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Old 02-18-2007, 07:11 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Red face I hate Wikipedia!
I just managed to spend another not-so-productive hour on Wikipedia, starting with a little search query that I just wanted to check out... but there were so many links in that article. And I couldn't resist... One thing led to another and a whole hour went past...

Anyone else share my little guilty pleasure?
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Old 02-18-2007, 07:13 PM   #2 (permalink)
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I just managed to spend another not-so-productive hour on Wikipedia, starting with a little search query that I just wanted to check out... but there were so many links in that article. And I couldn't resist... One thing led to another and a whole hour went past...

Anyone else share my little guilty pleasure?
Unfortunately yes. I once spent five hours surfing it. And all it began from was a query to check what Wolverine's claws were made out out. But I learnt sooo much about the x-men!
Last edited by Shaden; 02-18-2007 at 07:23 PM.
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Old 02-18-2007, 07:17 PM   #3 (permalink)
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People need to be careful with Wikipedia, anyone can log on there and type in erroneous information and no one would be the wiser. I came across an article where someone actually typed the following into the body of the article: see i can type anything in here. This confirmed for me that Wikipedia is not to be trusted.
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Old 02-18-2007, 07:24 PM   #4 (permalink)
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It's not just Wikipedia. I can easily spend an hour or more looking at the new posts here each day or on other forums or imdb...

Basically, if you don't spend your time on purpose, it is easy to get sucked into such time sinks. After all, you didn't decide to spend the time there consciously, so how could you possibly decide to stop within a reasonable amount of time? Naturally, when you finally do stop, you will feel that you "wasted" an hour that you could have spent doing something more productive.
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Old 02-18-2007, 07:27 PM   #5 (permalink)
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One thing led to another and a whole hour went past...

Anyone else share my little guilty pleasure?


Back in the olden days (70's) before Al Gore invented the internet, I would do the same thing with the real encyclopedia. Or the dictionary.

Ahhh, progress...
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Old 02-18-2007, 08:15 PM   #6 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ElizaJ View Post
People need to be careful with Wikipedia, anyone can log on there and type in erroneous information and no one would be the wiser. I came across an article where someone actually typed the following into the body of the article: see i can type anything in here. This confirmed for me that Wikipedia is not to be trusted.
You seem to be confusing a bug with a feature. This is how it's intended to work.
All past versions of articles are stored, and in this instance you would be well within your rights to revert to the last unvandalised version.

Similarly, if you found something to be inaccurate, then change it.
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Old 02-18-2007, 08:25 PM   #7 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ElizaJ View Post
People need to be careful with Wikipedia, anyone can log on there and type in erroneous information and no one would be the wiser. I came across an article where someone actually typed the following into the body of the article: see i can type anything in here. This confirmed for me that Wikipedia is not to be trusted.
Not to mention they have biases of their own and make assumptions of their own - there's definately a clique and groupthink among the top admins.
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Old 02-18-2007, 09:01 PM   #8 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by ElizaJ View Post
People need to be careful with Wikipedia, anyone can log on there and type in erroneous information and no one would be the wiser. I came across an article where someone actually typed the following into the body of the article: see i can type anything in here. This confirmed for me that Wikipedia is not to be trusted.
Someone once said to me, "I can say anything I please."

Then I realized: no one can be trusted.
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Old 02-18-2007, 10:15 PM   #9 (permalink)
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Not to mention that nothing that is written on Wikipedia is ever confirmed and/or verified by anyone, much less an independent third party. Moral of the story: Wikipedia should not be anyone's medium of choice from which to gather data.
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Old 02-18-2007, 10:30 PM   #10 (permalink)
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It's not like I'm doing a scientific research based on wiki's pages anyway. (this smilie really isn't sarcastic enough)
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Old 02-18-2007, 10:49 PM   #11 (permalink)
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Not to mention that nothing that is written on Wikipedia is ever confirmed and/or verified by anyone, much less an independent third party. Moral of the story: Wikipedia should not be anyone's medium of choice from which to gather data.
Because there is no such thing as a "third party". Eliza, please confirm and verify everything you just said.
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Old 02-18-2007, 11:28 PM   #12 (permalink)
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Default Confirmation
Here are the confirmations about what I said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Chui View Post
Someone once said to me, "I can say anything I please."

Then I realized: no one can be trusted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dor
Not to mention they have biases of their own and make assumptions of their own - there's definately a clique and groupthink among the top admins.
You're one of my confirmations!
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Old 02-18-2007, 11:47 PM   #13 (permalink)
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Okay, so if everyone thinks it, then it must be true?
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Old 02-19-2007, 12:35 AM   #14 (permalink)
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A review in Nature of the accuracy of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica found no significant difference in accuracy between the two.
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Old 02-19-2007, 07:02 AM   #15 (permalink)
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I thought I was the only one who did that. Seriously, I can lose hours to that at night.

My take on all of this? Wikipedia is as trustworthy as anything else. In other words, it isn't to be trusted.
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Old 02-19-2007, 08:21 AM   #16 (permalink)
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I dunno... Wikipedia has its flaws (like, the entry on Star Wars is the same size as the entry on Africa), but it's a good starting point for research. When I was teaching freshman comp, I would tell students that they could use Wikipedia as a source only if they verified the information elsewhere. I also didn't let them use it as one of their three required sources (like, they could use it, but they couldn't actually count it as one of their three).

Despite these roadblocks, many of them made good use of it. If I had to write a research paper on a topic I didn't know a whole lot about, I could do worse than noodling around on Wikipedia for an hour looking for leads.
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Old 02-19-2007, 08:46 AM   #17 (permalink)
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How many people ever used the Encyclopedia Brittanica as a source in an academic paper? Now that I think about it, I don't once recall using it as such. I'm shocked people use any encyclopedia as a source for such.
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Old 02-19-2007, 01:04 PM   #18 (permalink)
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xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe
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Old 02-19-2007, 03:23 PM   #19 (permalink)
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No wikipedia isn't 100% reliable.
Yes it does have flaws and personal opinions scattered throughout.
It is still one of the best ideas I have ever seen. Although I was very upset when they removed Steves page
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Old 02-19-2007, 08:29 PM   #20 (permalink)
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Half the interest in Wikipedia is in the 'Talk' page and the History.

Certainly, if you need something Wikipedia says to be reliable, you should at least read these two pages and see how this conclusion was reached. If you suspect vandalism, you can check back the last couple of edits in the history.

I agree with Michael's point: there is no 'independent third party'. You don't think that (eg.) Britannica suffers from editorial bias?

Wikipedia has a strong culture of keeping an eye on new edits for vandalism. You can guarantee mister "I can write anything I want here" was quickly reverted.
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Old 02-20-2007, 02:36 AM   #21 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by Michael Chui View Post
Okay, so if everyone thinks it, then it must be true?
George Orwell and Stephen Colbert would agree.
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Old 03-17-2007, 01:05 AM   #22 (permalink)
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Default Another Nail in the Coffin
Here's another nail in the coffin for Wikipedia:

E! News - Wikipedia Revives Sinbad
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Old 03-17-2007, 01:10 AM   #23 (permalink)
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Default And a previous nail in their coffin
Here's an article on the Essjay controversy:

Wikipedia founder speaks on the Essjay controversy | InfoWorld | News | 2007-03-09 | By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

I would say there are still many more skeletons hiding in the Wikipedia closet.
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Old 03-17-2007, 03:35 AM   #24 (permalink)
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Here's an article on the Essjay controversy:

Wikipedia founder speaks on the Essjay controversy | InfoWorld | News | 2007-03-09 | By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

I would say there are still many more skeletons hiding in the Wikipedia closet.
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Essjay disrobed
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Essjay's world
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Wikipedia's credentialism crisis

It's strange to hear someone whose beliefs are in line with Wikipedia attempting to discredit Wikipedia.
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Old 03-17-2007, 07:31 AM   #25 (permalink)
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I find wikipedia very useful for getting some general background information on a topic. I definitely agree though that if someone's looking for completely accurate facts, wikipedia isn't the best choice.
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Old 03-29-2007, 05:31 AM   #26 (permalink)
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People need to be careful with Wikipedia, anyone can log on there and type in erroneous information and no one would be the wiser. I came across an article where someone actually typed the following into the body of the article: see i can type anything in here. This confirmed for me that Wikipedia is not to be trusted.
Right!

You can actually post infos about some topics in Wikepedia which means that facts from there are not guaranteed reliable. One time, I found the original article copied into Wikepedia from the official website of the product.

How disappointing!
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Old 03-29-2007, 07:39 AM   #27 (permalink)
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Right!

You can actually post infos about some topics in Wikepedia which means that facts from there are not guaranteed reliable. One time, I found the original article coped into Wikepedia from the official website of the product.

How disappointing!
To say nothing of the rampant plagarism in universities, academic communities, academic journals, magazines...
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Old 04-02-2007, 05:27 PM   #28 (permalink)
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Simple solution for all you haters, don't use it then!

Question EVERYTHING you read from ANYWHERE... A lot of people have the problem of seeing the printed word as definitive truth.
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Old 04-02-2007, 07:46 PM   #29 (permalink)
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No wikipedia isn't 100% reliable.
It is still one of the best ideas I have ever seen. Although I was very upset when they removed Steves page
Does anybody know why they removed and banned "Steve Pavlina" from Wikipedia? Steve's website is legit, unlike many other wiki entries that are nothing but shameless self promotion or plain Spam.
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Old 04-02-2007, 08:08 PM   #30 (permalink)
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^ Prolly cause of number 11:
Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Talk:Steve Pavlina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for more info.

Again, no explanation seems to be given...
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