Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Article: The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

<< < (2/4) > >>

JavaJones:
You know, I agree with basically every one of his points. I have 2 problems with this and other articles.

1: The Wikipedia does present a vast amount of very good, useful, real information, often much more than is in the average enyclopedia. He talks about inaccuracy and revisionist history, but pretty much any school text book is full of the same, as are encyclopedias, and all history is somewhat influenced by perspective as we all hopefully well know here. He's not pointing out anything particularly damning but by making it seem that this is an exclusive issue of the Wikipedia I think he loses credibility. Granted there may be *more* inaccuracy there, but there has been no real accounting done of the percentage of inaccuracy vs. real fact.

2: Every single one of these articles I have seen has been authored by someone who is mad about their *own* entry in the Wikipedia! If that's not a conflict of interest I don't know what is. :P Sure they have a right to be mad about it and point out that something may be inaccurate in the article, and this conflict of interest doesn't invalidate their points. But it certainly makes me take everything they say with a grain of salt. They are not impartial by any means. Ok they make no claims to be either; in fact impartiality is really quite difficult to achieve. Still they seem *particularly* biased to be writing a damning "What's wrong with the Wikipedia" article.

2a: The damning of Wikipedia by these people always seems based on some microcosm of the greater body of articles. This is only natural, no one could read it all; the problem is the articles examined always seem to be something the author has a vested interest in which again reinforces the previously mentioned bias. I have yet to see a general, open comparison of the Wikipedia and several authoratative encyclopedias to see how well their info compares. I know there was one comparison done but according to one of these authors it focused on things the Wikipedia would be particularly good at. Fair enough but won't *someone* take a more impartial, rational look at this? Someone who isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia itself and doesn't have an apparent axe to grind?

Bottom line, as I said at the beginning, I agree with many of the points raised. What's interesting IMO is how much quality and accuracy does shine through and remain consistent. There are definitely some major areas of contention - topics where personal preference, fandom, etc. have a special interest. These topics are actually things many encyclopedias are unlikely to cover at all, or at least in much depth, so perhaps there's not much loss there anyway. I do wish for better controls in the Wikipedia - I'd like to one day feel a bit more confident in all information it presents me. But as it is I have learned a tremendous amount of real, independently verifiable info there. One should not rely on any one source of information anyway, at least not for anything important. I think the Wikipedia deserves a place as one of those sources of info at this point.

It should also be noted that they do seem to be responding to criticism over time. If I recall correctly they have changed some of the rules due to abuse. At its base the Wikipedia is still a big experiment, albeit a highly successful one thus far (IMO anyway). I think it will continue to evolve and if real problems are identified and persist they will be corrected where possible. I have the feeling the first few editions of Britannica wouldn't have even measured up to the Wikipedia in its first year. :D

- Oshyan

mouser:
i have myself complained about access control in wikipedia, but i think oshyan again gets it right, and in fact i would go further:

Wikipedia is amazing.  And the potential to become the definitive trusted source of information on the planet is right there just waiting for when wikipedia figures out how to establish some greater quality control.

In my view, it's not just the raw information that makes Wikipedia so nice, it's the consistent interface (and lack of distracting ads and stuff - ps. I wonder how long they can keep that up - I hope they can but i have fears).

Personally I find the wiki format and stuff a bit confusing and the choices made would not have been my first choices, but i think that's of secondary importance compared to the value of having a nice uniform, familiar feel to the pages that makes it easy to find what you are looking for.  It really is an amazing resource.

JavaJones:
I have been consistently amazed at what some authors can do with Wiki formatting. I just don't "get" it, but oh well. I think making it more user friendly could encourage a wider range of people to contribute, not just technophiles.

Interestingly I think that is one factor that I have not seen mentioned in any of these articles: the very authoring process itself favors the technically inclined! Thus you are unlikely to get people who may very well be experts in some area but who are not technically inclined to be contributing regularly. This to me seems like a fundamental problem.

Anyway I really like what I have seen of the Wikipedia so far, for basically the same reasons mouser mentions. I do hope they are able to figure out how to make it work really well, and I think they will do so. It's a work in progress, an evolutionary process. As I said before the quality level now is remarkable considering the faults that have been in the system from the beginning. It seems like it should really only get better from here.

- Oshyan

mouser:
Interestingly I think that is one factor that I have not seen mentioned in any of these articles: the very authoring process itself favors the technically inclined! Thus you are unlikely to get people who may very well be experts in some area but who are not technically inclined to be contributing regularly. This to me seems like a fundamental problem.
--- End quote ---

i think this is a great point..

housetier:
Personally I dislike WikiSyntax and CamelCase and such. I also do not wish to code HTML. For my site I have installed a textile input filter. It provides a powerful syntax while keeping the (unrendered) source readable, HTML-code is beyond "reading" without excellent syntax highlighting.

I readily admit that textile, too, can become complicated; my users so far have been able to handle it well.

I think a drag and drop interface for symlinking or adding pictures/other media would be very nice. Dunno if it's possible to implement such features with <buzzword>AJAX</buzzword>. But that's what I find lacking from most collaborative web thingies: easy way of putting content together. I'd be happy when someone proves me wrong and shows me such an interface.

Wikipedia has had a remarkable and deserved success. It is good enough for most people; some will never be satisfied. It is not easy to get people to write. I have been trying for three years, and only recently found one person willing to regularly write something. Wikipedia seems to have had more success...
:D

Still, it is too complicated for "noobs" to put content on the web in a proper way and that dreaded wiki syntax is one of the reasons.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page