The Role of Experts In Wikipedia 266
Hugh Pickens writes "Episteme, a magazine about the social dimensions of knowledge, has a special issue on the epistemology of mass collaboration, with many of the articles focusing on Wikipedia. One of the most interesting articles is by Lawrence M. Sanger on the special role of experts in the age of Wikipedia. Sanger says the main reason that Wikipedia's articles are as good as they are is that they are edited by knowledgeable people to whom deference is paid, although voluntarily, but that some articles suffer precisely because there are so many aggressive people who 'guard' articles and drive off others (PDF), including people more expert than they are. 'Without granting experts any authority to overrule such people, there is no reason to think that Wikipedia'a articles are on a vector toward continual improvement,' writes Sanger. Wikipedia's success cannot be explained by its radical egalitarianism or its rejection of expert involvement, but instead by its freedom, openness, and bottom-up management and there is no doubt that many experts would, if left to their own devices, dismantle the openness that drives the success of Wikipedia. 'But the failure to take seriously the suggestion of any role of experts can only be considered a failure of imagination,' writes Sanger. 'One need only ask what an open, bottom-up system with a role for expert decision-making would be like.' The rest of the articles on the epistemology of mass collaboration are available online, free for now." Sanger was one of the founders of Wikipedia, and of its failed predecessor Nupedia, who left the fold because of differences over the question of the proper role of experts. Sanger forked Wikipedia to found Citizendium, which we have discussed on several occasions. After 2-1/2 years, Citizendium has a few tenths of a
percent as many articles as Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Experts? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wikipedia Experts? (Score:3, Informative)
The average is usually below the best and above the worst. People "know" different truths. That wouldn't be much of a problem if only proven facts could be entered into Wikipedia, but Wikipedia actually uses a simple truth-by-discussion approach, weighed by the dedication which people are willing to put behind their point of view. This approach is cemented by the "no original research" rule. A citation is not proof, just a deference to an external evaluation mechanism. It is therefore no surprise that any one Wikipedia article isn't at the top of its field. Wikipedia's strength is the collection, not the individual factoid. It doesn't need the experts to achieve average results for the whole, as long as it can keep the other end away too.
Re:Wikipedia Experts? (Score:3, Informative)
That wouldn't be much of a problem if only proven facts could be entered into Wikipedia, but Wikipedia actually uses a simple truth-by-discussion approach, weighed by the dedication which people are willing to put behind their point of view.
No, it's about verifiable sources. You shouldn't be discussing what's true, you should be discussing what's supported by references. That's a fundamental Wikipedia policy.
This approach is cemented by the "no original research" rule.
Allowing original research would give the problem you claim exists - as then you would have people claiming that what they say is true based on their "research", despite a lack of any sources.
A citation is not proof, just a deference to an external evaluation mechanism.
What would constitute a proof?
It is therefore no surprise that any one Wikipedia article isn't at the top of its field.
Well, if the worst that can be said of Wikipedia is that it's not the number 1 best reference, I don't think that's too bad for something that's free on the web.
Re:Wikipedia Experts? (Score:3, Funny)
Yours?
Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we have any good reason to trust Sanger as anything other than a provocateur? What is the meat of the analysis? That open editing and cooperation is what explains wikipedia's success? I'll agree with him there. And that control of articles or processes by internal "experts" is damaging to that open editing and cooperation? I'll take two, please. He's the big problem.
We don't really know how to make a reasonably reliable, open and comprehensive encyclopedia without some deference to "local fiefdoms". We just don't. People don't contribute for money or fame. They don't have marching orders on which articles to keep free from vandalism or improve to featured status. They control their own production. Where that is the case they will bring themselves to edit on subjects they like and edit those articles in order to bring the distribution of coverage to their liking. We have to allow a little of that because it is those people who keep it from being a nuthouse. Those people spend 20-30 hours on wikipedia a week. They watch recent changes to keep subtle vandalism out. They fight back against civil POV pushers. They are an absolute necessity.
To they come with drawbacks? Hell yes. There are probably thousands of people who have avoiding wikipedia as editors because their first edits were reverted--even though they might have been productive. I find lots of those reversions and usually don't get a cooperative attitude from editors when I call them on it. Those people make subtle cultural distinctions (I like this and not that). Those people form cliques and cabals. Those people make processes and bureaucracy.
But I don't have a better way of organizing all of that free labor. Does Larry? Do you?
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:2)
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sanger has been saying stuff like this ever since he started Citizendium, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and Citizendium sucks.
I think the problem is evident in his statement quoted in the summary: "Without granting experts any authority to overrule such people, there is no reason to think that Wikipedia'a articles are on a vector toward continual improvement". Well, unless you count the fact that collectively Wikipedia's articles have quite obviously been on a vector toward continual improvement since Wikipedia started. Wikipedia's article quality is not monotonic, but it is increasing. Under what metric is Wikipedia not getting better? Larry, stop speaking in generalities and point us to some actual evidence that Wikipedia articles are not increasing in quality.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, unless you count the fact that collectively Wikipedia's articles have quite obviously been on a vector toward continual improvement since Wikipedia started.
This is not obvious at all. Let alone "quite obvious". Indeed, it is false.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Informative)
You can say a lot of things about wikipedia, but if you say that the majority of articles are worse off now than in (say) 2002, you'll be full of shit. You can point to some good articles in the past that have degraded from random edits. Or articles which have been subject to turf wars. But on the whole, there is improvement.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Insightful)
An improvement towards what though? Most articles have settled down to reflect the viewpoint of the people that watch them. If you agree with that viewpoint, that's an improvement. If you don't it's not and you give up citing, editing or reading them.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:4, Insightful)
An improvement towards what though? Most articles have settled down to reflect the viewpoint of the people that watch them. If you agree with that viewpoint, that's an improvement. If you don't it's not and you give up citing, editing or reading them.
And for non-controversial subjects, that generally results in a pretty good article.
For controversial subjects, if the article is bad it's normally because policies aren't being followed: for example, the 'Apollo Moon Hoax' article (whatever the title may be today as it gets renamed regularly) has been a disaster zone for years, but that's primarily because it's an enormous violation of WP:UNDUE.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Interesting)
The trouble is, lots of things can become controversial. Best example is "The Medieval Warm period". As far as I can tell everyone who looked for evidence of this in things like ice core temperature records found it. Unfortunately the fact that the average temperature of the Earth has been warmer in the past is awkward to people who claim that the current warming is unprecedented and an iminent disaster. So the Medieval Warm period article gets attacked by people trying to claim that the warming back then never happened.
And if you look at the article today, it frankly doesn't make any sense. On the one hand the intro says that the MWP never happened. The if you look the "By Region" section it clearly did. And the talk page is a complete warzone with MWP believers quoting The Telegraph, MWP disbelievers quoting sites like realclimate. Unfortunately the MWP disbelievers have got arbcom to label all the sources that are hostile to them as unreliable sources.
Frankly you're better off ignoring Wikipedia and looking at primary sources, i.e. people that actually looked for evidence.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period [wikipedia.org]
Initial research
The Medieval Warm Period was a time of warm weather around 800-1300 AD during the European Medieval period. Initial research on the MWP and the following Little Ice Age (LIA) was largely done in Europe, where the phenomenon was most obvious and clearly documented. It was initially believed that the temperature changes were global. However, this view has been questioned; the 2001 IPCC report summarises this research, saying "...current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries". The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that the "idea of a global or hemispheric "Medieval Warm Period" that was warmer than today however, has turned out to be incorrect" and that what those "records that do exist show is that there was no multi-century periods when global or hemispheric temperatures were the same or warmer than in the 20th century". Indeed, global temperature records taken from ice cores, tree rings, and lake deposits, have shown that, taken globally, the Earth actually averaged slightly cooler (by 0.03 degrees Celsius) during the 'Medieval Warm Period' than in the early- and mid-20th century
Of course if you scroll down you to the By World Region bit of the article you find
North Atlantic
The last written records of the Norse Greenlanders are from a 1408 marriage in the church of Hvalsey â" today the best-preserved of the Norse ruins.
A radiocarbon-dated box core in the Sargasso Sea shows that the sea surface temperature was approximately 1 ÂC (1.8 ÂF) cooler than today approximately 400 years ago (the Little Ice Age) and 1700 years ago, and approximately 1 ÂC warmer than today 1000 years ago (the Medieval Warm Period).[6]
During the MWP wine grapes were grown in Europe as far north as southern Britain
i.e. the MWP seems to be quite real in the North Atlantic and Europe.
North America
The Vikings took advantage of ice-free seas to colonize Greenland and other outlying lands of the far north.[11] The MWP was followed by the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling that lasted until the 19th century, and the Viking settlements eventually died out. In the Chesapeake Bay, researchers found large temperature excursions during the Medieval Warm Period (about 800â"1300) and the Little Ice Age (about 1400â"1850), possibly related to changes in the strength of North Atlantic thermohaline circulation.[12] Sediments in Piermont Marsh of the lower Hudson Valley show a dry Medieval Warm period from AD 800â"1300.
So the MWP and LIA seems quite real in North America.
and if you read Other Regions, it seems to be real there in Africa, the Antarctic, Japan and the Pacific Ocean too. All of which disagrees with the IPCC/NOAA quotes in the summary.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Interesting)
The article does not seem like an amazing piece of writing though and is only rated C-class by Wikipedia itself. Such articles are expected to have problems, until someone takes the time to fix them up....
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Interesting)
During the MWP wine grapes were grown in Europe as far north as southern Britain
And today wine grapes are grown as far north as southern Sweden - more proof that it is warmer today than during the MWP.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed; can you provide citations that Wikipedia's aggregate quality has improved?
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies [wikipedia.org]
Dig in. Or we could look at the increase in "Featured" articles [wikipedia.org] and "Good" article stats [wikipedia.org], though the latter is not a community process but an individual process.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Interesting)
The best is the type of discussion now going on thousands of places. Early on the argument was whether Wikipedia could create a viable encyclopedia, Wikipedia vs. Encarta essentially. A few years ago the argument was about Wikipedia vs. Britannica. Now the question is Wikipedia vs. specialized encyclopedias in their specialty.
That's progress.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, unless you count the fact that collectively Wikipedia's articles have quite obviously been on a vector toward continual improvement since Wikipedia started.
Citation Needed.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah there really isn't a much better way. I ran into this recently on an article on Wikipedia on the Super Nintendo release date. I was a video game reviewer in the early 90's and have a letter signed by Nintendo's PR firm stating I was getting a review system before launch (which was a pretty typical thing for them to do). The letter was dated the same date as when the Wikipedia article said the system was actually released.
Given this evidence I scanned the letter and posted it to let them know their date was off. Their response was that they couldn't use the letter as proof the date was wrong because they only used published sources of information. Unfortunately the only published sources they had were a handful of websites currently online that had the wrong date written down (no doubt copied from each other).
At first I was taken aback by this as it was a bit odd that they would turn down physical evidence, but after thinking about it, it was obvious they didn't know me from Adam and can't just take people's word for things at face value, otherwise people could "prove" whatever they wanted. Those kinds of check and balances probably produce entries that aren't always perfect, but it's a lot better than the alternative in my mind.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, I have no objection to vandalism being taken down, but the biggest flaw I see in Wikipedia is a lot of content gets deleted for no reason (face it, storage and bandwidth is dirt cheap).
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Informative)
One of the main problems of Wikipedia is it has firm guidelines on what it is and what it is not.
Actually, I wish. It's simply not true. They may have a few core rules (e.g. the one you complain about) that are quite rigid, but overall there is virtually no rule in Wikipedia that is not subject to modification - including by certain senior people at Wikipedia - when circumstances dictate it.
Don't take my word for it - I got it from the horse's mouth [ted.com]. He says it in so many words.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:2, Insightful)
Except wikipedia doesn't believe it belongs on wikipedia, it is why it is taken down. If you want to start a wiki about various games and include all the infinite detail and trivia about it, you can. You can even get it linked in the external links. There is a certain subset of the population of editors who can't seem to tell the difference between an encyclopedia and everything every written, said, thought and just made up about a subject ever. That being said the 10,000 sub articles on pokemon needs to be nuked from orbit. Articles are meant to provide all the information the average person would find useful about a subject. Someone who is not a world of warcraft player, which is something 99.998% of the population of the world, doesn't remotely care what spells some paladin gets access to at level 27. It isn't remotely useful to their understanding of the subject. Articles are usually made by players, but not for players. Try being objective.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:2, Funny)
Wait, "wikipedia doesn't believe it belongs on wikipedia"?
Great, Now I'm going to have to update the Wikipedia page that lists all things that aren't listed in Wikipedia again.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Interesting)
Articles are meant to provide all the information the average person would find useful about a subject.
By that argument most articles about physics and math could be deleted, because they are pretty much completly useless for somebody not working in that field.
An encyclopedia is a concept that is based around the limitations of paper, Wikipedia isn't printed on paper and therefore should not follow the same restrictions.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia, not being a living being, is utterly unable to believe anything. Some deletionist scum, on the other hand, can only get it up by exercising petty power by deciding what article stays and what goes. It's the closest the ever get to wielding power over life and death (I hope).
This is why I no longer contribute to Wikipedia and resist the impulse to correct any mistakes I notice: the reward is having my work deleted or reverted by some antisocial cretin who got kicked out from the Neo-Nazi party due to his excessive authoritarianism and has no other outlets for his resulting frustrations.
Mod me flamebait, it doesn't change the truth.
Today's featured article is about Thomas Cranmer, a archbishop of Canterbury in the early 1500's. The average person is unlikely to find that information at all useful for any purpose.
Someone who isn't a historian, which is something 99.998% of the population of the world, doesn't remotely care about who led a subset of English church half a millennium ago.
It isn't remotely useful, period.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't have the intellectual capacity to understand that I was talking about wikipedia as its community of editors then I can't wait for the rest of what you have to say..
mmm insults against faceless people. We're really getting to it now. Obviously you had some pet page you created that was deleted for some reason. Things are not made better by endlessly adding to them. Do you think when a director shoots a movie that he includes every last take and scene he shot in the final product? No. In order to create a good body of written work things need to be taken out. This applies to articles and to the encyclopedia as a whole.
Nope, but the average person who might be interested in him (for whatever reason) will likely find only an adequate amount of information about him and not an endless list of everything he had for breakfast throughout his entire life.
Actually there may be a number of students in university classes who could care a great deal about him, christians may find themselves interested, etc. But that is besides the point. I was making a point about excessive detail in articles. You're trying to compare that to an article about a minor historical figure. Two very different things. An article on World of Warcraft is quite appropriate. It is a notable subject. Delving into minutia with raiding strategies, item guides, etc isn't.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not community who decides to delete a page or reverse an edit, it's an individual editor. The tendency of Wikipedia editors to take some article as their "own" and guard it jealously is infamous, and repeatedly referred in this very discussion.
Like I said: I've had my work deleted or reverted once too many times to bother anymore. It's not an issue of pet page but a general feeling of "fuck this shit, I'm outta here."
Actually, Hitchcock did just that. Not that it matters; we aren't talking about prose, we are talking about an encyclopaedia, a collection of information. An encyclopaedia is made better by adding information to it. You aren't supposed to read through it all, as you are in a novel, but only the bits that interest you.
So now the criterion has changed from "not interested in the subject", as it was for WoW paladins, to "interested in the subject". Funny how that goes.
No, you said that someone who isn't a WoW player isn't interested in the abilities of WoW paladin class of certain level. Well, you're absolutely right: they won't be. I'm not, for example. However, using that as a criterion for deleting said details is foolish, since doing it consistently means deleting pretty much all information about anything; after all, few people are interested in the details of something which doesn't interest them even in general.
No. Two things which might interest some people, but for most people couldn't care less. In fact I'd say that there are likely more people interested in the details of WoW gameplay than the details of the history of English church.
"Notable" is almost as ingenius as "interstate commerce" in that it can mean exactly what the editor wants it to mean. And just as the interstate commerce clause, it too is used to justify arbitrary abuse of authority. Or, as the saying goes: "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and petty power corrupts all out of proportion to actual power."
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Interesting)
And with that you've shown a fundamental misunderstanding of wikipedia. Only in the case of a speedy deletion does 1 person decide to delete something. Even in that case a regular editor first tags it as a concern as meeting a criterion for that and then an administrator reviews that request. The rest of the articles are put to a community discussion for deletion where over 5 days people debate if the article should stay. The only situation in which a single person might decide all by themselves to delete something is in the case of a blatant attack page or nonsense.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why they just completed a six million dollar fund raising campaign. With cheap disk space, and cheap bandwidth, and volunteers doing the work... where is the money going?
Setting that aside, the problem isn't the cost of disk space or bandwidth - the problem is the unseen cost of maintenance. Every article on Wikipedia requires some portion of an editors time to maintain accuracy, completeness, coherency, etc..., and to clean up behind vandals. And there are only so many editors at any given time. Too many articles means rot accumulates in the corners and moves inward. Too many articles means too many stubs that remain untouched. Too many articles means an increasing number of articles that say the same thing from different points of views.
And frankly, based on a daily random sampling of articles, Wikipedia seems to be losing the battle.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:2)
And there are only so many editors at any given time.
Well, yeah, because the rest of them got annoyed over that deletionism and just isn't contributing to Wikipedia any more. The whole problem with deletions is that they happen without a valid logical reason, they happen in a non-democratic manner (i.e. number of people writing the article doesn't help against a single admin wanting to delete it) and they quite often happen on articles that are quite useful.
I have stumbled across interesting articles that got deleted later on far more often then about articles being vandalized.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Informative)
With cheap disk space, and cheap bandwidth, and volunteers doing the work... where is the money going?
$130K - Board expenses, including D&O insurance
$472K - Executive director expenses. Includes salaries for Executive Director and Deputy Director; some fundraising and travel expenses; consultants and contractors; staff and volunteer development
$2.7M - Technology. Includes salaries for technical staff, servers, bandwidth and contractor expenses.
$1.6M - Office & Admin. Includes salaries for finance/admin staff, audit fees, fundraising expenses, office rent, office supplies, bank fees, etc.
$595K - Outreach programs. Includes salaries for program staff, public outreach expenses, communications expenses.
$357K - Legal.
$96K - Wikimania. Includes travel for board, advisory board and staff.
Gee, that was hard. Took all of 2 minutes to find this info.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can "prove" things via publishing that letter in a book. The people with money still successfully control information through Wikipedia. What a waste.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:2)
Not that you necessarily care right now, but you could consider sending the scanned copy of the letter to the published sources. Wikipedia is supposed to be an aggregation of published information on the web. You need change the sources, not it itself.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, because I had a related problem. A series of related articles I wished to edit had considerable problems. I worked on the item described in one of the articles while I was in the Navy, I had the unclassified manuals at one elbow, at the other elbow I had a stack of expensive reference books... All were trumped because a handful of websites all referenced the same handful of coffee table books - and disagreed with me.
Except there aren't any checks and balances - there is only whether or not the guy you discussing the issue with has more time on his hands and whether or not he can quote an interpretation of policy that supports his position. Your story is one of how the checks and balances fail.
Book references (Score:2)
I worked on the item described in one of the articles while I was in the Navy, I had the unclassified manuals at one elbow, at the other elbow I had a stack of expensive reference books... All were trumped because a handful of websites all referenced the same handful of coffee table books - and disagreed with me.
Two things :
- Unlike the parent which had a letter, but from the point of view of other wikipedia could as well have been forged, you have references in *UN*-classified original manuals written by the Navy themselves. As they are not classified, they can be checked by any other user. It *IS* a reliable source. In addition, as it is written by the original maker of the thing, it could be considered as fist hand source, even better that website conveying second hand information.
So the situation isn't the same as with the "I have a letter".
- Ok, if the other users don't want to simply edit the date, maybe write a couple of lines saying that the commonly found data on the web and the manuals from the original source seem to disagree, citing your source.
Re:Book references (Score:5, Insightful)
The end result was the same - my edits were rejected because they didn't match the commonly, and easily, available sources.
Well, it was more complex than the date - it was essentially an entire rewrite of half a dozen articles. On each, on the talk page, I noted my sources - and the same person (who had written all the articles and had most of the edits on them) promptly reverted my changes. (This was prior to 'citation needed'.) So I went to the talk page and explained that not only had I worked on this weapon in the Navy, but I had researched them for nearly twenty years and wished to share that research - and was promptly hit with the "no original research" hammer. (Never mind that any comprehensive historical article on the Wikipedia contains the same level of original research.)
Between that and several other examples of asshattery, I realized I didn't have time to fight one fool with too much time on his hands, let alone half a dozen or so. I left Wikipedia and have never been back.
Re:Book references (Score:3, Interesting)
This sounds more like a Wikipedia editor who is violating the "WP:OWN" standards in an aggressive manner. It happens far more often than many Wikipedians care to admit, but for some types of articles it can be a real pain to get changes to happen.
Writing on Wikipedia does take a bit of a thick skin and strongly defending your contributions to a certain extent. When you have a POV pusher or somebody who is upset with changes to "their" article, it can be even worse.
Knowing your argumentative style here on Slashdot, it doesn't surprise me that other users on Wikipedia may have found you to be a little rough to work with as well. Still, that by itself isn't a reason to completely revert edits by somebody trying to make meaningful contributions.
The military history guys that I've dealt with seem to be a pretty level headed bunch, with some of them having incredible depth to their experience and knowledge of the topics they have written about. You might be surprised if you came back to see who is involved with these articles right now. Often all it takes is to stand up to the more belligerent editors and calling their bluff.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, because I had a related problem. A series of related articles I wished to edit had considerable problems. I worked on the item described in one of the articles while I was in the Navy, I had the unclassified manuals at one elbow, at the other elbow I had a stack of expensive reference books... All were trumped because a handful of websites all referenced the same handful of coffee table books - and disagreed with me.
Those stories are probably legion. I've had problems having facts corrected on Wikipedia articles where I was the primary source (one about me in person, one about a project I lead) - and could easily prove so.
But to Wikipedia, if three newspapers all quote the same source that got, say, my birthdate wrong, that is "more reliable" than me sending in a scanned, signed and confirmed by a notary, copy of my birth certificate. In fact, that would be entirely discarded as a "primary source".
And that's why Wikipedia usually gets it right on common and readily available articles, and has a 50/50 on articles about obscure topics (other than nerdy geek stuff).
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't say I have a solution.
But when it is this obvious, you can't close your eyes and go "lalalala", pretending that there isn't a problem here.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:2)
I know where you are coming from and I agree that the problem exists. Been there, it bit me, too. Hopefully, I never bit anyone else!
The thing is that, as of right now, we do not have a better system. Hopefully, we will come up with one at some point, but you need to draw the line _somewhere_. And no matter what system we come up with, there will always be situations in which the existing checks and balances fail.
PS: If those other books are better references, wouldn't it have been possible to let others know the ISBNs with which they head to a library or something?
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:2)
I've been in the same situation. I tried to correct some articles with obvious biases but got stuck in endless edit wars with those article guardians. It is extremely frustrating when you know that you are right, can cite secondary sources citing primary sources but are still reverted. A common tactic of "them" is to first ask for sources, then better sources and then claim that the fact is irrelevant to the article anyway. They are experts at wasting your time and making your editing experience frustrating. They also have more ties with the wiki-management so their viewpoint always prevail.
But here is the thing, to Wikipedia it doesn't matter if you like the process or not. It takes your edits that does not challenge the article guardians viewpoint and discards the rest. You get heavily biased articles that are still full with facts. The end result is articles that are improving at the cost of thousands of pissed of and frustrated editors. But the amount of people that wants to waste their time with Wikipedia is infinite which keeps the process working. I stopped contributing years ago because it was just to excruciating, others have taken my place which is what keeps Wikipedia going.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, because I had a related problem. A series of related articles I wished to edit had considerable problems. I worked on the item described in one of the articles while I was in the Navy, I had the unclassified manuals at one elbow, at the other elbow I had a stack of expensive reference books... All were trumped because a handful of websites all referenced the same handful of coffee table books - and disagreed with me.
The real problem here is that the best sources are not online. On wikipedia an online reference is worth so incredibly much more because it's verifiable - not as truth but as something others can read. Seriously, if you quote page 234 of the operations manual, how many would ever check that? How many even have the book or would hunt it down at a library? Most likely, none of the them know if you're bullshitting them or not.
I know it's the long way around but you need to find or make credible online sources that reference the offline sources, then make the argument that your online sources are better than the ones currently used. Otherwise you'd see a lot of book spamming on wikipedia, where all the answers are in the spammer's book. Because of the delay from addition to fact checking plus the costs, it'd be an impossible problem. It's fair enough to reference famous books like Porter's book on Porter's theory but in general it would only undermine wikipedia.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone should send the scan to the websites, along with an explanation about the situation.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:4, Insightful)
Those kinds of check and balances probably produce entries that aren't always perfect, but it's a lot better than the alternative in my mind.
This is also why articles are deleted on wikipedia, the editors are biased by their cultural knowledge. If its believed to be correct by their peers, then an alternate and possibly correct view cant be published due to the editors belonging to the same peer group.
This is really difficult area when it comes to politics, groups/clubs, companies, history, ethnic, gender, minority, etc. You only get one side. Thus the reason it cant be used in colleges, its mass agreement by a very common peer group. And a good portion of the editors are very close in its peer groups.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Interesting)
You should have posted the article to your blog, and then told some gaming magazine to link to it in some "no idea what to write today" newsbit. Then you could've cited that as a secondary source and bingo.
Laughable, isn't it?
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:3, Interesting)
A single source telling something different might not be enough to make a final call on a fact, after all the source could just be honestly wrong, it however should be enough to cast some doubt on the data and thus require further research. Especially when it comes to release dates it shouldn't be that hard to verify, there should after all be a plenty of magazines from back then that printed something about it.
Anyway, the real crux here isn't so much the policy itself, but the reaction to your request on the Talk page, which basically starts with "...Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires...". That might be all correct, but it also kind of misses the point, since the interesting part isn't what Wikipedia requires, but what the actual facts are. Way to much time is wasted in such discussions about policy instead about worrying how one could verify the actual data in better way. Now sure, the reply in the Talk page was a very mild one, one that I normally wouldn't even complain about, but in many cases, especially when it comes to deletions and larger edits, such discussions can get extremely annoying and unproductive, because one party just misses common sense and throws mindlessly some Wikipedia rules around (which aren't really hard rules in the first place, but just guidelines) while the other tries to get some fact figured out. And well, in the end the party that cares about the fact is just pissed of and no further research is done on the topic and that is really a thing that needs to change.
The reasons are actually quite simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those with the most time on their hands wins.
Mod up. (Score:2, Interesting)
This is absolutely correct.
It doesn't really matter if the people guarding articles are experts or not, or whether the other people who are trying to edit the article are experts or not. What matters is that somebody with enough free time to outlast the others will keep or gain control of the article and everybody else will eventually lose interest or give up in frustration and the article will became essentially the property of the person with nothing better to do than try to own it.
So many Wikipedia articles eventually fall into that particular category of worthlessness.
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:5, Insightful)
We love to talk shit about Wikipedia here on /,; talk about how Knol is going to beat it or how Citizendium is better or how you wouldn't use it as a source (duh). But when push comes to shove, do we have any good competing models of how an online encyclopedia should be made?
Well, I don't recall seeing full support here on /. for Knol or Citizendium. There seemed to be people on both sides of the aisle getting their voices heard. Many people attacked Wikipedia for its shortcomings, which you yourself agree exist. So, too, did many people attack the upstarts, with the standard arguments that come out whenever we discuss project forks or restarts here. Finally, there were people who had reasonable criticism for the upstart projects themselves.
However, Wikipedia itself has been extensively criticized throughout its history; famously, its ability to accumulate knowledge and remove vandalism works "only in reality, not in theory." So on that note, how can we say that we know that those systems are inherently that much worse? Many would argue, as you yourself hint, that Wikipedia's supremacy is eminent in its dominance, and in its success. Yes, Wikipedia has orders of magnitude more content than its competitors. Please consider, though, the possibility that this is simply the result of first mover advantage and network effects.
Wikipedia came on to the scene to find a fresh niche to fill. Earlier sites existed with similar goals to describe and categorize life (see: everything2 [slashdot.org] and h2g2 [bbc.co.uk]), but Wikipedia had a slightly different defined goal (be "the free encyclopedia") and software to ease the processes of collaboration and presentation. It took off like a shot and quickly established itself before it really had competition.
Today, Wikipedia has somewhere around 2.8 million articles and a dedicated community. It seems immediately obvious to me that it's impossible today to compete with Wikipedia from square one; any competitor would need to fork the project or have their own equally impressive database. A database that size needs a huge support structure, not only in infrastructure but also in terms of volunteers/workers to police content. It's not possible to get those things all at once. There might be enough people out there who would be interested in helping a different project, but there's no way to get in touch with all of them. New talent either joins up with Wikipedia, or becomes disinterested when they don't fit with that group.
Wikipedia got where it is because it was good enough at the right time. It does a lot right. It does some things wrong. It's not perfect. But then, I don't have to tell /. about technically inferior products dominating the marketplace due to familiarity...
Re:Got a better way to do things? (Score:2)
There are probably thousands of people who have avoiding wikipedia as editors because their first edits were reverted--even though they might have been productive.
Yup, besides some spelling corrections, one of my only contributions to wikipedia was to start a missing page (several links to it but no content). After a few days it got deleted: "Not enough context to identify article's subject". And deleted pages don't even have a history...
Great post, and more thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, good summary, I very much agree!
I like to think of myself as one of those careful, involved editors who spends my free time "tending" and improving articles on my major areas of interest and expertise.
What I've never understood about Sanger's argument is... what is it in Wikipedia's current model that /prevents/ experts from using their expertise?
What makes an expert?
I'd guess that an expert knows many reliable sources of information that they can use as references in their edits, to correct inaccuracies and add new material. Wikipedia encourages that!
I also expect that experts have superior writing skills and can summarize information in their area of expertise effectively. Wikipedia encourages that too!
Finally, I expect that experts are used to defending their conclusions and evidence in a rational but skeptical setting, so they should be well-prepared to convince their fellow editors when disputes over content and emphasis arise (as is inevitable!). Wikipedia encourages that kind of debate too.
So... what exactly ARE the aspects of Wikipedia that hinder expert contributors? It's an honest question by me. Can anyone point out any specific issues or cases they're aware of?
I usually read the discussion or history (Score:4, Insightful)
to get where the controversy in the articles/subjects are, so as not to be led astray by any one current revision. I don't get the big deal about doing that extra bit of work.
Expert FAIL (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of Wikipedia is to approach consensus, not truth. The purpose of experts is to forward their own agenda ;)
People who think either Wikipedia or experts are interested in the truth are likely to be confused.
Re:Expert FAIL (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of Wikipedia is to approach consensus, not truth.
I guess. This kind of critique gets pretty old. The whole point of moving away from "THE TRUTH" was to suggest that no one editing on wikipedia has access to "THE TRUTH". I'm not an expert. You're not an expert. Sure, we probably have our areas of expertise, but they aren't verifiable in a pseudonymous editing environment. In the absence of that verification, we have to trust references, not people. If I say "believe me, this is THE TRUTH", the right response is "Wikipedia isn't interested in THE TRUTH, do you have a source for that."
/., their blog, or their cat and declare that Wikipedia is only interested in groupthink. Lots of time groupthink does grip wikipedia--just like any other organization. People see comments from editors they know and trust and respond accordingly. New people are often distrusted. These aren't features unique (or even uniquely salient) to wikipedia. They are features found in any community, large or small. Conflating the existence of groupthink with some underlying community desire> to govern through groupthink is inaccurate.
It's cute to twist that around, but neither you nor I are Steven Colbert. We won't make it anywhere near as funny. To misread it to think "Oh, wikipedia is only interested in groupthink" is to miss the point. Lots of so called experts come on wikipedia and demand that people listen to them on the basis of their alleged expertise. When people (rightly) refuse to listen to them, those people storm off to
Really, we don't mind the truth, so long as it has a little blue superscripted number after it.
Re:Expert FAIL (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Expert FAIL (Score:2)
Wikipedia has this web of inter-connection in place because of its links and citations. This, I think, pushes Wikipedia or any grand system of knowledge towards "the truth" because reality cannot be inconsistent or self-contradictory so neither can any representation of "the truth".
Facts + interpretation = "truth"
Interpretations are subject to inconsistencies and self-contradictions.
Give us facts and please keep "the truth" to yourselves.
Re:Expert FAIL (Score:5, Funny)
The purpose of Wikipedia is to approach consensus, not truth.
I guess. This kind of critique gets pretty old. The whole point of moving away from "THE TRUTH" was to suggest that no one editing on wikipedia has access to "THE TRUTH". I'm not an expert. You're not an expert. Sure, we probably have our areas of expertise, but they aren't verifiable in a pseudonymous editing environment. In the absence of that verification, we have to trust references
the solution has been right under our noses the whole time!... lets just have the guys at Britannica write our consensus for us. Think about it.. then you never have to question the source of our info, cause the REAL experts are taking care of us.
personally I think all this wikishit is a load of tree hugging hippie crap. I am still using my 1994 CD-ROM version of the World Book encyclopedia because it sounded a lot more official than the names of the people writing wiki. I mean if I need to know the main industries of Sudan, I don't want to hear it from CaPtAinSwampA$$, I want it from a big faceless corporation I can trust.
Re:Expert FAIL (Score:3, Funny)
Actually it means Captain's Wampa Cash
Re:Expert FAIL (Score:2, Insightful)
Lots of so called experts come on wikipedia and demand that people listen to them on the basis of their alleged expertise. When people (rightly) refuse to listen to them, those people storm off to /., their blog, or their cat and declare that Wikipedia is only interested in groupthink.
If they were really such experts, they should capable of citing adequate evidence to back up their claims.
Re:Expert FAIL (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of Wikipedia is to approach consensus, not truth.
And one way is to shut out the people who don't agree.
"Expert" != "shadowy propagandist" (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of experts is to forward their own agenda
I'm not sure how tongue-in-cheek you're trying to be here, so if you are, then this is directed at the people who really believe this.
This is honestly one of the biggest and (to me) scariest and most incomprehensible problems with the American consciousness right now: the belief that not only do they, the average Americans, know better than the experts in their fields, but that those experts are, to a man, interested solely or primarily in putting forward their own "agenda"—which is necessarily something other than "educate people" or "show the truth".
What reasonable basis is there for believing that everyone who's highly educated is somehow trying to subvert society to some nefarious end??
Dan Aris
Re:Expert FAIL (Score:5, Insightful)
nonsense. Wikipedia is meant to contain fact.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability [wikimedia.org]
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth"
I'm not surprised that the people who whine the most about Wikipedia don't understand what it's meant to do.
Re:Expert FAIL (Score:2)
My problem is that many Wikipedia admins seem to interpret verifiability as in "was printed on paper somewhere", instead of just as what the word says. There are plenty of topics where a blog or another Wiki is a much more trustworthy and much easier to verify then mainstream press (homebrew software on consoles for example), yet linking them as source gets dismissed or articles even deleted.
Not learning from failure... apparently (Score:4, Interesting)
"Sanger was one of the founders of Wikipedia, and of its failed predecessor Nupedia"
There is a reason why he failed; "Without granting experts any authority to overrule such people, there is no reason to think that Wikipedia'a articles are on a vector toward continual improvement," writes Sanger
And all I have to say is ... so what? Articles at wikipedia frequently link to great off site expert resources. Not only that you have a wealth of choices of where you can get your information from, you're not limited to just wikipedia. If wikipedia was the only encyclopedia on earth his point might make sense. But given the level of alternatives and 'competitors' and number of wikipedia's contributors, there's a point where an article is more then good enough as a starting point.
The difference between experts and amateurs
in many instances is not large and for the most part negligible in many area's of knowledge, in other areas not so much.
Not only that, experts frequently get things wrong, the idea that experts are monolithically better then amateurs and other experts also has serious problems. Given that there has always been contention about certain areas of knowledge, take history for example: How much important stuff is/was and is possibly currently being omitted from history by "experts" for any number of reasons that might bias their testimony?
Wikipedia works because it has information people want. Experts frequently cull information they deem 'unworthy' of documenting, there's a whole host of articles on wikipedia about culture and entertainment stuff that would not normally be in a regular encyclopedia.
Truth be told, Wikipedia is an excellent study in the controversial nature of knowledge. Experts are frequently wrong, the history of mankind is one of the constant error in the expert world.
Re:Not learning from failure... apparently (Score:2)
As well as that, what constitutes an expert, and has a ranking system been setup, because I haven't got my number yet.
I would fee qualified to write an article on cluster analysis, which is a form of statistics, but not on other statistical methods. So, in order for such an expert system to be setup, either I would need to say what I'm an expert in (which would result in a situation no different from wikipedia now), or someone would need to look at all my references and decide for themselves (which is prohibitively expensive given the size and scope of an encyclopedia). So in order for it to work, you need people self-authorizing themselves to edit articles, which is exactly what wikipedia does now. Its not perfect, but its been shown by a few attempts to do the 'expert' thing that any benefits aren't worth the losses in information.
If you are using wikipedia as the only reference, you are going to get burned, much the same way as if you use anything as your only reference (big media, little media, conspiracy media, outdated books, articles that have been rebutted but remain published, websites with yellow text on a black background). Wikipedia is the starting point to learn about something, but it surely isn't the ending point.
Re:Not learning from failure... apparently (Score:2)
Wikipedia works because it has information people want. Experts frequently cull information they deem 'unworthy' of documenting, there's a whole host of articles on wikipedia about culture and entertainment stuff that would not normally be in a regular encyclopedia.
Not really. Its the peer groups idea of what is "worthy".
Take the mens rights article. Since there are no national mens rights movements. None that are a non-profit or officially accepted to speak as an Acceptable source for documentation. The major sources are infotainment reporters such as Glenn Sacks. The largest group of loosely related sites are Men going their own way (MGOTW), but its article and links on Mens Rights are often deleted due to the "popularity" concerns.
None of the active editors are familiar with Mens Rights issues, the websites, and often some are active in Womens Rights. And such think that mens rights articles are an attack on womens rights.
People have to backdoor issues in with Fathers rights, as its more media friendly. There are movies about fathers seem to get the approval under popular mainstream references.
The "personal belief" issue of Wikipedia editors is the reason older and mature editors are needed. The young editors with no life experience and knowledge cant recall the events of more than a couple decades of life experience. They had to use what they learned so far, maybe from college or personal experience which isn't always realistic as a whole.
Thats big reason the Simpsons, Futurama and any media is always allowed, everyone can agree, it just happened.
Re:Not learning from failure... apparently (Score:2)
Not only that, experts frequently get things wrong, the idea that experts are monolithically better then amateurs and other experts also has serious problems. Given that there has always been contention about certain areas of knowledge, take history for example: How much important stuff is/was and is possibly currently being omitted from history by "experts" for any number of reasons that might bias their testimony?
Sources?
No, seriously, come on. You're making a bold claim there. I know of a guy who trolls any place he can get to with his "knowledge" that 300 years of medieval history are fake and all the experts are in on the conspiracy.
At least he provides some evidence for his claim that I can check for myself.
The Wikipedia is getting better (Score:4, Interesting)
Since then, policies and procedures have been put in place. You can no longer get in to edits wars without [[WP:3RR]] [wikipedia.org] stopping you. You can no longer belittle editors who disagree with you without getting blocked for [[WP:NPA]] [wikipedia.org]. You can no longer edit the article about your small open-source project [wikipedia.org] without getting slapped for [[WP:COI]] [wikipedia.org]
Yes, these policies are not perfect, and yes a lot of articles still have unverified claims, and yes, like any democracy, it sometimes takes time and insanely excessive discussion to get to consensus. But the process on Wiki works and the new policies minimize the problems with articles. Did I mention that it's against Wikipedia policy to control articles on the Wiki, as per [[WP:OWNERSHIP]] [wikipedia.org]
Re:The Wikipedia is getting better (Score:2)
Does the process stop editors from banning known authorities on a subject as vandals because they dared to correct the editor's pet page? I ask, because I know it's happened at least once, and said authority has never been able to get the ban lifted.
Re:The Wikipedia is getting better (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, all those things have been rolled into one meta game - WP:TAA. (Wikipedia:Toss Around Acronyms) The end result the is the same - the win goes to he who has the most time on his hands.
Yeah, that's part of WP:NRETISRG. (Wikipedia:Not Really Enforceable Though It Sounds Real Good.)
Re:The Wikipedia is getting better (Score:2)
Since then, policies and procedures have been put in place. You can no longer get in to edits wars without [[WP:3RR]] stopping you. You can no longer belittle editors who disagree with you without getting blocked for [[WP:NPA]]. You can no longer edit the article about your small open-source project without getting slapped for [[WP:COI]]
That's the rules.
And then there's their application.
I've seen pages nominated for deletion again and again until finally a delete went through. I call that the deletion lottery, you can win it on almost any article that's not frontpage material.
We've all seen random edits made, reversed, re-made and it was pretty clear that persistance is often more important than rules, knowledge, or even fact.
And I have first-hand experience of how "well" these rules are sometimes enforced. I've had a COI case where you're told to contact an editor with your problem. Did that. His reply took so long that the monkeys were long done with their "work" before he woke up. Thank you, I'll certainly go that recommended route again.
No, the rules are nice in theory, but they don't work because idiots are usually experts in abusing rules for their personal profit, while experts are often idiots in rule-abusing.
So what? (Score:2)
I for one find it annoying to hear about people ragging Wikipedia about its accuracy. Its not meant to be a replacement for actual experience and training. Its a quick crash course. Its meant to be fast, easy, and relatively accurate. Some topics are going to be better, some worse.
If your looking for information about some opensource project, it probably is pretty good. If you looking for a definition of some obscure abbreviation, your pretty good. If your looking for information about religion, what in the world are you starting at Wikipedia for?
I dont care if experts are writing it or not, because anything important I wouldnt trust/rely on a single source anyway even if it was written by an "expert"
PS. I do find it crazy how obsessed some people are with it though. Personally the only changes I usually make are grammatical errors.
It isn't "experts" that are needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
You may complain about the quality of the comments on slashdot, but compare it to somewhere without any karma system. (this article [sfgate.com] sums up the problem with pure anonymity, and quite humorously so) Slashdot's system is not perfect, but it is a start in the right direction. I wonder how much wikipedia could be improved with a really good system. For instance, people with low karma would have their changes not show up immediately by default, or would be flagged as questionable, or what have you. People who didn't have a history of posting "good" stuff would tend to have few eyeballs ever see their stuff. There is a ton that could be done. It's tough to make it ungameable, but not impossible.
Re:It isn't "experts" that are needed... (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if you have actually given 18 hours a day to Wikipedia. I have (expert enough :p), and I can tell you right now that Wikipedia already has karma [wikipedia.org] system [wikipedia.org].
Now it is well established in Wikipedia "groupthink" that quality counts more than either. But the crux lies in the question: Who decides the quality?
Re:It isn't "experts" that are needed... (Score:2)
It also isn't necessarily about "rating things up". If you make an edit, and it tends to stay for a good while unchanged (or mostly unchanged) on a high traffic page, that is an indication that your edit was "approved" and can earn you karma. This of course is how wikipedia already works (good edits stay around), but it could be enhanced by adding a reputation/karma system to it.
Experts are few and want to be paid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even leaving out the political issues, Experts are few ,and when well known, consider charging a lot for their work and would probably only devote time to getting published in a scholarly journal rather than some random website.
It would be like running an open source project where the only people who are allowed to work on it are those people who hold a PHD or are certified to have 10 years experience programming with a major corporation.
Re:Experts are few and want to be paid. (Score:2)
Even leaving out the political issues, Experts are few ,and when well known, consider charging a lot for their work and would probably only devote time to getting published in a scholarly journal rather than some random website.
It would be like running an open source project where the only people who are allowed to work on it are those people who hold a PHD or are certified to have 10 years experience programming with a major corporation.
nail, meet head.
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Experts are few and want to be paid. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not true at all - I know many experts (keep in mind that expert and academic are not synonyms) that would love to edit the Wikipedia. But each and every one has ultimately been driven from Wikipedia by various forms of asshattery.
And that's a problem - how? It reduces the pool available for participation, sure. But the project is still open source and thus forkable by any individual who cares to do so.
How can Wikipedia be taken seriously... (Score:5, Interesting)
...when articles are tagged with the dreaded "primary sources" tag? In case you're not familiar with this tag, it basically states that the integrity of an article is in question because there are not enough cites from secondary sources (no, not a typo) as opposed to primary sources!
Anyone with an academic background will recognize this acceptance criteria as anathema, as primary sources are usually the only sources that count when it comes to rigorous research. That said, a comment earlier about Wikipedia articles striving for validity through consensus rather than rigorous research now makes it very clear to me what is going on. At the least, Jimmy should be honest and clearly indicate to users that Wikipedia is more a compendium of collective wisdom rather than factual content.
Re:How can Wikipedia be taken seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is just a different kind of writing than an original paper. People who make it out to be anti-academic or sneaky miss the boat entirely.
Re:How can Wikipedia be taken seriously... (Score:3)
That makes no sense whatsoever. The grandparent is discussing the skill of the writer, but the value of the reference.
Some hard evidence of Wikipedia's failure (Score:2, Interesting)
First, take a look at this discussion by an expert. [artsjournal.com] (We now pause for the know-nothing kooks to ridicule Kyle Gann, claiming he's not an expert: Gann has of course written scholarly books on the subject of his expertise published by major academic institutions. Finished with the crackpot character assassination yet? Good, let's continue.)
Now take a look at the Wikipedia article on the Chicago School of Economics. Does it contain any hint that the Chicago School's prescriptions were put into practice in Chile and failed so spectacularly that the country went into a major recession?
Now take a look at the article on Alexander Hamilton. What birth date is cited? is there more than one? Do they differ? Does the Wikipedia article contain any discussion of a problem Hamilton's birth date? Do any of the Wikipedia contribution even give an evidence of realizing there's a problem with Hamilton's birth date?
Lastly, ask yourself how knowledge gets amassed in the real world via real scholarship. In real scholarship, there is no one single source of knowledge: instead, many different scholars publish different books and different articles, each providing alternative viewpoints. Eventually these differing viewpoints tend to converge on a single interpretation, as demonstrated by the overwhelming number of citations of scholarly books and articles by one particular group of authors and many fewer by all other authors (the familiar power law distribution observed in the long tail et al).
Exit question: does Wikipedia show any sign of recognizing this basic reality of the way scholarship gets done in the real world? (We now return you to your regularly scheduled insults and personal attacks and shower of acid contempt by people who can't even spell or use punctuation properly.)
Citizendium (Score:2)
"""
After 2-1/2 years, Citizendium has a few tenths of a percent as many articles as Wikipedia.
"""
It's not about quantity, it's about quality.
Experts? (Score:2)
What qualifies someone to be an expert?
You cannot prove that you have degrees on the subject, but many list PHDs even if they never earned any of them. Wikipedia's staff had many members that got exposed as frauds. [wikitruth.info]
When you cite a reference, they can quickly dismiss it by saying the source is not a reliable source. For example if it was not a liberal web site like the Huffington Post but rather the CATO institute, chances are the citation will be removed as well as the text that explains it. The same way for technical articles, apparently an OS/2 fan base is not a trusted source on OS/2 but IBM got rid of their OS/2 pages to base OS/2 history on. Luckily I was able to find a Unix Programming book that cited OS/2 2.0 used Amiga technology in exchange for Amiga using REXX technology. The IBM pages that talked about the exchange of technology are gone, and no web site mentions it anymore. But it is important history to learn that IBM licensed the Amiga technology to make OS/2 2.0 and above.
But anyway yeah people watching articles like a hawk and then instantly reverting it, even if the points are valid and have a reliable citation are but one of the many problems that Wikipedia suffers from. I call them as "Armchair Experts" because they lack knowledge, wisdom, and an education on the subject (no college courses or degrees on the subject) and act as an expert from their armchairs using their computers to bully and bash and revert their way into the articles.
I call such people as the Thought Police [wikipedia.org] who accuse us of Thought Crimes and quickly revert the articles even if it was a valid edit that cited reliable sources and had a neutral point of view.
Problem is not lack of experts... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Problem is not lack of experts... (Score:2)
They have another "qualification:" the need to show off how smart they are, irregardless of whether they actually know of what they are talking about.
Re:Problem is not lack of experts... (Score:2)
Nowadays I just can't be bothered 99% of the time, and I suspect I'm not alone. The system that WP has built for itself actually doesn't serve the best interests of the encyclopaedia, so me feeling is that already WP's best days are behind it.
Recently I happened to look something up and noticed that the article had been vandalised about four days previously. I reverted the change without logging in because it was a quick fix and self-evidently non-controversial. I was reverted almost as soon as I clicked the Save button, and had a rude message dumped on my current IPs "talk page". If that's the way bona fide contributors (even anonymous ones) are treated nowadays then there's no real future for the project. Anyone with a double-digit IQ could see the change I made was reversion of crude vandalism and was made in good faith. Editors like me who once cared about the veracity and quality of WP are staying away in droves.
Why is this man so obsessed with credentials? (Score:2)
(1) There isn't any particular reason to think that credentialed experts are going to want to volunteer their work for free on wikipedia. Close it off to amateurs, and wikipedia will likely shrivel.
(2) There isn't any evidence that wikipedia is any more unreliable than any other encylopedia -- what studies there have been show them to be roughly comparable.
(3) The problem with volunteerism isn't the average quality of the volunteers -- the actual problem is subversion. As wikipedia, and things like it, grow in importance, than the ability to game the system will grow in importance, and well-funded flacks will overwhelm the volunteers (First, imagine that a Karl Rove has hired dozens of people to open hundreds of accounts, all of which build up their reputations until they're needed to control politically sensitive material. Second, imagine that the Chinese government has decided to take control of the page about China, rather than block the site.)
My prediction: there will come a time when internet anonymity has become more trouble than it's worth, and we'll insist that we know who our volunteers are.
Re:Why is this man so obsessed with credentials? (Score:2)
"Close it off"? Anyone can edit on Citizendium. The expert Editors just play the role of judging whether or not material in their particular area of expertise is accurate or not.
There is a simple reason for this: Stephen Hawking knows more about astrophysics than me or most other dorks who hang out on the Interwebs all day long.
Citizendium is not without issues (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps associated with its culture of 'experts', or perhaps simply its low population. One needs look no further than the Homeopathy article, which on Wikipedia is strongly rooted in reality, but on Citizendium is largely controlled by one Homeopath editor (who has been banned from Wikipedia for pushing his unsupportable POV), and leans towards promotion and advocacy.
For "guard" read "wanker." (Score:2)
I added something that was a) true; b) supported by references; c) well-written; d) not inflammatory or controversial to a certain article. I took my time and did it carefully. Foolish me -- someone who was clearly the self-appointed owner of that article removed it within minutes.
More articles != better (Score:2)
How many of the articles on Wikipedia that are missing from Citizendium are cruft like blow-by-blow retellings of individual episodes of children's cartoons, or two-line stubs on insignificant elementary schools, or bot-generated template "articles" on American locations that contain nothing more than a few statistics regurgitated from census data?
We need to remember that Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. It is a repository of all the random facts and assertions that anyone was ever able to keep from being deleted. One could produce an encyclopedia by taking a subset of Wikipedia.
(Now wait for all the people who didn't bother to read this far to assume that I'm a Citizendium user. I'm not. I've never even visited Citizendium to the best of my knowledge, while I use Wikipedia almost daily.)
"common sense" (Score:2)
Yepp, that's one of the many problems with Wikipedia.
It does great in summing up what's been called "wisdom of the crowd". I think we used to call that "common sense", but that's less of a buzzword.
The problem with "wisdom of the crowd" is that Wikipedia 1009 AD would have stated "the earth is flat" as a fact, and linked to many sources for the claim, even though experts had known for well over a thousand years that it isn't so.
The greatest strength of Wikipedia - that anyone who knows something can come in and add it - is also its greatest weakness - any fool who thinks he knows something can come in and add it. And there's no credibility system whatsoever. Einstein's opinion on relativity is, to Wikipedia, equal to Joe the barkeeper's. In fact, if we assume that Joe has less to do with his time, and spends more of it roaming around Wikipedia, his opinion will probably prevail.
Finally, Wikipedia actively alienates experts with its policies against primary sources and original research. That "secondary sources" are anything but reliable when you've become so popular that your secondary sources regularily use you as their source - well, we've just seen how that works out [slashdot.org]. And that wasn't the first event of this kind.
So, when you dig your teeth into what's good and what's bad about Wikipedia, the astonishing result you pretty much have to arrive at, is that your university professor was right: You can use it to quickly look up something for a start, but if you want to have anything solid that you can actually refer to, look up primary and secondary sources, not Wikipedia.
Liberal bias (Score:2)
Wow : WP threads on /. are getting interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hi.
A long while ago, I contributed to WP quite a bit. I stopped being subject to WikiStress [wikipedia.org]. I learned one thing at that time : when WP things gets on your nerves, just get a break. Then, one realise that an article is no one's little pet. And now one can come back to an article and forget about it easily. Many people who claim to be specialist or to be especially rightful, should take a WikiBreak... and come back later. No, later than that. Now, contributions starts being good.
I also observed /. threads about WP : They where rather poor, often being aggregation of blatantly incorrect statements. Reason IMHO was that not so many actually contributed to WP, thus ignoring what I now can read in this thread : WP is not a school yard, there are rules, these rules can indeed be gamed, WP is no one pet's toy : being a so called expert does not yield special status, consensus is indeed the driving thing in WP - not The Truth - and so on...
That's a lot of good comments in one single WP /. thread. Pleasantly surprising. I suppose WP is getting actually known by people. Nice!
Z
Democracy vs idiocracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia is more of an experiment in some type of direct Democracy/Demarchy (where the whole world rules) while Citizendium is an experiment in Meritocracy (where only the smart rule)
We see the results after a few years. Wikipedia has a much higher level of quality even though there are a lot of bad things about it. Citizendium might be more factually correct on some issues but the problem is that it doesn't have the vast amount of resources Wikipedia gives. Which one is better is a matter of choice. If you give negative points for anything that is not existing, Wikipedia wins. If you don't care that it's not there but what is there is correct then Citizendium is more correct. In the end Wikipedia will be more correct on current culture, things that are evolving constantly and new items while Citizendium will get things that are more scientific better. I think the two should merge some articles and things that are a matter of fact (history, mathematics, chemistry) should be better locked down on Wikipedia. On the other hand our understanding of matters is continually improving even on history but the fact is that even historians keep on rewriting history. Eventually Bush and Hitler will be good (or not-so-bad) guys to certain generations and within a few hundred years we'll have explored the sub-sub-quantum physics as well. It's all evolving and no knowledge is permanent even if they were a matter of "fact", it's all in the eye of the observer.
Simple - an online wikipedia court (Score:3, Interesting)
to which experts can take the contested and faulty articles, and the editions can be decided by input from admins, experts, and people.
you cant fight something that is solidly proven, and anyone still fighting such an edit will probably be extremists/radicals in wikipedia.