possibly OT: wikipedia credibility shaken

[badgolferman]

Wikipedia is used as a reference by many people on UseNet including
this forum. I have always been suspicious of its content and this news
report isn't helping in any way.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Man Apologizes After Fake Wikipedia Post
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051212/ap_on_hi_te/wikipedia_fake_bio


A man who posted false information on an online encyclopedia linking a
prominent journalist to the Kennedy assassinations says he was playing
a trick on a co-worker.

Brian Chase, 38, ended up resigning from his job and apologizing to
John Seigenthaler Sr., the former publisher of the Tennessean newspaper
and founding editorial director of USA Today.

"I knew from the news that Mr. Seigenthaler was looking for who did it,
and I did it, so I needed to let him know in particular that it wasn't
anyone out to get him, that it was done as a joke that went horribly,
horribly wrong," Chase was quoted as saying in Sunday editions of The
Tennessean.

Chase said he didn't know the free Internet encyclopedia called
Wikipedia was used as a serious reference tool.

The biography he posted, which has since been replaced, falsely stated
that Seigenthaler was linked to the Kennedy assassinations and had
lived in the Soviet Union from 1971 to 1984.

The entry motivated Seigenthaler to write an op-ed piece for USA Today
blasting Wikipedia's credibility. He described himself as a close
friend of Robert Kennedy and said he had worked with President Kennedy.
He said "the most painful thing was to have them suggest that I was
suspected of their assassination."

Seigenthaler said he doesn't plan to pursue legal action against Chase.

He also said he doesn't support more regulations of the Internet, but
he said that he fears "Wikipedia is inviting it by its allowing
irresponsible vandals to write anything they want about anybody."

Chase said he created the fake online biography in May as a gag to
shock a co-worker who was familiar with the Seigenthaler family. He
resigned as an operations manager at a Nashville delivery company as a
result of the debacle.

 

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 12 Dec 2005, badgolferman wrote

Wikipedia is used as a reference by many people on UseNet
including this forum. I have always been suspicious of its
content and this news report isn't helping in any way.
---------------------------------------------------------------
---

Man Apologizes After Fake Wikipedia Post
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051212/ap_on_hi_te/wikipedia_fake_
bio

-snip-

The worst aspect of this to me is the uncritical use of the
information in Wikipedia by people who should ruddy well know
better: one of the problems that Siegenthaler was faced with was
that a couple of news-type sites -- I've lost the reference, so I'm
not sure which they were -- apparently have a habit of auto-copying
stuff off Wikipedia and republishing it, without even bothering to
read/verify it.

I'm not a defender of Wikipedia: it's a discussion, not a
reference work, and the use of the "-pedia" suffix has always
struck me as either muddle-headed or intentionally misleading.

Nonetheless, to see other supposedly-authoritative sites not even
bother to assess the basic compilation weakness of the site is
pretty depressing.

 

[elaich]

Wikipedia is used as a reference by many people on UseNet including
this forum. I have always been suspicious of its content and this news
report isn't helping in any way.

Wikipedia can be edited by ANYBODY. That alone makes it an unreliable
source. Though the sysops are vigilant about removing false and misleading
information, they can't know everything. I would never view Wikipedia as an
authoritative source.

 

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 12 Dec 2005, elaich wrote

Wikipedia can be edited by ANYBODY. That alone makes it an
unreliable source. Though the sysops are vigilant about
removing false and misleading information, they can't know
everything. I would never view Wikipedia as an authoritative
source.

Wikipedia should be viewed as a discussion, not a source.

 

[Rob Kelk]

Wikipedia is used as a reference by many people on UseNet including
this forum. I have always been suspicious of its content and this news
report isn't helping in any way.

See also:

There's no Wikipedia entry for 'moral responsibility'
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/12/wikipedia_no_responsibility/>

Wikipedia prankster caught
<http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28270>


Mind you, this has been a known problem for at least two months:

Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems
(18 October 2005)
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/18/wikipedia_quality_problem/>


<snip>

 

[Rob Kelk]

On 12 Dec 2005, elaich wrote


Wikipedia should be viewed as a discussion, not a source.

Perhaps it should, but they call themselves a source. The first line in
each article on their site is "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
that anyone can edit." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia> says
an encyclopedia is a "compendium of knowledge". That doesn't suggest
"discussion" to me...

 

[CJ Jones]

Wikipedia is used as a reference by many people on UseNet including
this forum. I have always been suspicious of its content and this news
report isn't helping in any way.

I confess, I am a journalist and I've been assigned to a story regarding
Wikipedia. HUGE discrepancies occur with content and reality. There are
recording artists with long careers who have been taken off the site
because, and I'm quoting the person who pulled four jazz artists, "It's
just a vanity post". Meanwhile, a neighborhood garage band is given full
page credentials.

The article I'm working on includes interviews with ninety-one people,
including senators, musicians, congressmen, and even a professor at MIT,
who have been slandered or have had their entries removed by nameless
random "editors". The cases in the press at the moment involve a
politician and a news reporter. The reason they are newsworthy is that
lawsuits are pending.

Interesting additional facts? The offices in Florida are not quick about
returning calls, emails, nor requests for information. My article
research began three months ago, after a friend at a record label
contacted me because the label's entry was removed, without notice. The
reason they were yanked? "No one has even HEARD of this imaginary
label", per the random teen editor on the board. Well, the moron editor
didn't realize the company had 30 years of recordings from everyone in
jazz history, including Oscar Peterson, Dave McKenna, and dozens of others.

The inconsistency is the biggest issue. As I stated above, a garage band
can take precedence over recognized, award-winning recording artists. An
art student gets more page space than someone who has gallery showings
in nine countries. A senator, alloted three pages of history, read his
biography and discovered he is not only racist, but apparently has been
in lawsuits for sexual harassment. These comments, untrue as they are,
stood on the site for over a year.

For Wikipedia to exist, it must hire a staff of fact checkers. There are
none. As a public accessible forum, all posts need to be verified prior
to instant publishing, or there will continue to be issues. If the
pending lawsuits continue without settlement, there will be no
Wikipedia. This may give the Florida staff time to return to the jobs
they had at Disney World or at Miami Beach dance clubs.

CJ Jones

 

[Kenneth]

I confess, I am a journalist and I've been assigned to a story regarding
Wikipedia. HUGE discrepancies occur with content and reality. There are
recording artists with long careers who have been taken off the site
because, and I'm quoting the person who pulled four jazz artists, "It's
just a vanity post". Meanwhile, a neighborhood garage band is given full
page credentials.

The article I'm working on includes interviews with ninety-one people,
including senators, musicians, congressmen, and even a professor at MIT,
who have been slandered or have had their entries removed by nameless
random "editors". The cases in the press at the moment involve a
politician and a news reporter. The reason they are newsworthy is that
lawsuits are pending.

Interesting additional facts? The offices in Florida are not quick about
returning calls, emails, nor requests for information. My article
research began three months ago, after a friend at a record label
contacted me because the label's entry was removed, without notice. The
reason they were yanked? "No one has even HEARD of this imaginary
label", per the random teen editor on the board. Well, the moron editor
didn't realize the company had 30 years of recordings from everyone in
jazz history, including Oscar Peterson, Dave McKenna, and dozens of others.

The inconsistency is the biggest issue. As I stated above, a garage band
can take precedence over recognized, award-winning recording artists. An
art student gets more page space than someone who has gallery showings
in nine countries. A senator, alloted three pages of history, read his
biography and discovered he is not only racist, but apparently has been
in lawsuits for sexual harassment. These comments, untrue as they are,
stood on the site for over a year.

For Wikipedia to exist, it must hire a staff of fact checkers. There are
none. As a public accessible forum, all posts need to be verified prior
to instant publishing, or there will continue to be issues. If the
pending lawsuits continue without settlement, there will be no
Wikipedia. This may give the Florida staff time to return to the jobs
they had at Disney World or at Miami Beach dance clubs.

CJ Jones

Howdy,

You might want to check http://tinyurl.com/cyogx to learn
more about this problem.

All the best,

 

[Kenneth]

Howdy,

You might want to check http://tinyurl.com/cyogx to learn
more about this problem.

All the best,

My apologies... I had not seen the same earlier in the
thread.

All the best,

 

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 12 Dec 2005, Rob Kelk wrote

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 17:47:58 GMT, Harvey Van Sickle


Perhaps it should, but they call themselves a source. The
first line in each article on their site is "From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia> says an
encyclopedia is a "compendium of knowledge". That doesn't
suggest "discussion" to me...

Precisely.

Their use of the "-pedia" suffix is thus either illiterate or
disingenuous, and they're clearly not illiterate.

 

[Al Klein]

For Wikipedia to exist, it must hire a staff of fact checkers.

Or maybe people just have to learn what "wiki", regardless of any
suffix, means.

 

[David]

Or maybe people just have to learn what "wiki", regardless of any
suffix, means.

"A web site or set of web pages that allows almost anyone to edit or
add content."
Wordweb.
--
David
Remove "farook" to reply
At the bottom of the application where it says
"sign here". I put "Sagittarius"
E-mail: justdas at iinet dot net dot au

 

[Al Klein]

"A web site or set of web pages that allows almost anyone to edit or
add content."
Wordweb.

Exactly. Nothing in there about the content being accurate, unbiased
or worth anything.

An encyclopedia entry has value as data, a wiki entry has value only
insofar as one is willing to accept it. Possibly as a source of
amusement, in some cases.

 

[Exeter]

Wikipedia is used as a reference by many people on UseNet including
this forum. I have always been suspicious of its content and this news
report isn't helping in any way.

Wikipedia is a collection of opinions from a mass of people with no
special qualifications interspersed with a few facts. In addition no
effective cross checking is applied.

Wikipedia might be used as a first level touch point but hardly a solid
reference. If you check the references you may find quite a bit of urban
legend and folk lore

 

[Rob Kelk]

Or maybe people just have to learn what "wiki", regardless of any
suffix, means.

As I said in an earlier post, they claim on every page of their website
to be an encyclopedia. That implies a certain level of fact-checking,
even if you go by their own definition of "encyclopedia".

 

[coolchinchilla]

Wikipedia is a collection of opinions from a mass of people with no
special qualifications interspersed with a few facts. In addition no
effective cross checking is applied.

Wikipedia might be used as a first level touch point but hardly a solid
reference. If you check the references you may find quite a bit of urban
legend and folk lore

How sad. I rather thought of the wikipedia as an info equivalent of
freeware. In freeware, people write programs without direct
compensation. (Don't know official def.) Sure there are jerks who
write spyware and junk out there, but there are strong bodies of
fantastic programs with the utmost in usefulness and at the top of
the technology. Things like the various Linuxes, FireFox,
firewalls, antiviruses are great stuff. If you research a bit you
can find the good stuff amongst the bad. In the wiki- I believe it
started as a means for computer programers to share code easily. It
would make sense that good will and honest users would prevail in
the wikipedia. It worked with the freeware world. It worked with
the shareware world. It worked with ebay.

How sad that such terrible things are happening with the wiki.
Linda and the zoo.

 

[FirstName LastName]

Wikipedia is used as a reference by many people on UseNet including
this forum. I have always been suspicious of its content and this news
report isn't helping in any way.

"Nature took stories from Wikipedia and Britannica on 42 science-related
topics and submitted them to experts for review. The experts were not
told which encyclopedia the stories were from. "The exercise revealed
numerous errors in both encyclopedias, but among 42 entries tested, the
difference in accuracy was not great: the average science entry in
Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, around three,"
according to Nature."

from:
<http://www.theage.com.au/news/natio...put-to-the-test/2005/12/14/1134500913345.html>

 

[Craig]

"Nature took stories from Wikipedia and Britannica on 42 science-related
topics...
from:
<http://www.theage.com.au/news/natio...put-to-the-test/2005/12/14/1134500913345.html>

Well, ya;

If I used wikipedia as a resource, I'd be more comfortable using it as
*one* data-point in a natural science inquiry. Where the 'pedia's
problem seems to come up is in the social sciences, bios, history and
the like.

It seems that pranksters and those w/an agenda are more apt to want to
do damage there and, are more apt to go undedected. Re-writing history
as it were.

Craig

 

[CJ Jones]

Well, ya;

If I used wikipedia as a resource, I'd be more comfortable using it as
*one* data-point in a natural science inquiry. Where the 'pedia's
problem seems to come up is in the social sciences, bios, history and
the like.

It seems that pranksters and those w/an agenda are more apt to want to
do damage there and, are more apt to go undedected. Re-writing history
as it were.

Craig

Exactly, and it wasn't until I was a verified Associated Press
journalist that I got an apology. I let the nameless/faceless powers
that be know about the article assigned to me. Also funny that a guy
with seven albums to his credit had been removed by a fan of a rap
artist by the same name. The reason? He didn't know there were two
people named Mike Jones. Unreal.

CJ