Jim and I were corresponding on another subject, and this thread came up in passing. Before I saw what had become of the thread since yesterday, I responded that I often used Wikipedia the way I used the World Book Encyclopedia back in the days before the internet -- to get a quick grasp of the basic structure or organization of knowledge about a subject, before going on to the Encyclopedia Britannica (no, not Britannica III, the real one), and that you often needed the quick brush-up of the WB in order to understand what EB was talking about. Wikipedia is useful fmainly or figuring out what questions to ask and what to pay particular attention to.

There certainly is an element of "voting on facts" in the way Wikipedia articles are finalized, but the main part of the process seems to me to bear some resemblance to the Delphi method that assess "what most people surveyed believed is the fact" and expresses the range of beliefs, which means it's a useful tool for assessing the body of knowledge -- information and belief -- that's "out there," but that's a -- this is difficult to express: it's a n-1 dimension shadow representation of the facts, not a direct representation in n dimensions of the facts -- the way a hypercube can be represented by a sculpture in three dimensions or drawn on a two-dimensional surface, but operations performed on the pictures don't necessarily mirror operations on the hypercube. Looked at critically, Wikipedia articles are not reprsentations of the subject matter so much as they are representations of the state of knowledge about the subject matter, which is not quite the same thing. The problem comes about when you try to treat the "state of knowledge about a subject" as "knowledge about a subject."

Unfortunately nobody ever learns how to do critical thinking about the epistemological status of a proposition, so confusion is regnant.

I do think its cool that Wikipedia has a page on the criticism of wikipedia.

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

Myself, I use Wikpedia as a jumping off point to help me know where to look but do not accept it as al reference. I see it more as a very large community of people sharing their ideas and knowledge (right or wrong). What makes it different from other communities, like any forum for instance, is that the data is that the shared information is cataloged in a fashion for easy specific retrieval.

For what it's worth, I don't have any objection to wikis in general or Wikipedia as exactly what it is - and between you and Bill you've pretty well bracketed it.

My objection is to Wikipedia positioning itself as a reference and the ever-increasing number of people treating it as such. There's been a tendency to flock to it for this purpose out of sheer laziness (yes, it can be slightly harder to find the information on a topic-specific site) and, all too often, a smug sense that 'we don't need no steenkin' experts cuz we'se just as smart' pseudo-egalitarianism.

All the patchy band-aid fixes they've applied over the past few years in an attempt to raise their standards haven't changed the fundamental nature or fixed the basic problem, they've just made it damned near impossible for new contributors to get to a level where they can add new information or correct errors. You can't have it both ways, but they try. And fail: it's no longer truly a collective-knowledge site nor a reference by a limited number of expert contributors.

I use Wikipedia several times a week, but by far the most consequential thing I look up is comic character entries, which are generally excellent. But then, I don't really care if they say Wolverine stopped wearing the yellow spandex in issue #394 when everyone knows it was really ish #374, or whatever. It's a trivial pop topic and close enough is good enough for my purposes.

(Would I quote one of those entries in a comix forum? Not on your life, buster.)

I was going to ask you to define "whinging," but after looking it up I think you captured the tone of this argument beautifully.

Hey Jim, did you write this:

I've always objected to any encyclopedia positioning itself as a reference, if you mean as a reliable and authoritative source of information. I've been finding factual errors, to say nothing of ridiculously oversimplified information, in encyclopedias since I was an elementary school student criticizing our World Book at home.

As a jumping off point for research, though, Wikipedia works fine. And that's what encyclopedias are supposed to be and do.

Hi,

New to this forum. Glad I found life in Heinlein fandom since the Heinlein Society site appears to have been untended since about 2007. Thanks Jim!

Thought I might give my own take on Wikipedia.

What most commentators here don't seem to get is that Wikipedia is not where "anybody can write anything". Well - actually they can, but if they get on the wrong side of the powers that be they will soon be squelched. (Read - reverted, admonished, and/or banned).

One of the strictest rules of Wikipedia (I paraphrase radically) is that verifiability trumps truth. That is to say, that being able to reference a published source is mandatory. The "No original research" rule means that even if you know something for a fact (e.g. you were an eyewitness) your knowledge has no place in a Wikipedia article, unless you can reference a published source for the info.

To me, this makes Wikipedia a little too much on the "authoritative" end of the spectrum for my taste? Why? Because much of society's supposed knowledge is politicized. And, in some instances, a single viewpoint has a monopoly or near monopoly (or at least a vast preponderance) on published sources. This is less true since the rise of the Internet, however.) So, Wikipedia, like the traditional "expert" media, tends to undervalue dissenting voices. Though, there is more recourse there than in the world of the centrally controlled media.

That being said, I have found their work on non-politicized subjects quite useful, such as the article on Neurotransmitters (Actually neurotransmitters are somewhat politicized, due to the controversy over psych meds, but this doesn't seem to have crept into the core article much.)

I think basically "It's all good". The unfettered blogosphere has its uses, as does the authoritative encyclopedia, as do intermediate forms such as WIkipedia. It's all about knowing what tool to use for the job and how to handle it safely and effectively.

Just a thought,
-Steve

Somewhere that I can't find right now, Peter made the comment that Wikipedia is about collections of abstracts of other published material, and not about original contributions. I can testify to that.

There's a small datum I would like to put into the slipstream and I've never found quite the right place for it. I wrote it as a short paper and shared it with some knowledgeable aficionados a few years ago; disappeared without a trace. So it's kind of relevant now and I wanted to put it in the appropriate WP article, and in a test of Peter's theory I prettied up my paper and posted it in a convenient place. I then did a short writeup of the contents for the Wiki article, referenced the paper, and posted it.

Five hours later it was yanked by a 20-something English major who has a casual interest in the subject. His editing note is "Insufficient. Vanity press."

Which is both untrue and irrelevant; the factual basis of the matter can be checked, easily, by anyone with the relevant volume at hand. But Mr. Joe Collegeboy didn't like the paper trail for it, so it vanished into the aether.

Nuf sed about Wikipedia.

Crushing new cars reminds me of how the circa-2000 U.S. economy in The Door into Summer depended, among other things, on building cars (without motors, etc.) that were intended to be crushed.

All good comments, Steve.

"Motives" was a poorly chosen word. Revision: I suspect the intellectual rigor of anyone who would rely on Wikipedia for hard-science (or even quite-firm science, say, psych) data. I think it's laziness to rely on such an untrustworthy source just because the page always pops up in the Google top ten and is E-Z-2-REED.

So fine, you look up the page on cesium or neurotransmitters and it seems like a fine summary etc. ...but how do you know? Because you're already somewhere up the expertise scale and you can sift the useful info and likely accuracy from the mushy or even incorrect bits? I can say that I don't know jack about neurotransmitters except what I've absorbed through some collateral reading, so I would have absolutely no filter (freudian fun: I typed "know") for what is trustworthy and accurate and what an expert would know was mushy and ill-stated. THAT'S the problem. For all the general "gee, I'm an expert and all the entries I read in my field look great" attitude, that's not good enough to qualify as a reference. A reference should be vetted and accurate and trustworthy enough so that no expertise is required to judge the information it provides.

Which is why I think it is sloppy and lazy and intellectually mushy to look up anything rigid there.

The soft entries, on pop culture etc., are another matter. No one is going to get terribly spun if a discography omits a "The" on an album title, or decides that Led Zepp 4 is really titled "Zoso." So this faux implementation of JAMA standards to these entries - especially when so haphazardly applied - only reinforces my sense of "the Wikipedia community" as being little more than half assholes and half idiots.

I do wish to make it plain that I respect academic and scholastic standards, especially for reference materials. I even respect what Wikipedia wants/hopes/thinks itself to be. (I simply think it falls so short of that goal as to be risible.)

It is the schism between the millions of words of unsupported, un-referenced blather in the "soft" entries and this brick wall preventing me from adding a small, largely factual, immediately verifiable blot of info that infuriates me. I'm not trying to slip anything past anyone or corrupt the data stream; I can point to a hundred similar entries that hold paragraphs similar to what I want to add to the continuum, few of which even reference something so loose as a magazine article.

I understand that Bill went through much the same thing when he attempted, through every channel, to update the horribly skewed Heinlein entry a few years ago. (Someone finally got through the logjam and wrote a decent, if still imperfect entry - but it wasn't Bill.)

This is not how the system should work. Joe College, with his member page full of stars for his wonderful editing, should not arbitrarily block new material because - despite being accurate and immediately verifiable against the source - it doesn't dance to his tune. Makes me want to pull out my Uzi and tell Joe to do a little dance for me.

The Wicki pages I find most interesting are the "talk" pages that sit behind the entries. With enough effort and quoting of sources on the talk pages I have sometimes gotten changes made in entries that I could not have managed by simply changing the entry and posting a link.

Right now I am busy laughing at someone who has posted several items on the talk page for "Gray Wolf" and cited as his only reference Farley Mowat. Someone has already pointed out that Mowat did no research for Never Cry Wolf and has been criticized by wolf researchers to the point that he generally doesn't discuss the nature of that book anymore.

Two hours, twenty five minutes: Joe College "removes original research" - which it manifestly is not, any more than inserting a phrase "...such as the green frog on the cover of her latest album..." is.

Y'all can keep defending Wikipedia if you like. I consider all my reservations about it and its creation process validated. It is not a collective knowledge tool "by and for the rest of us" or whatever; it's an MMO game with no game-masters to rein in the gankers or abusive players. My distrust of its contents now officially exceeds describable bounds.

Apropos of very little, this timely cartoon just appeared:

Jim, this one's for you:



BTW, I defy you to read that without thinking of Monty Python.

There are many decaffeinated brands on the market these days, James, that are just as flavorful as the real thing.



In point of fact, my experience of Wikipedia is exactly that it is peopled by editors for whom referring to 'Eurhythmics' as 'The Eurhythmics' would get you skewered.

I hate to say this, because I do it myself, and I'm not fond of people pointing it out to me... but I think your distaste for WP is personal, not business.

I base that in part on the fact that you haven't responded to my accusing you of strawman argument earlier this month, on this thread -- which is grounds for pistols at dawn in these parts, no?

I didn't find any of your comments particularly relevant to the discussion, B. I thus nodded and moved on. The matters at hand are already complex and diffuse enough.

I find it interesting and a bit chilling that no one has quite addressed the specific issues I've raised, but rather have tried to reframe the discussion to terms they find more comfortable or convince me of WP's validity on other, only distantly related grounds.

Huh. Or maybe Hurm.

Well, between this response, and your handwave on the Rolling Roads thread, James... I'm starting to come to the conclusion that it's *you*, dude.

You're accusing not only me, but Bill and Peter, of handwaving you in our replies on this topic, and, man, I just don't see it.

No, Peter's been quite on point, and Bill's comments have been insightful if characteristically aslant. Yours seemed a little out of left field.

If you want to accuse me of handwaving and that it's somehow "me" here, fine. I won't argue. I've made my statements, have made them in multiple forums over the years, and have had more people clearly agree with my fears about Wikipedia subsuming the notion of "reference" in an ever-expanding population than have cogently disagreed. Disagreement often takes the form of mentioning the WP vs. EB comparisons (irrelevant) or even showing an obvious anti-expert, even anti-intellectual bias ("We'se all jest as smart as them aaaiixx-perts!")

If you've got an addressable point to make other than that you think WP is just dandy, please take all the space you like to make it. Saying it's somehow "me" adds nothing and is not worth trying to debate.

One of the reasons we have different experiences with Wik is that the old blind men and elephant problem. There is no one thing there. There are many different microenvironments and no one experiences more than a few. There are some general features which point me in the direction of thinking that the thing isn't all that wonderful. But my own experiences there haven't been bad.

If anyone wants to see the actual llst of errors found in the Nature article (), it is at .

Certainly it proves that Wikipedia is as trustworthy as EB on matters scientific. One of Jim's points is that it displays bias on controversial matters; the bias of whichever editors happen to dominate its editing. I can't really imagine how one could trust a comparison study of such articles since the much smaller number of experts involved in the comparison than the WP article writing could never be proven to be less biased. And this, perhaps, is the basis of the argument that WP should be on average at least as trustworthy as EB on controversial articles also; it is the product of a large number of people who care about the topic and bias can be evened out.

Jim would retort that truth is not a process of voting by the proletariat. Were this to have mattered, an ancient WP would claim "Earth: Flat" and the modern one might say "Evolution: Half-baked theory." So I looked at the just now. It doesn't appear to contain any such taint, less even than has been reportedly in certain school textbooks. It does start with a link to a lengthy article explaining why calling Evolution a theory does not make it half-baked; the main article does not call it a theory at all. In fact it contains a section on "Social and cultural responses" as thoughtful and neutral as any scientist could hope for.

I assert that this bolsters my earlier claim that many eyeballs lead to good results. I would expect more errors in articles about politics or current affairs that deal with topics of much less general interest; hence the reports about (relatively) obscure figures having bogus names, bogus deaths, and bogus assassinations. But in all honesty, I have yet to see anything in Wikipedia that would cause me to have even a mild tremor, let alone the 8.5 earthquake Jim experiences. I've found a few articles on incredibly obscure old British TV shows that had very little to say on the topics, but they were still accurate as far as they went. Someone doing Research with a big R shouldn't stop at WP, but neither should they stop with the EB. I think WP is perfectly acceptable for the average Joe to find out about topic X for non-mission-critical reasons, including homework. I simply don't see the justification for hauling out the crucifix and garlic flowers. Jim has had some unpleasant experiences in attempting to submit information to WP that appear to have colored his opinion of the whole thing to a degree I cannot reconcile with my own experience.

Let's not ignore also the tremendous advantage that WP gives to anyone with a network connection. When I were a lad, knowledge such as that required a trip to the library (and not just my village library, which could no more afford a large encyclopedia than we could) and hours of work that can now be had for the price of a few keystrokes. There is the opportunity for children to grow up vastly better informed. We will not know for some time whether this happens, of course - and as long as homework can be accepted electronically there is the potential for blindly copying and pasting, whereas at least copying text longhand results in the information passing through the brain in the process: that must have been why my high school transferred so much knowledge from our teachers to our notebooks by dictating through our tired hands. But the opportunity is there. The potential benefit is huge. If the choice is between having massive freely available information, the price of which is minor inaccuracies on obscure "soft" topics, and massive amounts of reliable information, the price of which is a dollar figure few families can afford, well...

I have absolutely nothing against WP as long as it is correctly judged - even the White Queen system of info arbitrage only mildly annoys me, separate from the larger issue. As a first-glance, general-survey, shout-to-the-room source of info, it's almost as amazing as IMDb.

My concerns about WP taking itself too seriously, and being taken too seriously, are based on firsthand observation of what people cite and quote to buttress meaningful arguments - arguments that can have serious consequences, such as loss of a job or other position. The (oh, let's pick a figure) under-25s have the usual brightly ignorant shortsight to be unable to distinguish why WP is a questionable rock on which to rest the word "reference."

As you point out with the lesser encyclopedias of a bygone age, there is a tendency to take the "it's in the encyclopedia, it must be true" position, when anyone with more intellectual experience knows that an encyclopedia is never more than a first approximation and summary, to be used as the steppingstone to real references when needed or demanded.

As Peter pointed out, it used to be difficult to get even this first-approx info, even if you were lucky enough to have a set of encyclopedias in the house. Lowering the bar on both lookup of info and submission of info to the point where "expertise" in either library skills or topic knowledge becomes almost irrelevant is a very two-edged sword... and the "good" edge is rusty, blunt and nicked while the dangerous edge is Herbertian shigawire.

WP is the big pimple on the front of the issue - best summarized as "if it's not on the web, it doesn't exist" and increasingly focused as "if it's not in Google..." Google's attempt to encapsulate all the world's knowledge is admirable and increasingly useful... but my fears of WP are a minor worry compared to my terror of an entity like Google controlling knowledge.

Yes, yes, for now Google is a pale shadow of real libraries etc., but they are voraciously expanding their content every day. For now Google is a benign world-saver. For now Google is backstopped and checked by other repositories.

But what about when it isn't? What about when we've passively or actively turned all our collective knowledge over to Google the Mighty? When libraries close because no one uses them any more except as internet kiosks (already happening); when no one has any personal cache of references because it's just mouse clicks away? (Sad to say, that includes me - our net connection was down the other night and I had no current VideoHound to look up a film datum... stopped buying them years ago because of IMDb.)

So Bush the Third comes along and unlike his predecessors, he and Rovesfeld Jr. are quite net-savvy. Google becomes a gummint pawn and knowledge is back in the hands of a priest class that determines what we get to know.

Case in point: the blurring of Cheney's house in Google Earth for eight years.

WP is just a facet of this, the most prominent, active and obvious one. The concentration of knowledge into the hands of a single entity, no matter how benign-benevolent-common heritage-netsocialist etc., terrifies me.

while i may be the only sentient being with a net connection who has NEVER visited WP, I do want to echo a bit of Jim's latest posting cc the concentration of knowledge (power) into a single entity

when/if this occurs, Jim is right to fear that this knowledge may become for only the privileged and all too rational- look backwards into history and see how keeping the general populace ignorant is directly related to their enslavement- it occurs over and over- you say that couldn't happen in this age? hmmmmmm....... maybe not in a generation, especially if books still remain, but over time, when people have gotten "lazy" and general reading has become so passe, books will fall into disuse and turn to dust and nothing new is being published, then you have the makings of tyranny ! holy hanna was that a run on sentence or ?

bread and circuses....bread and circuses........ smile and take your happy pill........don't worry big brother will handle all the details cuz we know all <sheeesh don't we have WP?>- isn't ignorance bliss ? revel in it

lol just having a little fun <and trembling at this thought>

Nick

oooops got too fired up to proof read- I meant to say (paraphrasing Jim) " fear.......all too rationally"

Coventry would seem appealing under the forementioned circumstances


Nick

Hurm. Okay.

In some brickwork-over-steamed-and-rolled-lawns academic framework, you leave little to argue with. If a BYS uses an inferior source for his/her information, that's their problem. Guess they flunk. Shame on them; they'll have to teach English Lit in a JC.

However, when that BYS is doing work that affects someone else, the flawed source becomes the problem of all those downstream - and they may or may not have any idea they have a problem. This is already happening. I am not citing a vague what-if, could-be, think-bout-this situation: I am referring to specific cases where BYSes who should have known better used greatly inferior web-based info, some from WP, to draw conclusions and make recommendations that affect peoples' lives. Educated BYSes. Some highly educated BYSes.

As much as you are trying to dismiss the problem as one of semantics and a few poorly educated individuals, it is real, it is here and it is only going to get worse as the understanding of what a reference is declines. We've never had anything like WP around before, so comparisons with WB etc. are at best shallow. If this doesn't bother you, go back to sleep - and hope the guy who designed that semi's brakes, you know, the one rounding the corner near your house, got his numbers from a valid source.

And what in the farking zarkwad of the Third Fain of Chudomo gave you the notion I was a libertarian?

As much as this would snarkily misrepresent Jim's position, I can't help characterizing it as Seinfeld's George Costanza ranting, "We're living in a society here, people!"

Yes, in the near term, my post would appear a mite laughable- what's scary though is watching what is acceptable "research" for my high school aged kids- at best one hard copy source is acceptable in a LARGE writing project- the rest can be on line sources!!! As the ease of just googling for material proliferates, the hard work of seeking within authoritative texts accordingly diminishes !

what happens when the online data source becomes so broad that it becomes acceptable as a sole source of info ? what occurs when this info source becomes one humongous data base (with appropriate government oversight)? - it's a frightening progression- seriously, i'm not, at heart, a fear monger. What happens when you/I begin connecting the dots ? at the very least you're faced with apprehensions of where we're headed as a culture- why do hard research when your computer can perform the gathering and sorting (and perhaps eventually) the correlation of all the materials ? what happens when your info sources are controlled by one authority? corruption- to who's benefit?

the quest for power in the name of "right" ? who determines what's right? it's a type of gordian knot

beware for whom the computer tolls, for it tolls for thee (my apologies to Mr. Poe)

Nick

There is a difference in viewpoints throughout this thread that I think is confusing things.

From the perspective of a properly educated and trained scholar, WP is a minor pop-culture phenomenon with interesting if casual purposes. You'll get no argument from me that this is a valid viewpoint. Very little of my concern comes from what might be called "skilled misuse" of WP and its contents. Several of you have spent a lot of words dismissing my comments from this viewpoint - which is largely irrelevant to the gist of what I'm saying.

The other perspective is that the vast number of more casual users assign too much validity to WP's content, and its relative stature. I have seen people say that "this isn't just from some web page, it's from WIKIPEDIA!" as if there was much difference. I suppose you can dismiss this phenomenon because these aren't academics talking in an academic framework to an academic audience, and thus somehow beneath concern (yes, Baylink, I think this squarely addresses your posts).

I think it is of some concern when the large base of nonacademic, untrained users assigns more weight and validity to a source like WP than is justified. Far more of influence is written by what might be loosely summarized as non-academics than by formal academics - and if these creators of pop influence are using faulty data, is the net effect on some large mass of readers any less than the smaller impact of a flaw within a formal framework?

Even that's not my real concern here, though. It's that writers, researchers, even "academics" who should know better are beginning to use WP as a source at a level it does not rate, blindly citing its contents and even secondary content like conclusions as if it came from a more validated source. It's this "validity creep" that really troubles me.

I don't think there's any point in further discussion of how academics do or don't or should or shouldn't see or use WP - we can close that argument as it's been closed several times, that we can assume the pros know better and those that don't will get their comeuppance in due time.

The concern is influential amateur use, and the evidence that even semi-pros are getting sloppy about their interpretation of WP, and that this problem is growing more widespread.

No, I don't have a solution to propose. (I don't subscribe to the theory of net pleasantness that says one must include a workable solution as part of any post decrying something.)

I think you've gone out of your way to selectively quote and interpret what I've said. I don't and have not "blamed Wikipedia" for anything. It's not any part of my criticism or viewpoint. I don't think the founders/movers/shakers have an unimpeachable rationale or viewpoint about their baby, but I don't "blame" them. It's a collective problem (and would need a collective solution).

On the other hand, rereading all your posts in light of you being a "six year Wikipedian" changes their interpretation quite a bit, IMHO. They start to sound a lot like the howling of tender toes.

I've really said all I have to say in this thread and really don't wish to devolve to me said/ye said hashing. I retain deep reservations about WP and all it represents, and those representing it, and the growing number who misrepresent and misuse it. If you want to take away that it's some personal problem of mine, I'm happy to leave it at that.

I don't edit enough to be talking it personally, I don't think, no.

And since the thread is titled what it is, complaining without suggesting a solution is perfectly acceptable.

So, certainly, nolo contendere.