Whats the craic with Wikipedia?

IvaBigWun

How can it "be edited by anyone" and deemed reliable? Who moderates the overall references etc and has it ever royally fcuked up before? Great website in theory but useless if the info isnt 100%.

Draupnir

Are you new to the internet or something?

Wikipedia is actively moderated by the whole community, spot something fake, made up or inaccurate, fix it. Simple as that.

Work perfectly and rarely is the information wholly inaccurate, although there have been some cases.

Flukey

You can register and edit it then. Edits are monitored. Read through all the various information on registering and editing etc. and you will find it there. I've edited a few things there myself correcting a few errors, common misconceptions etc. Take one of the great Dublin ones, that they huge obelisk near the entrance to the Phoenix Park is the Wellington Monument. In fact it isn't. It is the Wellington Testimonial. What's the difference? A monument is erected to a dead person. A testimonial is erected to someone who was alive at that time, as Wellington was. I've edited a few other things too, for different reasons.

jaggeh

all previous edits are saved aswell so if someone comes along and puts in garbage it can be rolled back to another edit.

Ruu_Old

Yep it can be rolled back easily enough.

seamus

There are a few main things within wikipedia which help keep it accurate(ish):

1. A massive army of moderators who are actually interested in keeping the site clean and usable.
2. A "recent changes" list.
3. A complete history of all pages.

When someone makes a change to a page, someone else will see the change and review it. Using the version control feature, they can see exactly what changes you have made. If it doesn't conform to wikipedia's guidelines, it can be removed, or if the accuracy of the statement can't be confirmed, it'll be queried, and sometimes removed.

It's surprisingly accurate (I think a recent check found it to be close to the accuracy of the encylopedia britannica), though prone to vandalism. The good thing is that if a page is vandalised, or if there are conflicts over the content of a page (as happened with the page about 9/11), then it can locked from changes.

It's great for scientific articles - you'll sometimes find far more detail than you'd get in any textbook, and there are always tonnes of links.
Historical or biographical content tends to be less authoritative, however any book containing such content is going to be written from *someone's* point-of-view, and this will contain their spin and opinion on events.

It comes under criticism in that people can write whatever the hell they want, therefore undermining its accuracy, but changes made with an agenda in mind are caught quickly, and the level of intentional disinformation supplied to visitors is negligible.

IvaBigWun

Flukey wrote:

I've edited a few other things too, for different reasons.

Thats my point ya see Who's to say you're right?

Flukey

IvaBigWun wrote:

Thats my point ya see Who's to say you're right?

Me.

Seriously though, I don't edit it for fun. I edit it for genuine reasons, as most people do.

liamo

IvaBigWun wrote:

How can it "be edited by anyone" and deemed reliable?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Reliability

Great website in theory but useless if the info isnt 100%.

What exactly do you expect for free? It is what it is. To perceive it as "useless" is to fail to understand what it is.

If you were to base a thesis (for example) based wholly on information from Wikipedia then you would be a fool. If you understand the way Wikipedia works, its strengths and its limitations then it is a very useful site.

Zillah

Clicky!

cornbb

liamo wrote:

If you were to base a thesis (for example) based wholly on information from Wikipedia then you would be a fool. If you understand the way Wikipedia works, its strengths and its limitations then it is a very useful site.

By the way, whats the story with referencing wikipedia in academic works? I'm in the middle of writing a thesis, one or two of my many references are from wikipedia. I'd prefer not to use it but there is no other literature available on some subjects.

astrofool

cornbb wrote:

By the way, whats the story with referencing wikipedia in academic works? I'm in the middle of writing a thesis, one or two of my many references are from wikipedia. I'd prefer not to use it but there is no other literature available on some subjects.

Having just written a thesis myself, the rule generally is don't reference Wikipedia at all, ever, as it has not undergone a peer review by other academics, which is what references should be. By all means use it as a jumping off point, but in the same vein as using google to search for an item, you don't reference google A good wiki will generally have references which you can use. Really, the best places for thesis is http://portal.acm.org or http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/ google books as well is fairly good.

Vokes

cornbb wrote:

By the way, whats the story with referencing wikipedia in academic works? I'm in the middle of writing a thesis, one or two of my many references are from wikipedia. I'd prefer not to use it but there is no other literature available on some subjects.

I guess you ve already checked out the links that the Wiki article referenced, if any.

cornbb

But surely not ALL references need to be peer reviewed? There are loads of websites, newspaper articles etc which are accepted in academic works.

I do accept that referencing wikipedia looks really bad though. Maybe I'll just mention it at the back of the bibliography.

cornbb

SofaKing wrote:

I guess you ve already checked out the links that the Wiki article referenced, if any.

Yup. I'm doing a chapter on drone music, as it happens, found one article online and a couple of paragraphs that I can use from books. All the rest is wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dronology

Gordon

They Are Wikipedia, You Will Be Assimilated

Pal

Flukey wrote:

You can register and edit it then. Edits are monitored. Read through all the various information on registering and editing etc. and you will find it there. I've edited a few things there myself correcting a few errors, common misconceptions etc. Take one of the great Dublin ones, that they huge obelisk near the entrance to the Phoenix Park is the Wellington Monument. In fact it isn't. It is the Wellington Testimonial. What's the difference? A monument is erected to a dead person. A testimonial is erected to someone who was alive at that time, as Wellington was. I've edited a few other things too, for different reasons.

I guess he's dead now or else he would be about 237. ha ha.

it's a monument now.

no ?

Aard

I just wish more people would help out at the Irish language Wiki.

Flukey

Pal wrote:

I guess he's dead now or else he would be about 237. ha ha.

it's a monument now.

no ?

No, it is still a testimonial because it was erected when he was still alive. Only if it had been put up after he died, like the O'Connell Monument or Parnell Monument etc. were, would it be a monument. It is when it was put up that is important, not whether a person is still alive or not. Another point of interest is that, after the Washington Monument, it is the second tallest Obelisk in the world, also making it the tallest one in Europe.

Terry

Wikipedia Administrator Blocks Stephen Colbert For Incitement of Vandalism

Wikipedia sysop Tawker blocked Stephen Colbert earlier tonight after a segment on the program where he incited on-wiki vandalism such as, "The number of elephants in the world has tripled in the last six months." Twenty elephant-related pages were protected as a result, and the account Stephen Colbert used to vandalize on-air was blocked.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmHm0rGns4I

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Stephencolbert
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...oldid=66977046
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special...Stephencolbert

mdebets

cornbb wrote:

Yup. I'm doing a chapter on drone music, as it happens, found one article online and a couple of paragraphs that I can use from books. All the rest is wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dronology

You could always ask the people who wrote it about the literature they used.
Or if you follow the links, there are some books and articles listed.
I hope you have read the talk page, as someone claims there, that it needs to be re-edited, because someone clais, that it is a mess and incorrect in parts.

Zombrex

IvaBigWun wrote:

How can it "be edited by anyone" and deemed reliable?

Who deems it reliable?

I would never reference Wikipedia or serious research, and I think a lot of schools and colleges have started to say they won't accept Wikipedia references.

But for just finding junk out on the internet (used it to day to find out about Nepal, Xgl, Aldi and SIGWX weather chartes) its brilliant. It is very rare I come across something of interest that doesn't have a Wikipedia entry.

So long as people realise it is literally public knowledge, ie the knowledge of the public, and don't expect that every fact or every article is correct, I don't see the problem.

mdebets

Wicknight wrote:

Who deems it reliable?

I would never reference Wikipedia or serious research, and I think a lot of schools and colleges have started to say they won't accept Wikipedia references.

I think to reference Wikipedia in an academic essay or book would be bad, however I always found it good as a starting point for research, as it contains in many case links to online (and offline) resources, which you can reference.

Aard

But most Wiki articles have references at the bottom, so you can just look up those books and reference them instead.

greenteaicedtea

IvaBigWun wrote:

How can it "be edited by anyone" and deemed reliable? Who moderates the overall references etc and has it ever royally fcuked up before? Great website in theory but useless if the info isnt 100%.

I take Wikipedia with a grain of salt.

I started a page, only to have it swiftly deleted, because some wikipedia person deemed it not important enough.

The person who deleted it was "an advocate of deletion" so I felt that my page's worth was determined by someone else's whim.

I created it again (worded more nicely, even) only to have it swiftly deleted again... so much for "editable by anyone".

Giblet

Well it depends if it's a page which contains useful information or one describing your own band or something. Whatever you put on the site has to be in some way known by more than just a handful of people.

iFight

I use it a good bit and rarely come across major innacuracies. It's good that you can just edit something if you think it's wrong, the only thing is that some pages are abused, but it's well taken care of imo.

I love the wikipedia mock called uncyclopedia .. herehttp://www.uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Maine_Page

On topic.. I use wikipedia more than any website. I don't know if things on there are 100% reliable or not, but it has to be one of the most indepth encylopedias of all time.