HoS Splitoff - Value of Wikipedia

[Tribble]

From this lovely HoS split off:

I don't think the other thread is relevant to the question of who actually performs the most terrorist acts as it seems to be about speculation.

If Wikipedia is against the forum rules, so be it.

No one here said it was against forum rules. Some members here stated that there are reliability, accuracy and credibility concerns when it comes to Wikipedia and they will not solely rely on it as a source of information, particularly when it comes to controversial topics such as terrorism. Most academic institutions ban the use of Wikipedia for much the same reason. Subject to a moderator telling me otherwise as far as I know you are free to use it, but don't expect everyone to view it as definitive proof on topics such as this one.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2&t=166264

Stupidity of me responding when told not to aside, I am curious now as to how other members treat Wikipedia. I tend to use Wikipedia a fair amount on this board unless I am trying to get specific info that it only glosses over. I don't really see this as much of an issue (or using fan-wikis) when it relates to fiction... since, well, it's fiction (there have been a couple of times where the sites were wrong but its pretty rare). Also IMO it seems to be a decent enough (if not academic level) source for most topics, though again with particularly controversial ones there can be issues with reliability, accuracy, credibly, bias etc.

For the purposes of this board, what do people think of Wikipedia? And other fan-wikis when it comes to fictional stuff? Is my assessment fairly accurate?

[mr friendly guy]

I would consider it ok for

1. Fictional stuff - like summarising novels. Heck I have read wiki summaries of Wheel of Time novels so I don't have to read subsequent novels after the author just dragged it out.

2. Definition stuff - eg definition of common political terms like liberal.

3. Certain statistics - for example GDP of countries. Its sourced from things like the IMF, and looking at the IMF sites their numbers are reproduced accurately on wiki. However wiki displays it in a much more easier to view graphical format than the IMF. Sorry IMF, but wiki puts things like flags and rankings to make comparison easy. It also adds up numbers for the whole world and the EU for comparison.

Generally for stats like this, wiki contributors just need to cut and paste, and group in order, so it just requires time and not necessary expertise in that area. So its harder to make a mistake by lack of knowledge in a particular area.

I would use it with caution for things like

3. Other stuff but only if you accept it as a basic primer - so it would be acceptable that it says we use drug x for disease y, but not the studies behind it.

I also use it for history, but only on a superficial level. Amazingly a lot of people would sprout things about a topic and know even less on a superficial level about it, so wiki gives an advantage.

If I was researching something for a proper work related presentation, I would not use wiki. If, for some reason I had to present things about fictional stuff, then wiki seems a reasonable source. Because you know, its about what happens in fictional novel x. Who cares if its wrong.

[mr friendly guy]

For the purposes of this board, what do people think of Wikipedia? And other fan-wikis when it comes to fictional stuff? Is my assessment fairly accurate?

Fan wikis are a hit and miss. Some of them seem only a bit better than a list of quotes without editing to make it more than a bunch of data. For example the Malazan wiki for some entries just had some lines from novels, rather than the contributor editing it.

For the purpose of what happened in a novel, some of them are decent, for example the WoT wiki.

For purpose of analysis for vs debates... well I haven't one that would give an equivalent to even what we would expect on SD.net. One has to go back to the source. This is why if there are some stories I find interesting for vs debates, I would make my own notes.

[Zwinmar]

Taken with a grain of salt. Some are outstanding, others are crap. It can be useful for finding other sources but never as a primary source.

[SpottedKitty]

Taken with a grain of salt. Some are outstanding, others are crap.

<nod> Remember Sturgeon's Law.

[TheFeniX]

If you want to use Wiki as a source, you need to be willing to check the references. Many times you will find those are just better sources to use either way. And many times you will also find those sources also link-through to even better sources.

But if I just want to find out quick facts about a certain voting district, Wiki is great.

[Civil War Man]

I would only ever use Wikipedia as an informal source, obviously. And I would be very leery of topics that are in any way controversial, since it means in a lot of cases the page may contain whatever goes along with the latest editor's agenda rather than what's actually true.

Of course, since there have been edit wars over stuff as stupid as Garfield's gender, whether hummus is a meal or a snack, and whether Jesus should be included in the "Biographies of Living People" or "Biographies of Dead People" category, that is a very fluid criterion.

[Adam Reynolds]

The problem with wikis in general and Wikipedia in particular is that they really are an excellent source in terms of breadth of topics, if extremely lacking in terms of quality in cases of controversy, which is far more broad than it appears as noted above. Even something that should be simple like listed ranges on missiles are often unreliable, due to problematic sources and nationalism coming into play.

Combining these two is problematic in that it naturally makes wikis a default first place to look, but an often problematic one. Though they are generally fine for things like plot summaries of movies or books, and generally the place I look for such things, I generally like something better when dealing with anything real.

[Elheru Aran]

Fan wikis can be useful when trying to delve deeper into a series. Memory Alpha, for example, is basically invaluable for Star Trek research, and since the stories are fictional, well, it doesn't matter THAT much if something's wrong (unless we're talking hard calcs for versus debates. Then it's SRS BSNS.). In particular, if it's a series you're only bothering to watch a few episodes of but you want to know for example what happened with X character or how Y plotline was resolved without having to watch through the whole thing, or you see an interesting side character that you remember the actor from another show but you're darned if you remember his name... etc. Interesting 'making of' information, and so forth.

Nonfiction wikis... well. They're a place to start, and I'll leave it at that, pretty much.

[Kojiro]

For the purposes of this board, what do people think of Wikipedia? And other fan-wikis when it comes to fictional stuff? Is my assessment fairly accurate?

For Wikipedia I'm usually happy to accept it on most things. Any more in depth, more focused/professional source would overrule it but as a general rule I'll trust it, especially if it's a non controversial topic. It also depends on the amount of information. With the source asked for and provided from the original thread, there's over 1800 events documented. Perhaps it's flawed thinking but I imagine some sort of margin of error to be in play, hence I'm accepting with a grain of salt and not comfortable dismissing such a volume out of hand. Getting an error here or there is one thing. Getting a thousand things wrong would be outright fiction.

Fan wikis are utterly hit and miss.

[Zor]

My American history professor said it best: Wikipedia is a good place to Start your research.

Zor

[The_Saint]

My American history professor said it best: Wikipedia is a good place to Start your research.

Zor

I've oft stated that Wikipedia is the place to go to to find out what you need to know to look up further information regarding your original topic.

A teacher I work with has the rule where if the answer to your question is to be 25 words or less you can use wikipedia. If the answer is going to be longer (ie you're going to be writing a paragraph or more as an answer to a single question) then you can't use wikipedia as a primary source.

[Rogue 9]

Wikipedia is good for the cited sources section at the bottom and nothing more.

[Gandalf]

Wikipedia is good for the cited sources section at the bottom and nothing more.

Is there any guarantee of the veracity of those sources?

[Simon_Jester]

Basically, Wikipedia is an excellent alternative to utter ignorance. This XKCD applies:

https://www.xkcd.com/903/

The limits of Wikipedia are basically the ones discussed- it can't act as a substitute for expert knowledge, and the information in it cannot be considered 100% reliable, especially on subjects where reasonable people can disagree in good faith.

But it can do a great deal to remedy someone's ignorance of subjects where they simply do not know a single blessed thing, which is more common than most of us would like.

[madd0ct0r]

Wikiepedia disscusion pages can also be intersting identifiers of information that is contentious, wheras a dictionary or encyclopedia rarely presents multiple points of view, even if it has less flame wars.

There's also something hilarously ironic that this thread has no sources (other than xkcd):

So:

2011:

Wikipedia as a Data Source for Political Scientists: Accuracy and Completeness of Coverage
Adam R. Brown (a1)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096511000199Published online: 01 April 2011

In only 10 years, Wikipedia has risen from obscurity to become the dominant information source for an entire generation. However, any visitor can edit any page on Wikipedia, which hardly fosters confidence in its accuracy. In this article, I review thousands of Wikipedia articles about candidates, elections, and officeholders to assess both the accuracy and the thoroughness of Wikipedia's coverage. I find that Wikipedia is almost always accurate when a relevant article exists, but errors of omission are extremely frequent. These errors of omission follow a predictable pattern. Wikipedia's political coverage is often very good for recent or prominent topics but is lacking on older or more obscure topics.

2010

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=2281527

How Today's College Students Use Wikipedia for Course-Related Research
First Monday, Vol. 15, No. 3, March 1, 2010

The findings suggest Wikipedia is used in combination with other information resources. Wikipedia meets the needs of college students because it offers a mixture of coverage, currency, convenience, and comprehensibility in a world where credibility is less of a given or an expectation from today’s students.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10. ... 4810365297

Wisdom of the crowd or technicity of content? Wikipedia as a sociotechnical system
Sabine Niederer José van Dijck
First Published July 7, 2010

Even if these concerns about Wikipedia as an encyclopaedic genre are relevant, they misguidedly focus on human agents only. Wikipedia’s advance is not only enabled by its human resources, but is equally defined by the technological tools and managerial dynamics that structure and maintain its content. This article analyses the sociotechnical system — the intricate collaboration between human users and automated content agents — that defines Wikipedia as a knowledge instrument.

BIG ASS LIT REVIEW FOR THE CURIOUS

2008
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1367673

Size matters: word count as a measure of quality on wikipedia
We propose a simple metric -- word count -- for measuring article quality. In spite of its striking simplicity, we show that this metric significantly outperforms the more complex methods described in related work.

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/1 ... 0810851998

Comparison of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias for accuracy, breadth, and depth in historical articles
This content analysis evaluated nine Wikipedia articles against comparable articles in Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Dictionary of American History and American National Biography Online in order to compare Wikipedia's comprehensiveness and accuracy. The researcher used a modification of a stratified random sampling and a purposive sampling to identify a variety of historical entries and compared each text in terms of depth, accuracy, and detail.

Findings
– The study did reveal inaccuracies in eight of the nine entries and exposed major flaws in at least two of the nine Wikipedia articles. Overall, Wikipedia's accuracy rate was 80 percent compared with 95‐96 percent accuracy within the other sources. This study does support the claim that Wikipedia is less reliable than other reference resources. Furthermore, the research found at least five unattributed direct quotations and verbatim text from other sources with no citations.

2006

http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm ... 13/1331&gt

An empirical examination of Wikipedia's credibility by Thomas Chesney 2006
This short study examines Wikipedia’s credibility by asking 258 research staff with a response rate of 21 percent, to read an article and assess its credibility, the credibility of its author and the credibility of Wikipedia as a whole. Staff were either given an article in their own expert domain or a random article. No difference was found between the two group in terms of their perceived credibility of Wikipedia or of the articles’ authors, but a difference was found in the credibility of the articles — the experts found Wikipedia’s articles to be more credible than the non–experts. This suggests that the accuracy of Wikipedia is high. However, the results should not be seen as support for Wikipedia as a totally reliable resource as, according to the experts, 13 percent of the articles contain mistakes.

My impression, vaugley backed up by the sequence above, is that the accuracy of wikipedia has improved over time faster than its reuptation for accuracy. To the point that more recent studies on it look to emulate it's success, not simply answer the question 'can a bunch of nerds on the internet build something accurate at such scale?"

[Titan Uranus]

Since you asked for an explanation, it depends on the topic, if the topic is a tribal football, or a political topic poorly covered by the media, the article is likely to be useless. If the article is a specific technical article (ie: an explanation of conics), it is probably fine, otherwise check the sourcesif you are actually relying on the validity of the article.