Wikipedia: where truth dies online

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/wikipedia-where-truth-dies-online/14963#.U2Fhb6KZjoo

by jamesbritt • 12 years ago

14 11 12 years ago

vacri• 12 years ago

Wikipedia has ... immense flaws, the greatest one being that nothing it publishes can be trusted.

s/Wikipedia/any publication

Yet another article complaining that articles on subjective topics are vulnerable to subjectivity. These articles are a dime a dozen, almost never look outside their specific little bubble-of-complaint, and have been going on for almost all of WP's 13-year history. This particular article is at odds with itself, because it complains that the moderators are censorious and overbearing, and also that WP can't police itself. So... moderators should take a stronger hand? Or a weaker one?

Wikipedia is less worthless than this blinkered, agenda-pushing article.

alayne• 12 years ago

The fact that so many problems with Wikipedia articles have been found really undermines the entire thesis of this terrible article.

funkyy2• 12 years ago

Back in the days I was actually doing some campaigns for companies on Wikipedia. Those would be based on creating high quality content and adding link to our customer in exchange as a source (we were placing nice article on customers page researched by knowledgeable folks from uni). We were doing a lot of work creating pages, adding really nice content. Some moderators knew about our actions but they were cool about it as they liked content we have been creating.

Because of how many edits we were making (at least 20 a day) we have witnessed politics and lobbying on Wikipedia. The worst are unfortunately subjects that could by any extent critique US, UK, French or Russian governments, history, monopoly or news.

We have seen highest placed people with absolute power just removing any content without reason and blocking further changes.

One day I got in to the conversation with one of the "untouchable" - admin with small amount of edits etc but for some reason high in ranks. I got in to argument as he removed 500+ words improvement of pretty dead article about some delicate subject (heavy industry related) - this included removal of some links to large companies (they were unrelated though and we placed in exchange links to government institutions and few scholar research). Argument was something like "I would like you to let us know the reason for removing our edits." after no answer for 7 days I sent "If we wont get answer within 48 hours we will be forced tp take this case up as reverse seem as selfpromotion".

Result - around 2 thousands quality edits removed (we had probably links to our related article customers on only ~200 edits). Complete removal of our accounts, blacklisting WHOLE IP ranges from our office and probably hundreds of other regular users. That is how Wikipedia is neutral...

LeeHunter2• 12 years ago

From what you describe, WP was totally correct to ban your organization. Your business model was to inject commercial links into articles. The fact that you think you provided some value in exchange is pretty much irrelevant.

funkyy2• 12 years ago

I think you misread it - I said we have putted links in Reference fields (below article) to articles that were placed on our customers websites. The articles itself were quality, well researched and with images etc. Then we would do quality edit and add value to Wikipedia. If this is not quality editing then Wikipedia should ban hundreds of most active editors right away as this is only way full time editors can make money from working for Wikipedia...

ekianjo• 12 years ago

Yawn. Nothing much new in this article. There are articles that cannot be trusted on Wikipedia. So what? It's just like everywhere else. Even History books are full of inaccuracies or present facts according to the political agenda of the current majority at power. This article missing the point that there's tons of articles on Wikipedia which are not subject to controversy - articles on science, math, technology - and those are usually written with a pretty good standard.

glenra2• 12 years ago

On any contentious topic (eg: climate change, criminal cases, religion, politics, economics...) it is a HUGE improvement to not just read the main article but also skim the associated "talk" page to see what points of view are being actively suppressed by whatever cabal currently controls that issue. If you do that, wikipedia's not too bad an information source.

The primary problem is that - like google - wikipedia has been too successful. What can happen now is that when a new issue becomes newsworthy:

(1) one side grabs control of the most relevant wikipedia page and slants it in their direction by the simple expedient of giving their side "the last word" in every argument and being ever-so-slightly more strict about sourcing for claims made by the other side than claims made for theirs.

(2) Lazy journalists skim wikipedia to see what they should think about the issue and write news stories that reflect the slant wikipedia intially had.

(3) Active editors use the articles written in step (2) to reference their own slanted claims and make the article even MORE one-sided.

And so on. I don't really see an answer to this circular dynamic other than perhaps: train journalists to look at the Talk page too?

davidgerard• 12 years ago

This is a climate change denialist upset that Wikipedia has a bias to verifiable reality.

glenra2• 12 years ago

Climate change is just one of the issues on which overactive editors of Wikipedia help create "verifiable reality" rather than merely reflect it. Which might be a bit of a problem. (The Wikipedia page for "climategate" is perhaps the best example of just HOW silly-political it can get.)

argonito• 12 years ago

I go to Wiki for biology, chemistry, math, and famous tech people. History, politics and medicine / health issues are all just repackaged PR of a winning country, political correctness and big pharma respectively.

Wikipedia: where truth dies online

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