False Fact On Wikipedia Proves Itself

An anonymous reader writes "Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia."

Nothing new

[wjh31]

This false fact cycle has been done plenty of times before. There was one recently-ish regarding a football team in some european championship, a british paper included a very silly false fact from wikipedia (something about the fans wearing wellies on their heads or something along those lines) and in a similar way, the cycle was closed. I cant remember the exact details, im sure someone will follow with a link

This is a story?

[MyLongNickName]

I hate to bring this to the attention of the nerd community.... the world existed before the explosion of the internet. This is hard to believe, but true. I have it on good authority that the world started sometime in the 1920's.

That being said, this type of problem existed long before the internet "Person A" starts a rumor. Others pick up on it, and a reporter who talks to "Person A" gets his story confirmed by others who heard the story from Person A. Not new. Not news. The speed of things has definitely sped up in the last decade, but this happened also with the invention of the telephone, telegraph and television.

Also, another nice fact. Wikipedia is not your research center. It is a place to start. If you are using it as a source for your research paper, you should get an F.

Emperical evidence has supported this for ages

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a well known fact among editors. Make an edit to an article on an obscure topic and you have a finite time to verify the facts using online sources. Before long Google has indexed your change and your independent sources get relegated further down the list. After a little more time your article has been used as a source and soon it is not clear as to what is independent fact and what is derived from your own words.

Re:This is a story?

[bcmm]

Anyone who cites Wikipedia in a paper should fail, as everything even remotely contentious on Wikipedia is supposed to be backed up by a citation from a proper source. Wikipedia's use in writing papers is in telling you where to find material you can cite.

Re:Nothing new

[sam_handelman]

You're not kidding this is nothing new.

  The hebrew bible gets the order of Persian kings wrong. Josephus quotes list of Persian kings found in hebrew manuscript. Tada, the list of persian kings is independently verified!

  New technology enables this kind of thing to happen with amazing *speed*, but it always took careful consideration and scholarship to disentangle. If anything, having all those explicit timestamps makes this much easier in the information age, but the volume is probably greater than people can really process.

Re:I also hear...

[internerdj]

Once upon a time when news outlets reported on news, they needed to protect some of their sources because some of the information could result in retribution on the source. To get sources to open up they promised confidentiality where appropriate and as time went on this became the culture: The news has source authority based on the assumption they are practicing good journalism. As information has recently accelerated, there is less time for good journalism and instead we have good-enough journalism but they still maintain a front of source authority.

I don't get it

[squoozer]

Why does everyone seem to get so up in arms when something is wrong on Wikipedia or worse when something is changed to be wrong. Do people really think that a site such as Wikipedia, where anyone can edit (just about) anything, isn't going to get abused. To be perfectly honest I'm surprised it doesn't get abused more than it does. Wikipedia is a great starting point for research it should never be the end point.

It's not quite the same

[blind biker]

The Hebrew Bible (Tanach? I think the Torah is part of the Tanach, which should be most of the Old Testament. I might be rusty on this) does not quote Josephus' Antiquities, so your example doesn't quite fit.

Re:Wikipedia: a failed experiment

[internerdj]

As opposed to someone else typed it into a book? My books are not filled completely with references to peer-reviewed papers or committee approved technical specs. And this doesn't exactly give me warm fuzzies about the integrity of publishing houses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights [wikipedia.org] The internet is a mixture of facts and inaccuracies, so is any published work. The only difference is now you don't have to be rich to make your mixture of facts and inaccuracies heard.

Research is both about weeding out the important stuff from the unimportant stuff but weeding out true stuff from untrue stuff. Banning wikipedia or failing someone for a refence to it is just pointless. Wikipedia is good for a starting point for research, a representation of what the general public thinks about a topic(factual accuracy being unimportant in that case), and a good exercise in critical thinking (Does it make sense? Can I find other sources that back up what I found? What do the edits/discussions say about the information presented? Why is that important to the topic?).

Re:1984?

[owlnation]

So, um, what grade do you suppose you'll get in my class?

An unfair one. It's disturbing that you are in a position of power. You are obviously discouraging open-mindedness and creative thought. Many newspapers and journals are a valid source of information in many subjects. Obviously there needs to be caution with them, as there must be with ANY source, but newspapers are legally accountable.

An opinion piece in a newspaper isn't worth much, but an interview, with direct quotes for example, is. Newspapers are used all the time as sources for University level historical research. More than one newspaper is better of course.

I don't know what you teach, but you probably shouldn't be teaching. Der Spiegel is for the most part an ethical publisher, it's certainly exposed many things -- such as neo-nazism -- than other outlets have failed to find.

Re:This is a story?

[oodaloop]

In the intelligence community, we call it circular reporting, and it also predates the internet.

Re:Nothing new

[PRMan]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that recent archaeology has, once again, proved the scriptures true in this area (regarding the Darius/Cyrus relationship, if Gubaru is, in fact, another name for Darius who was a regent ruling in place for Cyrus, making neither of them before or after the other).

Of course, I don't know if this is true since you didn't list any examples of what you are talking about.

Hmmm ...

[OneSmartFellow]

... could (and probably has) happen with almost any source. The advantage of Wikipedia is that it's self-correcting (not the same as auto-correcting), and shows a history, something not (freely) available with other private knowledge-bases.

Yet another attempt to discredit Wikipedia - Oh well, I know I'll keep using it, as long as it's available, in the same way I use any source of information - with due skepticism.

Re:This is a story?

[linhares]

not if the article is deleted by those fucks

read it again?

[Mathinker]

The post you critique claims that Josephus quoted the Tanach, not the other way around.

Re:primary sources discouraged

[Random Walk]

The problem is that wikipedia itself discourages the use of primary sources by wikipedia authors. The reason they give is that using primary sources may lead to "original research", which is strongly discouraged as well.

Re:This is a story?

[mdwh2]

There isn't a "verifiability over truth" policy - rather, the threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth. You're reading it in the wrong direction: this policy doesn't mean that untrue "verifiable" things should be added. Rather, it's to stop people claiming that things should be added because they claim it's true, even though no one can verify it

Yes, it's unfortunate that sometimes seemingly "verifiable" things can turn out to be untrue. But the same situation would have occurred if the policy was "truth" - since someone would still be claiming this fact was true, based on what the media article said (or perhaps, not based on anything).

"Verifiable" is meant to be a subset of "truth".

email OTRS

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia almost always avoids original research, because original research requires that they have staff on hand who will vet the information, and Wikipedia doesn't have the staff on hand to do this.

Biographical mistakes are one of the few cases where Wikipedia makes an exception. Please email OTRS [wikipedia.org], and they'll make sure that a trusted person reviews the information, and corrects the article. The fact that people who contact OTRS provide their email address (and possibly more contact info) means that you (for once) have more credibility than some random anonymous vandal.

obama inauguration estimate

[Straif]

Same type of 'fact checking' happened with the Obama inauguration estimate.

1) News papers reported an estimate of 2 million people.

2) Parks service (which stopped counting crowds after the Million Man March a few years back after their analysis was way below the politically correct estimate) quotes the newspapers.

3)When asked for verification of their numbers the newspaper points to the Parks Services numbers.

Most independant analysis of satellite photographs pegs the number at somewhere between 800k-1.2m ; including estimates for people in transit. Still a very impressive number but nowhere near the hyped multimillions the press had been pushing for weeks so essentially ignored.

The Washington Post did do a follow up piece which exposes some of the problems (after it was pointed out to them that they were the Parks Services source for the 1.8 figure in the first place) but even though they still headline the 1.8m figure it doesn't seem any of their other sources come withing 500k of that number.

In the new age of media, speed of data, and it's ability to match expectations, sadly far outweigh accuracy.

Re:Whatever happened to research?

[staeiou]

That's the 21st century version of failing a student for referencing a book from a "popular press" like Penguin, Harper, Random House, Doubleday, etc. No joke, one of my professors told me that when he was in grad school, he was publicly berated for citing one such book, even though it was a reprinted out-of-copyright classic. He was told he should have gotten the reprint published by a university press.