Wikipedia. So...how accurate is it?

Originally Posted by LeHah

If one person was to write a convincing, well spoken edit that Harrison Ford is a closet homosexual, and then 10 people made sure that the edit would stay there - it becomes fact to someone else who reads it without a grain of salt.

That doesn't surprise me, and honestly, anyone beliving anything on Wikipedia as ABSOLUTE TRUTH deserves to look like a fool. But if that example did happen, it would just invoke drama and that fancy-pants editing lock on it. XD

Which is what those type of people want, of course. :3

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Sosei

anyone beliving anything on Wikipedia as ABSOLUTE TRUTH deserves to look like a fool.

So then - why have it at all? If its to be used as ANY type of reference - not for school papers but to find even the most asinine subjects and is prone to being askewed by e-jerks, what good is it?

Do you people LIKE being lied to constantly?

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It's accurate for the most part.

The only thing I hate about it is that when I edit an article in order to insert some "cool facts" about a certain person's career, some other person edits it out saying it's not needed. It's just a battle of control. In the end, we compromise.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Heh, I've also been told that Wikipedia would not be accepted as a reference site for research pages. A good example of why is the disclaimer on the entry about the "Mona Lisa" painting by Leonard da Vinci.

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Because of recent vandalism or other disruption, editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled. Such users may discuss changes, request unprotection, or create an account.

I had a debate with someone a while ago over some inaccurate wiki information on the entries pertaining to the Zoids "Chaotic Century"/"Guardian Force" anime. English Wikipedia lists those two titles as seperate series (34 vs 33 episodes), while Wikipedia Japan puts both under the series "Zoids" (67 episodes). Considering the Japanese animation production website ALSO lists it as one 67 episode series, I like to go with the Japanese info as "correct".

It's a sign of what a fandom can apply to a series, which ends up being considered "official" across that fandom, whether it actually is or not. I don't mind the distinction, I just don't like the false official-ness.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by LeHah

If one person was to write a convincing, well spoken edit that Harrison Ford is a closet homosexual, and then 10 people made sure that the edit would stay there - it becomes fact to someone else who reads it without a grain of salt.

That won't happen, Wikipedia is ANAL about citations.

Originally Posted by LeHah

So then - why have it at all? If its to be used as ANY type of reference - not for school papers but to find even the most asinine subjects and is prone to being askewed by e-jerks, what good is it?

Because a source of information doesn't have to be an official reference to be useful. The official rates of innacuracies in Wikipedia are about the same as those of Encyclopedia Brittanica ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...d_in_Wikipedia ) which makes it a reliable source for casual browsing. Really, the number of times I've used Wikipedia for non-academic research far outnumbers the times I've used it as a starting point for an essay. Through hyperlinking, I've often been able to get a deep understanding of the broad context surrounding a single entry, which is incredibly useful. Yes, e-vandalism is a problem, but you take risks when you read any text. Just because it's not open source doesn't mean the author is telling the truth.

And still, Wikipedia often provides citations for its facts, which most often can be used for academic purposes.

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Do you people LIKE being lied to constantly?

Is this some sort of crude red herring or am I misunderstanding you? I don't remember evidence that there is not a single bit of truth on Wikipedia. Constantly?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by EmmDoubleEw

That won't happen, Wikipedia is ANAL about citations.

Somehow - people on the internet (which in and of it's self is an extremely dubious thing best left for a seperate discussion) aren't the smartest, most talented or best equipt people to say anything about any subject ever.

Why? James Pearson Assfuck of Bounty Hive, Montana can pretend he's Professor Bordem Q Faggot and stick 3,000 facts about any one given subject to hide any one given lie. That single lie totally destroys whatever validity the subject has because who's to say someone is to find it?

How many times does someone edit an entry and have some asshole take it down because it slanders what they like? I've heard of that happening all too often on sources about Hans Zimmer or James Horner. Say whatever fact you like about a subject - if some shitheel on Wiki disagrees with it, they can delete it.

In the short run, all you are is a mouthpeice of ignorance and stupidity by even glancing at that site.

Originally Posted by EmmDoubleEw

Because a source of information doesn't have to be an official reference to be useful.

That has to be the stupidest thing I've ever read in my life.

Information doesn't have to be TRUE for it to be USED. What are you, Sean McCormack? You going to tell me that theres UMD somewhere?

Originally Posted by EmmDoubleEw

The official rates of innacuracies in Wikipedia are about the same as those of Encyclopedia Brittanica ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...d_in_Wikipedia) which makes it a reliable source for casual browsing.

Citing Wikipedia about the validity of Wikipedia is like asking a rapist if he's guilty.

That aside, casual browsing in the way you paint it is fine if you enjoy being lied to. If thats your thing, fine - but I don't tolerate it, so if you want to go on being an uneducated ponce, don't tout it here is all.

Originally Posted by EmmDoubleEw

Really, the number of times I've used Wikipedia for non-academic research far outnumbers the times I've used it as a starting point for an essay... And still, Wikipedia often provides citations for its facts, which most often can be used for academic purposes.

No, it isn't -- this is empty Lunix jerk rhetoric, a clear example of people taking a term that has nothing to do with their project because they think it sounds smart.

The Wikipedia isn't a form of peer review at all. When you submit an academic paper for peer review, it's actually reviewed by the acknowledged, accredited experts *before* publication. The Wikipedia does none of this -- it publishes without any sort of review at all, and it in no way shape or form guarantees that your writing will be reviewed by experts.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by LeHah

Somehow - people on the internet (which in and of it's self is an extremely dubious thing best left for a seperate discussion) aren't the smartest, most talented or best equipt people to say anything about any subject ever.

Settle down

You're a person on the internet. Cynicism is a belief but not an argument.

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Why? James Pearson Assfuck of Bounty Hive, Montana can pretend he's Professor Bordem Q Faggot and stick 3,000 facts about any one given subject to hide any one given lie. That single lie totally destroys whatever validity the subject has because who's to say someone is to find it?

Aside from the blatant homophobism suggested by his pseudonym, Mr. Assfuck will quickly have to provide sources for his information before his "facts" are found to be erroneous and deleted. That's partly my attraction to wikipedia. It doesn't matter if he pretends to be the President of France or a high school teacher, because no one can verify his identity, he will have to provide evidence to support the claims hemakes.

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How many times does someone edit an entry and have some asshole take it down because it slanders what they like? I've heard of that happening all too often on sources about Hans Zimmer or James Horner. Say whatever fact you like about a subject - if some shitheel on Wiki disagrees with it, they can delete it.

You might want to check out what's happening to the page on the Armenian genocide as we speak. As you may know, the validity of the "genocide," although significantly supported by factual evidence, is disputed (particularly amongst Turkish scholars). The reason I want to you to take a look at it (and its talk page) is so you realize how much more complicated the issue is when "slander" is disputed. The Turks aren't really happy that such a page even exists, it's interesting to see how the Wikipedia community is dealing with it.

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In the short run, all you are is a mouthpeice of ignorance and stupidity by even glancing at that site.

For your own sake I will ignore any ad hominem/ poisening of the well on your part. I'll do my best, but it's usually more convincing when you use proper rhetoric, especially when we the subject of the conversation is "validity" .

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Information doesn't have to be TRUE for it to be USED. What are you, Sean McCormack? You going to tell me that theres UMD somewhere?

Straw man fallacy

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Citing Wikipedia about the validity of Wikipedia is like asking a rapist if he's guilty.

My citation wasn't about Wikipedia's validity , it was a verifiable source. You have no excuse; the encyclopedia Britannica is available for you to verify the facts on the page.

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That aside, casual browsing in the way you paint it is fine if you enjoy being lied to. If thats your thing, fine - but I don't tolerate it, so if you want to go on being an uneducated ponce, don't tout it here is all.

Evidence is your friend, particularly when you are criticizing Wikipedia for lacking evidence. You haven't provided significant evidence that Wikipeda consistantly spread "lies" and false information.

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No, it isn't -- this is empty Lunix jerk rhetoric, a clear example of people taking a term that has nothing to do with their project because they think it sounds smart.

I don't think so. Your comment suddenly brought "constistent lying" into the argument when the original subject was about validity; that sounds like a red herring to me. My concern isn't really appearing intelligent. I'm confident enough in my rhetoric that I can use it without flaunting it.

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The Wikipedia isn't a form of peer review at all. When you submit an academic paper for peer review, it's actually reviewed by the acknowledged, accredited experts *before* publication. The Wikipedia does none of this -- it publishes without any sort of review at all, and it in no way shape or form guarantees that your writing will be reviewed by experts.

I understand, but just because a paper is not peer review does not mean it is a lie, especially when it cites all its sources which are themselves peer reviewed. You seem to keep ignoring that most pages on Wikipedia do that.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Most wikipedia information seems to be accurate. I highly doubt people would write up a long, detailed entry that's false, let alone it go unnoticed. I've seen multiple fake entries, all which have been taken off the site.

However, it's true that people often put a bunch of subjective crap in there and add crummy links.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Wasn't it about a year ago, around the time aforementioned Penny Arcade strip was published, when Wikipedia received a lot of bad press regarding inaccuracies and vandalism? Kinda like that whole "Et tu, Firefox?" affair, when people realized that the latest open-source shooting star - god forbid - was not free of bugs either.

Sufficient to say that I happily go about my Wikipedia business (reading and contributing) using Firefox, my point being, that there is no such thing as a flawless system. Yet with enough people involved there is always a good chance for improvement. Too bad the templates {{sprotected}} and {{fact}} don't get as much press as the events which made them necessary in the first place.

A few words for LeHah: Chill! If you don't like Wikipedia, that's your thing but the way you're bashing that medium and everyone even remotely involved with it, all you're achieving is to look like an idiot. I share your problem with people being ignorant against better knowledge but in this case, this might as well work both ways.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I like browsing it for casual information, but I don't use it as a credible source for researching scholarly stuff. One of my history professors said that a research paper he was given by a student was word for word what was written on Wikipedia, and he said he found a lot of inaccuracies on that particular page (I think it was a WW2 topic).

Another professor said stuff similar to other peeps here, what's to stop a guy from writing things one way, and trying to make it a fact? What if the kingdom of France according to most accredited historians existed in the 11th century, but some guy wants it to have been established in the 7th century and then edits it accordingly?

And yeah, I've seen some interesting stuff before. While it's not as bad now (thanks to a bot that automatically reverts pages that get dramatically changed, but this is far from perfect), one time I looked up "dinosaur", and got a page saying that it's fake, and that God is going to punish people for saying all these lies and stuff.

Another interesting one I saw was "woman". The page I saw was basically "woman R teh Suq, they're bastages, etc, etc." apparently some guy got dumped recently and decided to get rid of everything that was written there, and replace it with what was essentially the online equivalent of graffiti.

Maybe in like 50 years it'll be credible enough to be a respectable source. But until then, if you cite wikipedia as a reliable source, and then the information is wrong, then you'll look like an idiot, which is why professors increasingly don't accept wikipedia sources (it might be okay for a general overview, but don't rely solely on them).

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Dinosaurs... oh gawd. XD

I remember when SheezyArt last had issues, and I found the wikipedia entry on it that was quite outright slandering the progress of the SheezyArt site and its content. I wish I had saved the entry, because it was changed later. It was pretty funny. I'll give Wiki credit that they seem to be pretty quick at fixing the outrageous stuff like that.

But yeah... if you really want more accurate information, I'd say get a book.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

If you're looking for more casual information, like wanting to know the list of every single Pokémon to date, for example, then Wiki is a pretty darn good source, but I'd never use it for actual research. Go get an encyclopedia for those.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Freelance Wolf

If you're looking for more casual information, like wanting to know the list of every single Pokémon to date, for example, then Wiki is a pretty darn good source, but I'd never use it for actual research. Go get an encyclopedia for those.

I still disagree. Never cite wikipedia, or paraphrase it, but it's a great tool for research because it has so many links to peer reviewed sources that you might not find through google. It's all about knowing how to use your tools.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

As a general information source, Wikipedia works quite well. It's a very good resource for two main areas: the factual/well known subjects which are also covered by other encyclopedias, and for information about subjects that wouldn't have any comprehensive amount of data on them in any particular place otherwise.

For major topics like historical figures and basic principles and facts about a major subject, it does a very good job of providing facts and information at pretty much the same pace as a normal encyclopedia. And also, for subjects that otherwise wouldn't really get any attention in a normal encyclopedia (facts about a certain movie or game series, the history of a company, data about technologies, etc.), it's a nice resource when you wouldn't really be able to easily find any information on those subjects anywhere else. For those topics, about the only other place you'd find data on them would be random websites dedicated to those particular subjects, but often they aren't as comprehensive as Wikipedia and sometimes are wrong more often than Wikipedia.

It's weakest when it comes to the more controversial subjects or highly debatable information, or about specific people. For those, there's a higher chance of having false or outdated information being posted and vandalism. But usually those are areas that aren't going to be covered by many other sources without being prone to bias or factual innacurracies as well, so it's a bit of a toss up since you'd just be kinda screwed in general if you're looking for research on those topics.

In general Wikipedia is a good source, especially since they almost always have links that cite their sources and usually give a warning before parts that may have innacuracies are don't cite where the information is from. Of course it's mainly just good to use as a starting point or to get a basic overline of a subject, and occasionally pages will be sabotaged (I've rarely seen that outside of the heated debatable subjects, though), but overall it's a good source that offers a large range of facts quickly.

Just remember that the information there is usually paraphrased to begin with, so there's not much point to taking specific quotes from it and referencing it directly when you can use the original source that's cited at the bottom of the page for it.

FELIPE NO

Wikipedia is my Nr.1 page when I want to get an overview on a certain topic. There are several topics or questions that pop up in my head, for which I want to investigate it further. A few years ago, I didn't bother any longer, since I didn't want to waste my time searching with Google or reading books. But Wikipedia is just a click away and when I type in the word of my interest I get a nice and comprehensive article in almost all cases.

Wikipedia is also perfectly suited for niche topics like animes or games. There are various animes and RPGs that are inspired of classical topics of history, fiction or religion (for example, the origin of Count Dracula in Hellsing or Planet Styx in Star Ocean 3, which origin lies in greek mythology), which gets you firstly more involved with the actual stories and you have a better understanding and secondly it's always good for general education.
In that case, Wikipedia has made my life easier on a certain degree.

Wikipedias weakness are topics like politics, philosophy or religion where you have various opposing sides that edit each others' articles. It's especially annoying in times of election, there you have to get your hands off Wikipedia because you don't know if one statement about a party is true or if it's maliciously altered by another one.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by LeHah

Hasn't this subject been discussed here already?

Instead of running off at the mouth again, I'll simply say that Stephen Colbert and his example involving the elephant entry makes a more resounding statement as to the stupidity of Wikipedia than I ever could hope to make myself.

Well of course not. Being completely uninformed, you can't really make a statement with any kind of impact.

Wikipedia articles are fantastic when the rules (eg. Neutral Point Of View) are followed. It's some users who are stupid, not Wikipedia as a whole.

Originally Posted by LeHah

Somehow - people on the internet (which in and of it's self is an extremely dubious thing best left for a seperate discussion) aren't the smartest, most talented or best equipt people to say anything about any subject ever.

Reading some of your posts, I wholeheartedly agree.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Gad, that I have to come near the very end of this thread to find something reflecting my point of view on this topic...

It's rather simple: the stronger the opinions on a topic (or the more irrational haters), the more the chances for inaccuracies, especially now that wikipedia has gotten so popular. The 'net is full of know-it-alls who find ways to disagree with even the world's foremost experts on anything (2+2=4? WTF?), and some of them will always want to try to "fix" anything that isn't consistent with their percieved knowledge, right or wrong. That, or they just wanna prank on their favorite targets. But all that usually comes from resentment over a person's or item's success or praise (better look up Tom Cruise or Eminem somewhere else). The aforementioned is also why no source can ever be definitive anymore. But I'd have no qualms about looking up info on any of the 50 states in the Union, or on mathematics, geometry, etc. Another example: you'd be fine reading about the workings of different audio compression technologies, but you'd probably wanna stop when you get to quality comparisons.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Wikipedia is like the Google of research sites...its going to get soooo popular...

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I tend to use Wikipedia for basic information, generally if I want to find out about a video game or anime series that I'm not familiar with at all. It's a good general resource, and I have added some of my web sites that have information about subjects I know to be correct (because it came from official sources), but that's mostly on games and other things. I'm an English major, I'd never use it as an actual source for anything.

For the most part, it's fairly accurate. Some of the people do have a grasp on what they write and if accurate details can be added later on, great. It's not the be-all and end-all of anything, but it's a useful tool for various things.

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Teachers and professors hate it though..but i could care less. Ctrl C and Ctrl V work fine for me. Thanx wiki!

I was speaking idiomatically.

Wikipedia is accurate as much as you want it :dealer:

How ya doing, buddy?

yeah, it's pretty spot on on it's info. a little too advanced sometimes

FELIPE NO

I don't consider it a viable source for information in regards to anything academic. Mainly because anyone can just write whatever the hell they want. You don't know where they got it, and I'm sure no one actually bothers to credit their sources. No matter how true something seems, it may be totally off base, which leads to you looking like an idiot in front of the teacher you try and pass the information off to in any form. Besides, if they know about wikipedia, they'll know if you copy and paste information directly from the site. Plagiarism, anyone?

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by lia

I'm sure no one actually bothers to credit their sources

lmfao. Try visiting the site before you criticize it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.