Wikipedia's New Definition of Truth 428
Hugh Pickens writes "Simson Garfinkel has an interesting essay on MIT Technology Review in which he examines the way that Wikipedia has redefined the commonly accepted use of the word 'truth.' While many academic experts have argued that Wikipedia's articles can't be trusted because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted, studies have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. 'But wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience,' says Garfinkel. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is verifiability — that it appeared in some other publication, but there is a problem with appealing to the authority of other people's written words: many publications don't do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right. Wikipedia's policy of 'No Original Research' also leads to situations like Jaron Lanier's frustrated attempts to correct his own Wikipedia entry based on firsthand knowledge of his own career. So what is Wikipedia's truth? 'Since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it's the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.'"
Wikipedia takes the truth very seriously (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Food for Thought (Score:5, Informative)
To add to my point, the Nintendo DSi announcement is a perfect example. Take a gander at the Slashdot story:
http://games.slashdot.org/games/08/10/02/2116202.shtml [slashdot.org]
"Nintendo finally came out with a solution to the Wii's lack of storage capacity -- a 2GB SD card from which users can execute games"
Sounds pretty cool, eh? Expect that it's wrong. Nintendo announced a solution to DOWNLOAD games to the SD Card. At no point did they confirm an executable solution. (In fact, they seemed intent on steering away from such an announcement.)
But Slashdot's reporting was not the worst. The worst was GameSpot [gamespot.com], a site that SHOULD by all rights be authoritative. Yet here they are putting words into Reggie's mouth:
9:23] "Iwata is addressing the problem of Wii storage," he says. "Soon you will be able to download and store virtual console and WiiWare titles directly on your SD card, and play them off your SD card. This will make the Wii download experience much easier."
I emailed a more reputable editor who was at the event and confirmed for a fact that those words were never spoken. Yet many, many people quoted GameSpot's poor journalism as proof positive that Nintendo announced a solution to execute games off of SD Cards.
What is a site like Wikipedia supposed to do?
Thankfully, this is a case where a mountain of solid reporting existed to counteract the poor reporting. So Wikipedia reports the correct information. But what if this was more obscure information? How would Wikipedia know who to trust? How would they be able to check again bad reporting?
Answer: They can't. Reporters must be help accountable for the factual nature of their statements. (In the case of GameSpot, that means they should have issued a retraction.) If they cannot maintain a reasonable level of journalistic standards, the industry as a whole should start advertising them as an unreliable source.
Multiple sources (Score:5, Informative)
That's why multiple sources are the best. Whenever sources disagree, the more reliable [wikipedia.org] sources are trusted over less reliable sources.
That's just not true. Many talk pages are filled with disputes over "my source X is more reliable than your source Y because ...". That's ultimately a very healthy discussion. And WP:RS [wikipedia.org] does say that some sources aren't reliable enough to be worth including at all.
Notability is King (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A Reasonable Aggregate of Truth (Score:3, Informative)
"a reasonable aggregate of truth."
Many years ago, someone coined the term "consensus reality". I think that is more than appropriate here. What Wikipedia does is create "consensus truth", where things are true if there is a consensus that they are. That's independent of fact, although there is a fairly strong correlation. However, there is no causation. There's quite a bit on WP that's verifiably false - but the falsifications never make it because they violate some WP policy. Lanier is a good example, I know a couple more like that.
WP is an interesting experiment in expanding the scientific method by removing the "peer" from "peer-review". Ironically, it works exactly there where we-as-common-humans are peers - in the facts of everyday life, that are within our capabilities to verify and thusly thanks to the vast popularity of WP, there'll always be someone to spot the error and correct it.
By my estimate, it fails on non-mainstream topics, be they obscure or just complicated. Also in anything subjective, where you get edit wars because of differing opinions.
Verifiability, not truth (Score:5, Informative)
If readers sometimes look to it for truth, well, they're misusing it.
the problem with wikipedia (Score:2, Informative)
What really gets me about wikipedia is stuff like Heavy Metal (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) [wikipedia.org]. The guy loses the Afd and so what does he do? Merges every episode, save that one, into List of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episodes [wikipedia.org]. You see - this user knows he couldn't get consensus by an AfD so he engages in backroom deals to gain support.
Of course, that doesn't top Torchic [wikipedia.org]. A front page featured article with 20 paragraphs and 46 citations now reduced to redirecting to a list of pokemon, with 2-3 paragraphs (depending on whether or not a one sentence paragraph counts) and no citations. Amazing stuff.
Jaron's new definition of "film director" (Score:2, Informative)
Jaron Lanier is complaining that Wikipedia listed him as a "film director". He did make a film once. Apparently it sucked, and he's embarrassed about it. He's whining because Wikipedia mentions that part of his life, and he'd like to delete that from his resume.
That's not a Wikipedia problem.
Re:The problems with wikipedia: (Score:3, Informative)
It's further clouded by the fact that some pages that have many references are in fact linked to sources which are also dubious. You see references and can be fooled into thinking they are true, but they just link to random webpages -- probably written by the author of the wp article.
Most wikipedia pages on commercial products, companies, and bands(especially) use a fansite or the official site of the product as their primary sources. Hence, large sections of wikipedia are nothing more than promotional material for bands and commercially available products. There's sentences and links to bands in many, many unrelated wikipedia pages -- if not most pages on the entire site.
The search thing is a real problem. Because of Google's skewed ranking of the site as a whole, a wikipedia page will most often appear higher in search results than that of the primary source any article is linked to. This is not good. Not good at all.
Re:And of course (Score:1, Informative)
The Iraq example just goes to show how complicated the situation is. In fact US troops were greeted as liberators in Iraq--by the Kurds and Shia. Much less so by the Sunni. When the truth is complicated the effect of rule by consensus is often gross oversimplification and the elimination of complexity and nuance.
And of course when people have an ideological/political axe to grind (as you obviously do) it becomes even more complicated.
Re:And of course (Score:2, Informative)
Not trying to buy yellowcake. Already bought the stuff, 550 metric tons, in fact: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/ [msn.com]
Re:And of course (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, no. From the very article you cite ...
Meaning, the claims by the US government before the invasion of Iraq that they had been recently and actively trying to buy yellow cake on the open market are false.
We're talking about removing older stockpiles of this stuff, not whether or not they'd ever had any. That little bit about trying to buy it from Nigeria was quite resoundingly demonstrated to have been a forgery.
It's easy to keep repeating the same falsehood and claim it's true. In this case, the assertion about yellow cake wrt Iraq and the justifications for military action simply aren't borne out to be true.
Cheers
Re:Food for Thought (Score:5, Informative)
That quote refers to something called the Maginot Line; a line of heavily fortified positions on the French border prior to WWII. The "consensus truth" (a term I doubt they had heard of back then, it is so politically correct sounding) was that the Germans could NEVER break through such a heavily defended line.
That was the French "truth". The German "truth" was that they walked past the Maginot Line (because it was fixed and could not adapt to changes in attack plans) and into Paris.
"Consensus truth" is a waste of time and an insult to intelligent people. The summary shows why. If someone who was actually there because it was his life cannot get correct information into Wikipedia, that doesn't mean his life was different than he thought. It means that the Wikipedia "consensus truth" is balderdash. In other words, forty million Frenchmen CAN be wrong.
Re:Food for Thought (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Jaron's new definition of "film director" (Score:5, Informative)
He is a director in the same sense I am a door to door salesman, mechanic, dirt bike rider, and diaper wetter.
Saying I once did those things is accurate. Saying that I "am" any of them is not because it creates the belief that I DO or have recently tried to sell something to someone, fixed broken machinery, ridden a low powered motorcycle on a dirt track, or soiled myself.
If only English were a rich enough language to denote the difference between what people once did and what they do now. Oh, wait, it is. :)
Re:Food for Thought (Score:3, Informative)
They were just items that had been buried during the Iran-Iraq war and were long past their shelf life even if properly stored. No one seriously used them as proof.
Re:Food for Thought (Score:4, Informative)
That is untrue.
"Consensus truth" is nothing more than a politically correct way of saying "opinion" that dresses opinion up in a fancy dress and makes it look like more than it really is. It's a way of making EVERYONE correct, while not having to point out that some people's "truth" just doesn't fit with the facts. It's good for their "self esteem" and politically correct not to think that some truths really are absolute.
The encyclopedia of the time could easily give just the facts about the line, which is what truth ultimately is based on. Real truth, not "consensus truth" which can ignore facts in favor of rumor and innuendo. "The Maginot Line consists of X number of fortified positions spread across a line from Y to Z, intended to defend the country against German attack". Those are facts. "The Maginot Line is an invincible fortified defense system ..." is an opinion, or what would be called "consensus truth" today.
Some of these might be true, but the thing is, the wikipedia has no way of being smarter than the consensus.
Yes, it does. The same way anyone has of being smarter than the consensus. Look for facts and not opinions. The fact that they don't allow one of their victims to correct his own biography is demonstration that truth really isn't the goal of Wikipedia, it's popularity. Let everyone participate, even if they don't know what the hell they are talking about.
Here's an example of how to beat "consensus truth". The "consensus truth" is that the current US tax system is unfair to the poor and lets the rich off the hook. ("Unfair" and "off the hook" are opinion words, a quick way to identify "consensus truth".) The FACTS show that the poor already pay nothing, or very close to nothing, in federal taxes. The bottom 50% of taxpayers by income pay just 3.3% of the tax revenues (and a large number of them pay 0) while earning 13% of the income, while the top 0.1% of incomes pay 17% of the revenue while earning just 9% of the income. That's the truth, and it directly contradicts the "consensus truth", which shows that the consensus truth is not.
Re:Food for Thought (Score:3, Informative)
No, Alchemy was not equivalent to new age nonsense. Alchemy was a brand new science at Newton's time, and its boundaries and laws were unknown. It was perfectly reasonable and logical to assume that since you could change the color of compounds, or change one substance into another by mixing and heating things that there might be a recipe for turning lead into gold. Today we understand the laws of chemistry and know that lead and gold are elements and cannot, by chemical means, be transformed into each other. What we see as "new age nonsense" today was merely cutting edge science back in the day.
Re:Food for Thought (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, but the 'consensus' only existed in the minds of the Americans. Most of us Europeans could smell the bullshit, MWD's or not.