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Oh! The number of articles I have read lately where I have gone and looked up actual books and discovered that the wikipedia content is copied verbatim from the

by wbhart 15y ago

Oh! The number of articles I have read lately where I have gone and looked up actual books and discovered that the wikipedia content is copied verbatim from the books, yet with sentences that do not correlate strung together in a way that results in totally incorrect information. And then there is the fact that for ages the Jean Claude van Damme article said he had killed 100 men with his bare hands {expletives deleted}. Many of the mathematics articles contain appalling errors. You post about the errors in the discussion page and the issue is totally ignored. There seems to be no way to work with the community process to get things fixed. I use wikipedia a lot for things that don't matter, e.g. as a structured skeleton for notes on a particular topic that I am writing for my own benefit and understanding. But as a project, I think it has basically reached its limits. There's no way to move it significantly past what it is now.

xxpor 15y ago
If there are significant errors, fix them yourself. There's no need to go to the discussion page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD
- CJefferson 15y ago
  Except I find most of my changes get reverted, even if referenced or simply deleting incorrect and unreferenced information. I don't have time to enter a life-long battle keeping an article correct.
  - TikiTDO 15y ago
    Something does not compute there. If your changes are getting reverted, obviously someone cares enough to notice, so it follows that they should care enough to check the discussion. Are you sure you're not just getting hit by a bot? Maybe you did not tag your changes properly? If anything, there might be a problem that the admins should look at. I would like to see some of these changes you are talking about.
    - woodall 15y ago
      My experience with Wikipedia has been hit or miss. Sometimes I'll find an older article and fix it up a bit and it will stay. Other times I get my edit reverted by an over zealous neck beard who can't handle being wrong on the internet. I don't have the time to battle these types of people. This is what sunk, "Wikipedia is not a creditable source" into my brain.
- wbhart 15y ago
  Quoting from that page: "Don't get upset if your bold edits get deleted." Which is my experience entirely. Sorry, but being bold is a great way to waste my time, not to actually get things fixed.
bhousel 15y ago
> There's no way to move it significantly past what it is now. I think having paid editors would fix most of those problems..
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  How would you pay for it? Also, the error rate on Wikipedia is comparable to Britannica, which is written by paid experts. Letting anybody edit has worked so far. It may need to be adjusted, but there's no need to entirely throw out the model that's been so incredibly successful.
  - bhousel 15y ago
    haha, ok
  - wbhart 15y ago
    This is NOT correct. It is highly dependent on the subject matter and what is filtered from Wikipedia before doing the comparison. Take a hard science and take everything that is written and Wikipedia is substantially worse. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/16/wikipedia_britannica_science_comparison/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/16/wikipedia_britannica... Furthermore, take Wikipedia and compare it with authoritative books on the subject matter in the actual articles and you will find that Wikipedia contains many very serious errors. http://www.economist.com/node/17902943?story_id=17902943&CFID=159910163&CFTOKEN=53366793 http://www.economist.com/node/17902943?story_id=17902943&#38... (Search for Ofqual in that article.) In particular, Wikipedia is about as accurate as general books and press articles. It is not an accurate source of academic information.
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      >It is not an accurate source of academic information. It has never claimed to be. It seems a bit silly to say that something is bad because it isn't some other thing that it was never designed to be. My iPhone is a pretty lousy toaster, too.
redthrowaway 15y ago
>There seems to be no way to work with the community process to get things fixed. So don't. Fix it yourself, and source it. It's really ridiculously easy to do, and it's what Wikipedia encourages you to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sofixit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sofixit >There's no way to move it significantly past what it is now. There are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pages in need of some loving. Even the good ones aren't perfect. There's still plenty of room for improvement, and thousands of people doing just that.
- wbhart 15y ago
  It's not as easy as you say. When the article contains mathematical errors, sourcing your correction is not easy. Wikipedia does not allow personal research. When the article contains "facts" which are in error, which you only know because you can understand the maths yourself, you don't have a source, other than your own research. Finding one, to correct what is to you a blatant error, can be a massive job. You shouldn't need a source to correct an error. The person who wrote the original piece of incorrect information should have to source their claim. Also, when I edit wikipedia articles without consultation with the community first, it invariably gets shouted at and reverted. Consult the community, and you have to expect that people there actually understand why the article is in error. Mathematics is sometimes very subtle. Errors can be subtle. Trying to explain them to people who didn't understand what they were writing in the first place is impossible. Yes, there are very many extremely qualified academics adding stuff to Wikipedia. But there are also very many amateur mathematicians who write many almost-but-not-quite-true things, not understanding the subtleties involved. I already spend a lot of my time teaching people how to do mathematics. Doing so on Wikipedia is a poor venue. By the way, since when did people start using the down voting feature on HN for posts they didn't personally agree with?
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    >By the way, since when did people start using the down voting feature on HN for posts they didn't personally agree with? I think it was more the implied laziness of thinking Wikipedia is a great resource but not being willing to fix it. As for your issue, if you know something's wrong from your own research, have you published it? There's a secondary source right there. Wikipedia, by necessity, aims to be verifiable, not true. People will argue till the cows come home about truth, and do so much less civilly than when arguing about verifiability. So yes, there are plenty of errors on Wikipedia that exist because the source is wrong. The only consistent way to deal with this is to leave it in until other secondary sources emerge that allow you to fix it. Still, you can just run the math, as that isn't OR. If you'd prefer, you can tell me the page and the error and I'll take care of it. Being an established editor can be handy sometimes.
Enlightenment 15y ago
If you find something wrong in Wikipedia then fix it, otherwise it is your lazyass fault for not fixing it. Wikipedia is a great source to start learning about a topic and a good place to find references. An idiot would make Wikipedia their only and final source. I've noticed that a very high percentage of new text that was later removed because the new text DID NOT have a citation reference. Don't whine because you are lazy. If you really want to make contributions to Wikipedia and make them stick, then edit articles that few people are editing or haven't edited in a long time. Newbies should avoid articles that have a lot of current edit activity.

by wbhart 15y ago

xxpor 15y ago

If there are significant errors, fix them yourself. There's no need to go to the discussion page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD

CJefferson 15y ago
Except I find most of my changes get reverted, even if referenced or simply deleting incorrect and unreferenced information. I don't have time to enter a life-long battle keeping an article correct.
- TikiTDO 15y ago
  Something does not compute there. If your changes are getting reverted, obviously someone cares enough to notice, so it follows that they should care enough to check the discussion. Are you sure you're not just getting hit by a bot? Maybe you did not tag your changes properly? If anything, there might be a problem that the admins should look at. I would like to see some of these changes you are talking about.
  - woodall 15y ago
    My experience with Wikipedia has been hit or miss. Sometimes I'll find an older article and fix it up a bit and it will stay. Other times I get my edit reverted by an over zealous neck beard who can't handle being wrong on the internet. I don't have the time to battle these types of people. This is what sunk, "Wikipedia is not a creditable source" into my brain.
wbhart 15y ago
Quoting from that page: "Don't get upset if your bold edits get deleted." Which is my experience entirely. Sorry, but being bold is a great way to waste my time, not to actually get things fixed.

bhousel 15y ago

> There's no way to move it significantly past what it is now. I think having paid editors would fix most of those problems..

redthrowaway 15y ago
How would you pay for it? Also, the error rate on Wikipedia is comparable to Britannica, which is written by paid experts. Letting anybody edit has worked so far. It may need to be adjusted, but there's no need to entirely throw out the model that's been so incredibly successful.
- bhousel 15y ago
  haha, ok
- wbhart 15y ago
  This is NOT correct. It is highly dependent on the subject matter and what is filtered from Wikipedia before doing the comparison. Take a hard science and take everything that is written and Wikipedia is substantially worse. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/16/wikipedia_britannica_science_comparison/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/16/wikipedia_britannica... Furthermore, take Wikipedia and compare it with authoritative books on the subject matter in the actual articles and you will find that Wikipedia contains many very serious errors. http://www.economist.com/node/17902943?story_id=17902943&CFID=159910163&CFTOKEN=53366793 http://www.economist.com/node/17902943?story_id=17902943&#38... (Search for Ofqual in that article.) In particular, Wikipedia is about as accurate as general books and press articles. It is not an accurate source of academic information.
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    >It is not an accurate source of academic information. It has never claimed to be. It seems a bit silly to say that something is bad because it isn't some other thing that it was never designed to be. My iPhone is a pretty lousy toaster, too.

redthrowaway 15y ago

>There seems to be no way to work with the community process to get things fixed. So don't. Fix it yourself, and source it. It's really ridiculously easy to do, and it's what Wikipedia encourages you to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sofixit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sofixit >There's no way to move it significantly past what it is now. There are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pages in need of some loving. Even the good ones aren't perfect. There's still plenty of room for improvement, and thousands of people doing just that.

wbhart 15y ago
It's not as easy as you say. When the article contains mathematical errors, sourcing your correction is not easy. Wikipedia does not allow personal research. When the article contains "facts" which are in error, which you only know because you can understand the maths yourself, you don't have a source, other than your own research. Finding one, to correct what is to you a blatant error, can be a massive job. You shouldn't need a source to correct an error. The person who wrote the original piece of incorrect information should have to source their claim. Also, when I edit wikipedia articles without consultation with the community first, it invariably gets shouted at and reverted. Consult the community, and you have to expect that people there actually understand why the article is in error. Mathematics is sometimes very subtle. Errors can be subtle. Trying to explain them to people who didn't understand what they were writing in the first place is impossible. Yes, there are very many extremely qualified academics adding stuff to Wikipedia. But there are also very many amateur mathematicians who write many almost-but-not-quite-true things, not understanding the subtleties involved. I already spend a lot of my time teaching people how to do mathematics. Doing so on Wikipedia is a poor venue. By the way, since when did people start using the down voting feature on HN for posts they didn't personally agree with?
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  >By the way, since when did people start using the down voting feature on HN for posts they didn't personally agree with? I think it was more the implied laziness of thinking Wikipedia is a great resource but not being willing to fix it. As for your issue, if you know something's wrong from your own research, have you published it? There's a secondary source right there. Wikipedia, by necessity, aims to be verifiable, not true. People will argue till the cows come home about truth, and do so much less civilly than when arguing about verifiability. So yes, there are plenty of errors on Wikipedia that exist because the source is wrong. The only consistent way to deal with this is to leave it in until other secondary sources emerge that allow you to fix it. Still, you can just run the math, as that isn't OR. If you'd prefer, you can tell me the page and the error and I'll take care of it. Being an established editor can be handy sometimes.

Enlightenment 15y ago

If you find something wrong in Wikipedia then fix it, otherwise it is your lazyass fault for not fixing it. Wikipedia is a great source to start learning about a topic and a good place to find references. An idiot would make Wikipedia their only and final source. I've noticed that a very high percentage of new text that was later removed because the new text DID NOT have a citation reference. Don't whine because you are lazy. If you really want to make contributions to Wikipedia and make them stick, then edit articles that few people are editing or haven't edited in a long time. Newbies should avoid articles that have a lot of current edit activity.