PSA: Wikipedia Pledge Season

[jducoeur]

FYI, Wikipedia is on what seems to be turning into an annual fundraising drive. I recommend considering it: while it isn't crucial for everyone, it's certainly becoming an important tool for me, one that I use most days to research one topic or another. So I think of it as shareware -- it's well worth tossing them some money each year for operating expenses. If you use it regularly, give it some thought...

Comments

[ladyariadne.livejournal.com]

have you considered the fact that the research element on it is kind of bogus since the information on there is many times not reliable? with no relaible way to back up the facts, since anyone anywhere can put their OPINIONS in and not fact?

That is my biggest issue and why I dont use it for anything where I actually need reliable info.

[jducoeur]

While I can understand that, this is mostly true for virtually all information. Even academic-sounding sources are only as reliable as your willingness to actually *check* the citations. (Witness the SCA's fondness for the game Tablero de Jesus, based on a lovely well-cited source that turned out to be completely a pack of lies. It took us 20 years to realize that, though, because everyone took the citations at face value.)

Wikipedia's self-checking nature *tends* to weed out misinformation. It doesn't always succeed, but by and large I've found it to be the most accurate general source of information on the Web, and better than 90% of focused sources. (And better than 75% of all books as well, whether cited or not.)

So I don't much sympathize with holding the flubs too stringently against it. Virtually nothing is truly "reliable", and Wikipedia is far better than most...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

What he said. If there's a field you know a lot about, you will be astonished/annoyed at the number of errors you see in "official" sources about that field, no mater what the medium.

Just as an example, I recently picked up volume 4 of Absolute Sandman, a series which I followed obsessively in its various incarnations. It includes a 2-page text piece "Timeline of The Sandman" which is *riddled* with errors, inconsistencies, and oversights.

There's just no such thing as an authoritative secondary source. If you didn't look at the originals yourself, you can't trust it completely. IME, wikipedia scores well above average in reliability, but that doesn't mean I give it my complete trust, any more than I trust any secondary source.

[ladyariadne.livejournal.com]

I mentioned this previous conversation with Mark to my college aged daughter and she also let me know that it has improved since I had shook my head and laughed at, appearanlty when it was first out and completely unregualted.

I am still leery but might not consider it the plague anymore.

[jducoeur]

It's worth noting that the level of regulation per se hasn't changed much. It's just that it has such a large army of volunteers patrolling it that egregious misinformation tends to get stomped on relatively promptly. It's one of those rare cases where large scale is a real benefit...

[ladyariadne.livejournal.com]

She said they also require notifications for cites and non cites.. Ie.. a study or doctor or report or episode that can be looked at versus someone just saying so. or so she explained to me.

Although it still is not allowed to be used for any educatonal work in schools she says.. Just a basis to look for other information and cites.

[jducoeur]

Yeah, that's generally true. I disagree with that policy -- I think it's too often used as a cheap substitute for the harder but more important job of teaching real critical thinking -- but it's certainly quite common...