9 ms·

An impressive amount of information on Wikipedia is just outright wrong, misleading, clearly biased, or astroturfed. At the rate in which I encounter inaccurate

• kyled 10y ago
  Curious, what areas do you find are usually flat out wrong? The math sections seem to be pretty good. A friend found a flaw in a crypto algorithm though.
  • Ralfp 10y ago
    I've eventually learned to limit my usage of the Wikipedia to science, distant history, and synopsis of works of popular culture while avoiding like plague current politics and ongoing events. ...but thats on english wiki only. As pole understanding english, I despair for my natives trying to use polish wikipedia, because here politics creep everywhere. I remember what a disaster polish's article on Big Bang was before its ridiculous state was called out and went viral in sceptic circles as being plainly antiscientific. Until then it's contents were more fittingly titled as "philosophical and religious criticisms of Big Bang theory". Remnants of those may be found in Article's discussion which filled with philosophical and religious debate about Big bang.
    • belorn 10y ago
      Honest question, what alternative do you use instead? HN mostly links to news article, and I would question if current politics and ongoing events are more accurately written by news media and with less bias. I don't know about polish news companies, but its not uncommon elsewhere that news companies are openly biased towards one political party or bias their articles towards their main customer group (UK example from Yes, Minister: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M). We have books or research papers, but meta research generally acknowledge that researchers include bias into their work, often linked to the opinion of those that funds the research. Meta research is thus generally a bit better, especially the meta-meta-research papers, through it generally takes a quite political contested topic for that to happen which then further increase the risk of bias by the meta researchers selecting results that favors their side.
      • notcolin 10y ago
        In terms of news, I use Haystack (http://www.haystack.tv http://www.haystack.tv). It aggregates YouTube videos from various media sources daily, much of it American (then again, that might be intentional). You can also pick and choose specific sources and topics you want to follow, even cast to Chromecast. The developer(s) are pretty responsive too and the app is free. My only frustration is that it only aggregates videos on YouTube. If you want to get video news segments from media companies that publish their videos to a proprietary CDN or hosting service, you can't use it with Haystack.
  • yongjik 10y ago
    Topics of contention between two nations (or worse, between two political factions inside a nation) are usually suspect. Even if every sentence is meticulously sourced, you can't tell if someone is "lying by omission." Basically, the tone of the article is determined by which country (or faction) can muster more people with free time and passable English skills, which may not correspond to actual expertise on the topic... I agree that math/physics sections are pretty good. It's difficult for knowledgeable people to disagree on these matters...
    • jessriedel 10y ago
      > Even if every sentence is meticulously sourced, you can't tell if someone is "lying by omission." This is a problem for literally every source on Earth, and persists even among the most prestigious newspapers, books, etc.
      • hackuser 10y ago
        > This is a problem for literally every source on Earth, and persists even among the most prestigious newspapers, books, etc. That's true but practically meaningless. Some sources are dramatically more reliable and accurate than others. I can't completely trust my 4 year old nephew about physics, nor can I completely trust a leading physics text book, but that doesn't make those sources similarly reliable. What we're discussing here is where Wikipedia falls on that continuum. I agree with the GP; there is so much deception by omission in WP that I don't trust it. For example, I was just looking at (American) football player Peyton Manning's article; it completely omitted a major sexual assault/harassment allegation, one about which there was a court settlement, book, major news coverage, etc.
        • jessriedel 10y ago
          I mean explicitly that Wikipedia does as least as good on lying by omission as the most reputable sources (NYTimes, the Wall Street Journal, whatever).
          • 10y ago
  • thebooktocome 10y ago
    The math sections are okay up to what a typical mechanical engineer would know. My own sub-field is very poorly covered.
    • gravypod 10y ago
      Do you submit corrections?
      • flubert 10y ago
        Do you? Seems like there should be a xkcd covering this. The usual case as near as I can tell is something like: Make a minor correction to an obvious error, including a link to a source and other wikipedia articles. Edit gets immediately reverted by whoever has declared themselves the guardian of that particular page. Talk page lights up with all sorts of tangential discussion of whether or not this particular subtopic should be corrected or deleted or reworded or something else. Someone else tries making a modification, which again is immediately reverted. People who enjoy the drama have a self-interested desire to perpetuate it. If you are lucky you could go back 6 months later and there's maybe a 50% chance that the original has been corrected (that's if the original topic hasn't come into contact with the non-notable deletionists). Anyone know when C2 became a javascriptified dumpster fire? Seems like that's a "Day the Music Died" event that should have a date associated with it.
        • maccard 10y ago
          (Not OP) I have in the past, and my experience was that the talk page was civil, my changes were discussed and we came to a common agreement as to what the change should be. Nothing like the fiasco you're describing. You still haven't answered the question though; do you submit corrections?
          • flubert 10y ago
            >You still haven't answered the question though; I was never asked a question until now (N.B. the original posters). > do you submit corrections? I haven't for years (as in over 5+ years). I'm sure someone will point out it is different now.
  • simonsarris 10y ago
    Really? I find many math topics to be covered extremely poorly, and presume a lot of prior knowledge without linking to that knowledge. Plenty of philosophy articles are also very poor. For example the page on Deconstruction, though its better than it was ~4 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction
    • noobermin 10y ago
      >Really? I find many math topics to be covered extremely poorly, and presume a lot of prior knowledge without linking to that knowledge. At what level, an ELI5 level or the level of people who are actually going to look that stuff up?
      • Larrikin 10y ago
        I think all articles should be at formers level since people with a deeper knowledge will be using sites, books, etc where that deeper knowledge is assumed. If they aren't already they can get started by reading reading the sources in the article
        • noobermin 10y ago
          It is an encyclopedia, not a collection of tutorials. That seems more appropriate for something like wikibooks. Otherwise, every single article would be in inordinately long with a lot of redundancy. I like it better in which pre-requisites are often linked to other pages, so you can brush up on the pre-req's if you don't understand them.
        • throwaway2048 10y ago
          wikipedia is a reference, reference material isnt teaching material.
      • ghaff 10y ago
        Many of them seem to be written/edited by people who are more interested in using an equation editor than in trying to explain the topic. I don't necessarily expect ELI5 level but I wonder how many people who don't already understand the topic in depth can decode most of those math pages. They dive into a lot of jargon and rarely attempt to provide any real context that a non-specialist can understand. I understand that it's hard to do and it also reflects the fact that Wikipedia pages are wildly variable in the audience they're written for.
  • _0ffh 10y ago
    I find that quality on technical and mathematical subjects varies wildly. I remember once looking up a very specific topic, just to be sure that I don't misremember a certain simple but crucial core relation. What I found was a page that was so shockingly disorganised that I had to wade through 5 pages of mindbendingly complexified, quasi-obscurantist... drivel... just to extract that central piece of information that really should have been mentioned in the bit above the TOC, or at least easy to find. So, YMMV.
• deleted 10y ago
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• sowbug 10y ago
  This is a rare opportunity to cite the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: "You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]'s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the 'wet streets cause rain' stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gel...
  • blubb-fish 10y ago
    I'm shocked - there is no Wikipedia article on this!
  • psyc 10y ago
    I've been pointing this out about journalism for years, and it's awesome that it has a name. However, I still want a name for just the first part of the effect - the part where you notice an article about your area of expertise is laughably wrong. And you never forget it and conclude that journalism is just terrible.
  • Deimorz 10y ago
    There's a similar saying referred to as Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy: "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge." There's also another related topic on TVTropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CowboyBebopAtHisComputer http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CowboyBebopAtHisC...
• blubb-fish 10y ago
  The Internet says ...
• cooper12 10y ago
  > At the rate in which I encounter inaccurate data on Wikipedia that I can identify Why haven't you tried to address those inaccuracies? I could sympathize if you said you did and were rebutted, but sounds to me like someone complaining that their local beach is full of trash when they themselves never bothered to help clean it. > At the rate in which I encounter inaccurate data on Wikipedia that I can identify, it makes me suspicious of nearly everything on the site. If you don't do that for every source you use, you might be suffering from the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. > but it's hardly a substitution for a legitimate source let alone encyclopedia. A Nature study (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm) found it to be comparable in accuracy to Brittanica. > Nonetheless, I know plenty of people who take it as legitimate and cite it as if it's an authority. Encyclopedias are tertiary sources, they should be used as reference works, not sources in and of themselves.
  • bobcostas55 10y ago
    >Why haven't you tried to address those inaccuracies? Trying to edit wikipedia is a hellish experience. The vast majority of articles have one or more de facto owners who will do everything they can to preserve control over their turf. They tend to be experts in rules laywering which is how they got their power in the first place. So "addressing inaccuracies" typically involves 5 minutes of editing and a month-long war afterwards. And that doesn't even begin to address that wikipedia's rules are insane to begin with. Just the rules covering acceptable usernames are almost 4000 words long (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username_policy).
    • cooper12 10y ago
      > Trying to edit wikipedia is a hellish experience. The vast majority of articles have one or more de facto owners I'm so tired of this meme. No one owns an article. [0] You say "de facto", but just because someone disagrees with you on something, it doesn't mean they disagree with every edit or do it only for that article. The vast majority of articles barely have anyone watching them. > who will do everything they can to preserve control over their turf. The fact that you describe it as "turf" only further proves that you have this mentality of the article being a battleground. > They tend to be experts in rules laywering which is how they got their power in the first place. What power? Even admins on Wikipedia can't overrule consensus and discussion. What's this about rule lawyering too? They just understand the community norms better. I don't walk into a fancy restaurant and complain about "rules lawyering" after I get kicked out for breaking the dress code. Once someone tells you about a rule, you should read up on it, not boisterously claim that you should be above the community rules. > Just the rules covering acceptable usernames are almost 4000 words long Seems simple enough to me: > This page in a nutshell: When choosing an account name, do not choose names which may be offensive, misleading, disruptive, or promotional. In general, one username should represent one person. Those 4000 words should only matter if you don't find the above to be sufficient explanation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content
• projektir 10y ago
  I'm not sure that's a Wikipedia problem, as opposed to a general sources problem. Wikipedia at least often shows proponents and critics of a given idea, while the average source just presents its own position and doesn't provide any sort of context. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "legitimate source", I don't think I've ever seen one. Often an old book has more bias and inaccuracies in it than a blog post. I recall reading a discussion on how The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire is no longer perceived as accurate, and few people will call that an illegitimate source. Information is hard. All Wikipedia does half the time is reference such sources, so it's about as biased as the sources are, except it tends to combine them, and there's nothing forcing it to do so in a way that represents the true balance. That's up to the content editors. The only thing I can suggest is, if you see a problem, try to correct it. Also, pretty much every page these days has a warning on it. Wikipedia is great for basic coverage of a fairly broad range of topics, such as physics, psychology, linguistics, religion, biology, computer science, etc. As long as you're sticking to information that's mostly perceived as fact, as opposed to opinion. I have yet to find a source that rivals Wikipedia in this regard. Wikipedia had a huge, huge influence on information transfer for many people, I think we forgot how big of a deal it is because it's been around for so long. It's absolutely invaluable to many people. I don't believe it's Wikipedia's job to identify answers to opinionated stances, so don't expect it to be "accurate" on things like controversial history, politics, design, etc. Those things are usually not covered accurately by anyone.
• hackuser 10y ago
  I now recognize Wikipedia as the original 'fake news' or 'fake information' on the Internet. Just like all those news stories people pass around, nobody cares about Wikipedia's accuracy. It's the same phenomenon, and possibly (I have no evidence) Wikipedia conditioned people to accept unreliable information.
  • redsummer 10y ago
    I was about to write the same thing. Many articles have fake information. For instance, someone might edit an article to say that a person was a known political extremist. Someone else might write an article (not on Wikipedia) saying the same thing (after having read the Wikipedia article). Years later, if the information is questioned on Wikipedia, then editors will add a reference to the off-wiki article, and everyone will be happy. Circular fake news, with truth going down the plughole. The entropic heat death of information.
    • grzm 10y ago
      With the widespread adoption of the term "fake news", I'm wondering what you mean by "fake information" as opposed to wrong, or false, or mistaken, or in more subtle cases, from a different perspective (think "freedom fighter" vs "terrorist"). "fake" to me implies purposeful deception. Is that what you mean here?
      • redsummer 10y ago
        It doesn't have to be deliberate, purposeful, or even conscious - though it often is. An exaggeration can be treated as fact. That fact can again be exaggerated, until the words bear no relation to reality. Wikipedia practically invented this mechanism.
        • grzm 10y ago
          I do think in that case that fake is not the right adjective to use. Every definition of fake implies intent to deceive. If you're trying to encompass the meanings you describe above, fake doesn't appear to cover it.
• empath75 10y ago
  Anything that touches on politics or religion is a tire fire, but the math and science articles aren't bad. I mostly use Wikipedia to help me find actual resources.
  • notadoc 10y ago
    Science is political now because evidence, studies, and results can impact policy, so it's deeply polluted. Personally I've found many medical and scientific articles to contain vast amounts of misinformation and disinformation. I would recommend not relying on any of it, it is at the whims of whoever bothers to edit.
• deleted 10y ago
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