If Wikipedia were a democracy, Greg, then it would exhibit “a form of government (management/administration) in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.” Please show us the free electoral system. Please show us how all those editors are selected. It happens from within, Greg – not from the masses. And, there are illustrations of how the editors rule with iron hands … when they are not right/correct in their citations.

Many people on the site cannot be identified, nor can they be contacted. The process is set up so that questions, complaints and more may be ignored.

There are too many examples of long standing errors that go uncorrected. The John Seigenthaler example is one. How many others like that exist? None? One? If it is one or more … it is one too many. Gregory and others have found legitimate examples.

We shall agree to disagree.

There are instances where Wales and others have touted the site as legitimate as a reference because it was accepted in a court of law, for instance. Just because that happened does not make it reliable. I could go on, but why … there are the believers and the doubters.

But, please remember this. The critics are not the ones creating a site that is being touted as a reliable reference … when it isn’t. I can appreciate your statement that it is “*great* reference…to references.” Sometimes that is true. Not always, though.

What makes the editor referenced so special? We are ALL editors. It is a wiki. If you find something wrong you have the ability to fix it. Not doing so makes you at least as flawed as “tylerdmace,” if not moreso. If fact, I read that editor’s tweet as a very tongue in cheek joke.

Granted the idea of Wikipedia is a wild concept, but it is based in democracy. There are far more good people in the world than bad, so good can win out. If you don’t believe that…well…doesn’t democracy fall apart too? I like that it accepts the input of all people and thus is absolutely defined by the online majority, which has the collective wisdom to respect the voice of the minority.

I doubt many, if any, of the Wikipedia cult will want to see past their own trees and look at the forest. Still, I’m glad you shared further evidence of these instances.

This has always been my main concern about Wikipedia. There is not real ‘complete’ process tracking all edits & posts that is regularly vetted and reported on the site. There is no real ‘complete’ vetting going on as to the validity of the editors. Then, given all of that, we have the sad reality that edits containing false information can stand for long periods of time.

In the past, I’ve seen instances where Wikipedia true believers speak of the site as a way to educate the poor and developing nations. Well, this would be an example of that education … with misinformation.

Wikipedia, in its present form, is too similar to the ‘knowledge bureaus’ we see in George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. To see people so blindly follow such a blind example of a pseudo-reference collection … well, it is truly frightening.

Did Abraham Lincoln attend the first Republican Party platform convention in Jackson, Michigan?

According to history, no way. Abe only set foot in Michigan one time, in Kalamazoo.

According to Wikipedia, though… this “fact” was “undisputed” from May 18, 2007 (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jackson,_Michigan&diff=next&oldid=130167692 ) until January 8, 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jackson,_Michigan&diff=262826238&oldid=262550036 ) that Abraham Lincoln was in attendance in Jackson, Michigan. This was handily disproved by a multi-degreed Historical Commissioner. But, for the 601 days that this falsehood stuck in Wikipedia, we might estimate that the page was viewed over 89,000 times ( http://stats.grok.se/en/200801/Jackson%2C_Michigan ).

Yet, time and time again, we hear from the cult-addled minds that Wikipedia “gets it right” astoundingly often, and errors are “fixed” rather quickly. How do they explain a 601-day error viewed 89,000 times about one of the most famous historical figures of the entire span of the 19th century?

Shava Nerad, you’re obviously a ‘true believer’ in Wikipedia. I realize that few, if any, of the true believers will be able to see past the obvious rational thoughts represented in the criticisms of Wikipedia.

Further, you’ll note that I haven’t engaged in ad hominem. You have. This speaks volumes about you.

Suffice to say, the name of your site – the one you entered in the comments – speaks volumes about you, too. A self-professed odd fellow?

oddfellowstudios (dot) com

Again … ~sigh~

Gregory’s analysis is valid, Shava. It raises legitimate questions about Wikipedia’s trustworthiness.

/discussion

But if you aren’t the sort who believes that every textbook — say American history — that you ever read was God’s Own Truth, you sure read like that kind of person.

Honestly, though, very little of the *veracity* of Wikipedia overall is even relevant to the “random twitter post” you cite though.

What this editor said was, that if he comes upon an article that has been vandalized — and he admits he recognizes it’s been vandalized — *HE LEAVES IT TO ONE OF THE OTHER 1500 MAJOR EDITORS* or maybe even one of the millions of minor contributors to clean it up.

Sometimes.

This is the rough equivalent of a *volunteer* at the Red Cross blood drive seeing a coffee spill, not feeling like wiping it up, and leaving it to one of the other dozen people feeding donors sugar cookies to clean it up while s/he goes to set out more cookies.

Yes, in fact, it’s something to feel guilty about. No, it’s not a cardinal sin, and it doesn’t make them a bad volunteer, overall. It also doesn’t mean that the blood drive folks are bad people, and you shouldn’t trust them to put a needle in your arm.

You sound like a person with an emotional. Why does wikipedia threaten you so badly? It is designed, as one of your tweets above said, to be used as an initial summary of a topic with references to primary and secondary sources at the bottom.

As an amalgam of secondary sources, as it were, it is not particularly less reliable that most journalism or non-fiction books. If you think of it as a replacement for the Britannica — well, that’s your limitation, not wikipedia’s. It’s a crowdsourced, cooperative alternative that is much more web-friendly, and one of the lovely assets is that it *teaches* critical thinking, rather than teaching blind acceptance of authority.

You could take your average high school American History textbook, and anything by Howard Zinn, and the difference between them and wikipedia would be that certain sections in wikipedia are marked “This section is controversial and contains disputed opinions” — textbooks and history books don’t highlight those things because you depend on one person’s bias, usually.

Wikipedia is, by nature, a living document. It has no more authority, in a way, than a public school textbook written by one teacher and approved by a committee of bureacrats. (If you think I’m wrong, google the Texas State Textbook Committee).

See Five ways Wikipedia beats newspapers. I’m sharing this here as I will want to refer to these links in class. I won’t comment there as it would likely just start yet another round of exchanges with another Wikipedia proponent. Here is what I would have posted:

You write, “the article quickly gets investigated and deleted within three weeks.” I challenge you to prove this is the case. First, you cannot cite all the innaccurate articles as they may well have not yet been discovered.

Two examples.

First, consider this study of how long Wikipedia vandalism can last on the site: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Wikipedia_Vandalism_Study

Second, please allow me to remind you of the Seigenthaler incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr._Wikipedia_biography_controversy

I’ll not await your proof of quick Wikipedia corrections taking place to surface very fast, as it does not happen in all cases. Therefore your proof cannot be produced.

It is sad. Too sad.

http://www.mywikibiz.com/Wikipedia_Vandalism_Study

As for the leadership of the English Wikipedia, I think that the project (and the world) deserve a more competent and ethical leader than Jimmy Wales:

http://www.mywikibiz.com/Criticism_of_Jimmy_Wales

Finally, I think that an openly-edited wiki is an EXCELLENT way to aggregate initial content for an all-encompassing encyclopedia. Once you get to 2 million articles that way, though, it’s time to shut down the open-editing feature and allow the experts to take over. The Wikimedia Foundation has the authority to do this, but they don’t, because they have allowed the “Free Culture Movement” cart to be placed before the “Reliable Free Encyclopedia” horse.

It’s sad.

I can now see how, as a professor, you would dread having to comb through every single Wikipedia article your students quote to insure their resources are legit. Yes, bias does happen and you cannot spend time determining whether a resource is biased or not or whether it has been cited well. Therefore, you cannot generally consider Wikipedia a reliable resource. It makes complete sense.

I also want to say that there is a lot more going into a high profile Wikipedia article than you seem to think. I know two Wiki editors that take their ‘hobby’ very seriously. Both have completely re-written articles to remove bias and add citations. They participate in discussions with the Wiki community and work diligently to make Wikipedia a more reliable resource. It is unfortunate that there aren’t more people like them, because Wiki would be much better if all people took on the responsibility as well as they do. Until then, I will continue to use Wikipedia as a reliable resource upon further verification. And you should also continue not to accept it as such for Academic purposes.