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Octavius Hite

The Big Question: Do we need a more reliable online encyclopedia than Wikipedia?

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article1886601.ece

Troll_Bait · Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 8:25 pm Post subject:

Funny you should ask.

What checks & balances exist in Wikipedia?

gang ah jee · Joined: 14 Jan 2003 Location: city of paper

Nambucaveman · Joined: 03 Aug 2006

I agree, Wikipedia has some definate disadvantages. Anyone can post anything pretty much. There are a lot of times edit wars start because one person (or more) are pushing a specific point of view. Sometimes it feels like it's not worth contributing to.

Octavius Hite · Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 9:01 pm Post subject:

It's definitly had an overall positive impact on the world with the idea of open source info etc. My point was just to reaffrim that making your argument complete and compentent isn't done by sourcing wikipedia solely.

Gopher · Joined: 04 Jun 2005

For some subjects and topics, no encyclopedia or summary will help you. This is so even with respect to some words where you need much more than what a mere dictionary entry can tell you. For these things we need to get into source materials, scholarship, and/or other, always more in-depth, literature by people who have studied X, Y, or Z for a number of years and know the ins and outs of what they are talking about.

On a great deal of other subjects and topics, however, I have found Wikipedia to be pretty reliable, as least as a tool for a brief overview. Many Wiki entries go even beyond this and present bibliographies that can be expanded. Look at this excellent entry on Lumumba, for example, with all of its refs at the bottom...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba

But, however this may be, I would never go into a court of law and argue a case based on facts gathered from Wikipedia -- or any other single source, for that matter -- alone. And I would never look into something like "9/11" at Wikipedia.

Also, I am not surprised at all to see this kind of warning on the George W. Bush page, which, in any case, is not something I would use as a tool to inform myself on the man, as it is simply way too "presentist-oriented," as though people are updating it play-by-play...

mithridates · Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 10:00 pm Post subject:

One other advantage of Wikipedia is that when you have a subject based in another language (edicts of some ancient Spanish king for example) you can often jot over to another language Wikipedia, find someone that knows a language you know and ask them to help out. People have often asked me for help on Korean, Japanese language issues and I do the same with other languages I don't know.

EFLtrainer · Joined: 04 May 2005

The only assessment done of Wikipedia's reliability that I know of found it to be as accurate as other refrence materials.

FWIW.

ddeubel · Joined: 20 Jul 2005

They do have a system of checks and balances, based on the authority of the person submitting and editing.

I think it would be hard to create anymore "rigour" without stroking out the notion of "open" reference.

Atlantic had a very insightful and indepth article in their Sept. edition (I think Sept. ) on Wikipedia. Most of the article revolved around this same debate and also the infighting between the founding members/creators. Good reading.

DD