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There was a very interesting article in the Guardian on Monday about whether you can trust the information in Wikipedia. They contacted experts in various fields and asked them to review the entries in those fields for accuracy and completeness.

Can You Trust Wikipedia?

I'm unsure how I feel about Wikipedia and the idea that anyone can add or edit information. On the one hand, it has the potential to be entirely current and constantly updating itself, which is excellent. But there's no controls, no guarantee that the information is accurate, or has even been researched at all. The potential for misuse is incredible - someone could deliberately plant false information.

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Will Richardson did a presentation at a conference I attended, and had some statistics about how quickly errors are fixed in Wikipedia. I guess people take ownership over certain pages and "protect" them from error. There have been some entries that have had to be shut down to prevent them from frequent spamming changes, such as George Bush and John Kerry during election time, etc.

My question is, well for consistency's sake, that's all fine and good, but what if my (imaginary) 10 year old accesses a wikipedia entry at the very moment it contains incorrect information? There is the biggest problem.

You can read Richardson's latest entry here, it's actually about an issue with it.

The conference I attended had a lot of teachers at it, and while they try to embrace the internet and various new technologies, they all seemed to put their foot down about wikipedia. In a way, I'm glad, because I still want people to have to locate "scholarly" resources for facts, not just communal resources that might be scholarly or accurate.

On the other hand, talk about peer reviewed - wikipedia might end up being the ultimate peer-reviewed resource. You can even access the list of what changes have been made and when if you're wondering about accuracy of a specific fact.

My question is, well for consistency's sake, that's all fine and good, but what if my (imaginary) 10 year old accesses a wikipedia entry at the very moment it contains incorrect information? There is the biggest problem.

That was my exact question, too. And because things do change so frequently, there's no way to verify that the information was ever there in the first place.

except that there is. let's take an article cited, the ts eliot one. click on "discussion" and you'll get a run-down of issues with the article, click on "history" to get the change-log.

(i mean, i have a lot of other issues too. like, why is the ten year old only using wikipedia as a source? that school librarian has got to wonder why he or she is bothering to pay for freakin' expensive electronic encyclopedias & databases, let alone maintaining a paper one. why is it not okay for a source to be created by many people now, when that's basically how the oed was constructed? why do we think just because something's in print it's correct? there are errors in print encyclopedias all the time, and you're certainly not going to find a changelog there. and finally, what free web resource should we be using instead?)

me, i *heart* wikipedia for a quick overview. it gives me the outline and the keywords. or if i just want to know when eliot was born i can get that too. it's a jumping-off point. and that should be true of traditional encyclopedia articles as well. wikipedia's still in development, it is aware of its issues, and i'm not certain it's entirely fair to blame it for the way people use it. as it says in the faq: But Wikipedia cannot be perfect. There is almost certainly inaccurate information in it, somewhere, which has not yet been discovered to be wrong. Therefore, if you are using Wikipedia for important research or a school project, you should always verify the information somewhere else — just like you should with all sources.

i particularly like that final bit. darn right! and actually the entire school faq is worth a peek.

That's good - I didn't know that the changelog existed. And of course there are errors in print resources as well.

I think for me what it comes down to for me is not that there are multiple authors -- most encyclopedias are like that, and that's the way it should be -- but that there doesn't seem to be any way to verify who wrote things or what their credentials are. Obviously, it doesn't mean that the people writing for Wikipedia are any more or less knowledgeable than the people writing for any other reference source, print or online, but that I don't know that, because I don't know who they are. I want to know who they are. I want to be able to look at the article on Beethoven and check what else that person has written.

I mean, whatever, I use it, I think it's great, but mostly as a jumping off point, like you said, or if I need a general idea about something. Because, exactly like they said in the bit you quoted up there, if it's something important, I'm always going to find a second source.

(I don't blame Wikipedia for people who are going to blindly believe everything they read there. I just worry, given what a massive phenomenon it is and the proven trend these days of students to get all their information off the internet without citing or questioning the integrety of the source, that it will become the only authority used.)

well, you can do that to a point. the changelog includes user names, and so sometimes there's a profile and tracking of what other articles they've contributed to.

and if the teachers are willing to accept work that references it as the only authority, that too is a problem outside of wikipedia. there needs to be more education about the integrity of sources. hey! looks like a job for librarians!

God, for real! The world would be a better place if librarians were in charge.

Thank you for the link. It's an interesting article. I like the way Wikipedia's structures, but I think you're right about the potential quality control problems.

What I like about it is the potential for hotlinking and giving quick and easy access to current information, but, yeah, I'm a little concerned about how it's being promoted as the ultimate resource.

My manager just sent me a similar link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/18/wikipedia_quality_problem/

The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk) has had a few articles on it recently, too. Their stance is very much that Wikipedia fanatics are out of their gourd, and that it will never be a creditable source (much less a great paragon of scholarly information). I have to admit: they have me pretty much convinced.

(In a nutshell, there are too many people who are not experts, yet fashion themselves to be such, who fanatically defend their "turf" on the Wikipedia...)

A major distinction seems to lie along the lines of what kind of information is being sought (these articles focus on technical/engineering entries...).

Interesting articles are here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/18/wikipedia_quality_problem/) ("Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems"), here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/24/wikipedia_letters/), and here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/27/wikipedia_britannica_and_linux/). (The latter two links are feedback from Wiki supporters and detractors alike. Granted, the supporters are painted as fanatics... but it's a fun read!)

I think that Wikipedia is a wonderful idea but it's lack of review will be the death of it. You can't have an authoritative source that isn't written by people with authority on the subject. Even if an entry is correct there's no way of telling.

Which isn't to say that it isn't wonderful, it is, and that it won't be used by everyone. I've even had Canadian Trademark Office Examiners quote it to me as a source.

Maybe they could have entries that are given a stamp of accuracy by persnickitty experts who stick to a particular subject.

A gold star! I want gold stars of persnickittiness.

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Where I expand on wikipedia

Re: Where I expand on wikipedia

Where I get all defensive for a moment and then flame out quickly

Re: Where I get all defensive for a moment and then flame out quickly

Re: Where I get all defensive for a moment and then flame out quickly

Re: Where I get all defensive for a moment and then flame out quickly

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