Wikipedia & Google: Free Schooling?

[Quaoar]

Funny that you have enough time to track all these "glaring" errors, but not enough time to fix them. Of course, that would make Wikipedia more correct, and weaken your argument when you rail against it.

 

[ZapperZ]

Funny that you have enough time to track all these "glaring" errors, but not enough time to fix them. Of course, that would make Wikipedia more correct, and weaken your argument when you rail against it.

It isn't my job. By it's nature, nothing that I correct will stay.

And no, I didn't go out SEEKING these things. These 3 pages were brought to MY attention one way or the other. The worst part was the Accelerator Physics page. I had high school students visiting our facilities a couple of years ago, and they thought they should "read up" on what they will be seeing by looking it up on Wikipedia. BIG MISTAKE! When they started asking really weird questions that had rather strange "connection", I asked them where they found all of these things. Bingo!

That's when I looked up the page and was horrified how these things get passed down. I could spend A CAREER doing nothing but correcting these pages. I can correct these and there will be TONS more just like it. Still don't believe me? I just did a quick look for the very first time on the tunneling spectroscopy page. Anyone who depends on that page for the definition of "normalized tunneling" deserves everything that's coming.

If people who STILL think Wikipedia is a valid reference, then there's nothing the rest of us can do to save them from themselves!

BTW, rather than making an effort in trying to bad-mouth me, why don't you answer my question if such pages qualify to you as having "proper citations"? But then again, you keep saying you're through with this. Didn't last long just like that last time, did it?

How come you are not doing this as an experiment? I presume you are not an expert in accelerator physics. So look at the particle accelerator page, follow the citations, and tell me if you can find the errors on that page. 2 would be sufficient (there's more than that). If you can do that, then you have proven your point that someone who doesn't know anything about it CAN, in fact, distinguish between which are facts and which are garbage if that person follows through with reading all the necessary citations given on a Wikipedia page. Go on. Take the challenge.

Zz.

 

[tronter]

I agree with ZapperZ. Wikipedia is not a good source to learn a subject. Moreover, even most online lecture notes and books are very mediocre. Learn a subject properly, by going through a good textbook on the subject. They have been peer reviewed, so textbooks are legitimate sources of information.

 

[mathwonk]

it is not true that all online texts are mediocre. those of james milne are excellent.

 

[Quaoar]

It isn't my job. By it's nature, nothing that I correct will stay.

And no, I didn't go out SEEKING these things. These 3 pages were brought to MY attention one way or the other. The worst part was the Accelerator Physics page. I had high school students visiting our facilities a couple of years ago, and they thought they should "read up" on what they will be seeing by looking it up on Wikipedia. BIG MISTAKE! When they started asking really weird questions that had rather strange "connection", I asked them where they found all of these things. Bingo!

That's when I looked up the page and was horrified how these things get passed down. I could spend A CAREER doing nothing but correcting these pages. I can correct these and there will be TONS more just like it. Still don't believe me? I just did a quick look for the very first time on the tunneling spectroscopy page. Anyone who depends on that page for the definition of "normalized tunneling" deserves everything that's coming.

If people who STILL think Wikipedia is a valid reference, then there's nothing the rest of us can do to save them from themselves!

BTW, rather than making an effort in trying to bad-mouth me, why don't you answer my question if such pages qualify to you as having "proper citations"? But then again, you keep saying you're through with this. Didn't last long just like that last time, did it?

How come you are not doing this as an experiment? I presume you are not an expert in accelerator physics. So look at the particle accelerator page, follow the citations, and tell me if you can find the errors on that page. 2 would be sufficient (there's more than that). If you can do that, then you have proven your point that someone who doesn't know anything about it CAN, in fact, distinguish between which are facts and which are garbage if that person follows through with reading all the necessary citations given on a Wikipedia page. Go on. Take the challenge.

Zz.

Actually isn't it funny how we fight to have the last word? You're no better than I am. No matter what I say, you have to answer. I guess that's how you have 8500 posts!

And to answer your question, none of the articles you've provided have proper citations (Namely, they provide some external links and links to other Wikipedia articles, but individual sentences are never cited). All I see is confirmation bias from you, which I hope doesn't extend to your professional life.

And lastly, put up or shutup. You've now incidentally visited 4 Wikipedia articles with errors, most of which sound like they could be corrected with the removal of a sentence, which you could do anonymously and would take 5 seconds of your time. How about you go ahead and improve the articles that bother you?

 

[Thrice]

Initiates claim wikipedia fails at esoteric subject. News at 11.

Eh. Collaborative authoring is here to stay. I've also seen sections on wikipedia that would probably still be wrong if I had spent those 10 min at PF instead.

I sometimes wonder if you guys object to errors, or to the idea of a common.

 

[gravenewworld]

It is sad that NO ONE uses libraries anymore. Your reference librarian>> google/wiki.

Recently, I was a judge for a local science fair competition for grades 4-8. One of the requirements for the competition was that the students were required to keep a log book of their experimental procedures and have the references cited for all the research they did. 95% of the students either A.) referenced wikipedia or B.) referenced some other strange website they found on the internet.

As someone who worked in the reference section in the library for their entire undergraduate career, this is absolutely atrocious. 80% of the information on the internet is pure garbage. I bet there are tons of students in high school and college who have no idea what things like pubmed, scifinder, lexus nexus, etc. are. What is really disturbing is the fact that when I worked in reference there were seniors in college who had no idea how the LC system worked in the library. SENIORS FOR CHRIST'S SAKE! So many freshman come in having no idea how to even find a book on the shelf in the library.

Some tips for finding credible information on the internet:-There better be no advertisements. If you see one advertisement, you should question the source immediately.

-The author should list their name/email/and last update on the webpage.

-.com website=terrible source for info. .ORG used to be good, but those websites have gone down the tube for reliability. Stick mostly to websites that end in .gov, .mil, or .edu

-if you are going to use google, at least start out using google scholar
-GO SEE YOUR REFERENCE LIBRARIAN. THEY CAN FIND INFO ON JUST ABOUT ANYTHING. I used to laugh at the fact that universities offered degrees in "library science", but goddamn reference librarians know a TON. You definitely need a degree to sort through the mind blowing amount of information that is out there. There is a reason why your university pays in excess of $80-100,000 per year for certain journals and databases! USE THEM!

I know I sound like an information nazi and you will always see me questioning people's sources of information on these boards, but that is simply because of the fact that I worked in reference for so long as a student.

 

[Ki Man]

Actually isn't it funny how we fight to have the last word? You're no better than I am. No matter what I say, you have to answer. I guess that's how you have 8500 posts!

no... that's from using his experience as a prof. to help people with physics and their research goals for the last few years...

fighting for the last word? you've "left" this thread 3 times... all he's done is reply

it is not true that all online texts are mediocre. those of james milne are excellent.

I agree that not all are mediocre but finding a credible one and verifying its crediblity may take a bit of searching because usually the good stuff is burried under mountains of useless resources. I'd say a good 98% of the internet is nothing but a waste of bandwith.

If I know absolutely nothing about a topic, I go to wiki to learn the vocabulary. Then, depending on how much I need to know and how important my understanding is, I'll look for other websites using the vocabulary that I was able to get from wiki sites.

I use wiki for stuff like learning the basics of soccer. When it comes to something more technical like learning what a quasar is or what the colors of quarks are, I would just take a quick glance at wiki but then try to find a more reliable source elsewhere, mainly this forum.



I think I have learned more physics from looking over threads and posting my 'humble' opinion on things here over the last few months than I learned through taking a full year of 8th grade physical science. yay PF!



A wiki article is usually just a flake of snow on the tip of the iceburg. Real texts are much more reliable and all it takes is a library card and means of transportation.

One of the problems I think we have today is an addiction to speed. Satisfying for mediocrity is alright as long as it takes as little time and effort as possible

 

[Quaoar]

you've "left" this thread 3 times... all he's done is reply

2 times. Let's just say I get frustrated with stubbornness.

 

[mathwonk]

i have done the searching for you. my threads here recommend good books.

 

[tronter]

I guess online books and course notes would be okay then. But, in my opinion, nothing beats studying from an actual book. The screen hurts your eyes.

 

[mathwonk]

i also recommend hard copy books. whatever you want. i also prefer them. used copies are often available at abebooks.com

 

[ZapperZ]

Actually isn't it funny how we fight to have the last word? You're no better than I am. No matter what I say, you have to answer. I guess that's how you have 8500 posts!

... and I never to be "better" than you. However, I do tend to go with my word when I say that I would do something.

And to answer your question, none of the articles you've provided have proper citations (Namely, they provide some external links and links to other Wikipedia articles, but individual sentences are never cited). All I see is confirmation bias from you, which I hope doesn't extend to your professional life.

And how do you expect high school kids, people off the street, and someone who is just learning the subject matter to KNOW that these do not have "proper citations"? Which leads me to believe that you are looking for actual citations to journal papers. But doesn't this defeat that whole purpose of having FREELY available articles for the poor masses that you are so championing?

And unless I missed it, you NEVER BOTHERED to actually provide an example of a page that has one! I at least tried to illustrate several examples of what I am trying to convey. In other words, I don't just make empty accusations about Wikipedia without any supporting evidence.

And lastly, put up or shutup. You've now incidentally visited 4 Wikipedia articles with errors, most of which sound like they could be corrected with the removal of a sentence, which you could do anonymously and would take 5 seconds of your time. How about you go ahead and improve the articles that bother you?

Who said I've visited only 4? I said that these are the 4 that I've tracked over the years because I decided to pay attention to how they have evolved. I've seen WAY more than that because inevitably, people on here would somehow use an entry there as a source. I've certainly seen WAY more than 4, thankyouverymuch!

And no, I'm not correcting those. The issue isn't JUST those 4 articles. The issue is the inherent flaw in the whole concept of Wikpedia. I'm involved with the wiki project done by the condensed matter division of the APS. THIS, I would spend my time for, not Wikipedia. There are more effective means to disseminating information and knowledge on the web.

Zz.

 

[raolduke]

Doesn't the same rule of interpretation apply to wikipedia similar to how you interpret a book? The nice thing about wikipedia, and the rest of the web but wikipedia especially, they offer references that you can view instantly.. Of course it’s all based on personal interpretation and whether or not you chose to believe in the information in question but online sources of information offer instant citation.

 

[ZapperZ]

Doesn't the same rule of interpretation apply to wikipedia similar to how you interpret a book? The nice thing about wikipedia, and the rest of the web but wikipedia especially, they offer references that you can view instantly.. Of course it’s all based on personal interpretation and whether or not you chose to believe in the information in question but online sources of information offer instant citation.

It depends on what book you buy and under what circumstances. One would think that if it is a required school text, then there's a very strong likelyhood that this is a well-tested material and is pedagogically sound. If you buy a book about, let's say, quantum field theory and it is written by Steven Weinberg, there's a very good chance that you are not reading crackpottery. However, if you buy Deepak Chopra book on quantum field theory, then you're up the creek!

It all boils down to examining the SOURCE of the info you are getting. It isn't about Wikipedia, it isn't about buying textbooks, it isn't about looking at journals. It is about the QUALITY of the source! With everyone getting their news and info from the web, people seem to somehow no longer care where their info comes from. Even dubious sources get passed on.

You will note that all the 3 Wikipedia articles that I've mentioned have "references" that you can also view instantly. Again, I asked for a simple experiment whereby you look at those articles, and the corresponding references, and see if you (i) learn anything and (ii) can figure out if there are mistakes in those articles. If you don't, then I have proven that someone who does not know about the material cannot tell if he/she actually got a correct and accurate information out of such a thing. You'll never get that type of error in a text on particle accelerators.

So if those kinds of errors can occur, how are you able to trust the rest of what you read? Again, this brings us back to the source and the quality of the source. In physics especially, one can do so much better in seeking other sources to teach oneself about various subjects.

Zz.

 

[Chris Hillman]

Hurrah, someone noticed my comments!

First, thanks to siddharth for citing my mini-essay (pared down from a much larger series of pages which originally appeared in my Wikipedia user space) at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/RelWWW/HTML/wrong.html

(If you like this page, please consider bookmarking instead the main page http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/RelWWW/ since there is much more at this website than that one page!)

If a [WP] article is not properly cited, you shouldn't believe what is written there.

Right, but you're missing a crucial point: manipulation of information presented at WP to present crank/fringe theories as mainstream.

There have been dozens of cases in which a crank writes an article on their pet theory under a pseudonym and cites papers at their own website. These papers would often be considered "obviously nonsensical" by good advanced physics students, but the "obvious problems" might be not at all obvious to laypersons or beginning physics students.

One way to appreciate this is to recognize that all good science students continually check claims they encounter against what they already know about mainstream science. Claims which appear to contradict established knowledge come in for extra scrutiny; the good student asks first "did I misunderstand what I just read?" and if the answer is "no", then looks to see if the author discusses the discrepancy and tries to meet "obvious objections" (like "this scheme contradicts the consevation of linear momentum!"), and if not, probably dismisses the claim as obviously incorrect and ill-informed.

So one "reality check" which laypersons can apply is this: does the article have citations? (If not, the problem might be that the author didn't trouble to add citations to the mainstream sources he used, in which case all might be well. But often this indicates that the article might be a hoax or written by someone who had no idea what he was writing about.) If so, are the citations to academic websites or research journals?

But even this check is unreliable! There have been dozens of cases of fringe theories or even crank theories misleading presented in WP articles as mainstream theories, which cite papers in "journals" with titles like Hadronic Journal. Few nonphysicists would immediately recognize the names of "trashcan journals" which basically publish anything they receive, even though they may claim to send manuscripts out for refereeing.

But even if you know which are prestigious journals and which are trashcan journals and which are somewhere in between, this check is unreliable! There have been cases of nonsense or fraudulent papers published in the best scientific journals, including Nature, Science, Classical and Quantum Gravity www.iop.org/EJ/journal/CQG, and so on. So ultimately, only a genuine expert in the mainstream of the research topic in question, who has more or less carefully studied the cited papers, will be able to assess whether or not a WP article accurately presents the current scientific thought on the topic in question, or not.

This kind of misrepresentation has been a huge problem in the physics articles at WP. I could give not dozens but hundreds of examples, some of which have been the subject of long running edit wars.

There is a WikiProject Physics which in principle consists of people who have Ph.D.s in physics, or are graduate students who only write out the stuff they know best, but of course members declare themselves to be "qualified", and no-one checks credentials--- this last has recently been an issue within the WP community, which was enormously embarrassed by the revelation that one of the most powerful Wikipedians in the history of this website had utterly misrepresented himself as holding a faculty position when in fact he had not earned any graduate degrees. One of the biggest problems with the scimathtech pages at WP is that the "experts" (in the Wikipedia sense of having studied standard textbooks, not in the scholarly sense of being an author of a widely used textbook!) are outnumbered by the cranks and wind up spending most or all of their time arguing in talk pages or AfD pages rather than writing new articles or improving existing ones.

well i just tried an experiment, googling "tensor products". Indeed the first two hits were for wikipedia, so i read the first article.

At the present time, math articles are generally more likely to present the mainstream, but math cranks do exist at WP.

Another crucial point is that WP articles are highly unstable--- a carefully constructed, well written, fully cited, knowledgeable article can be destroyed in an instant by some vandal, or by a crank. For this reason, one should never cite a Wikipedia article expect as a permanent link to the specific version you read! (See the left hand bar in any WP page to obtain a permanent link.)

Another problem with the lack of editorial oversight at WP is that newbie authors who frankly don't know how to write tend to insert new material into paragraphs written carefully by a more experience author, without regard for breaking the flow of ideas in the previous version. This kind of problem leads to "edit creep", the process by which well intentioned edits gradually degrade a good article into something which is almost unreadable, even if it does not present inaccurate information.

Mathwonk, you inadvertently brought up another good point. The Wikipedia editors are all writing for different audiences. Some people, for example, might only be interested in the result of a derivation. Others might want to see that derivation in gory detail. Some might want to learn the mathematics behind tensors, while others only want to know how to use them.

Yes, and this is another reason why Brittanica makes a better read than Wikipedia--- in the scholarly encyclopedia model, authors are not only experts, they are (ideally) experienced authors who are familiar with such issues as addressing the right audience in a suitable style, and editors can assist authors who seem to be missing the mark in their first draft article.

Lets assume that the accuracy rate is terrible: 50%. I would rather kids learn from material that's 50% correct over not learning anything at all.

Isn't a superficial idea better than no idea at all?

This precisely expresses the anti-intellectual and anti-scholarly ethos I fear WP is promoting!

Quaoar, unfortunately one needs to be fairly experienced with scimathtech to really appreciate this point, but in highly technical subjects which build upon previous work in a delicate way, building upon a foundation which is 50% inaccurate is a recipe for utter disaster. All professors know that one of the biggest problems in the classroom is getting students to recognize how much they do not know.

One of the hallmarks of the classic crank is that he vastly overestimates his knowledge and skills, and vastly underestimates the wisdom of those who really possesses some knowledge and skill. See the classic paper by Kruger and Dunning cited at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crank_(person)&oldid=54987381
Bearing this in mind, I fear that WP/Google may result in an entire generation of schoolchildren who behave like classic cranks. The consequences of this are unpredictable, but I doubt they will be entirely pleasant.

Huh? I use wikipedia, but only for things that aren't important. It's got an article about pretty much everything you could possibly want. However, wiki is not where I would go to learn technical subjects, since I know that there's a high probabilty that there will be mistakes. I use books or lecture notes freely available on university websites.

Exactly. In the page cited by siddharth, I suggested using Wikipedia articles to find search terms one can plug into Google, citeseer, to try to find textbooks published by reputable academic publishers. Even this is fraught with peril given the possibility (which has been observed "in the wild" at WP on many occasions) that someone has carefully constructed a plausible appearing but seriously misleading WP article which has gone unnoticed by unbiased "experts" (in WP sense).

the consensus seems to be that its pretty accurate for broad low-level topics, which is where I think it is the most useful.

Consensus among what group? I suggest that the appropriate group to ask would be scholars, mathematicians and scientists who are familiar with WP, e.g. by virtue of having written and extensively edited many articles as well as having participated in various administrative actions at WP such as AfDs. (Since WP is rapidly evolving, my own experience from 2005-6 will eventually become less relevant, but at the moment I think I can speak with authority as an entity which knows the math/physics pages at WP well.)

This brings up another point I discussed extensively in some essays which formerly appeared at my Wikipedia user space: the firmly entrenched WP political philosophy is avowedly populist rather than scholarly. While populism has many attractive features (such as the idea that all persons are endowed with the innate ability to comment usefully on all topics, and that the opinions of all persons are equally valid), the populist ethos is profoundly contradictory to the scholarly ethos, which is neccessarily elitist, because of the cumulative nature of mathematical and scientific knowledge, and indeed of scholarly discourse generally: you can't really comment usefully on a technical issue if you are completely unfamiliar with what previous thinkers have said.

Once you are aware that WP has a political philosophy, it is very easy to see that it falls firmly into the venerable strain of American populism. Most of WP (co?)-founder Jimmy Wales pronouncements reflect his deeply held populist convictions. The fundamental contradiction between the scholarly and populist ethos was in fact one of the major points of contention between Wales and (WP founder? WP cofounder? former employee of Jimbo Wales?) Larry Sanger, who is currently trying to found an alternative web encyclopedia upon a more traditional scholarly ethos citizendium.org/ (Unfortunately, one of the original cofounders was previously a founder of the aforementioned Journal of Scientific Research, who has made some pretty startling "fringe science" claims about UFOs, the paranormal, and what not in many places over several decades, as well as some more mainstream scientific papers. None of the technophile journalists who have written about Citizendium seem to be aware of this odd discrepancy.)

If I know absolutely nothing about a topic, I go to wiki to learn the vocabulary. Then, depending on how much I need to know and how important my understanding is, I'll look for other websites using the vocabulary that I was able to get from wiki sites. As anyone with any web experience will tell you, knowing the vocabulary is the most important thing when it comes to good searching practices.

Bottom line to me is, wiki is useful for a lay person to get the very most basic under standing about a subject, and I wouldn't trust it at all for anything past first year or 1.5 year college. Even then, I would look for other collaboration before I used it as a source.

I think that is currently the best way to use WP! But be careful--- it is only likely to work well if most articles on the topics you are interested are written honestly and with some knowledge. The trouble is that it is all too easy to manipulate information at WP in extremely devious ways. Even worse, I and many others have attempted to draw attention to an insidious Google/Wikipedia cycle by which WP can be used to promote fringe or cranky viewpoints. Unfortunately, this seems likely to increase rapidly, and some experts fear it might eventually destroy the utility of Google. Even worse, even if this happens, people will continue to use Google and WP even though they know they are being misinformed, simply because they have decided going to their public library takes too much effort. That would be tragic.

Here's some suggested reading:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_epistemology_of_Wikipedia [/URL]
The epistemology of Wikipedia, by Larry Sanger. In this memorandum, Sanger challenges a core precept of the Wiki Faith: the notion that a wiki article will be naturally attracted to perfection.

[url]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_and_why_it_matters[/url]
Wikipedia and why it matters, by Larry Sanger, January 2002. Briefly discusses the Google/Wikipedia feedback:
[QUOTE]
We believe that we are, happily, in a positive feedback loop with Google, as follows. We write a thousand articles; Google spiders them and sends some traffic to those pages. Some small percentage of that traffic becomes Wikipedia contributors, increasing our contributor base. The enlarged contributor base then writes another two thousand articles, which Google dutifully spiders, and then we receive an even larger influx of traffic. All the while, no doubt in part due to links to our articles from Google, an increasing number of other websites link to Wikipedia, increasing the standing of Wikipedia pages in Google results.

Larry Sanger
[/QUOTE]
Note that this was written well before Sanger's disillusionment with WP.

[url]http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25[/url]
Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism, by Larry Sanger, Kuro5hin, 30 December 2005. Discusses the conflict between the scholarly and populist ethos.
[QUOTE]
Wikipedia is better described as one of those sources regarded as unreliable which people read anyway...The root problem: anti-elitism, or lack of respect for expertise...As a community, Wikipedia lacks the habit or tradition of respect for expertise. As a community, ... it is anti-elitist (which, in this context, means that expertise is not accorded any special respect, and snubs and disrespect of expertise is tolerated)... One thing that Wikipedia could do now, although I doubt that it is possible in the current atmosphere and with the current management, is to adopt an official policy of respect of and deference to expertise. Wikipedia's "key policies" have not changed since I was associated with the project; but if a policy of respect of and deference to expertise were adopted at that level, and if it were enforced somehow, perhaps the project would solve the problems described above. But don't hold your breath. Unless there is the equivalent of a revolution in the ranks of Wikipedia, the project will not adopt this sort of policy and make it a "key policy"; or if it does, the policy will probably be not be enforced. I certainly do not expect Jimmy Wales to change his mind. I have known him since 1994 and he is a smart and thoughtful guy; I am sure he has thought through his support of radical openness and his (what I call) anti-elitism. I doubt he will change his mind about these things. And unless he does change his mind, the project itself will probably not change.

Larry Sanger
[/QUOTE]

[PLAIN]http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=111504A
The Faith-Based Encyclopedia, by Robert McHenry, Tech Central Station Daily, 15 November 2004. One of the most cited critiques, includes the earliest known description of "edit creep".

To put the Wikipedia method in its simplest terms: 1. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can submit an article and it will be published. 2. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can edit that article, and the modifications will stand until further modified. Then comes the crucial and entirely faith-based step: 3. Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy...The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him.

Robert McHenry

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=121305E
The Faith-Based Encyclopedia Blinks, by Robert McHenry, Tech Central Station Daily, 14 Dec 2005. Commentary on the Siegenthaler defamation scandal.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-edemocracy/wikipedia_bias_3621.jsp
The real bias in Wikipedia: a response to David Shariatmadari, by Robert McHenry, Open Democracy, June 7, 2006. Discusses another consequence of the lack of editorial vision/oversight at WP: the perennial lack of global structure and balance:

Is imbalance in Wikipedia "systemic"? I should rather say that it results inevitably from a lack of system. Given the method by which Wikipedia articles are created, for there to be any semblance of balance in the overall coverage of subject-matter would be miraculous. Balance results from planning.

Robert McHenry

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge183.html Digital Maoism, by Jaron Lanier, The Edge, May 30, 2006. In this thoughtful essay, Lanier challenges many of the core assumptions of WP:

The problem I am concerned with here is not the Wikipedia in itself...the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous...The Wikipedia is far from being the only online fetish site for foolish collectivism. There's a frantic race taking place online to become the most "Meta" site, to be the highest level aggregator, subsuming the identity of all other sites...What we are witnessing today is the alarming rise of the fallacy of the infallible collective. Numerous elite organizations have been swept off their feet by the idea. They are inspired by the rise of the Wikipedia, by the wealth of Google, and by the rush of entrepreneurs to be the most Meta. Government agencies, top corporate planning departments, and major universities have all gotten the bug.

Jaron Lanier

 

[Chris Hillman]

Continuing (my post grew too long, but I think my summary of some informed and thoughtful comments on WP is worth continuing):

In the same essay, Lanier points out that the WP process tends to eliminate not just local structure ((via edit creep) but also stylish, witty or otherwise enjoyable writing:

It's important to not lose sight of values just because the question of whether a collective can be smart is so fascinating. Accuracy in a text is not enough. A desirable text is more than a collection of accurate references. It is also an expression of personality...The question isn't just one of authentication and accountability, though those are important, but something more subtle. A voice should be sensed as a whole. You have to have a chance to sense personality in order for language to have its full meaning...The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people. If we start to believe the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots.

Jaron Lanier

Like Sanger and McHenry, he calls attention to problems arising from the Google/WP feedback loop:

For instance, most of the technical or scientific information that is in the Wikipedia was already on the Web before the Wikipedia was started. You could always use Google or other search services to find information about items that are now wikified. In some cases I have noticed specific texts get cloned from original sites at universities or labs onto wiki pages. And when that happens, each text loses part of its value. Since search engines are now more likely to point you to the wikified versions, the Web has lost some of its flavor in casual use.

Jaron Lanier

He contrasts the WP "hive mind" with the scientific enterprise:

It's not hard to see why the fallacy of collectivism has become so popular in big organizations: If the principle is correct, then individuals should not be required to take on risks or responsibilities. We live in times of tremendous uncertainties coupled with infinite liability phobia, and we must function within institutions that are loyal to no executive, much less to any lower level member. Every individual who is afraid to say the wrong thing within his or her organization is safer when hiding behind a wiki or some other Meta aggregation ritual... It's safer to be the aggregator of the collective. You get to include all sorts of material without committing to anything. You can be superficially interesting without having to worry about the possibility of being wrong. Except when intelligent thought really matters. In that case the average idea can be quite wrong, and only the best ideas have lasting value. Science is like that.

[snip]

Every authentic example of collective intelligence that I am aware of also shows how that collective was guided or inspired by well-meaning individuals. These people focused the collective and in some cases also corrected for some of the common hive mind failure modes. The balancing of influence between people and collectives is the heart of the design of democracies, scientific communities, and many other long-standing projects. There's a lot of experience out there to work with. A few of these old ideas provide interesting new ways to approach the question of how to best use the hive mind...Scientific communities...achieve quality through a cooperative process that includes checks and balances, and ultimately rests on a foundation of goodwill and "blind" elitism --- blind in the sense that ideally anyone can gain entry, but only on the basis of a meritocracy. The tenure system and many other aspects of the academy are designed to support the idea that individual scholars matter, not just the process or the collective

Jaron Lanier

And he too expresses fears for the education of future generations:

Some wikitopians explicitly hope to see education subsumed by wikis. It is at least possible that in the fairly near future enough communication and education will take place through anonymous Internet aggregation that we could become vulnerable to a sudden dangerous empowering of the hive mind. History has shown us again and again that a hive mind is a cruel idiot when it runs on autopilot. Nasty hive mind outbursts have been flavored Maoist, Fascist, and religious, and these are only a small sampling. I don't see why there couldn't be future social disasters that appear suddenly under the cover of technological utopianism.

Jaron Lanier

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact
KNOW IT ALL: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?, by Stacy Schiff, New Yorker, July 31, 2006. One of the best profiles, but including misinformation provided by one of the interviewees, the aforementioned high ranking Wikipedia who lied to Schiff about his alleged academic credentials.

Wikipedia has become a regulatory thicket, complete with an elaborate hierarchy of users and policies about policies...Whereas articles once made up about eighty-five per cent of the site's content, as of last October they represented seventy per cent.

[snip]

Even Eric Raymond, the open-source pioneer whose work inspired Wales, argues that "a disaster" is not too strong a word for Wikipedia. In his view, the site is infested with "moonbats".(Think hobgoblins of little minds, varsity division.) He has found his corrections to entries on science fiction dismantled by users who evidently felt that he was trespassing on their terrain. The more you look at what some of the Wikipedia contributors have done, the better Britannica looks, Raymond said. He believes that the open-source model is simply inapplicable to an encyclopedia. For software, there is an objective standard: either it works or it doesn't. There is no such test for truth.

Some more well-informed and thoughtful essays documenting my claim that the scholarly community has grave reservations about WP:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/42
Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past], by Roy Rosenzweig, The Journal of American History, Volume 93, Number 1 (June, 2006): 117-46.

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may06/3412
One-Click Content, No Guarantees], by Elizabeth Svoboda, IEEE Spectrum, May 2006.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/06/14/mclemee
A Wiki Situation, by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, June 14, 2006

Thoughts from an outspoken media critic:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/15/wikipedia_can_damage_your_grades/
Avoid Wikipedia, warns Wikipedia chief], by Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 15 June 2006.

http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=1911&cid=1&sid=19
The Six Sins of the Wikipedia, Sam Vaknin, Global Politician, 25 June 2006

A discussion of how WP fosters plagiarism:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/mortarboard/2006/06/fighting_the_google_generation.html
Fighting the Google generation, by Alexandra L Smith, Guardian Unlimited, June 19 2006

Another comparison of Brittanica and Wikipedia models:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...53&call_pageid=968350072197&col=969048863851
Just the Facts, by Sharda Prashad, Toronto Star, July 1, 2006

Tutorials on slanting information in the WP to pursue some hidden agenda (not so hidden, in these two cases):

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060702/nysu015.html?.v=56
OSS CEO Speaks Out on First Amendment, Open Source Intelligence as Antidotes to State Secrecy and Questionable Practices, a press release, apparently written by Robert David Steele, from Open Source Software Net, July 2, 2006

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003782.html
How to Place a Company in the Wikipedia?, a tutorial from Search Engine Roundtable, May 9, 2006.

Example of a journalist's "experimentation":

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2006/06/land_of_linkin.html Test tube tube steak, an idea whose time is coming, by Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, 5 June, 2006.

Just to be clear: while I am a critic of WP, I strongly oppose vandalizing WP or conducting this kind of "experimentation", much less deliberately slanting information to put some political candidate or business competitor in a bad light or whatever someone out there might be thinking of doing!

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...,4744260.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Why Wiki Can Drive You Wacky: When free-form information gets it wrong, watch out, by Bernard Haisch, Los Angeles Times Op-Ed pages, July 24, 2006.
Haisch asks: what is a person to do when he loses control over his own wikibiography? There's an irony here which would take too long to explain: Haisch didn't mention the somewhat ugly context for the quotation with which he begins his essay, which involved myself :-/

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1882027,00.html
I'm on Wikipedia, get me out of here], by Seth Finkelstein, The Guardian, September 28, 2006. Finkelstein expresses a similar concern about wikibios of living persons.

Discussion of manipulation of (mis)-information in WP article to pursue hidden political agendas:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2279162,00.html
How wiki-wiki can get sticky, by Ben MacIntyre, London Times on-line, July 21, 2006.

Past issues of the Wikipedia Signpost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives can be a good place to find links to more recent media commentary on WP.

 

[raolduke]

The internet is an overload of information that can be viewed almost instantly unlike going to rent or even buying a book from a library or store.

you buy a book about, let's say, quantum field theory and it is written by Steven Weinberg, there's a very good chance that you are not reading crackpottery. However, if you buy Deepak Chopra book on quantum field theory, then you're up the creek!

Becoming a published author is the only thing that separates an author’s credibility from any other person. The standards that separate published works and any random piece of information may be different but just because something that doesn’t comply with a book publishing company or critic shouldn’t be overlooked as garbage. The nice about the internet is that everyone/anyone knowledgeable about a certain subject can make changes to any document on wikipedia or even start their own site to express their opinion or knowledge. The down side to a book or magazine is that you may have to deal with revisions or slanted view points.

 

[ZapperZ]

The internet is an overload of information that can be viewed almost instantly unlike going to rent or even buying a book from a library or store.
Becoming a published author is the only thing that separates an author’s credibility from any other person. The standards that separate published works and any random piece of information may be different but just because something that doesn’t comply with a book publishing company or critic shouldn’t be overlooked as garbage. The nice about the internet is that everyone/anyone knowledgeable about a certain subject can make changes to any document on wikipedia or even start their own site to express their opinion or knowledge. The down side to a book or magazine is that you may have to deal with revisions or slanted view points.

But you are missing the whole point here. This isn't about "freedom of expression". It is about reliable, accurate, and valid informaton.

Zz.

 

[Thrice]

Lets assume that the accuracy rate is terrible: 50%. I would rather kids learn from material that's 50% correct over not learning anything at all.

Isn't a superficial idea better than no idea at all?

This precisely expresses the anti-intellectual and anti-scholarly ethos I fear WP is promoting!

Quaoar, unfortunately one needs to be fairly experienced with scimathtech to really appreciate this point, but in highly technical subjects which build upon previous work in a delicate way, building upon a foundation which is 50% inaccurate is a recipe for utter disaster.

Unless, of course, you know that it's 50% inaccurate. :)

This brings up another point I discussed extensively in some essays which formerly appeared at my Wikipedia user space: the firmly entrenched WP political philosophy is avowedly populist rather than scholarly. While populism has many attractive features (such as the idea that all persons are endowed with the innate ability to comment usefully on all topics, and that the opinions of all persons are equally valid), the populist ethos is profoundly contradictory to the scholarly ethos, which is neccessarily elitist, because of the cumulative nature of mathematical and scientific knowledge, and indeed of scholarly discourse generally: you can't really comment usefully on a technical issue if you are completely unfamiliar with what previous thinkers have said.

Agreed, though I'd say undemocratic rather than elitist. Do you see how this might be resolved?

 

[Chris Hillman]

What to do?

Unless, of course, you know that it's 50% inaccurate. :)

Right, but the point being made my myself, ZapperZ, cristo, and others, is that in many cases only an expert will be able to reliably recognize inaccuracies/slants.

I'd say [the scholarly ethos is] undemocratic rather than elitist. Do you see how this might be resolved?

Not at WP, since the leadership all the way to Jimmy Wales holds populist values very dear, and since Wales has resisted drastically reforming WP procedures for discussing proposed changes in policies, much less "constitutional changes", I see little hope for real change unless the top leadership is replaced by more scholarly minded persons, which currently seems unlikely.

It seems that Citizendium is off to a slow start, and I am not as optimistic as Sanger about its chances for real success. However, I hope that more alternatives to WP will arise. My own hunch is that trying to compete directly with WP using the same wiki model (presumably with a semi-closed wiki with editing restricted to "vetted experts") is doomed. Rather, I hope to see specialized wikis (I know of some fine examples but suggest that we avoid naming them here, because at present many are not well protected from vandalism, and quite frankly PF is infested with nasties who may well be reading this thread; I don't wish to provide them with a list of new playgrounds for their anti-intellectual mayhem), which can then be aggregated by specialized engines (yet to appear). To encapsulate my notion in a slogan: "locally top-down, globally bottom-up". That is, expert driven websites exhibiting good judgement, vision, style, and of course factual accuracy, amalgamated by external sources into something which can compete with WP.

So I urge faculty to consider creating and developing a "techno-encyclopedia" type wiki in their own field of expertise.

For the rest of us, I think the best thing we can do is to try to write and post essays explaining some of the problems at WP, or at least to try and popularize some of the more thoughtful examples which have already appeared. (I tried a mixture of these approaches in this thread.)

 

[Thrice]

Right, but the point being made my myself, ZapperZ, cristo, and others, is that in many cases only an expert will be able to reliably recognize inaccuracies/slants.

Yeah but I think the successes of WP show that reliability/accuracy might sometimes have to take a back seat to other considerations. Given a choice, someone outside science is probably not going to pay texbook prices to satisfy idle curiosity & I'm not sure they should. Perhaps we can define "accurate enough" for some purpose?

http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/42

As Daniel J. Cohen has argued, resources such as Wikipedia “that are free to use in any way, even if they are imperfect, are more valuable than those that are gated or use-restricted, even if those resources are qualitatively better.” Your freedom both to rewrite Wikipedia entries and to manipulate them for other purposes is thus arguably more profound than your ability to read them “for free.” It is why free-software advocates say that to understand the concept of free software, you should think of “free speech” more than “free beer.”

Coming from the software side of things, I've noticed people tend to join for the "free beer" and stay for the "free speech." I'm not sure to what extent WP will mirror this, but linux was never this popular. I think other sites are likely to be absorbed into WP.

 

[Quaoar]

I think Citizendium's main problem is that it has a crappy name (seriously). Try to say the name 5 times fast.

 

[Chris Hillman]

You make my point!

Yeah but I think the successes of WP show that reliability/accuracy might sometimes have to take a back seat to other considerations. Given a choice, someone outside science is probably not going to pay texbook prices to satisfy idle curiosity & I'm not sure they should. Perhaps we can define "accurate enough" for some purpose?

Again, this proposal expresses exactly the increasingly accepted but fallacious principle which I and other scholarly-minded observers fear will prove disastrous: the notion that "good information" is "convenient information".

By the way, if you read over my comments again, and if you read some of the essays I linked to, you should see that accuracy is by no means the only problem thoughtful observers see at WP.

Coming from the software side of things, I've noticed people tend to join for the "free beer" and stay for the "free speech." I'm not sure to what extent WP will mirror this, but linux was never this popular. I think other sites are likely to be absorbed into WP.

I think you mean "aggregated by WP". That's no doubt true; WP already aggregates text from many sources, and conversely, many competitors grab text from Wikipedia. But WP may not be the only "massively aggregating website" around in five to ten years. (Or rather, I guess there will be aggregation tools which work efficiently with Google and other engines, a wikifocused elaboratoration of the kind of powerful aggregation tools already available to those with Google API keys. See my remarks about the potential of specialized "closed" wikis run intelligenetly by acknoledged experts in their field.)

 

[Thrice]

Again, this proposal expresses exactly the increasingly accepted but fallacious principle which I and other scholarly-minded observers fear will prove disastrous: the notion that "good information" is "convenient information".

It's not a principle! It's an empirical fact. Convenience is valuable. Accuracy is valuable. People can/will/do trade accuracy for convenience. We do it every day here with layman physics explanations. I still think it's only really dangerous when you try to extend approximations beyond their boundaries.

You posted a lot of interesting information. I'm still reading it.

 

[raolduke]

Of course.. Just because it’s in a book doesn't automatically make it valid. I know books are generally more credible but it seems that the internet can be almost as reliable as traditional methods of sharing information. The question originally was whether or not things on wikipedia (mainly) can be counted as credible in anyway?

 

[Chris Hillman]

Where is the boundary of the Safe for Ignoramuses Zone?

Convenience is valuable. Accuracy is valuable. People can/will/do trade accuracy for convenience.

Sure, but

it's only really dangerous when you try to extend approximations beyond their boundaries.

My point is that in scimathtech, for the most part, only an expert will sense when he is about to plunge over the edge of the cliff.

You posted a lot of interesting information. I'm still reading it.

Yes, and there's much more I didn't post. I am very glad you are reading the essays Iinked to--- I found them thought-provoking!

 

[Thrice]

My point is that in scimathtech, for the most part, only an expert will sense when he is about to plunge over the edge of the cliff.

Well nothing in principle stops the expert from sharing the information eg by posting in this thread or by banning it in classes.

 

[raolduke]

Would you consider this forum as a valid source of some knowledge?

 

[cristo]

Would you consider this forum as a valid source of some knowledge?

Is that question aimed at anyone in particular?

I think this forum is a good source of knowledge-- after all there are many professors/teachers/professional engineers/grad students/ (etc...) who post here regularly and share their knowledge. Of course, the longer one reads posts here, the more one can tell whether or not to "trust" a certain poster.

 

[Chris Hillman]

Another attempt to summarize the problem

Well nothing in principle stops the expert from sharing the information eg by posting in this thread or by banning it in classes.

I think you misunderstood something.

Would you consider this forum as a valid source of some knowledge?

At the present time (May 2007)? See http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/RelWWW/HTML/more.html . And I agree with what cristo said.

I don't disagree with the principle that most activities (searching for a job, a house, information about "quadi-dyadic chromatic p-functions" ) involve tradeoffs. The special problem with Wikipedia is that the potential benefits of a free on-line encyclopedia with millions of articles, and also of a very different thing, a social club with thousands of highly active members, are obvious to all, while the ways in which information can be, has been, and is being manipulated at WP by devious persons seeking to pursue some hidden agenda, is so far very little appreciated, even by most technical writers.

 

[Chris Hillman]

Scholarly versus Populist ethos

Just came across another essay to add to my list of suggested reading on Wikipedia:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sanger07/sanger07_index.html
WHO SAYS WE KNOW: On the New Politics of Knowledge, by Larry Sanger, The Edge, undated.

We are now confronting a new politics of knowledge, with the rise of the Internet and particularly of the collaborative Web—the Blogosphere, Wikipedia, Digg, YouTube, and in short every website and type of aggregation that invites all comers to offer their knowledge and their opinions, and to rate content, products, places, and people. It is particularly the aggregation of public opinion that instituted this new politics of knowledge.

...

We want our encyclopedias to be as reliable as possible. There's a good reason for this. Ideally, we'd like to be able to read an encyclopedia, believe what it says, and arrive at knowledge, not error...Encyclopedias should represent expert opinion first and foremost, but also minority and popular views...I'll have no truck with the view that simply because something is out of the mainstream—unscientific, irrational, speculative, or politically incorrect—it therefore does not belong in an encyclopedia. Non-mainstream views need a full airing in an encyclopedia, despite the fact that "the best expert opinion" often holds them in contempt, if for no other reason than that we have better grounds on which to reject them. Moreover, as we are responsible for our own beliefs, and as the freedom to believe as we wish is essential to our dignity as human beings, encyclopedias do not have any business making decisions for us that we, who wish to remain as intellectually free as possible, would prefer to make ourselves...

Experts, or specialists, possesses unusual amounts of knowledge about particular topics. Because of their knowledge, they can often sum up what is known on a topic much more efficiently than a non-specialist can. Also, they often know things that virtually no non-specialist knows; and, due to their personal connections and their knowledge of the literature, they often can lay their hands on resources that extend their knowledge even further.

Another thing that experts can do, that few non-experts can, is write about their specializations in a style that is credible and professional-sounding.

...

The most massive encyclopedia in history—well, the most massive thing often called an encyclopedia—is Wikipedia. But Wikipedia has no special role for experts in its content production system. So, can it be relied upon to get mainstream expert opinion right?...Wikipedia is deeply egalitarian. One of its guiding principles is epistemic (knowledge) egalitarianism. According to epistemic egalitarianism, we are all fundamentally equal in our authority or rights to articulate what should pass for knowledge; the only grounds on which a claim can compete against other claims are to be found in the content of the claim itself, never in who makes it...Wikipedia's defenders are capable of arguing at great length that expert involvement is not necessary. They are entirely committed to what I call dabblerism, by which I mean the view that no one should have any special role or authority in a content creation system simply on account of their expertise...To be able to work together at all, consensus and compromise are the name of the game. As a result, the Wikipedian "crowd" can often agree upon some pretty ridiculous claims, which are very far from both expert opinion and from anything like an "average" of public opinion on a subject...It's easy to be impressed with the apparent quality of Wikipedia articles. One must admit that some of the articles look very impressive, replete with multiple sections, surprising length, pictures, tables, a dry, authoritative-sounding style, and so forth. These are all good things (except for the style). But these same impressive-looking articles are all too frequently full of errors or half-truths, and—just as bad—poor writing and incoherent organization. (Jaron Lanier was eloquent on the latter points in his interesting Edge essay, "Digital Maoism.") In short, Wikipedia's dabblerism often unsurprisingly leads to amateurish results.

...

It is no exaggeration to say that epistemic egalitarianism, as illustrated especially by Wikipedia, places Truth in the service of Equality. Ultimately, at the bottom of the debate, the deep modern commitment to specialization is in an epic struggle with an equally deep modern commitment to egalitarianism. It's Truth versus Equality, and as much as I love Equality, if it comes down to choosing, I'm on the side of Truth.

I'd prefer less emphasis on "truth" versus the concept I think Sanger actually has in mind, "fair and accurate presentation of mainstream expert opinion, plus fair and accurate description of some widely discussed nonmainstream opinion", but otherwise this slogan well summarizes much of what I wrote above.

I largely snipped a lengthy claim that the problem with the Brittanica model is that experts are allowed to define "what we all know". Sanger thinks this is a problem. Nicholas Carr disagrees:

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/04/sanger_1.php
Stabbing Polonius, by Nicholas Carr, Rough Type, April 26, 2007

"Maybe that's a little harsh"-- yeah, maybe a little :-/ But he does make an interesting point:

To be honest, I don't see much difference between Sanger and his arch-nemesis and sometime collaborator Jimmy Wales. They're true believers arguing over a technicality - always the bitterest kind of dispute - and Wales recently sidled toward Sanger's camp when he came out in favor of introducing a more formal credentialism into Wikipedia's already extraordinarily bureaucratic operation. (Wikipedia was once about outsiders; now it's about insiders.) As Wikipedia shifts from pursuing quantity to pursuing "quality," it is already heading in Sanger's direction.

Whatever happens between Wikipedia and Citizendium, here's what Wales and Sanger cannot be forgiven for: They have taken the encyclopedia out of the high school library, where it belongs, and turned it into some kind of totem of "human knowledge." Who the hell goes to an encyclopedia looking for "truth," anyway? You go to an encyclopedia when you can't remember whether it was Cortez or Balboa who killed Montezuma or when you want to find out which countries border Turkey. What normal people want from an encyclopedia is not truth but accuracy. And figuring out whether something is accurate or not does not require thousands of words of epistemological hand-wringing. If it jibes with the facts, it's accurate. If it doesn't, it ain't. One of the reasons Wikipedia so often gets a free pass is that it pretends it's in the truth business rather than the accuracy business. That's bull****, but people seem to buy it.

In other words, WP and Citizendium and Web 2.0 seem to be redefining words like "knowledge" in ways which will have profound effects, if Sanger is correct. But Carr is even more dubious about WP than Sanger:

Yes, Wikipedia is the most extensive work of paraphrasing the world has ever seen - and, I admit, that's a useful accomplishment and something its creators can be genuinely proud of - but, in the end, who really cares? It adds not a jot to the sum total of human knowledge. In fact, by presenting knowledge as a ready made commodity, a Happy Meal for Thinkers in a Hurry, it may well be doing more to retard creative thought than to spur it.

I think that gets back to my fear that WP will prove a Very Bad Thing because in the end it may harm students more than it helps. That's because the most important thing students can learn (in high school, in college) is not a bunch of "facts" (Sanger's "truth") but how to acquire reliable knowledge of (or at least a reliable impression of) mainstream/dissident thought on some topic, to assess evidence, to critique reasoning, and to test one's own understanding, knowledge, and skills--- in short, how to think independently.

The public, including not only the current of students but even many journalists and "opinion shapers", have accepted without protest Wikipedia's redefinition of "good knowledge" as "conveniently accessible knowledge" rather than "reliable knowlege". I believe this is moving in just the wrong direction if our vision of an "educated citizenry" includes the principle that citizens in a democratic society should be capable of independent critical thinking.

 

[Moonbear]

It is sad that NO ONE uses libraries anymore.

Thank you for pointing this out! As I'm reading through this thread, the silliest of arguments has jumped out yet again, that somehow wikipedia is better than books because it's free. Reputable books are freely available at the public library. Actually, anyone can walk into a university library and browse the stacks for free too. They won't let you check out the books if you're not a member of the university community, but you can sit there and read them, or make photocopies to take with you...this was common practice when I was in high school, to head to the closest university library to look up additional information for reports if the book wasn't available in the public library. And, you don't even have to buy a computer to access the information in a library, and they come complete with knowledgeable librarians who can help you search for what you need, and locate appropriate level textbooks if you need a good starting point.

On the original question, no, it's not an adequate source for schooling, and neither is reading the encyclopedia in bound form. Wikipedia and other internet sources are more prone to containing misinformation than bound encyclopedias, but you can also find pop science books in the library that will give you just as much misinformation. It's not because it's online that it's not a good source, it's because of who writes it and the level of content in it even when written by someone who knows what they're talking about. It's not going to educate you on a topic, it's just going to give you the tiniest taste of information to decide if it's something you'd want to find out more about.

And, yes, I've even had to deal with the students whose high school teachers were the source of misinformation. I don't care WHAT the source is of misinformation, if it contains misinformation, it is not a good way to be educated. It is REALLY HARD to get misconceptions and misunderstandings out of someone's thinking process once they've been planted there. I dealt with this for many years when teaching freshman biology. So, no, a source that has misinformation is NOT better than no information at all. It's better to start off with a clean slate having no prior knowledge of a subject and learning from someone who knows the subject than to start out confused and trying to unlearn mistakes planted by a bad source.

There's also no point in anyone who knows a subject to waste their time fixing mistakes on wikipedia when any random kid or crackpot can undo it all the next day. Nobody has time to police their entries 24/7, and I'm afraid the crackpots have much more time to waste than real scientists when it comes to modifying wikipedia entries to their liking and undoing changes repeatedly.

That said, most of the biology topics I've looked up aren't too bad, but they are the most cursory of information. It's also prone to the same issues as someone independently reading a textbook without an instructor's guidance runs into...terminology is very specific, and definitions can be quickly misunderstood if you don't know that a particular word in the definition must have only a very precise meaning for the definition to be correct (in the classroom, I can find students who have misunderstood these definitions by asking them to paraphrase, and see if they substitute the wrong synonyms or present a wrong concept to catch it quickly, but if you're reading on your own, you don't get the benefit of the teacher/professor to warn you of these issues). For what's available on it, it seems like a waste of server space when every library in the country (probably much of the world even) has multiple textbooks that will answer the same question in a better way, and in better context of the subject as a whole.

 

[Chris Hillman]

I agree!

There's also no point in anyone who knows a subject to waste their time fixing mistakes on wikipedia when any random kid or crackpot can undo it all the next day. Nobody has time to police their entries 24/7, and I'm afraid the crackpots have much more time to waste than real scientists when it comes to modifying wikipedia entries to their liking and undoing changes repeatedly.

Exactly! This is precisely why so many former members of WikiProject Physics, including myself, have been driven out of the WP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Expert_retention

Actually, in retrospect, I can hardly believe I was ever so naive to spend time there. When I first heard about WP, I thought it sounded like a bloody silly idea. As it turned out, my first impression was correct

 

[raolduke]

People with low karma will only be able to edit the lowest quality articles, and people with high karma will be able to edit them all, so if you've got low karma better improve some articles and get your karma risen or face being able to edit fewer and fewer articles.

The karma system would be the best in my opinion. There would be a couple problems probably for the first year of its introduction but it would shape up quickly. If you really wanted to restrict non-qualified people from posting you could create some kind of age verification or some sort of qualifying test. Another solution which might be costly but effective? - Creating a network to record information posted by an individual. This system would keep track of the individual's ip address and would also house the karma system.