Phony Wikipedia Entry Used By Worldwide Press 391
Hugh Pickens writes "A quote attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre was posted on wikipedia shortly after his death in March and later appeared in obituaries in mainstream media. 'One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear,' Jarre was quoted as saying. However, these words were not uttered by the Oscar-winning composer but written by Shane Fitzgerald, a final-year undergraduate student, who said he wanted to show how journalists use the internet as a primary source for their stories. Fitzgerald posted the quote on Wikipedia late at night after news of Jarre's death broke. 'I saw it on breaking news and thought if I was going to do something I should do it quickly. I knew journalists wouldn't be looking at it until the morning,' The quote had no referenced sources and was therefore taken down by moderators of Wikipedia within minutes. However, Fitzgerald put it back up a few more times until it was finally left up on the site for more than 24 hours. While he was wary about the ethical implications of using someone's death as a social experiment, he had carefully generated the quote so as not to distort or taint Jarre's life, he said. 'I didn't expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised.'"
High journalistic Standards (Score:5, Interesting)
On the Diane Rehm Show on NPR, the topic today was the demise of newspapers and what could be done about it; suggestions included government bailouts and subsidies or reorganization as not-for-profit organizations. The "politically correct" argument was that they wanted to preserve the newspaper business model per se, but preserve "journalism" and all those high standards and ethics it embodied as opposed to the unprofessional world of bloggers and news aggregators who could (obviously) not hold themselves to high standards.
Perhaps the journalists could be Jarre'd back to reality?
Re:Lazy (Score:2, Interesting)
. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised.
Bloggers actually check their facts, or their posters or competition will. Newspapers simply don't. The AP's habit of running absurd or blatently photoshopped images convinced me of this. Is it any wonder that Blogs flourish while major newspapers die?
The death of objective journalim was the death of main stream reporting. Bloggers just do a much better job of biased journalism than the mainstream press.
~Innovating (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is Wikipedia no longer innovating?
The basic premise of the project evolved rapidly as the encyclopedia was developed in the early years- creating rules, policies and a vibrant and effective community; and now is a massive and globe-changing entity. However, to remain relevant, the site and the ideas that drive it must continue to evolve. To me, as a slightly disinterested outside observer, it seems that Wikipedia hasn't changed what they do or how they do it now for several years.
There is *so much* they could do to make explicit and transparent the edits, the timeliness of added information, and many other things - to handle issues like this - but they are not. Why?
I can appreciate the desire to prove (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Even then, check the talk page to make sure there's been no serious recent disagreement about the matter (checking the history helps too).
It would be really nice if wikipedia made such historical inquries easy, like a javascript interface where you could highlight a portion of the article and have it return a list of edits to that pertain to that part of the article.
Re:Wikipedia motto (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but that is a absurd attitude.
Only because you didn't understand my attitude.
The whole idea of progress is that we can actually know that electric light bulbs work and why so we don't have to repeat the entire series of Thomas Edison's trials.
If you want to have first-hand information about all those tests that didn't work, then yes you will do well to repeat them all. Most of us don't actually need that detail of information; most people are happy to flip a switch and have it work. And there is something that I have verified personally: 99% of the time when I buy a light bulb from the store, and plug it in, light comes out. Light bulbs work. I have verified that. If I want to know how they work, I will need to dig deeper.
Verified and checked by a lot more than one person. People with a professional regard for what they are doing. Do errors creep in? Sure they do, but they are not only caught they are accidental.
You may be unaware of this study, which suggests that Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica have similar error rates. You may not like the conclusion, so feel free to do your own study.
Does that mean that if I believe John F. Kennedy was killed by lizardmen from a far off planet that this is equally valid as people that believe he was killed by the mafia? On Wikipedia you might find either, on alternate days.
And now we get to my real point: everyone knows that wikipedia is unreliable. It is a feature. The only thing it is good for is as a starting place for research, a starting place for knowledge. And it does a very good job of that. Encyclopedia Britannica does an ok job at it too, but often people expect it to be more than a starting point, they expect it to be definitive. Which it is not.
Sorry, but science isn't an opinion. History isn't an opinion. There are facts and there are lies people want you to believe. Sorting them out is important, and you will never, ever be able to sort them out using Wikipedia as a reference.
Good thing no one expects that of Wikipedia. As a starting point for research, it is unsurpassed.
Re:Lazy (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, let me get this straight: you accuse mainstream journalists of failing to check their facts and a lack of objectivity ... and then you use bloggers as an example of how to correct these problems?
No, you've entirely missed my point. My point is that bloggers do a far more entertaining job of non-objective journalism than the MSM, and the MSM's level of fact checking (*and* hard-hitting investigative journalism) has recently fallen to to level of bloggers - or below!
If the MS wants to survive, it needs to do what blggers are bad at. There's no longer any value in mere distribution, and the first-hand reporting of news will predominately be live-blogging by random people who happen to be on the scene, before much longer. In theory, the MSM could be adding reliable fact checking, and neutral-POV context, to this raw reportage.
In practice they simply aren't - they're merely culling the raw data down to whatever supports their idiological position, and running with it unchecked. And blogs are far better at that!
Re:Wikipedia motto (Score:5, Interesting)
A week or so ago, I was in a cafe, and a ~40 year old teacher was explaining loudly to her companions how the internet is changing the way we know things (and how she was uncomfortable with it).
These days every high school or college student knows about Wikipedia, and they all know it is unreliable. It is only one step from realizing that one source is unreliable to realizing that many things are unreliable, and Wikipedia is opening the door for many people to this line of thought. This is a good thing.
LIVE History in Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
This is something I've wanted since Wikipedia became big. I'd like to have a slider bar that allows me to highlight (say, in red) everything that's been changed within the last 7 days. And everything (say, in yellow) everything that's been changed within the last month.
That way, when I'm looking at an article on Albert Einstein I'll know when there is something strangely recent put in there. Also, when I'm looking at the swine flu article, I'll be able to set the slider bars for 12 hours/3 days and see what's new.
Yes, yes, it'll be a few more database hits, but think if everything you could do with this. And not just as a viewer, but as an editor.
Now, someone with way more time on their hands than me, please Make It So.
Re:Rat Race (Score:5, Interesting)
Bringing in new blood, bright young minds and college grads is the right idea, but have them work with the old guard for a while before they can change everything that kept the company running before they arrived with their new ideas and magic wands.
The main problem with business is "maximising profits and lowering costs".
Profits should be ploughed back into a company, not spread out to people who did little to deserve them. Costs should be high, especially for purchasing. The more you spend (generally) the better the products you're receiving, and the better the product you send out.
Too many bean counters, unanimously untrusted, universally disrespected bosses and management that are only in place long enough to empty the profit pot and move on to another position of extreme power and no fallout for their mistakes.
Everyone knows this, don't they?
If you know who Scott Adams is, you should.
Re:Making a point by being an asshole (Score:3, Interesting)
Because Wikipedia isn't vulnerable. It was corrected. It is the "mainstream media" that's broken. They use anything they find on the Internet and pass it off as fact. That's what the experiment was about, and it was something that really hasn't been done before.
Re:Wikipedia motto (Score:5, Interesting)
Long proven to be a skewed small-scale study carried out by biased researchers.
Proven where? What part of the results were skewed? Why do you believe the researchers were biased? A number of people were involved, including Roald Hoffmann and Michael Gordin. Are you saying they were biased as well?
They've published a list of the errors they found, so if you disagree you can go over the list and verify. Also of note is that there was an error in nearly every Britannica article they checked.
Let's not mention this study again, other than to ridicule it.
Why? It seems to be good research. Here is Nature's rebuttal to Britannica's arguments [nature.com]. Also, there you will find Britannica's argument itself. Read it, I think you will agree that the study seems to have been performed well.
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)
I had this exact problem.
It was a trivial fact, a submarine was listed as having four times the horsepower it really contained, since there were four engines some fuzzy math took place and this submarine just under four times more powerful than it's direct successor.
The problem was the fact stood for years, I worked at a museum which actually had one of these submarines, Among my sources were A, the number written on the engines, and B, Dead tree books and manuals clearly stating the engine size.
My vandalism was taken down because this fact stood so long it couldn't be false, I said it wasn't cited, how can you prove me wrong, He quickly found citation, hundreds of sites got their stats info from wikipedia, and as we all know "The Internet" is a more trustworthy souce than a real navy manual any day of the week.
Hand's up who is actually surprised ??? (Score:5, Interesting)
If they get the main thrust of the issue it's a good day.
Sure, the political reporters know about politics, and the sports reporters know about sport, but once someone has to write up a story outside his normal scope, it's as bad as any school child's homework essay.
Missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
That's nice, but it's missing the whole point.
Yes, it's happened before. Yes, it'll happen again. No, it's not a nice thing to do. But it will happen again anyway.
And _that_ is the problem. Something that is so easily vandalized, isn't that great a source of information.
If you will, I'll draw your attention to your own point:
_That_ is the whole point. If a peer-reviewed journal was as easy to "experiment" on, it anyone with enough time could redefine physics or history in it just because he was bored, then everyone would agree that it's a fucking useless journal. So, yes, how about we apply the same standard to Wikipedia?
Again: what's not OK, isn't just the experiment itself, but the very fact that it's trivial to make such an experiment. Not that just it's hypothetically possible, but that it actually happens again and again.
Yes, it means that some people are assholes. Do you have some safeguards against that? Because otherwise it's the same failing of techno-utopianism as of any other utopianism. If to work it would need everyone to play nice, stick to the rules, and know their own limits -- i.e., if to work it needs humans as a whole to change -- then that's the failure of any utopianism. Communism too would have worked perfectly, for example, if it weren't for those pesky humans who insist on being what they are instead of the new breed that Marx, Engels and Lenin envisioned.
That very need to scream that someone else didn't play by your rules, _that_ is what tells me that it's yet another failed utopianism.
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Interesting)
non, non, non, non ... they can print a retraction in the next issue.
So the news is like a tape back-up with diffs: to restore the data you just need all the tapes.
Generating news (Score:1, Interesting)
>Bloggers and the mainstream press distribute this >information, they don't (usually) generate it.
Unless you are CNN and you fabricate the news to suit the message being sent out.
Canadian jarhead Scott Taylor is editor of Esprti de Corps magazine and one of the true war correspondents like RObert Fisk and the examples he gives during his lectures of how CNN's Amanpour was trying to fit her storylines to fit the official story the US was pushing in the balkans (When Bin Laden was our ally) was stunning.
He on the other hand was often chided by canadian network heads that his stories which he would collect on the ground (not from a hotel room) didnt match the official versions given by our govt.
He mentions about how reporters would see something like ABC's report on a bunch of bearded foreigner's arrested in the Balkans with bombs in toys and be told that they were 'counter-terrorist' experts who were showing how to find hidden explosives that were of course used by theofficial bad guys. Even though it wasnt hard to see who they were and what they were arrested doing, reporters went out of the way not to discredit the insulting official version but tried to find a storyline which would support it.
As Taylor says, follow the storyline and your access to the people making the news will be intact. Follow the story instead like Taylor and you can be one of the first reporters kidnapped and released in Iraq and your story will be totally avoided.(Taylor was kidnapped at almost the same time as some reporter from France and his 10 day kidnapping was barely mentioned in his OWN country while the French one case was carried on a 24hr basis.)
Medias generate the stories they want to suit their needs. The idea of an impartial press especially when it comes to foreign affairs is nothing more than a myth.
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Interesting)
Experts in a field we are quite busy publishing their findings, which for whatever reason is not a valid citation on wikipedia.
False. If you publish your finding, it is acceptable as a reference (subject to issues of reliability - that in practice means a peer-reviewed journal, or being published by someone notable enough to be an authority). The only rule is against people who try to publish it on Wikipedia (No Original Research).
I am not paid to fight with some unemployed self appointed editor of "knowledge" who's only qualification seems to be the ability to over pedantically interpret arbitrary rules.
And here you demonstrate your ignorance - of course you are not expected to argue with editors (many of who are employed, so you can take your libel elsewhere), just as you are not expected to argue with Britannica editors. That's a straw man argument. Your job, if you really are a scientist, is to publish your findings in peer reviewed journals. Encyclopedias will then reference that information. If you really think that the world of science works not by peer reviewed journals, but by trying to persuade encyclopedia editors to publish your information, then I'm worried what kind of scientist you are.
And yes, interpretting rules is what editors are supposed to do. The way it should work is accepting information following the three fundamental policies of verifiability, no original research and neutral point of view ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability [wikipedia.org] ). As opposed to being a free-for-all where anything that's put in gets to stay in.
Policies are good you know, just like the idea that science in peer reviewed journals is more trustworthy than something that a so-called scientist claims is true on his blog or whatever.
(And I love the irony that an ill-informed rant by an anonymous person gets believed as fact...)
The wiki might be good for party facts, but not if really need to know something.
How many better sources are there? There are some of course, such as Britannica, but "not quite as good as Britannica" doesn't mean it's poor. And how many better sources are there for free (especially as in speech)?
To be honest we have better things to do with our time.
Evidently you still have time to post here to grind an axe against Wikipedia. I apologise in advance for taking up your time. I look forward to reading the great scientific advancements you make on Wikipedia.
Hell hath no fury like a Wikipedian scorned (Score:3, Interesting)
The wiki might be good for party facts, but not if really need to know something.
How many better sources are there?
The sources that Wikipedia cites?
*Every* article on Wikipedia that deals with something that I have in-depth knowledge on is wrong in some way or another. I sense a pattern.
The earliest computers worked by doing computations multiple times and using a majority vote on which of the results returned was correct. So long as one does the same thing with stuff returned from Internet searches, that usually leads to a pretty good result. If one also makes the assumption that Wikipedia is wrong on a controversial subject, it usually leads to an even better result.
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to measure the accuracy of Wikipedia, then let's have evidence based on a survey of pages, comparing that to other sources (whether it's the media, or other encyclopedias).
Every single Wikipedia page that I have in depth knowledge on (including the XEmacs page) is wrong and/or incomplete.
Why do you include profiles of baseball players if you cannot be bothered to get their playing history and stats correct? Why should I assume that given that sloppiness, that anything else there is of higher quality?
Re:Google (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting. Can you provide a link to the history of a sample page?