The errors of Wikipedia's ways

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The errors of Wikipedia’s ways
But all of this assumes that Wikipedia has come up with a rational method, nay a science, of encyclopedia error correction. And herein arises a conundrum. The Nature study was generated because of scandals that have recently arisen on Wikipedia. Prejudicial misinformation was put into some articles – most notably one that falsely claimed a former assistant to Robert F. Kennedy may have been involved in his assassination…
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In the course of researching this column I looked at Wikipedia entries about Globe and Mail columnists and came across one on Leah McLaren. It is both mean-spirited and inaccurate, but more pointedly points readers toward scurrilously critical sites which describe Leah with headlines reading in one case “Leah McLaren is a Fawning, Bilge-weened Poltroon.”
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The entry is exactly the sort of malicious, backbiting that judicious Britannica editors would never allow into print, and exactly the sort of thing Wikipedia should eliminate tomorrow.
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They can indeed say anything - but it tends not to stick around for long if it is rubbish.

I stick by what I have said previously - I find the Wikipedia interesting as a backup source or to investigate things when I have a bit of free time. But I don’t use it as a sole source except for things I know already and I feel lazy.

Mike
 
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gilliam:
Look under the photo of Sharan at the site today:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Sharon
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Dunno which edit precisely you mean. There have been about 20 in the last hour. Yes - there are vandals and idiots and trolls in the Wikipedia. But usually it is fixed very quickly indeed.

Mike
 
Guar Fan said:
:confused: Perhaps it was changed back? I know little about Sharon but I didn’t see anything egregiously wrong.

But yes, wikipedia is an unreliable source, especially on controversial issues.
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Yes it was changed back. There was a Died: 1/5/06 and then a vial expression in it. Yesterday there was profanity in it.

I look at Wikipedia as possibly a good place to start research, but you need to verify everything in it.
 
The column’s last paragraph, which you edited
The entry is exactly the sort of malicious, backbiting that judicious Britannica editors would never allow into print, and exactly the sort of thing Wikipedia should eliminate tomorrow. And if they don’t, and I mean tomorrow literally, then shame on Wikipedia. Shame, shame, shame.
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And as you might expect, Wikipedia corrected that entry not “tomorrow,” but the very same day.
 
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gilliam:
Yes it was changed back. There was a Died: 1/5/06 and then a vial expression in it. Yesterday there was profanity in it.
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I’m not sure those are the sort of errors to be worried about. One shouldn’t be using Wikipedia as a news source (even if they have ‘in the news’ on the front page) and it is usually easy to tell when someone is trolling.

The subtle non-obvious changes are the pernicious ones that undermine the whole project - but there are far fewer of those, in my experience.

I imagine a lot of Wikipedia users are like myself - keep a small collection of pages they have contributed to at one time, for whatever reason, and look at them every few days to make sure they haven’t been vandalised.

Mike
 
Wikipedia isn’t a good reference source if you’re writing a doctoral thesis. It’s just as good as Google for normal Internet research to point you to other sources though.
 
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