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Phony Wikipedia Entry Used By Worldwide Press

Posted by samzenpus on Wed May 06, 2009 07:20 PM
from the check-your-sources dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "A quote attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre was posted on wikipedia shortly after his death in March and later appeared in obituaries in mainstream media. 'One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear,' Jarre was quoted as saying. However, these words were not uttered by the Oscar-winning composer but written by Shane Fitzgerald, a final-year undergraduate student, who said he wanted to show how journalists use the internet as a primary source for their stories. Fitzgerald posted the quote on Wikipedia late at night after news of Jarre's death broke. 'I saw it on breaking news and thought if I was going to do something I should do it quickly. I knew journalists wouldn't be looking at it until the morning,' The quote had no referenced sources and was therefore taken down by moderators of Wikipedia within minutes. However, Fitzgerald put it back up a few more times until it was finally left up on the site for more than 24 hours. While he was wary about the ethical implications of using someone's death as a social experiment, he had carefully generated the quote so as not to distort or taint Jarre's life, he said. 'I didn't expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised.'"
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  • Lazy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by timpdx (1473923) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:27PM (#27853777)
    The press is lazy, always have been. Nothing like sourcing your story in a few keystrokes.
      • Re:Lazy (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Daniel Dvorkin (106857) * on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:32PM (#27854347) Homepage Journal

        Okay, let me get this straight: you accuse mainstream journalists of failing to check their facts and a lack of objectivity ... and then you use bloggers as an example of how to correct these problems?

        As for the first claim, go on believing that "[b]loggers actually check their facts, or their posters or competition will" if it suits you, but I can pretty much guarantee that you will find more errors of fact per story in just about any political blog than you will find in just about any newspaper, or radio or TV news show. There are simply too many blogs, and too few people with the time and motivation and skills to fact-check, to keep the blogosphere honest. You could put up a blog post claiming that Obama eats live kittens every morning for breakfast, and there would be a substantial number of people who will not only believe you, but would champion you against those who said "Um, no, actually he doesn't" as a Bold Politically Incorrect Speaker Of Truth To Power.

        And as for the second, I would argue that the pretense (which is all it can ever be) of journalistic objectivity has done more damage to journalism than its lack ever did. People know perfectly well that reporters -- and, at least as importantly, the people who pay those reporters -- have opinions of their own, and that those opinions will influence news coverage. MSM journalism (newspapers, radio, TV) is actually much more useful when you can discern those opinions within minutes of picking up a paper or tuning into a station instead of trying to read between the lines to puzzle them out.

        • Re:Lazy (Score:5, Interesting)

          by lgw (121541) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:45PM (#27854475) Journal

          Okay, let me get this straight: you accuse mainstream journalists of failing to check their facts and a lack of objectivity ... and then you use bloggers as an example of how to correct these problems?

          No, you've entirely missed my point. My point is that bloggers do a far more entertaining job of non-objective journalism than the MSM, and the MSM's level of fact checking (*and* hard-hitting investigative journalism) has recently fallen to to level of bloggers - or below!

          If the MS wants to survive, it needs to do what blggers are bad at. There's no longer any value in mere distribution, and the first-hand reporting of news will predominately be live-blogging by random people who happen to be on the scene, before much longer. In theory, the MSM could be adding reliable fact checking, and neutral-POV context, to this raw reportage.

          In practice they simply aren't - they're merely culling the raw data down to whatever supports their idiological position, and running with it unchecked. And blogs are far better at that!

        • Re:Lazy (Score:5, Insightful)

          by lgw (121541) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:34PM (#27854361) Journal

          Most bloggers only comment on news and sometimes combine multiple news sources. It is very rare that they are the primary source of information.

          True enough, but the same is true of a cable news network or a major newspaper. The primary sources are people "on the ground" where something newsworthy happened. Bloggers and the mainstream press distribute this information, they don't (usually) generate it. Mere distribution no longer adds value. Fact checking, comparing sources, and providing context all add value. Bloggers are getting better at all these things.

          but you're not going to get a whole lot of people live blogging in the middle of a war zone.

          The only good, reliable news coming out of Iraq for the first few years of the war was from Iraqi bloggers. Everyone else was full of crap, with the exception of the US Military briefings, which quite reliably told you what the US Military wanted you to think (newsworthy in its way).

  • by BoRegardless (721219) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:28PM (#27853783)

    As the author noted.

    We see it all the time, where no one wants to delve into details & analyze something.

    After all, that takes time & "I have to get my Latte @ Starbucks."

    I am also struck by the lack of actual questioning of people "journalists" interview. It doesn't happen for the most part. It is mostly "star-struck fan time" when journalists interview the politicians and famous people.

    • It is mostly "star-struck fan time" when journalists interview the politicians and famous people.

      It might actually be worse than that. Lots of journalists know that if they ask real questions and press for real answers, the person they're interviewing won't like it, and will stop submitting to the interview. The journalist will get a reputation for being difficult, and other people won't give them interviews either.

      So they might not be that they're star struck, but instead kissing ass to get access. And then there's laziness. It's hard to do a good job.

  • Google (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bluefoxlucid (723572) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:28PM (#27853795) Journal
    And on the Internet you can spend $8 a month and $8 for a domain name per year, and have your own private site. Devote a shrine to anything, write bullshit, and Wikipedia's massive peer review team ("The Whole Fucking World") can't stomp all over you and delete your edits. Best of all, if you have a shiny Web design, people will 1) incorporate your shit in Wikipedia, citing it; and 2) use your shit to debunk other (actually factual) shit in Wikipedia because another "not-Wikipedia" site says Wikipedia is wrong.
    • Re:Google (Score:5, Funny)

      by beckett (27524) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:54PM (#27854045) Homepage Journal
      godaddy can cut this cost in half for you.
    • Note that this is the same type of failure as what happened in the mortgage bubble. Realtors and buyers and auditors were not actually determining the real value of the houses they were trading, but were merely checking to see what everyone else thought the value was. Most of the players (at least those with the most control) had an incentive to inflate the value. So the result was a spiral of home prices that rose far beyond the true value.

      Now that the market has corrected and prices are closer to the actual value, all parties are crying foul and saying they don't want to have to "mark to market" or face foreclosure or bankruptcy for their inability to correctly determine the true value of their investments.

      In the same way, Wikipedia does not check for actual truth of the statements it publishes, just that they are corroborated by some other medium or by some other website. This process is subject to the same manipulation and error that has decimated the global real estate market. In the same way, the consequences of failure are externalized by Wikipedia and not borne by any of its editors, contributors, or sponsors.

      Caveat emptor.

      • Note that this is the same type of failure as what happened in the mortgage bubble. Realtors and buyers and auditors were not actually determining the real value of the houses they were trading, but were merely checking to see what everyone else thought the value was.

        The real value of a house is what 'everyone else' thinks the value is - there is no 'real' or objective way to determine the value of a house.

  • Newspapers (Score:5, Informative)

    by Frankie70 (803801) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:31PM (#27853817)

    Both the Guardian & the Independent has this quote in their obits.
    So did BBC Music Magazine.
    http://www.google.com/search?q=%22maurice+jarre%22++%22music+was+my+life [google.com]

    The Guardian has even published a retraction blaming it on the Wikipedia vandalizer - poor Guardian.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/31/maurice-jarre-obituary [guardian.co.uk]

    This article was amended on Friday 3 April 2009. Maurice Jarre died on 28 March 2009, not 29 March. We opened with a quotation which we are now advised had been invented as a hoax, and was never said by the composer: "My life has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life." The article closed with: "Music is how I will be remembered," said Jarre. "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head and that only I can hear." These quotes appear to have originated as a deliberate insertion in the composer's Wikipedia entry in the wake of his death on 28 March, and from there were duplicated on various internet sites. These errors have been corrected.

    • Re:Newspapers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by daybot (911557) * on Wednesday May 06 2009, @09:01PM (#27854637)

      The Guardian has even published a retraction blaming it on the Wikipedia vandalizer

      Actually they've worded it quite fairly and I think they're brave to have admitted to falling victim to the hoax.

      • Re:Newspapers (Score:5, Insightful)

        by The Warlock (701535) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @10:28PM (#27855267)

        Except they skipped the part where they didn't take blame for using Wikipedia as a source in the first damn place, because professional journalists aren't supposed to use Wikipedia as a fucking source in the first fucking place.

  • This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JoshuaZ (1134087) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:31PM (#27853821) Homepage

    This has happened so many times before that it isn't funny. To use one example off the top of my head, there was a debate on the page about Rutgers where someone claimed with no good sourcing that the University had had an opportunity to be in the Ivy League when the league was first formed. Edit-warring over this continued for some time until someone found a recent source that made the claim. Suspicious editors thought something was up and contacted the newspaper in question. It turned out they had gotten the claim from "somewhere on the internet" that is, Wikipedia.

    Bottom line. Don't take a fact in Wikipedia unless it is sourced. Even then, check the talk page to make sure there's been no serious recent disagreement about the matter (checking the history helps too). And then, you can only trust claim as much as the source used. And don't trust things you hear in the general media without some fact checking.

  • by amicusNYCL (1538833) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:36PM (#27853869)

    I understand those words individually, but when you put them together like that they don't make sense.

  • by hduff (570443) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .ffudtyoh.> on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:39PM (#27853899) Homepage

    On the Diane Rehm Show on NPR, the topic today was the demise of newspapers and what could be done about it; suggestions included government bailouts and subsidies or reorganization as not-for-profit organizations. The "politically correct" argument was that they wanted to preserve the newspaper business model per se, but preserve "journalism" and all those high standards and ethics it embodied as opposed to the unprofessional world of bloggers and news aggregators who could (obviously) not hold themselves to high standards.

    Perhaps the journalists could be Jarre'd back to reality?

  • Well played (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rastoboy29 (807168) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:43PM (#27853949) Homepage
    If it had to be done, this was a good way to do it.  Maybe it should be done more.
  • by formattedFury (1549017) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:46PM (#27853967)
    And they tell me I can't use Wikipedia as a source for my high school research papers... Please, if the press can do it, I can do it.
  • A Good Read (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cornwallis (1188489) * on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:07PM (#27854147)
    I'd suggest reading Mark Helprin's "Digital Barbarism" for much more on this topic (as an aside from the main thrust supporting copyright). It amazes me how the Internet has lowered the bar. Hell, when my daughter was three years old she used to cite herself as an authority: "Daddy, according to me..."
  • ~Innovating (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drDugan (219551) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:24PM (#27854277) Homepage

    Why is Wikipedia no longer innovating?

    The basic premise of the project evolved rapidly as the encyclopedia was developed in the early years- creating rules, policies and a vibrant and effective community; and now is a massive and globe-changing entity. However, to remain relevant, the site and the ideas that drive it must continue to evolve. To me, as a slightly disinterested outside observer, it seems that Wikipedia hasn't changed what they do or how they do it now for several years.

    There is *so much* they could do to make explicit and transparent the edits, the timeliness of added information, and many other things - to handle issues like this - but they are not. Why?

    • Re:~Innovating (Score:5, Insightful)

      by teslatug (543527) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:51PM (#27854555)
      They got bogged down due to their own weight. It's not easy to do anything when you have millions of people using your site, millions of articles, etc. They were able to innovate when they were small, nimble, and could afford mistakes.
  • by w0mprat (1317953) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:41PM (#27854437)
    Check facts (Y/N):> Y

    Option not available. Please try another option.

    Check facts (Y/N):> N

    Publish article (Y/N):> Y
  • by this great guy (922511) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @10:05PM (#27855125)
    Everybody misses an important point in that story: the fact the student had to repeatedly introduce the phony quote in the article and barely succeeded in having it live for more than 24 hours demonstrates that wikipedia is pretty good at self-correcting itself !
    • by JeanBaptiste (537955) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:24PM (#27853753)

      [citation needed]

      • by goombah99 (560566) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:58PM (#27854073)

        [citation needed]

        [1]

        • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Morlark (814687) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @11:31PM (#27855619) Homepage

          Of course the said thing is, when it gets added back to the article, they'll just cite the mainstream newspapers that copied the phony quote. And then it'll become a part of the ever burgeoning body of Wikipedia's New Truth. Facts? Facts be damned, we don't need those in an encyclopedia.

          • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)

            by aywwts4 (610966) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @11:51PM (#27855751)

            I had this exact problem.

            It was a trivial fact, a submarine was listed as having four times the horsepower it really contained, since there were four engines some fuzzy math took place and this submarine just under four times more powerful than it's direct successor.

            The problem was the fact stood for years, I worked at a museum which actually had one of these submarines, Among my sources were A, the number written on the engines, and B, Dead tree books and manuals clearly stating the engine size.

            My vandalism was taken down because this fact stood so long it couldn't be false, I said it wasn't cited, how can you prove me wrong, He quickly found citation, hundreds of sites got their stats info from wikipedia, and as we all know "The Internet" is a more trustworthy souce than a real navy manual any day of the week.

      • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DiamondGeezer (872237) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @09:02PM (#27854647) Homepage
        Slashdot headlines with "Phony Wikipedia" should be marked {{tautology}}. The mere fact that supposedly responsible journalists are even citing Wikipedia shows what an intellectual cancer Wikipedia is on the Internet. Wikipedia is extremely difficult to avoid - there are many thousands of scrapes of Wikipedia around the Internet and millions of blogs that cite it. Any alternative to Wikipedia (and I don't mean Citizendium) had better grasp why Wikipedia is so easily disseminated and deliver something better.
        • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mdarksbane (587589) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @09:20PM (#27854775)

          Something more reliable, like the newspaper? The same newspapers that are apparently referencing wikipedia without checking it? Why would you trust them to find a more accurate source if wikipedia did not exist.

          Studies have shown wikipedia to be, in general, nearly as accurate as more established encyclopedias. But that isn't the point.

          The point is that by not hiding behind an establishment of respectability, wikipedia shows that trusting any single source for your information is ludicrous. When Britannica is wrong, no one writes an article about it.

            • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Sparklepony (1088131) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @11:10PM (#27855517)

              So, in a comment thread under a Slashdot article that's about mainstream media doing shoddy reporting, you cast aspersions on a study in a peer-reviewed journal and use a USA Today article to back your claim up?

              As an aside about this particular incident, I find it enlightening that despite active attempts by Fitzgerald to keep his bogus quote in the Wikipedia article the longest it managed to stay there was 24 hours. On the other hand the various news articles in non-user-editable media are stuck with it. So Wikipedia does seem to be working quite well here by comparison.

            • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)

              by phantomfive (622387) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @11:54PM (#27855769) Homepage Journal

              This, as mentioned, is a bogus study.

              It wasn't a bogus study. It involved a panel of experts, including nobel prize winner Roald Hoffmann; and Michael Gordin, the Princeton expert on Mendeleev. They've published their methodology, so you can review it. Your link, on the other hand, comes from an opinionist in USA Today, who basically makes snarky remarks about the situation without actually analyzing the situation. USA Today, while a fine newspaper by some counts, has by no means established itself as an arbiter of truth and rationality.

              You can check the methodology for yourself: go here and click on supplementary information [nature.com] and you will see the whole list of errors they found, both in Wikipedia and Britannica. Whether it turns out Wikipedia or Britannica is more reliable, it is clear Britannica is not the pinnacle of reliability they wish they were. Look at the error list: in nearly every Britannica article they found an error.

              Now that you've looked at the evidence itself, what is your opinion? Where were the errors in their methods? Do you find that their conclusions were poorly founded? You have no need to rely on USA Today, you can look for yourself. Which is always much more satisfying, in my opinion.

        • What the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by TrekkieGod (627867) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @09:34PM (#27854873) Homepage Journal

          The mere fact that supposedly responsible journalists are even citing Wikipedia shows what an intellectual cancer Wikipedia is on the Internet.

          It most certainly is not. It's exactly as bad for a journalist to quote wikipedia as it is for a journalist to quote britannica or any other encyclopedia. Journalists are supposed to use primary sources, and they're supposed to check those sources.

          Hell, I wasn't allowed to use encyclopedias as a source for my middle school papers, and you're saying the availability of wikipedia and it being "difficult to avoid" is an excuse for journalists? You don't go to a website to get a quote from the guy who just died, you call his estate and get information and statements from them.

          Wikipedia is fantastic when used for the purpose of an encyclopedia. In others words, it's a great place to get a general idea about a subject and figure out what aspects you want to look at when you start your research. You don't ever, ever cite one or use information from one directly.

          • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)

            by cbiltcliffe (186293) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @09:29PM (#27854843) Homepage Journal

            Seriously, we in the west want to get all high horsed about our "free media" and point fingers at places like North Korea where the news is state run. Personally, I say clean up our own back yard before complaining about the mess next door.

            Exactly. And at the same time, all the newspapers are claiming that the Internet is putting them out of business due to blogs and such, but that "citizen journalism" cannot compete with the quality of traditional journalism due to the costs of putting reporters on the ground in various newsbreaking places around the world.

            Then they go and pull a stupid stunt like this.
            If that "citizen journalism" that they complain about so much is so bad, why the hell are you using it for your sources?
            I don't care whether it's a single source or multiple. It simply says that they don't believe their own propaganda.

            • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Idiomatick (976696) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @11:45PM (#27855713)
              This was NOT an AP or Reuters screw up. They are the ONLY people that are really "putting reporters on the ground in various news breaking places around the world.". Please learn the difference.
              "the Guardian, the London Independent, on the BBC Music Magazine website and in Indian and Australian newspapers." -- These are completely different. What they do is have a bunch of people that sit at desks and write stories that are profitable. These fools can be replaced and they are being replaced.

              AFP, AP, Reuters are not the same. They cannot be replaced by blogging armies. If they fail we will be entering a new Dark Ages. We will have no real journalists.
    • Re:Wikipedia motto (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive (622387) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @07:37PM (#27853887) Homepage Journal
      And this is really good. Because people KNOW it is unreliable. In the past, they depended on things like Encyclopedia Brittanica, or *ahem* newspapers, thinking they were reliable, when the truth is, they were never any more reliable than a publicly editable website. And now people are becoming more aware of the unreliability of what they know.

      If you really want to know something, you have to verify it yourself. Don't rely on someone else's interview, go interview the person yourself. Don't rely on someone else's experiment, or someone else's first hand account, if you want to know something, verify it yourself. In many cases this is of course impractical, but at least you should be aware that your knowledge might not be accurate.

      Newspapers still have a place, and that is to get the information out quickly. They've never been accurate, but they do a good job letting you know roughly what happened so you can go out and investigate the matter in more detail if you need to.
      • Re:Wikipedia motto (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cdrguru (88047) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:22PM (#27854265) Homepage

        Sorry, but that is a absurd attitude. The whole idea of progress is that we can actually know that electric light bulbs work and why so we don't have to repeat the entire series of Thomas Edison's trials. OK, Edison was a tinkerer rather than a scientist but that doesn't mean we have to discount his work.

        Look it up in Encyclepedia Brittanica and you will find it there. Verified and checked by a lot more than one person. People with a professional regard for what they are doing. Do errors creep in? Sure they do, but they are not only caught they are accidental.

        Wikipedia's innaccuracies are intentional, it is part of the design. The general dumbing-down of knowledge and discounting "experts" in a wholesale manner. The idea that all knowledge is an opinion and everyone has an equally valid opinion if they care to express it.

        Does that mean that if I believe John F. Kennedy was killed by lizardmen from a far off planet that this is equally valid as people that believe he was killed by the mafia? On Wikipedia you might find either, on alternate days. And I bet I can find more than one source to cite about suit-wearing lizardmen being the real source of all our problems here on Earth. Sorry, the truth is not an opinion. It doesn't work for History and it doesn't work for Science.

        Rough quote from Stranger in a Strange Land: "Scientists indeed! Half guess work and half superstition." This is indeed the attitude of far too many today and certainly in the US the education system is doing nothing to combat this problem. This quote is from a book written in 1960 or so and is in defense of the "science" of astrology. Yes, there are plenty of people that believe that astrology is just as relevent as physics.

        Wikipedia is a silly idea that is just getting worse all the time. It was obvious it wasn't worth much from its inception to some people but every day that goes by you would think it would be clearer and clearer. Instead we have people defending it and claiming the silly foundation of Wikinonsense is true. Sorry, but science isn't an opinion. History isn't an opinion. There are facts and there are lies people want you to believe. Sorting them out is important, and you will never, ever be able to sort them out using Wikipedia as a reference.

        • Re:Wikipedia motto (Score:5, Insightful)

          by owlnation (858981) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:38PM (#27854411)

          Wikipedia is a silly idea that is just getting worse all the time.

          The parent's post is great, mod it up. My take on this is that, of course wikipedia is a silly idea. If only people could treat it that way. As a silly idea, it's quite a good silly idea. If wikipedia was about having fun with knowledge it would be one hell of a lot more useful than it currently is.

          Problem is, of course, the wikinazis. They don't think it's silly. They take it seriously (far too seriously) and fraudulently proclaim it to be something it isn't, and never will be -- a reliable source for information. This fraud, in turn, convinces the weak-minded to conclude it's reliable -- in this case the weak-minded are journalists, but it could be many other professions.

          If people stopped taking Wikipedia seriously, then it would be a lot more useful. And a lot more fun too. It might even accidentally become reliable that way too.

        • Re:Wikipedia motto (Score:5, Interesting)

          by phantomfive (622387) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:40PM (#27854429) Homepage Journal

          Sorry, but that is a absurd attitude.

          Only because you didn't understand my attitude.

          The whole idea of progress is that we can actually know that electric light bulbs work and why so we don't have to repeat the entire series of Thomas Edison's trials.

          If you want to have first-hand information about all those tests that didn't work, then yes you will do well to repeat them all. Most of us don't actually need that detail of information; most people are happy to flip a switch and have it work. And there is something that I have verified personally: 99% of the time when I buy a light bulb from the store, and plug it in, light comes out. Light bulbs work. I have verified that. If I want to know how they work, I will need to dig deeper.

          Verified and checked by a lot more than one person. People with a professional regard for what they are doing. Do errors creep in? Sure they do, but they are not only caught they are accidental.

          You may be unaware of this study, which suggests that Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica have similar error rates. You may not like the conclusion, so feel free to do your own study.

          Does that mean that if I believe John F. Kennedy was killed by lizardmen from a far off planet that this is equally valid as people that believe he was killed by the mafia? On Wikipedia you might find either, on alternate days.

          And now we get to my real point: everyone knows that wikipedia is unreliable. It is a feature. The only thing it is good for is as a starting place for research, a starting place for knowledge. And it does a very good job of that. Encyclopedia Britannica does an ok job at it too, but often people expect it to be more than a starting point, they expect it to be definitive. Which it is not.

          Sorry, but science isn't an opinion. History isn't an opinion. There are facts and there are lies people want you to believe. Sorting them out is important, and you will never, ever be able to sort them out using Wikipedia as a reference.

          Good thing no one expects that of Wikipedia. As a starting point for research, it is unsurpassed.

            • Re:Wikipedia motto (Score:5, Interesting)

              by phantomfive (622387) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @10:02PM (#27855103) Homepage Journal

              Long proven to be a skewed small-scale study carried out by biased researchers.

              Proven where? What part of the results were skewed? Why do you believe the researchers were biased? A number of people were involved, including Roald Hoffmann and Michael Gordin. Are you saying they were biased as well?

              They've published a list of the errors they found, so if you disagree you can go over the list and verify. Also of note is that there was an error in nearly every Britannica article they checked.

              Let's not mention this study again, other than to ridicule it.

              Why? It seems to be good research. Here is Nature's rebuttal to Britannica's arguments [nature.com]. Also, there you will find Britannica's argument itself. Read it, I think you will agree that the study seems to have been performed well.

          • Re:Wikipedia motto (Score:5, Insightful)

            by derGoldstein (1494129) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:55PM (#27854591)
            In absolute science categories, they do depend on experts, and in some areas these camps (or "tribal" mentality) helps, since a few people set the tone, and many others follow and "enforce" it, within a given field.
            It's when this happens around subjective categories that this become a problem. There's no real way to judge how "neutral" an article is other than asking other people for their opinion, which is never neutral.
            I really don't see Wikipedia as one cohesive blob of information. When it comes to exact sciences, it's excellent, and I rely on it heavily. When it comes to technology, it's almost as good, though there are, as you said, camps that could bias a subject overall.

            I never use it for politics, current events, or controversial individuals (or any controversial subject, for that matter). You're better off looking elsewhere, or at the very least only taking their articles as jumping-off points.

            By the way -- Jane Q. Public, in regards to that other comment thread [slashdot.org] -- you're right, my last comment was more in reaction to the rest of the comments, I usually don't jump to conclusions or make these types of assumptions.
        • Re:Wikipedia motto (Score:5, Interesting)

          by phantomfive (622387) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:49PM (#27854521) Homepage Journal
          I think things are changing. I think the popularity of the [citation needed] meme is an indication of this: even 10 years ago on the internet people would not ask for citations nearly as often as they do now, which shows people who are online at least are paying more attention to where things come from.

          A week or so ago, I was in a cafe, and a ~40 year old teacher was explaining loudly to her companions how the internet is changing the way we know things (and how she was uncomfortable with it).

          These days every high school or college student knows about Wikipedia, and they all know it is unreliable. It is only one step from realizing that one source is unreliable to realizing that many things are unreliable, and Wikipedia is opening the door for many people to this line of thought. This is a good thing.
    • Re:Rat Race (Score:5, Insightful)

      by unlametheweak (1102159) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @08:02PM (#27854101)

      That just goes to show how much of a rat race life is. People working as fast as they can to spit out crummy, non referenced work to please the higher-ups.

      It's not about working fast, or Wikipedia, or referencing sources. It's about people and companies making a professional living supplying news in a non-professional manner. Some people spend tens of thousands of dollars to go to school to learn how to do research and journalism, and some people actually write their own essays without any help from their friends or families. Those people, unfortunately, have the disadvantage of being honest and intelligent. When it comes down to it anybody can do journalism, but it's only people who can write good resumes that will get the job. It's the same in all industries. The world keeps on turning, however slanted the orbit may be.

      • Re:Rat Race (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nine-times (778537) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 06 2009, @09:22PM (#27854783) Homepage

        It's about people and companies making a professional living supplying news in a non-professional manner.... it's only people who can write good resumes that will get the job. It's the same in all industries.

        I think you're right about it being a wide-spread problem. It really only took a month in my first job to realize that most people at the company-- and it was a successful company-- weren't any good at their jobs. I was awestruck and wondered, "How can a company of such incompetent people be so successful?" and then I realized it was because our competitors were equally incompetent. It didn't take me much longer of looking around and talking to people to decide that it wasn't limited to my industry. Most people are not good at their jobs.

        I think that's why the banking system is in the state it's in. You have a bunch of people running these banks who aren't good at their jobs. They're doing what seems to be working for their colleagues and competitors, but it's the blind leading the blind. No one knows what they're doing.

        If that doesn't fill you with dread and terror, realize that it's the same for your doctors, your policemen, and everyone else who your life depends on. They're probably not very good at their jobs and they don't know what they're doing.

        • Re:Rat Race (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Throtex (708974) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @09:36PM (#27854891)

          And yet, somehow, we all know how to do everyone else's job better than they can! What a fucked up world -- should we all just shuffle our jobs around like in the game of Life? (Milton Bradley, not Conway)

          • Re:Rat Race (Score:5, Interesting)

            by PReDiToR (687141) on Wednesday May 06 2009, @09:38PM (#27854923) Homepage Journal
            Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't pension off all the old guys (and gals) that actually know WTF their job is for and how to do it properly?
            Bringing in new blood, bright young minds and college grads is the right idea, but have them work with the old guard for a while before they can change everything that kept the company running before they arrived with their new ideas and magic wands.

            The main problem with business is "maximising profits and lowering costs".
            Profits should be ploughed back into a company, not spread out to people who did little to deserve them. Costs should be high, especially for purchasing. The more you spend (generally) the better the products you're receiving, and the better the product you send out.

            Too many bean counters, unanimously untrusted, universally disrespected bosses and management that are only in place long enough to empty the profit pot and move on to another position of extreme power and no fallout for their mistakes.

            Everyone knows this, don't they?
            If you know who Scott Adams is, you should.
        • Re:Rat Race (Score:5, Insightful)

          by nine-times (778537) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 06 2009, @09:59PM (#27855079) Homepage

          Well, if you're looking for a journalist's job, I hope that you could write one hell of a cover letter, at least.

          You're right, but I can't help but wonder whether that's unfortunate. Is the most important qualification for a journalist that he can write really clever and impressive journalist-y prose? There's definitely a sort of writing you see these days in newspapers and magazines, and it's really great and pretty and reads like the sort of writing you'd expect to win awards, but it's awful.

          Every time I read an article on something I know much about, it's misleading, filled with inaccuracies, buries the main idea, and often enough, completely misses the point. Plus it's hard to read because it's too flowery and self-indulgent.

          All of this is just to say, maybe being able to write one hell of a cover letter isn't so much the point. Maybe it's better to find someone who's honest, thorough, and clear.