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> I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate? Because the alternative is massive systemic bias. This issue has been discussed to death and I won't a
by Animus7 15y ago
> I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate?
Because the alternative is massive systemic bias.
This issue has been discussed to death and I won't argue anything here, but the point is that having a thick coat of process encourages a _certain kind_ of editor to participate in Wikipedia. Thus, proponents claim, the largest reference work on the internet is biased, in a very nonobvious way.
This wouldn't be an issue if Wikipedia was some niche forum where "facts" are taken for granted to be opinions. But for (what I suspect is) the majority of people these days, Wikipedia is the de facto source of truth. Therein the problem lies.
- vacri 15y agoThe quality of technical articles on Wikipedia are second to none. Time and time again technical references have played out in personal and professional endeavours. They're clear and concise. You've got to accept that some topics, biographies for example, are inherently subjective and can't be purely objective. Wikipedia is the most rigorous source of 'truth' available to the masses, and the complaints of bias are about bias which may indeed be present, but are markedly subtle. Where is the source of 'truth' that's anywhere near as objective as the offerings of wikipedia?
- dextorious 15y ago"""The quality of technical articles on Wikipedia are second to none. """ You don't really read many quality technical books, do you?
- vacri 15y agoSorry, I should have said "given the breadth". Even so, the information in wikipedia is regularly (though not always) more concise and palatable than textbooks.
- john_flintstone 15y ago>The quality of technical articles on Wikipedia are second to none Academic articles maybe, other articles, not so much. I run a website / forum in a niche area of animal husbandry, and one part of the site links to useful descriptions / information on different breeds. We've had no choice but to ban links to Wikipedia articles on individual breeds because they are simply factually incorrect, to the extent that even pre-teen site members find them funny and point out errors on our forums. Seriously, we have 10 year olds on our forums linking to Wikipedia articles and making fun of them - they really are that full of nonsense.
- Angostura 15y ago... and what happens when you attempt to correct the Wikipedia articles?
- vacri 15y agoFair enough, but apart from your story all the others I've heard strongly complain about inaccuracy have been about subjective topics. Still, if it's causing that much trouble in your community, why not fix the articles? Rather than spend time making fun of it, why not spend time fixing it - which is a double-barreled solution: not only do you lose the incorrect links, but people not associated with your group benefit from more correct advice.