4 ms·

Wikipedia's flaws are more subtle. Pages sometimes present controversial, or even wrong claims as unambiguously true. Note, this is not actually that bad on pag

Wikipedia's flaws are more subtle. Pages sometimes present controversial, or even wrong claims as unambiguously true. Note, this is not actually that bad on pages that are clearly covering controversial topics (namely historical & political topics). The issue is more prevalent on niche topics where the average reader wouldn't recognize the controversy being claimed. I've sometimes encountered citations where the cited material directly contradicts the claim made on the page. I highly suggest reading the talk page of wikipedia articles. Not just the talk page, but read through the history of the talk page too. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Ada_Lovelace&oldid=1165660551 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Ada_Lovelace...

resolutebat 3y ago
Genuine Q: what do you find "wrong" about Ada Lovelace's article as it stands today? To me it looks scrupulously fair about her contributions and the amount of disagreement on what exactly she did "first", which seems to account for 99% of the talk page wrangling. Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers, especially since the seventh one contained what many consider to be the first computer program—that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. Other historians reject this perspective and point out that Babbage's personal notes from the years 1836/1837 contain the first programs for the engine.[6][better source needed] She also developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  I don't have any issues with the article as it stands today. But earlier revisions had uncritically claimed that she had written the first computer programs. Hence the massive Talk thread.
  - jorvi 3y ago
    See the article about who created the internet. Packet switching was invented in the UK by Donald Davies, yet somehow it’s always the Americans that get sole credit for the internet. :)
makeitdouble 3y ago
To parent's point, I think this is still better than what we had before. I mean, encyclopedias didn't have sources at all, and people were overly confident in books being correct. On the niche topic part, I wonder if we'll ever be able to do something about it. I don't believe in AI check being a good fit for specialized or rare contexts, and as there's fewer eyes it's by definition more complicated to cross reference and have many active contributors on the same topics. Even with more appeal to authority (let's say you get more power to edit if you're proven to be an expert in the field) I assume that would get abused to insert personal gripes in some place or another.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  To be fair, I don't think there's much more Wikipedia could do better. Wikipedia is largely self-correcting in that the more eyeballs an article has, the more likely that wrong or biased claims will be challenged. I actually think the idea of creating a separate class of "proven experts" would make the situation worse: it'd just entrench whatever the expert opinion is which may even be more biased than the normal contributor base. The main thing is to check out the talk pages. That's where the controversies crop up and at least you know the opposing view.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Wikipedia is largely self-correcting in that the more eyeballs an article has, the more likely that wrong or biased claims will be challenged. I think that concept is a fairy tale. It's kind of like open source software: just because the code is out there doesn't mean anyone's looking for bugs in or or fixing them. Wikipedia articles settle on the stalemate between its most obsessive or motivated users, the result of which is frequently is wrong or biased. The quantity of eyeballs is irrelevant.

resolutebat 3y ago

Genuine Q: what do you find "wrong" about Ada Lovelace's article as it stands today? To me it looks scrupulously fair about her contributions and the amount of disagreement on what exactly she did "first", which seems to account for 99% of the talk page wrangling. Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers, especially since the seventh one contained what many consider to be the first computer program—that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. Other historians reject this perspective and point out that Babbage's personal notes from the years 1836/1837 contain the first programs for the engine.[6][better source needed] She also developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities.

Manuel_D 3y ago
I don't have any issues with the article as it stands today. But earlier revisions had uncritically claimed that she had written the first computer programs. Hence the massive Talk thread.
- jorvi 3y ago
  See the article about who created the internet. Packet switching was invented in the UK by Donald Davies, yet somehow it’s always the Americans that get sole credit for the internet. :)

makeitdouble 3y ago

To parent's point, I think this is still better than what we had before. I mean, encyclopedias didn't have sources at all, and people were overly confident in books being correct. On the niche topic part, I wonder if we'll ever be able to do something about it. I don't believe in AI check being a good fit for specialized or rare contexts, and as there's fewer eyes it's by definition more complicated to cross reference and have many active contributors on the same topics. Even with more appeal to authority (let's say you get more power to edit if you're proven to be an expert in the field) I assume that would get abused to insert personal gripes in some place or another.

Manuel_D 3y ago
To be fair, I don't think there's much more Wikipedia could do better. Wikipedia is largely self-correcting in that the more eyeballs an article has, the more likely that wrong or biased claims will be challenged. I actually think the idea of creating a separate class of "proven experts" would make the situation worse: it'd just entrench whatever the expert opinion is which may even be more biased than the normal contributor base. The main thing is to check out the talk pages. That's where the controversies crop up and at least you know the opposing view.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Wikipedia is largely self-correcting in that the more eyeballs an article has, the more likely that wrong or biased claims will be challenged. I think that concept is a fairy tale. It's kind of like open source software: just because the code is out there doesn't mean anyone's looking for bugs in or or fixing them. Wikipedia articles settle on the stalemate between its most obsessive or motivated users, the result of which is frequently is wrong or biased. The quantity of eyeballs is irrelevant.