Congress 'made Wikipedia changes'

[azande]

Scary if this is true

[ducasi]

Unsurprising, I'd say...

Wikipedia, even with its deity-like status with some folks, has many flaws. And if the creators of the system can't be trusted not to "fiddle" with their biographies, why should anyone expect the politicians to behave differently?

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by ducasi

Unsurprising, I'd say...

Yeah - and honestly, you do want people to edit stuff they know about.

Having said that, there's definitely a case for enforcing registration for editors, and possibly even identity-checking editors, to provide some more verification of content. Certainly, that's the model we're going for with our corporate intranet.

We should probably be in Geeks corner for this...

[Donna]

Originally Posted by azande

Scary if this is true

That is scaaary.

[El Salsero Gringo]

I suggest that anyone who thinks this is scary is elevating Wikipedia entries to a station way beyond that which they deserve.

There's an old story about a Chinese tailor who's commissioned to make a new suit for the Emperor of China. Slight problem - to look upon - let alone touch - the Emperor is a crime punishable by disembowelling. So how is he to get the measurements? Answer - he commissions a survey and asks a million people how big they *think* the emperor is, then takes the average. That's how big he makes the suit.

I think that's what you get with Wikipedia. The frightening thing is how well it works, not how often people get to fiddle with their own entries!

[Clive Long]

Originally Posted by DavidJames

Yeah - and honestly, you do want people to edit stuff they know about.

Having said that, there's definitely a case for enforcing registration for editors, and possibly even identity-checking editors, to provide some more verification of content. Certainly, that's the model we're going for with our corporate intranet.

We should probably be in Geeks corner for this...

This was my concern with "publicly alterable" data published on Wikipedia (discussed before - somewhere). The content all looks equally authoritative and true because it sits in the same wrapper (Wikipedia) as other seemingly true and erudite content and "assumes" Wiki's authority (if you get my drift).

Now I'm probably going to commit the same sin as those who knowingly or unknowingly misrepresent the content within a Wiki entry. However ....

It is quite disturbing when you listen to a news report on a subject on which one knows a little, how much basic factual inaccuracy there is and consequently how mislead people can be. And we probably trust most of this info subconsciously - if we pay any attention.

Why should Wikipedia be singled out as the only "organ" that distributes false-hoods as truth? I can think of Holocaust Revisionist histories, vast armies of "editors" in totalitarian regimes "adjusting the truth" in school text books to suit the current thugs who held power, Japanese portrayal of its Imperial Conquests pre-WW2, early C20. British Histories on the way the Empire was run etc. etc. etc.

This is going to get a bit rambling

Well-meaning ideas can be shown to be less than wholly positive in hind-sight. For example, British urban planning of the 60's - which was trying to pull Britain out of the long slump following WW2. I can imagine a Wiki entry from the 1960's (go with me on this) extolling the virtues of "cities in the sky". Would that material have been deliberately misleading? Or naive? My point is (there is one gentle reader) is that we can have people almost universally acknowledged as experts in their field whose ideas fall foul of the laws of unintended consequences. So how can we trust anything that is written?

Let me try and re-focus a bit. How to counter-act the deliberate but plausible misrepresentation on Wiki? I don't think assigning "great minds" to own the content is enough. The important stuff (i.e. to do with people and how they live their lives) is always subject to different values. Maybe you just allow "parallel" or dissenting entries and don't promote any as authoritative. Of course, the problem with that approach is that any crackpot or fanatic will claim their view of the subject is just as valid as any other (I'm thinking of the glorious contributions to the Forum threads on Faith and Superstition - choose your own sage, fool, charlatan and nutter from the contributors) and they have the platform (Wiki) to parade their delusion or mendacity.

I don't know. I just don't know. I'm losing the will to write any more ...


Clive

I wonder what ESG thinks on this subject? Hold firm, hold firm Clive.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Clive Long

It is quite disturbing when you listen to a news report on a subject on which one knows a little, how much basic factual inaccuracy there is and consequently how mislead people can be. And we probably trust most of this info subconsciously - if we pay any attention.

To be fair, Wikipedia administrators do spend time addressing this problem, and they have a variety of mechanisms to do so - for example the "the neutrality of this article is disputed."

The benefits of any Wiki system are that of any open-source product, in that it provides the real power to make changes to the users of that system. So it requires little maintenance or editorial overhead, and the administrators can focus on structural and technological improvements.

Of course, the downside is that "ownership" is diluted, and if no-one feels ownership over a particular piece of content, they won't care too much if that content is altered, especially if the alteration is in terms of phraseology or spin.

Originally Posted by Clive Long

So how can we trust anything that is written?

We can't; the best we can do is use any source as a rough-and-ready guide, follow relevant links to other sources, and progress from there.

The acid test of Wikipedia now is the same as it was for Google 5 years ago - it works, it's much better than the competition, and it's pretty reliable in doing what you want it to do. I've never found a mistake on it, and only a couple of omissions (one of which I corrected), so it's more than good enough for me.

Originally Posted by Clive Long

I wonder what ESG thinks on this subject? Hold firm, hold firm Clive.

It was a fascinating post; long and complex, and opened my eyes to a totally new way of perceiving online knowledge. Shame you missed it...