The Question of Wikipedia

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Originally Posted by librarius_qui

Revision would be something, for a start. But there's more than this.

Not only a Grammar revision, but a body of researchers for revising the contents, and correcting ... It's the work of an encyclopedia, after all, I think ...

It can be done, but it should be restructured, and it'd probably not be possible to keep it (for) free ... In a way, it works well for its purpose.

There are encyclopedias available in the internet, that you can access, if you pay for it. Researchers do eat as well (...).

Well I don't know, I'm not a researcher. Perhaps they don't eat. They might be spending the money in plans for conquering the galaxy! :alien:

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Well that's making wikipedia something that it isn't. The only way such an amount of information can be put on wikipedia is by not having everything systematically verified but letting people in general do the job. That's the principle of it. Make it otherwise and you will just have another "professional" encyclopedia. Wikipedia's method has it's strength and it's weaknesses that are inherent to the method used. It's strength is the great democratization of knowledge and the great amount of subjects covered. It's weakness, is a direct cause of it's strength, and namely, that it will forever be worthless as a serious source - and that is perfectly alright, because it was never it's point.

It's always been a starting off point for me but in the end I rarely end there and light topics I never really second guess the information but with it comes to history I have found peoples own views are given of certain wars, battles and leaders etc. The same with literature, people can interpret certain plot points and character developments their own way and somebody just skimming might take it for fact when the complete opposite might be true. I know I've looked back and cursed wiki a few times anyway.

Although I have read a few books where I found out later that the author either plagiarized, mislead or took something out of context with certain events. So the problem can work in both mediums.

Wikipedia needs to move on now and try to become a much more reliable source and try win people over or else I can see something else coming along and toppling it.

Ihem is this mike on? ..ok heed my words people
Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source of information!!!!
its is alright for a quick starting point or a summery of a film or even just to follow the links to the external sources it quotes but it is not and never will be a good reliable information resource. No just because anyone can edit it that DOES NOT mean it is peer reviewed, nor is that a strength.

but it does have loads of information there and in fact it has some fairly accurate stuff on heavy going topics>>> it had last year anyway all the correct equations for calculating recovery and retrieval of search engines and weighting of terms and inverse frequency and all that jazz related to making serach engine right, and google actually does take you to a lot of very good resources if you use it properly its just that usually its too much hassel to go through and refine all the search details aas much as one really should.

:D

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Wikipedia needs to move on now and try to become a much more reliable source and try win people over or else I can see something else coming along and toppling it.

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Not really, because that's not necessarily what wikipedia is meant to be. It's reliable enough for what it's purpose is. Just like, say, this topics in this forum are not supposed to be moderated by specialists to be sure each question is answered exactly correctly. It's not about being cited as a serious source, but it's about making the information as accessible as possible and this entails degree of unreliability, which is not really a factor when it comes to how one should use it. For example, the other day I had a drunken chat with a friend and we came to a point where we needed to check something about color perception. I'm not going to go drunk at 2 A.M in a library. That's why wikipedia is there. Not for academic papers or even serious personal research.

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Originally Posted by Etienne

Not really, because that's not necessarily what wikipedia is meant to be.

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Well If they want to settle thats fine by me but if the continue to leave the doubts out there then they can say goodbye to any long term serious goals if they have any. I'm sure they wont want to be known as being totally unreliable and a joke within some circles.

What about increasing and enriching the amount of article, and not only in English, but especially in other languages? That's one hell of a long-term goal. And the articles are all slowly being improved (that means also getting more reliable), but just never expect them to reach academic standards, and even if one article does have academic standards in terms of reliability, wikipedia can still not be used as a reliable source, even if it's only because the next article about some random manga character or-I-don't-know-what, doesn't cite it's sources correctly or does not have credible sources.

I guess I'll just have to keep going to the library for my WW2 information and leave wikipedia for finding out which episode of That 70's Show Mitch Hedberg was in.

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Originally Posted by Petya

I guess I'll just have to keep going to the library for my WW2 information and leave wikipedia for finding out which episode of That 70's Show Mitch Hedberg was in.

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There are many good sites on the web that cover the area of WWll it's just a case of careful research, though books are better!

It’s alright for a very general overview on something and if it is used in this way I see no problem. Of course it is not to be relied upon beyond this - it’s a sort of ‘bag o’ crisps’ of the information world.

Honestly, I have seen sourced info there that is just flat out wrong. I think that is problematic to say the least.

I always tell my students this:

"Wikipedia is a nice place to start researching; it's a lousy place to end researching."

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Originally Posted by JBI

Honestly, I have seen sourced info there that is just flat out wrong. I think that is problematic to say the least.

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I can’t say I have ever seen any that bad but I am sure there are some out there that are. If you use Wiki you have to take that risk, it is the nature of the site - of course I’ve never used it for literary purposes or anything of much importance at all, nor would I ever. I must say too that I have read some quite good ones - this one about Sheffield which I stumbled across the other day is quite good.

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

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Originally Posted by The Comedian

I always tell my students this:

"Wikipedia is a nice place to start researching; it's a lousy place to end researching."

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This certainly seems to be the consensus here. Interestingly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia
Seems to talk about the same thing we are. Interestingly these are full of citations, and I suspect they are the most stringently edited articles in there.

Flip through the references - some even link back to wikipedia itself. And, more importantly, almost none of those sources are peer reviewed if any. Not to mention the fact that there is clear bias in the article. A most mediocre justification I might say. The truth is, wiki is rubbish. Sometimes, rubbish is faster and easier, so we read it. But it is still rubbish.

That being said, the article compares wiki to Britanica, not to real sources. Why not compare it to something with more credibility. Half the non-contemporary stuff on Wiki seems lifted from Public Domain versions of Britanica anyway.