NEWS: Wikipedia.org: Not A Reliable Web Source

GEEK: Wikipedia.org: Not A Reliable Web Source

In a recent article published in the Syracuse Standard a librarian dismisses the popular, 'open content' online encyclopedia, Wikipedia as an authoritative source. Stagnitta sites Wikipedia's disclaimer that the site 'makes no guarantees on validity' and that anyone can change any part of its content at any time as opposed to professionally researched, traditional publication without any credentials.

As a student myself, I have cited Wikipedia on many occasions but had never really given a second thought to the correctness of its content. I guess this brings up the time honored internet conundrum: yes, the web offers an incredible amount of information, but without knowing who creates it, can it be trusted?

well, pardon me for stating the obvious, but: duh.

the thing is, because ANYONE can edit the entries they should, after a while, weed out the bad stuff. it's a kind of "one billion chinese can't be wrong" type of system.

No shit lirbarian sherlocks.

It's a collective encyclopedia based on what others contribute and that's it. Verification is usually based on nothing more than linking to other sources. But as anyone who has ever done real research on anything knows, tons of material that can substantiate or dismiss things often is not online and will most probably never be online.

If it's older than 8 years, the Interntet is a horrible source for information.

Leave it to Syracuse to publish really obvious and stupid news... And people wonder why I don't watch the local news

I'd never heard of Wikipedia until today

At least the information about SG looks quite right and up-to-date..

i've never liked wiki's, wookiees are much more authorative. I mean would you argue with this guy if he laid down exactly how it was?


I wonder what shampoo he uses? silky

[Edited on Sep 05, 2004 by sync]

*shutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutup*

A really good librarian would quietly smack you with a ruler for using "sites" when you mean "cites."

The ideology behind a wiki is the same as the ideology of the internet itself; both are only as accurate as the people who maintain it, and neither should be taken as gospel.

[Edited on Sep 05, 2004 by AceTracer]

what, i thought it was like tv! look ma it's on the internet it must be true. It's funny I've started to find peoples attitudes towards information garnered on the internet as being similar in their blind faith in tv and the media.

the best thing anyone can do who uses the internet as a resource, especially if they want to cite quotes/references and data is to cross reference. i.e. find a variety of sources that all say the same thing. This either means that the data is most likely correct or that there are an awful lot of deluded people.

I think the problem is a unique combination of stupidity mixed with technological awe. Some people think that computers are "magic" and that anyone who can use them is a "genius". So building on that idea, some people think that if anything is posted on the Internet, it has automatically gone through some level of intellectual verification and such.

And I think the TV analogy is too narrow focused. Prior to TV people were gullible enough to believe that the "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast was "real'. Also, people still think--to an extent--that if you can publish a book, whatever that book says is automatically true. Ever hear someone said "Well, I read it in a book!" as proof that their point is valid?

People have been stupid for centuries. And no amount of technology will change that.

Wikipedia has quicly become one of my all time favorite sites.

I wouldn't use it as an academic source but I think it's an excellent tool for beginning your research. I find it reliable enough on most subjects to merit trusting it to guide you to other sources.

When I'm bored at work, I just go from link to link, reading about various shit. I love it.

Sure, Wikipedia is a debatable source. But can't that be said about everything?

And in other news, today experienced some weather.

Yeah, No matter what source you use, in the end it's only an opinion. Using Wikipedia for easily verifiable information should be perfectly fine, if anyone makes stupid changes to it, they would be noticed really quickly.
Using Wikipedia for historical analysis is just another point of view in a web of differing accounts. I could equally say that one should not trust the interpretation of the Cambridge encyclopedia on any issue of contention.

that's one of them most interesting sides to this. I've been studying similar things to this for my english degree (narrative authority etc) and it's a real quandry.

However something like the cambridge encyclopedia could arguably be said to be more authorative as it goes through peer review which is a much more consistent style of editing than wiki. It's hard to imagine that a wiki goes through the same level of rigorous editing as an encyclopedia does simply because it allows anyone to become an editor. This could possibly be seen as a bad thing because, for instance I could go and add my 50 cents about string theory or five dimensional topology when I don't know anything about them, I've just googled some facts. However if none of the things I say are in an obvious way wrong but in a more subtle way incorrect (because knowing nothing about the subject my presentation is wrong/imprecise) perhaps no-one will notice it and correct.

I've heard wiki being compared to the same ethic as open source software and in some ways this holds true but in some very important senses it is not.

Open source software works because among other things there is a certain amount of atomicity in writing software. By that I mean things are definate and can be split down into units and dealt with in a way that provide consistent solutions that can be proved under any numbers of circumstances. Think of it in the sense of simple logic, if subject A is true it cannot be false. Although that is simplistic.

Wiki does not have that atomicity of programming because what it deals with, knowledge, not code, is much more interpretive than absolute. In other words five different people can agree that 2+2=4 (unless they're from radiohead where it =5 ) but those same five people might all come to different conclusions on what the meaning of "consumerism" or "truth" is.

[Edited on Sep 06, 2004 by sync]

that radiohead song is in reference to Descartes Clear and distinct perception aspect of his theory of knowledge and certainty.
of course what i just said is only an opinion and an interpretation based on what I believe to be true.

If what i said was deeply flawed, then if enough people read it, some of them are bound to correct me.

Cambridge encyclopedia might claim to be more authoritative, but it limits the amount of input into that authority which may result in shallow analysis on certain topics merely because different opinions were not considered.

true, however for my purposes it is authorative simple because it's deemed so. It would be legitimate to refer to it when I was writing an essay, or to refer to a peer reviewed critic who had written something relevant to what I was examining because within the context I write the essay, the value of peer review is much higher than that of more widely reviewed common sources.

I guess something can only claim to be authoratative if everyone believes it is. Which means that Mr T must be a genius.

However if you measure the value of information then you arrive at the concept of the meme, or unit of cultural information. I'm no philosopher so I can't really comment on them as much as I would like but to me it seems that memes as a theory allows the same atomicity and insight that you get in programming/mathematics, so if we were to measure wiki's memetic value (which seems to be increasing more and more) then perhaps it does have something resembling authority and truth to it?

In 100 years, this idea will hold true for the Wikipedia if it is still around. But it's relative newness to the world combined with the ability of casual users and seasoned experts to contrinbute is troubling.

Everything in the world is an opinion, but some opinons hold more weight than others. A person who has studied a subject for their whole life has a better understanding of a subject than a new grad student. A person who has programmed for years is often a better programmer than someone who has been book learned and not much else.

The point being that no matter how much one defends Wikipedia, it's openness is wonderful from a communal standpoint but horrible from a factual standpoint.

Ever notice how certain memes take hold online and online only? The stupid Hamster dance becomes a "craze" online yet offline it's not much of anything. Same with Internet rumors and gossip. Wikipedia falls prey to same kind of "mania" that affects other online things. And for that reason, it's simply not a valid tool.

And heck, the article proves it. A librarian who does research for a living points out this fact. She has real world experience. Most contributors to Wikipedia do not.

Wikipedia's communical aspect makes it great in one way. The ability to communally edit and communally correct is great! But that's simply the mechanism that I'm praising. The meat of the data in Wikipedia is tedious and often wrong.

Authoritative source for what? No one who needs a "source" should ever be using an encyclopedia except as a starting point anyway. It's second-hand information at best-- real researchers would always want to go to a primary source.

However, everything I've seen leads me to believe that Wikipedia is as functional as a regular encyclopedia for a quick reference. All the moreso because it is quite up to date on a number of topics that won't even hit the regular encyclopedias for a year (or whenever their next edition comes out). And even better when it comes to certain pop culture topics, because some of those might not even be deemed serious enough to spend money on producing articles about them.

I think the greatest problem I have with the wikipedia project (and I know I've been doing alot of wiki-bashing but I do still think it's great) is that while anyone can be a contributing editor, not everyone will be.

We don't as a rule like to reinvent the wheel, so on that basis we reuse ideas and concepts rather than having to wade through a morass of uncertainties that untouched ground gives.

The internet however is in so many ways a new concept and the personal editorial power it gives the individual is so amazing that alot of people havn't got to grips with it or understood the possibilities. Just imagine how many people there are that are best placed to comment on a certain subject who cannot because they don't understand/havn't heard of a wiki.

Therefore my point is that something like the wiki/wikipedia favours those of a more technological bent, thus introducing a bias in what information is provided and the way it's presented.

This will not be always be the case as we become more depdendent and interweaved with the internet. At some point in the future it will become so omnipresent that it will become a direct part of almost everyones lives.

hmmm so many interesting possibilities. The mind boggles

[Edited on Sep 07, 2004 by sync]

[Edited on Sep 07, 2004 by sync]

Amen sistah.