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Original post by zyrolasting Quote: better go somewhere else For how long? Social issues are hard to record now, but we don't seem to dispute things that happen before <insert distant past period here>.

...unless it's related to religion, in which case the arguments go back so far, that we even debate what happened before time even began. [grin]

(And on a side note... time really wont make the issue of 'which is the greatest pokemon' any clearer either)

[Edit:] And I totally overlooked the word 'social'; oops. [smile]

I trust Wikipedia as much as any other media. Wikipedia is certainly unreliable in many topics but for most of them I feel you would be just as foolish to pick up a single book or newspaper and view it as a absolute truth.

I'm continuously amazed by the quality of Wikipedia. This is especially true of history articles. They have huge articles on some of the smallest moments of history. As mentioned it depends on the topics, but if you're wondering how much I trust Wikipedia in general I'd say with my life.

I have to imagine it will become more and more reliable after everything in the world has an article. I mean they've already made articles for everything and anything new has an article by at least the next day. Also Wikipedia will be reliable for a long time since it's updated insanely fast. Just take the case of all the celebrity deaths. Often times Wikipedia was updated before the death even occured. That's fast.

I trust it enough to get a general idea on a topic. For more detailed information I'd prefer to rely on some papers signed by professionals, so I have some names to blame if the information happens to be wrong.

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So there's quite a bit about plot and character, and some stuff about production. There's very little about critical reception, or the wider impact of the show, or its relation to other shows and works. <...> The articles do seek a mean as more contributors are added, but you shouldn't assume that "stable" means "objective" or "comprehensive".

If we were to look at a reference authored by an individual, and accept empiricism ("POV Posting" is inevitable), a single person writing a single source endangers the reputation of both the author's knowledge and the source. During the time the author still believes his source, his knowledge and work are the same thing! However, a publicly available source is in a position where the reputation of less educated contributors are more suspect than the source itself.

Going from a one-to-one to many-to-one model in a knowledge-record relationship allows us to see collective flaws as opposed to individual flaws. Additional contributors become an effective tool to make objective, comprehensive material, but they naturally can not be trusted to just come up with that immediately. I did not mean to put "stable" and "comprehensive" on the same level, so sorry about that! [lol] I would not even call a single article anywhere "stable" given the nature of human knowledge, but I would consider the relationship WP draws between authors to information as extremely valuable.

Assuming standards are met, a collective perspective will grow organically that highlights what is consistent in our knowledge as opposed to what was just slapped on by a joe six-pack. Bias is a real attention seeker! Once something relatively consistent spawns, whatever is missing is simply missing (which should pique curiousity). I would say the credibility of the incomplete source is still valid to the extent that it provides something relevant, and should have enough review to justify its accuracy. Addition of more relevant info would just go through the same process. I would much rather have an accurate yet incomplete source than an inaccurate, complete source.

I concede the point that interest is a powerful factor, but could we say that WP avoids problems that other records of information face? Is the ability to edit something at will is attributed solely to WP for reasons outside of how easy it is to change? If we can suspect work by an individual, it makes little sense to distrust an entire source that suffers from the same ignorance bug as every other source of information, especially when the ignorance in itself becomes easier to see and correct!

If we remove the name "Wikipedia", we can see a model that makes widespread ignorance more noticeable, and makes the development of information faster and more competitive. I guess this is just me here, but the fact uneducated play tug of war with the educated help the development of an article more than either group can help it themselves. This even applies when discussing arguably trivial matters such as the strongest Poke'Mon.

...

(It's Zapdos. Shut up. I win.)

Trust? I trust wikipedia to be somewhere close to the mark most of the time. It is very well done for some popular and fairly well known articles, but some are woefully ignorant, outdated, and plain wrong. I remember a few years ago there was a bit of a fight on one of the pages about archery to get updated information about bodkin to actually stay. (The short of it is that the idea that bodkin points were designed to punch through armour is outright bull.)

However, some people cling to their old ideas that were presented in old books written by people without half a clue between the lot of them.

Personally I think the idea that printed books are somehow more reliable sources than wikipedia to be down right laughable. What I would really love to see is an academic version of Wikipedia to be developed. You want to be an editor? Well then you go to your local university or other institution that is part of the project, provide proof that you are actually qualified to comment on the subject material, and then you are given access to edit parts relating to your field of training or research.

Anyone can write a book, and it isn't that hard to have it printed. There is a lot of material out there, especially Victorian 'research', that even today is still sometimes quoted as being true despite it having been proven wrong decades ago.

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Original post by Talroth What I would really love to see is an academic version of Wikipedia to be developed. You want to be an editor? Well then you go to your local university or other institution that is part of the project, provide proof that you are actually qualified to comment on the subject material, and then you are given access to edit parts relating to your field of training or research.

I really don't see how that would help. All the technical articles that pertain to actual fields of study tend to be correct.

Your archery problem seems to be just a disagreement. The nice thing about Wikipedia is that the Talk page can clarify those things or discuss why something isn't included. Also it sounds like from the article that problem was solved. Wikipedia works.

You would not imagine how long it took for the "MMO" sections on Wikipedia to get fixed. There was a time when every ignorant kid would list games like Counter Strike as an MMO or something. It got pretty ridiculous.

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The school I attend encourages students to visit Wikipedia only to use it as a "shortcut" to what their articles cite. According to popular opinion here, citations support work...

I would totally agree with your school here, you should not accept something publicly written by many authors as truth any more than you should trust written text in a book edited by a singular person. Three sources of information should generally be required.

I have a generally favorable view of wikipedia. I agree with the advice given at your school. When searching for information it's a good place to start, but not generally a good place to end. Although, as others have pointed out, it's math and science content is pretty good and it does have entries for obscure historical events that would otherwise go forgotten.

I think the question, "How much do you trust Wikipedia?" is akin to asking "How much do you trust yourself?", because, aside from the fact that you can edit wikipedia entries too (I have), ultimately you have to decide whether the information has enough quality for you to use. From this point of view, it has severe drawbacks as a learning tool. If you don't know anything about the topic, how can you know if you're getting bad information?

As for whether it will become more or less reliable over time, I think it depends primarily on how widely used it remains. The more widely used, the more reliable, according to the dictum "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". The more widely used, the more likely that the managers won't slack off and let the weeds grow through the cracks.

zyrolasting, how much research into this question have you done? Have you noticed the "view history" option at the top of every page? Have you read the various faqs at wikipedia about editing articles? Did you know that a wikipedia account let's an editor set up a watchlist to track changes that others have made to the articles they're interested in?

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Original post by Sirisian Quote: Original post by Talroth What I would really love to see is an academic version of Wikipedia to be developed. You want to be an editor? Well then you go to your local university or other institution that is part of the project, provide proof that you are actually qualified to comment on the subject material, and then you are given access to edit parts relating to your field of training or research. I really don't see how that would help. All the technical articles that pertain to actual fields of study tend to be correct. Your archery problem seems to be just a disagreement. The nice thing about Wikipedia is that the Talk page can clarify those things or discuss why something isn't included. Also it sounds like from the article that problem was solved. Wikipedia works. You would not imagine how long it took for the "MMO" sections on Wikipedia to get fixed. There was a time when every ignorant kid would list games like Counter Strike as an MMO or something. It got pretty ridiculous.

Wikipedia 'works', like the Model T worked at the time. Sure it got the job done, but I don't think I would want to take one across Canada during the winter. We've moved on and developed better and more useful cars.

The biggest problem I have with Wikipedia is that anyone can come in and change stuff/vandalize pages, and there is little in the way to prevent that. There is no accountability for what you write on Wikipedia.

Updating things can also be a slow process. The issue with the archery article went on for a rather long time because a handful of people kept going back to quote old and outdated views, and insisted anyone else, no matter what sources and proofs were provided, where wrong. As far as I remember, the issue was really only solved after whoever was doing it finally got bored of creating alts and changing the page.

The idea that "Anyone" can come in an edit pages means that Wikipedia can be painfully slow to stabilize and improve.