes, pointing out the blindingly obvious is difficult when people so desperately want things to be something other than what they are. Wikipedia is, at best, something *like* an encyclopedia, and as such should serve similar purposes. Some people think that somehow there is a way to take the human element and passion out of a user-contributed site, or any site, or any work or endeavor of humankind for that matter. There isn't. Let us simply understand that you can't have the factual accuracy and neutrality of an encyclopedia for something that occurred yesterday; technology alters the quantity and speed of information, not its quality. If you want neutrality, you must wait for cooler (and further removed) heads to prevail.

This article explained

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Troll#Attent ion-seeking_trolls [wikipedia.org]

Intentionally posting an outrageous argument, deliberately constructed around a fundamental but obfuscated flaw or error.

Troll article -> Slashdot links to it -> Lots of pageviews -> More ad clicks -> Profit

To be fair

Also, Wikipedia marks articles that involve current events and controversey as such to make it clear that it's not necessarily an objective and concise source of information. So long as they are forthright about that, I don't see a problem.

Re:Too recent & controversial for an encyclope

I think the correct solution in this case it not to argue content but to file a 'Request for Deletion' - explaining that the term is a neologism. That - together with the "No original research" rule should get rid of the offending article in short order.

Square peg, round hole.

You don't go to Wikipedia to learn things about actively controversial subjects. You go to Wikipedia to learn things that nobody cares to dispute. Like science, math and biology. Or even history.

If there's significant controversey, it'll usually get its own section on a page.

Re:Square peg, round hole.

You don't go to Wikipedia to learn things about actively controversial subjects.

I vehemently disagree. If it's controversial then you'll learn lots from Wikipedia because you'll see the actual controversy live as it happens rather than the sanitised version you'll read 50 years later in Britannica.

I'm not buying it.

You step into Wikipedia, you understand what's up.
You know it's not a peer-reviewed encyclopedia. It's a WIKIpedia.
You know anyone, including you, can edit it.

Whenever you read up on a controversial topic, you expect controversial results... would a traditional encyclopedia even HAVE information about some enron executive? I doubt it.

Let's not make controversy where there is none.. wikipedia is a stunning example of what the internet is good at.

WP is self-correcting

The advantage of WP isn't that it's right all the time, it's that it is (through the tireless effort of zillions of people on five-minute breaks) self-correcting. When the AP screwed up their Ken Lay story, it took overnight before a retraction was posted. WP's story is screwed up for 5-20 minutes at a time.

The mainstream media are almost equally susceptible to being hacked -- even if you don't follow wingnuts like Rush Limbaugh or the insane propaganda and political fart-lighting on Fox News, it's not hard to spot gross errors or oversights in news reporting. "Unbiased" news doesn't exist, investigative reporting isn't anymore, and the media circus is just that -- a circus. Wikipedia may be raw, uncensored, or wrong, but at least it tends to correct itself rapidly.

For what it's worth, the science articles are rapidly becoming the most comprehensive archive of science knowledge ever aimed at the general public. (Of course the refereed literature is larger, but it's not a reference work for the layperson).

Re:WP is self-correcting

I have in my watchlist over two dozen pages that I know to be incorrect - that have lain untouched for as much as a year.

Correct them then; that's the point.

Re:I've always been ...

If you're not similarly skeptical about information in the rest of the media, you're naive.

Hearing the tech reporting on the news is pretty scary. I imagine it's similarly painful for experts in other fields to hear their field discussed by reporters.

There's an expression that idiots don't understand

and that is, "consider the source." If someone is dumb enough to believe uncorroborated reports without any kind of consideration for the fact that the reporter could be wrong, lying, misinformed, or promoting an agenda then they get what they get.

The Internet is a great resource. Wikipedia has been very good for helping me find new things to be interested in, but it's not the end solution. If anything it's the beginning and the beginning only. I use Wikipedia to find out that I want to learn more about a subject, and from there, once I have had a chance to consult or read from true experts then I can make my judgement.

Unable to understand that apples are not oranges

This is simply a case of people not being able to understand that wikipedia is not the exact same thing as Britannic. You have to look at the talk page, you have to hit a few revisions if you want to be comfortable about the accuracy of data. At times I have learned more reading the debate back and forth of two opposing viewpoints than the entry itself.

Unfortunately, people think in metaphors. Well, that is not so bad in itself, but people often seem unable to get beyond the metaphor and understand that some things are not exactly like anything they are familiar with. Case in point, how many people equate hacking into a website with breaking into a house? Or infringing on a copyright with stealing a car? This is just another case of people unable or unwilling to appreciate that wikipedia is unique and cannot be treated like a traditional encyclopedia.

Finkployd

Wikipedia is for reference, it's not a news site.

You don't expect the encyclopaedia on your shelf to be up to date and accurate on something that happened half an hour ago. Wikipedia was never intended as a news service, anyone who treats it like one is going to be sorely disappointed.

The role of Wikipedia is for reference, give it time and the information there settles down to the truth or at least something close to it.

Don't ask it to be something that it isn't any you won't be disappointed.

Re:Add a stability value to a page?

Maybe an additional bit of information could be a stability index. How much of the page has changed, both recently, and over time.

Look at the little row of tabs at the top of every Wikipedia page. See the one marked 'history'? Click on that. You are now looking at a complete history of edits to that page. The handle of everyone who edited it, the date and time it was edited and the commit comment they attached to it. Isn't that enough?

You can click the radio buttons to the left and get a side-by-side comparison of the article as it was at any times in the past or you can see the entire article exactly as it was on any given date. You can click on the author's name and send them a message on their 'Talk' page if you want to ask about why they changed whatever they changed. You can go to the 'Talk' page for the article itself and see comments from the various editors - heck, you can even get a history of the edits to the Talk page!

Generally, if there are a lot of 'rv: vandalism' entries on the history page (eg on the "Computer" article that gets vandalised a lot) - then perhaps the article itself is pretty stable - but gets a lot of editing history because people are fixing up the actions of complete idiots. If on the other hand there is some kind of 'edit war' between two editors - then this is still a controversial subject - so treat the article with care. If the article had a busy period for some days or weeks - but then all the subsequent edits were spelling fixes, addition of foreign language versions and stuff like that - then this is a stable and trustworthy article.

The number of References at the bottom of the article is another good gauge of quality.

The best summary I've read

was, surprisingly, at Penny Arcade:

Reponses to criticism of Wikipedia go something like this: the first is usually a paean to that pure democracy which is the project's noble fundament. If I don't like it, why don't I go edit it myself? To which I reply: because I don't have time to babysit the Internet. Hardly anyone does. If they do, it isn't exactly a compliment.

Any persistent idiot can obliterate your contributions. The fact of the matter is that all sources of information are not of equal value, and I don't know how or when it became impolitic to suggest it. In opposition to the spirit of Wikipedia, I believe there is such a thing as expertise.

The second response is: the collaborative nature of the apparatus means that the right data tends to emerge, ultimately, even if there is turmoil temporarily as dichotomous viewpoints violently intersect. To which I reply: that does not inspire confidence. In fact, it makes the whole effort even more ridiculous. What you've proposed is a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2005/12/16 [penny-arcade.com]

I think it's valid criticism for non-technical articles. As noted by others, wikipedia kicks ass for noncontroversial, primarily technical topics.

Except it's not valid

What you don't mention is Tycho's motivation in writing this rant against Wikipedia, as revealed by the part of the article you didn't quote: He was pissed off because they deleted some of his articles. Articles about a book series called "Epic Legends of the Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga". A book series that doesn't exist.

In other words, this very set of arguments as to why wikipedia's system "doesn't work" was prompted by an incident of wikipedia's system working. Tycho tried to post false information, and Wikipedia rejected this. And Tycho got pissy and went and complained about Wikipedia on his blog.

Now given, Tycho's false information was awesome; the ELOTH:TES stuff that Wikipedia rejected is truly hilarious, and now that it's been moved to its own wiki [pbwiki.com] (where it probably should have been in the first place), it's turned into a collaborative project in its own right, as if Borges' "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" conspiracy had had as their goal to parody fantasy novels.

But it didn't belong on Wikipedia. And the incident in which it was removed from Wikipedia itself neatly refutes the complaints that the incident inspired Tycho to level against Wikipedia.

The first complaint is that "Any persistent idiot can obliterate your contributions... all sources of information are not of equal value... I believe there is such a thing as expertise." I don't think it's very hard to read between the lines here; we already know Tycho is pissed off because some "persistent idiot" obliterated his contributions. It's not very hard to imagine that the real issue here is that Tycho (who certainly is a person with expertise) thinks he as a source of information is of value, and the Wikipedia hivemind does not. But Tycho himself shows that the things wikipedia values are more valuable than "expertise"-- Wikipedia values facts, neutrality and whenever possible rigor, and ignores authority. If we accepted "expertise" or appeals to authority, then we'd be obligated to accept Tycho as a source of information just cuz he's a real smart person with a real popular blog. And then Wikipedia would have a series of articles about a fantasy novel franchise and ill-fated 1980s children's TV show which never existed.

Second off, Tycho issues the complaint that Wikipedia's "errors get fixed eventually" principle isn't very useful if you don't know whether the errors have been fixed yet. Simply looking at a wikipedia page, you have no way to know whether you're looking at a cleanly vetted, accurate bunch of information, or if your pageload just happened by random coincidence to fall in that 30-second gap of space between a vandal entering a statement that Ken Lay committed suicide and a watchlister rving it. This is a much more serious and substantial complaint, and one which is a serious problem for the idea of Wikipedia as an information source. The lesson to be learned here is of course that you shouldn't treat wikipedia as a primary source but rather a starting point for further information, and if the information you're taking from wikipedia is important you need to check the references like a hawk. But in the end, it still isn't a real problem-- as Tycho has shown us. After all, as Tycho found when he tried to introduce false information, that little gap of time where the Wikipedia Wave Function hasn't yet collapsed and pageloads return false information is strikingly small. This is generally not a matter of errors taking months to get fixed. It is sometimes measured in minutes or seconds. The probability of hitting at a bad moment is small enough we can effectively ignore it, unless we have some kind of ulterior motives and are just trying to make Wikipedia look bad.

"The encyclopedia that Slashdot built."

I can see the coder-geek authorbase as the primary cause of Wikipedia's problems. Here are the issues I've noticed in the past. Many of these examples may have been rectified, but they still exist in countless other forms:

They're insidiously opinionated. Instead of saying wasabi is "fried with peas," they say it is "considered quite tasty with fried peas." Gee, "tasty" is completely objective I guess, not a matter of personal, ahem, taste, at all. Someone tries to argue them down, but they know they're "right," after all they learned C++ when they were 10.

They miss the forest for the trees. The article on AIDS has wonderful information on the disease's origins, treatment and spread throughout the world. Too bad there's no fucking organization to anything in the article, and the section titled, "Global epidemic" is precisely redundant with the one named, "Current status." It's like the typical geek's desk, awash in code printouts and spec sheets. There's good stuff in there, somewhere (he's sure) but he'll be damned if he can make any sense out of it (but hey it's like a puzzle and those are fun). He should just print one more copy instead of checking if it's already there, and organizing his shit.

They don't know how to write. If the spelling and language mechanics are correct, then it's good writing (which is like saying that any code that compiles is good code). There's no rule in Strunk & White about too many clauses in one sentence! Thus, the writing is perfect. Decent style, flowing sentences, consistent tone and voice are only for the weak-minded; hackers are made of sterner stuff (well, mentally).

They're obsessed with dumb trivia. Every article must have its "In popular culture" section, just to prove that they, like Ken Jennings, know stupid references to everything.

They don't know jackshit about page layout. Does every table need a full set of borders? Must LaTeX equations be fucking huge? Why can't editors use a color wheel (or common sense) to choose nicely matching colors? Deitel & Deitel is not the standard on typesetting or formatting; use a textbook that had an editor as a guide on page layout, like "Fundamentals of Aerodynamics" by Anderson. Clean tables without distracting borders, equations modestly marked by centering and italics (no huge font necessary), headings used only when needed. It's black and white because colors would be superfluous. But it's fun on Wikipedia to add superfluous formatting, it's just like adding new features to software. Oooh, shiney! Instead of featuritis, it's sectionitist, bolditis, table-itis.

So that's what I think ails Wikipedia in a nutshell. Many of these are addressed by Wikipedia policies, but when even Wikipedia's founder (Jimbo Wales) dislikes following them [wikipedia.org], how will they ever gain decent implementation? Especially when any editor with half a brain who does support them is just another uncool, uptight elitist who should be ignored [kuro5hin.org]. It's no wonder that Wikipedia today is still a nightmare of good information. Citing Wikipedia at the college level is still academic suicide. Unless their policies and people change throughout the chain of command, Wikipedia will never evolve to a real authoritative source that is a true encyclopedia. It's fun to read, but only as accurate and objective as the rest of the internet.

The solution is to let it get bigger

Each page(sometimes a grouping) needs to become it's own community. I run a forum about writing operating systems and I've just setup a mediawiki to contain osdev(as it's called) information. My mediawiki requires accounts to edit/post content to the wiki and (with a free mediawiki plugin)the accounts are just forum members that I've placed in a certain group. Myself and fellow moderators can very easly determine who has valid content to contribute to a osdev wiki but it's just to overwhelming to try to maintain that level of control for topics I'm not familiar with. You compare just the "amateur systems" section on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osdev [wikipedia.org] with my project list at http://www.osdev.org/wiki/index.php/Projects [osdev.org], 23 vs 132 OS projects listed. I'm not saying that people visiting the Osdev page on wikipedia should be redirected to my site, I think more community features need to be added to mediawiki. I say lock all pages and require community involvement to gain editing rights. You might lose a poster that just wanted to dump off information but that's why I have a forum for people to make requests in. Basically the forums become the filter/distiller for the wiki in the long run.

Old news...

This type of 'accident' may happen even on paper, depending on the slant of a writer or / and an editor. Case in point : France's most notorious (if not most serious) encyclopedia "for the masses" is the Larousse. In the first edition (circa 1870), at the entry "Bonaparte", you could read "Born in Ajaccio 08/15/1769, died in St Cloud, 18 brumaire an VIII of the Republic (11/9/1799)".

As you may know, on this day, Bonaparte made a coup d'État and thus became known as "Napoléon"...

Every time a single person (or institution) is in charge of the writing / editing of any article, a risk exists, and that's why a) encyclopaedias are not scholar references b) science suppose peer review.

Not fud

honeslty I don't see this as fud. Fud to me is someone needless, or warrantless spreading doubt about something. Doubt about wikipedia is justified. As a whole, society and people are stupid. When groups get together things inevitably turn into a gong show. Wikipedia is just another example of something that got ruined by a bunch of people using it.

As I said on the other wikipedia article here not too long ago:
its very easy for a few idiots to get together and muddle things into no concensus. You could write an article on something remotely notable that couldn't possibly have any sources and easily have it kept by having a few buddies show up for the AfD. They don't get major exposure, and all it takes is a handful 90% of the time. Part of the blame for this lies with the admins. Most seem lazy and unwilling to do anything that requires work. AfDs are supposed to be debates, and they insist that what it is, but admins often just tally the responses and go based on that, if an AfD look like this:

Delete - Violates WP:OR
Delete - not notable, original research, violates WP:V
Delete - as above
Keep - pickles
keep - spork
keep - I like ponies!

they would simply close it as a no concensus even though its clear the people who want the article kept are brain damaged.

Admins also aren't content editors. In a content dispute, they'll protect the article or block those involved in an edit war, but they won't go "Yeah, you're full of crap, stop trying to add that ridiculous information". Which basically means when blocks and page protection expire, they go at it again. There are two IPs that have been warring over Herner Werzog's nationality, an admin will randomly semi-protect the page, but it expires and they come back and fight over it again. These kind of things damage wikipedia a lot. Until they start actively dealing with these things, its going to suffer, and likely fail.

ALL Sources are Biased

The common whine about Wikipedia and "editorial neutrality" reflects the common ignorance of the fact that ALL sources have biases. At least in Wikipedia's case, the issue of bias is openly accepted, discussed, and worked around/with.

Re:I am no nut but...

I am not a conspiricy theorist...

Now you are. Congratulations on the shiny new hat.