NationStates Jolt Archive

I notice a lot of people insult wikipedia due to the fact that anyone can edit it.

I agree that the occasional inaccuracy can creep in and I don't mind. If someone changes an article to contain bad information, it is usually reverted soon after. If there is an editing dispute, the article is labelled as such. Warnings are put at the top of articles to warn of bias, inaccuracy or other problems. Articles are expected to cite their sources too, people aren't allowed to add "original research".

I'm not saying I'd use it if I needed to gather information in great detail or accuracy (but when would you use an encyclopaedia to do that anyway? You'd get a book specifically on the subject). But if I want a good introduction to a topic, I find wikipedia to be of great use.

Of course anyone can edit wikipedia, but then, pretty much anyone can write a book. And the information you get from wikipedia you'd probably get by asking some random person, or doing a google search anyway. How is wikipedia any worse than that?

It depends on the article in question, really.

Grumb.

Dependant upon the context. For an essay of any great magnitutde, I wouldn't touch Wikipedia with a barge pole, due to the unreliability one does accept in using it. However, for most minor stuff, or general knowledge, I don't have any objections.

it's very useful for general knowledge, but it's pretty poor as an academic resource. the only way i'd use it as such is in order to find out what works a particular article is referencing so i may use those.

This is gonna go poorly...

*dons Wikimedia Battle armor*

This is gonna go poorly...

*dons Wikimedia Battle armor*

Well I don't intend to "battle" over it. I've made my points. If people want to ignore them, getting angry and insulting them won't make any difference.

Wikipedia is very useful for a lot of things. Most of my teachers don't mind me using Wikipedia either. And it's so much more convenient than finding a book for something loke a general knowledge question or Googleing any random person's website.

Well I don't intend to "battle" over it. I've made my points. If people want to ignore them, getting angry and insulting them won't make any difference.

You'll see...I merely have to lie in wait for a page or two...

it's very useful for general knowledge, but it's pretty poor as an academic resource. the only way i'd use it as such is in order to find out what works a particular article is referencing so i may use those.

ditto

You'll see...I merely have to lie in wait for a page or two...

Yeah, other people will take side and start bitching ineffectually; I just won't be one of them.

This is gonna go poorly...

*dons Wikimedia Battle armor*

*makes a bad edit to your armour.*

Ha! you are now defenseless!

Wiki is too convenient to ignore. I must say I enjoy its existence.

*bows to Wikipedia*

*makes a bad edit to your armour.*

Ha! you are now defenseless!

*Wikibot reverts obvious vandalism*

I rather like it, since most articles provide sources, which can be quite useful.

And its handy if you want a general overview of something without having to go to Google and search through the 10,000,000 results if you want to look up something obscure with a name similar to something popular.

*Wikibot reverts obvious vandalism*

*makes the bad edit again*

*makes the bad edit again*

*reverted*
*armor becomes semi-protected*

wikipedia, like babylon 5, is our last, best hope for peace

*makes the bad edit again*

*bombs all Polish wiki articles*

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia) is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is)le (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le) sex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex)! :) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy)

I've found the edits people make are generally really easy to spot. People don't try to casually edit them, they go for really obvious ones, like: "Stephen Colbert has saved 10,000 elephants"

I've found the edits people make are generally really easy to spot. People don't try to casually edit them, they go for really obvious ones, like: "Stephen Colbert has saved 10,000 elephants"

I was reading the article on the battle of Mactan a while back, which seemed quite accurate up to the point where Magellan got a wedgie.

Wikipedia is useful for a general overview, but not much more. When doing research, I skim through Wikipedia articles and then head for the links at the bottom, pointing to further information that might be actually reliable. Of course, half the time there aren't any useful links either, but meh.

I find wikipedia very useful. As others have said, even if you don't find the information you are looking for on the page then it provides you with external links that may be useful.

Wikipedia is useful for a general overview, but not much more.

sorta like an encyclopedia, but covering vastly more topics

sorta like an encyclopedia, but covering vastly more topics

It is an encyclopedia, sort of. Problem is that not all of the information it presents is accurate, and those inaccuracies frequently go unedited; hence, articles contain factual errors or uncited information, or 'original research'.

It is an encyclopedia, sort of. Problem is that not all of the information it presents is accurate, and those inaccuracies frequently go unedited; hence, articles contain factual errors or uncited information, or 'original research'.

Incidentally, pointing out some definite examples would be most appreiciated. I find it's the easiest way to help fix up Wiki.

sorta like an encyclopedia, but covering vastly more topics
Indeed. And I fail to see how an encyclopedia that's practically "peer-reviewed" is not at least equal to traditional encyclopedias. Quick, somebody link to that study on how Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica have the same "margin of error".

I for one happen to have a rather large amount of trust in Wikipedia. A friend of mine who is a medical doctor has been writing/editing several medical entries, and now other people who know more or other details about the respective topic can post and edit his comments - which, because any potential nit-wittery somebody might edit in will be noticed and deleted by other people knowledgeable on the topic, cannot really fail to make for an end result that is pretty damn balanced, purged of as many errors as possible, and most of all comprehensive.

No, you can't write your thesis with Wikipedia instead of books, but I doubt anybody ever tried that with the Encyclopedia Britannica. :rolleyes:

For scholorly work bad but it can be INCREDIBLY usefull if you are just trying to get some general info about something or some info on a newer trend/person/technology

It is an encyclopedia, sort of. Problem is that not all of the information it presents is accurate, and those inaccuracies frequently go unedited; hence, articles contain factual errors or uncited information, or 'original research'.

All the above get flagged for edit and categorized

In fact I have wrote a few wiki bots to propagate information before as well as edit and source track (for an internal wiki not applied to wikipedia but it would take less then a day with approval to get them ready for wikipedia)

I notice a lot of people insult wikipedia due to the fact that anyone can edit it.

I agree that the occasional inaccuracy can creep in and I don't mind. If someone changes an article to contain bad information, it is usually reverted soon after. If there is an editing dispute, the article is labelled as such. Warnings are put at the top of articles to warn of bias, inaccuracy or other problems. Articles are expected to cite their sources too, people aren't allowed to add "original research".

I'm not saying I'd use it if I needed to gather information in great detail or accuracy (but when would you use an encyclopaedia to do that anyway? You'd get a book specifically on the subject). But if I want a good introduction to a topic, I find wikipedia to be of great use.

Of course anyone can edit wikipedia, but then, pretty much anyone can write a book. And the information you get from wikipedia you'd probably get by asking some random person, or doing a google search anyway. How is wikipedia any worse than that?

I really believe Wikipedia is one of the greatest concepts ever. It has only been up for about five years and the English version has 1.64 million articles! In another five years the info will be just more accurate, and there will be even more articles.

As far as credibility, while I never cite it on an essay, it is usually one of the first tools I use to get background info on the topic and ideas (with the wikilinks and see-alsos) of what I might use in the essay.

I used Wikipedia to get a cursory idea of things that I am interested in. I like Wiki's in general, because they are a really awesome concept. My husband's work has a wiki and it has really helped them out a lot, it's more flexible than the old style knowledge base they had, and people really like the interface better.

I used Wikipedia to get a cursory idea of things that I am interested in. I like Wiki's in general, because they are a really awesome concept. My husband's work has a wiki and it has really helped them out a lot, it's more flexible than the old style knowledge base they had, and people really like the interface better.

We are about 3 months into one we deployed here(I deployed it) ... and we have found the same

The databasing style it does is efficient fast and stable, the language mediawiki uses is easy to deploy and modify in a *nix environment and easy to create bots for

we have something like 2500 articles in ours already ...

The science articles are ment to be as good as those in Encyclopedia Britancica. But thats proberbly because most people don't feel entierly confidenet editing the science articles.

i like wikipedia alot but i don't always trust the sources

We are about 3 months into one we deployed here(I deployed it) ... and we have found the same

The databasing style it does is efficient fast and stable, the language mediawiki uses is easy to deploy and modify in a *nix environment and easy to create bots for

we have something like 2500 articles in ours already ...

Hubby set theirs up about 3 or 4 months ago, he started out just copying down knowledge base stuff, had about 300 articles, within the first week they had 400 more, people were hoarding information because it was a pain in the ass to add it to the old system. It's like everyone was too lazy to screw with it, only now that he set up the wiki they are adding stuff daily.......weird.

Dependant upon the context. For an essay of any great magnitutde, I wouldn't touch Wikipedia with a barge pole, due to the unreliability one does accept in using it. However, for most minor stuff, or general knowledge, I don't have any objections.

True, but then again I find the links provided in Wiki articles very helpful when I intend to go deeper into the subjects.
I wouldn't quote Wiki itself in any academic context, though.

I notice a lot of people insult wikipedia due to the fact that anyone can edit it.

I agree that the occasional inaccuracy can creep in and I don't mind. If someone changes an article to contain bad information, it is usually reverted soon after. If there is an editing dispute, the article is labelled as such. Warnings are put at the top of articles to warn of bias, inaccuracy or other problems. Articles are expected to cite their sources too, people aren't allowed to add "original research".

I'm not saying I'd use it if I needed to gather information in great detail or accuracy (but when would you use an encyclopaedia to do that anyway? You'd get a book specifically on the subject). But if I want a good introduction to a topic, I find wikipedia to be of great use.

Of course anyone can edit wikipedia, but then, pretty much anyone can write a book. And the information you get from wikipedia you'd probably get by asking some random person, or doing a google search anyway. How is wikipedia any worse than that?

I have found wikipedia very useful for quick reference on physics based concepts when I need to quickly remind myself of a needed concept or equation. Some of the articles are very advanced in their level of specialist knowledge and I have found these to be very reliable and no misleading edits or information found yet.

Uncyclopedia (http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) is where its at!

It's great. Saves shelling out for an encyclopaedia, and as time goes on is becoming as accurate as one (with the added benefit of the information within being continually updated and refined.) Small problems with vandalism and the like hardly detract from it as they're fixed in almost no time.

No, I wouldn't use it as an academic resource, but then I wouldn't use an encyclopaedia as one either.

Wikipedia is God. After all, knowledge = power, and Wikipedia has the potential to become omniscient and thus omnipotent. Thus Wikipedia = God.

Back to real life: I practically worship Wikipedia. As many other people have pointed out, it can't be any worse than Googling a question or resorting to a book; for those who think that books tend to be more accurate I point them to virtually any book in favour of circle-squaring or global warming!
Articles are vandalised, yes. However, the vandalism is cleared up so quickly that it makes no real difference, especially as the vandalism is always quite, quite obvious anyway.
There's also the fact that vandals will tend to go for more casual articles; you will find that very few serious, advanced physics or mathematics articles have been vandalised, for example, and for those ones you know the non-vandalised section is almost certainly accurate as only those with knowledge in the topic field will write an article.

In summary: I find Wikipedia to be the greatest thing ever, and I'd refer to it for virtually anything.

Ilaer

Wikipedia is a pretty reliable tool, and is even better than conventional encyclopedias because it's free and anyone can contribute to it. If I'm really concerned about the reliability of a given article, I'll just look up the sources that are given or go somewhere else.

1.64 million articles is an amazing amount of knowledge, and it's a lot more comprehensive than any other encyclopedia on Earth.

Of course anyone can edit wikipedia, but then, pretty much anyone can write a book. And the information you get from wikipedia you'd probably get by asking some random person, or doing a google search anyway. How is wikipedia any worse than that?

1. Anyone can write a book but getting a book published and writing one are very, very different. You can get charged with libel(sp?)/slander for inaccurate information in a book.

2. That is why it is important to check the credibility of a website befor trusting it.

3. All that said I do use wikipedia a lot of the time for the links to good website at the bottom, but also as an introduction. Do not reference it, and be careful but other then that *shrugs*

I used wikipedia for a recent essay I did for my tutor. I didn't use it directly, but it's a brilliant place to get information on a subject that you can then look up elsewhere.

Wikipedia and Howstuffworks are my goto sites when I want a tidbit of info.

I notice a lot of people insult wikipedia due to the fact that anyone can edit it.
Well, it is true. So it depends on whether the info you seek for is:

1. High-profile. In this case, it will be reverted and fixed. WP is fine.
2. Susceptible to fads. In this case, unless it's high-profile, you're at risk.
3. Depends on precise details. For instance, in the WP article on how to fly a helicopter, left and right pedals were "flipped" for a while. Then they were fixed. Then it was revealed different helis have them different. So when a single typo is critical, don't use WP.
4. POV-susceptible. WP is among the more neutral sources, but its visible neutrality is deceptive: it maintains a strong systemic bias, being edited mostly by young white American males. Checking sources on both sides is preferable. Also, remember that it's hard to censor information out of WP, but easy to tone it away: so always ignore the words "however", "but", "though", and their implications. There's no person with opinion, these just join together the random bits.