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Author Topic:   Wikipedia - A general discussion of its validity
Adminnemooseus
Administrator
Posts: 3974
Joined: 09-26-2002


Message 1 of 40 (271491)
12-21-2005 4:04 PM


Wikipedia has become a theme at the "General discussion of moderation procedures: The Consequtive Consecution", starting at message 3. There it was a reply to this message.
Messages 3 through 6 were:
brennakimi writes:
wiki may be a valid reference for common knowledge stuff (like the popular colors at christmas) but not for anything of contention. you need peer-reviewed or otherwise confidence bearing sources for this. wiki is an encyclopedia. just like all encyclopedias, it's written by encyclopedia writers and prone to error and non-specificity.
pink sasquatch writes:
wiki is an encyclopedia. just like all encyclopedias, it's written by encyclopedia writers and prone to error and non-specificity.
Wikipedia is open to editing by anyone, including you. So it's not quite like all encyclopedias.
It can serve as a good starting point, especially for those who won't understand the primary literature due to technical style and language. However, entries should be reviewed for errors/issues by the person citing the entries (just like with any cite, really, including peer-reviewed ones...)
arachnophilia writes:
moose writes:
Not that it must be trusted as being accurate and reliable information. Other sources to back up Wiki are a good thing. Maybe a topic specific to Wiki would be a good thing.
moose -- i mentioned in one of the gd peanut gallerys (they might be giants) about the accuracy rating of wikipedia. it reportedly ranks at the level of most encyclopedias. which sounds good until you hear the number of errors that were found in common encyclopedias.
wikipedia also has a tendency to acknowledge boths sides of issues that shouldn't really be under argument, which doesn't always make it the best source for debatable material.
brennakimi writes:
yes. but it is not appropriate to use for the debate of obscure facts. i.e. no one should use it to determine how many women were imprisoned in rape camps under saddam hussein. instead, one should look at the records we recovered in the first gulf war. these things are not yet common knowledge and neither are facts about some crazy puerto rican who may or may not have decided to join a terrorist organization.
Carry on.
Adminnemooseus
This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 12-21-2005 04:12 PM

Replies to this message:
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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 2 of 40 (271493)
12-21-2005 4:11 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Adminnemooseus
12-21-2005 4:04 PM


errors
in the they might be giants peanut gallery me writes:
quote:
Online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a comparison study has found.
The British journal Nature ran blind tests asking experts to compare scientific entries from both publications.
The reviewers were asked to check for errors, but were not told about the source of the information.
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia.
Reviewers found 162 factual errors in the Wikipedia documents, compared to 123 in the Britannica documents.
Nature also said that its reviewers found that Wikipedia entries were often poorly structured and confused. Wikipedia is a free resource edited by 13,000 contributors.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica declined to comment on the findings.
http://www.vnunet.com/...647/wikipedia-squares-encyclopaedia
i guess the moral of the story is that encyclopedias aren't all that accurate in book form either -- the GOOD thing about wikipedia is that it's almost evolutionary in nature. if something is wrong and someone knows better it gets changed much faster than the book form would. this of course can also work against it, but hopefully not very often.
162 errors, and four serious ones. it doesn't say how many articles they checked... edit: nevermind, found the nature article. 42 articles contained 162 errors. close to four errors an article, on average.
quote:
The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.
Internet encyclopaedias go head to head | Nature
i find wikipedia good for looking up general knowledge stuff. stuff i already know but may not recall clearly. but for questionable and debatable materials, it's far from the best source
This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-21-2005 04:18 PM

אָרַח

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 3 of 40 (271494)
12-21-2005 4:12 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Adminnemooseus
12-21-2005 4:04 PM


Wiki: The weakerpedia?
I read an interesting article on Wikipedia here,
and also browsed the google archive to see what is being said about Wikipedia. Personally, I prefer the World Book on CD. It has everything relevant that I need to know and, if not, I peruse a variety of sources...including Wikipedia yet not exclusively.

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Minnemooseus
Member
Posts: 3941
From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior)
Joined: 11-11-2001
Member Rating: 10.0


Message 4 of 40 (271496)
12-21-2005 4:23 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Phat
12-21-2005 4:12 PM


Re: Wiki: The weakerpedia?
A link from Phats cite contained the following, which seems to sum things up nicely:
For information professionals, Wikipedia is a bottled version of the internet. Contained within this site is a host of unverified content on a wide variety of subjects, and, as a resource, it saves users from carrying out masses of searches. But just like web searching, there is no way for users to be sure the content is trustworthy.
Moose

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AdminNWR
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 40 (271499)
12-21-2005 4:29 PM


What's all the fuss about?
From an administrator's perspective, I don't understand the objection to Wikipedia. Granted, it is not guaranteed to be 100% correct. But what is? Even peer reviewed scientific journals contain errors.
If we disallow wiki, don't we have to also disallow all newpaper and on-line media reports? Wouldn't we have to disallow the pdf file for the Dover ID decision, since that was hosted on a media site rather than the court's own site?
If somebody makes a reference to wiki, that can still be challenged by better evidence. If someone makes a reference to a peer reviewed article, that can also be challenged by reference to newer better results.
If we are going to have a debate with broad participation, then I think we should not be too restrictive in what is allowed as reference material. In most cases, it is up to the debaters to challenge particular references.


Replies to this message:
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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 6 of 40 (271505)
12-21-2005 4:43 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by AdminNWR
12-21-2005 4:29 PM


Re: What's all the fuss about?
If we disallow wiki
whoa whoa whoa. who said anything about disallowing wikipedia?

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pink sasquatch
Member (Idle past 6022 days)
Posts: 1567
Joined: 06-10-2004


Message 7 of 40 (271508)
12-21-2005 4:51 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by arachnophilia
12-21-2005 4:43 PM


Re: What's all the fuss about?
whoa whoa whoa. who said anything about disallowing wikipedia?
brennakimi asked for a Wikipedia ban. That's what started the most recent discussion.
_______
AbE: To clarify, here's the exact quote from brennakimi (in her usual confusing prose):
brennakimi writes:
can we ban the use of wiki like that?
This message has been edited by pink sasquatch, 12-21-2005 04:54 PM

This message is a reply to:
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AdminNWR
Inactive Member


Message 8 of 40 (271509)
12-21-2005 4:52 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by arachnophilia
12-21-2005 4:43 PM


Re: What's all the fuss about?
who said anything about disallowing wikipedia?
Perhaps I misundertood the meaning of
can we ban the use of wiki like that?
in Message 96.

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Replies to this message:
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nwr
Member
Posts: 6408
From: Geneva, Illinois
Joined: 08-08-2005
Member Rating: 5.1


Message 9 of 40 (271537)
12-21-2005 6:03 PM


A wiki alternative
This just in:
Peer-reviewed alternative to Wikipedia set for launch.

Impeach Bush.

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pink sasquatch
Member (Idle past 6022 days)
Posts: 1567
Joined: 06-10-2004


Message 10 of 40 (271543)
12-21-2005 6:13 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by nwr
12-21-2005 6:03 PM


Another wiki alternative
Not to take away from nwr's alternative, but here is another one.
Creationists should feel especially at ease since Jesus has reviewed and blessed the entry on "evolution". An excerpt:
Evolution is a scientific theory that has been scientifically proven by scientific science. It involves a process that allows fishes to have monkey eggs. Usually evolution is seen to be a sign of progress, but this doesn't explain George W. Bush. Evolution was a popular pseudoscience in the late twentieth century, before scientists finally proved the truth of Creationism...
Evolution has survived to this day, despite predators such as Fundamentalists and Bevets.
This has come about due to mutations and differentiation caused by environment, sexual experimentation, and the lack of more plausible theories not involving a Omnipotent Being designing new terms from thin air.

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Silent H
Member (Idle past 5819 days)
Posts: 7405
From: satellite of love
Joined: 12-11-2002


Message 11 of 40 (271545)
12-21-2005 6:27 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by nwr
12-21-2005 6:03 PM


Re: A wiki alternative
I like Wiki and I do not understand the grumblings going on about it. I agreed with your earlier post that if it is not accurate, as NOTHING is 100% accurate anyway, info from another source can be used against it.
The only important point to remember (or remind others) is that Wiki is not some trump card on any subject. It is simply one resource. Thankfully it is easy for people online to get to and look up some data.
I do not agree that it cannot be used for debatable subjects. Highly detailed discussions of very recent info at another source may end up trumping stuff at a Wiki, but that does not mean that Wiki CANNOT have very good discussions of some topics and supply debate ending info. It will come down to the topic and people having the debate being reasonable in assessing whether the data is enough.
I might add that Wiki often contains links at the bottom, to more info on any subject being discussed.
I am responding to this post because it contained a link regarding Digital Universe, the supposed better version of Wiki, because it will be reviewed by "experts". While I don't want to totally put it down, I do think its funny that the guy putting it together (who was also a founder of Wiki) misses that he is appealing to a logical fallacy.
He is claiming it should be more trustworthy because reviewers will have PHDs, and actually uses the argument that "If you get operated on you'd rather trust a guy with an MD". Well yeah, but you know what? You also should go and get a second opinion, and sometimes it turns out people with PHDs ARE WRONG. Pasteur got nowhere for a long time because of this same type of educational/professional bias.
While describing its structure he uses the example of Global Warming as a topic. Well THAT ought to be interesing. Exactly which PHDs will be reviewing entries, the ones that agree with Global Warming (indeed advocates of it) or the ones that do not?
In the end I'll bet he finds he has to get reviewers for the reviewers. The end result of that chain being something much like Wiki.
(Nod to Phat... I liked the "Weakerpedia" name)

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Cthulhu
Member (Idle past 5851 days)
Posts: 273
From: Roe Dyelin
Joined: 09-09-2003


Message 12 of 40 (271562)
12-21-2005 7:34 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by pink sasquatch
12-21-2005 6:13 PM


Re: Another wiki alternative
Uncyclopedia is such a great site.

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 13 of 40 (271589)
12-21-2005 10:04 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by pink sasquatch
12-21-2005 4:51 PM


luuuuuuucy, you got some 'splainin' to do!
brennakimi asked for a Wikipedia ban.
sigh. ok. i'll smack her around a little.

אָרַח

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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roxrkool
Member (Idle past 988 days)
Posts: 1497
From: Nevada
Joined: 03-23-2003


Message 14 of 40 (271597)
12-21-2005 10:57 PM


I use Wiki a lot. I love it, but I also read it with an eye for bias and with the understanding it may not be entirely correct, especially when dealing with highly complex issues.
I would not be in favor of banning it.

  
ReverendDG
Member (Idle past 4110 days)
Posts: 1119
From: Topeka,kansas
Joined: 06-06-2005


Message 15 of 40 (271616)
12-22-2005 3:58 AM


well the wiki admins try to keep everything pretty accurate, by making sure the entries are useful and contain good info, and they also add that some ideas entered maybe wrong or contrversal
personally i think we should be able to use it, but not as the only source, if its debated

  
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