If you Deny Ignorance...then don't Wiki

Thank you OtS, Grady and Echtelion.

Wikipedia has been a GREAT source for me to do research, more reliable in finding the topic I WANT to read than any other source, even though howstuffworks.com is a GREAT site, it doesn't cover specific subjects like wikipedia does.

for example I was researching on "headspace" on wikipedia, and got my question anwered immediatly, sure Wikipedia is not as reliable at times but usually it will be flagged as biased or inaccurate.

I never submitted any articles my self, but I found wikipedia to be a great source of information on EVERY subject.

Well Grady, times have changed things are different, the teachers at my school, especialy this one are overjoyed just to get a paper turned in by the students.

Whats sad to, the class I did this for, Contemporary Social Issues, I'm a senior in high school by the way.
Anyways this class has 10 people in it, the paper was due the day after everyone got back from thansgiving break, he gave the class three months notice about the paper, even had us do research online in class, yet as of now, he has only gotten 4 papers.

As a concrete example of how this negative claim about Wikipedia is utterly false and irrational, here is a Wiki page on Quinoa, a very nutritive and yet tasteful kind of grain that is not very well known on the market. In this article you can find complete general informatin about where the grain comes from, its nutritious values, its uses in cooking, how is it grown and even its mythological status among the Incas back in the pre-colonial age. You even have a handful of links to inform the reader more deeply on growing these grains or their nutritious values and purposes. The only flaw I seen with this page is that it does'nt really talk clearly about the protein value of Quinoa grains...

en.wikipedia.org...

Now I dare any of you here to tell me what's unreliable and therefore useless into this Wiki page. If you have a real critic to make about this page, then please get me a page from EB and tell me how much and to which extent it is more informative, reliable and scientifically factual than the Wiki page.

[edit on 20/12/05 by Echtelion]

Iori, your teacher is a moron and should be fired. To use two sources for a paper (one being an encyclopaedia, and a bad one at that) is good enough reason. Can I have his name and your college? I want a word with the Dean. Well no, but it's absurd.

Nakash,
Firstly, I will agree, my teacher is not the most intelligible person, but thats only because he believes we control everything the government does.

Secondly, I consider Wiki a good source for information.

Thirdly, as I said in my las post, I am in High school, not college.

Never used it, never will

And I never click on their links used in any posts so chances are if they have been used, I have dismissed the post.




[edit on 21-12-2005 by ImJaded]

Originally posted by Nakash
Wikipedia as reliable as the encyclopaedia Britannica ??! Are you completely nuts?! That's like saying Webster is better than the Oxford English language dictionary, or like saying Stormfront is a credible news agency. Wikipedia and Britannica in the same sentence **shivers** Do you even have a copy of Britannica?

[edit on 20-12-2005 by Nakash]

Poor Nakash! I don't know about you, but I really hate it when my favorite icons take a tumble!

Just goofin.... But seriously, in this day and age, I wouldn't bother to keep a hard copy of something so general, and time sensitive as an Encyclopedia should be. Wikipedia is a great general encyclopedia, and it works well becasue sensitive folks like you take the time to edit erroneous information.

wikipedia lends value in giving other places to look - and that's only sometimes. But it does have that value on numerous occasions. Other than that, to quote it and do nothing more is to put yourself in a very perilous position.

Originally posted by Valhall
wikipedia lends value in giving other places to look - and that's only sometimes. But it does have that value on numerous occasions. Other than that, to quote it and do nothing more is to put yourself in a very perilous position.

I don't know if I agree or not on that one Val... No more than I would allow myself to quote only the Brittanica as a source.

I got a look at the Nature article that was mentioned earlier in this thread. The differences in accuracy in the examined fields isn't enough to call it a big difference at all.

I kind of think, seriously, that there are two types of mentality involved here, much like many of the "new age" tech tools we have available. There's early adapters and the "not"-early adapters.

My wife didn't want to do on-line banking, cell phones, or much on-line shopping until I finally got her into it... Now.... Well... My credit card hasn't been safe since then, and she had a very scary stituation that would have been simple had she been in possession of a cell phone. And now she carries it all the time.

An on-line, totally accessible and editible (is that a word?) by everyone, encyclopedia, certainly smacks of a brave new world. I suspect it will be the standard in the next 3 - 5 years. Brittanica and the other encyclopaediae will have to go on-line to compete, lose most if not all of their paper wasting output, and we will, finally. lose those door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen.

Just ran across this below article from the NYT [of all places].
It will require a a login access.

THE debate over Wikipedia has hit a fever pitch in recent weeks.

Supporters of Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia, are pitted against traditionalists who call the site inaccurate and irresponsible.

The latest salvo came this week thanks to Rogers Cadenhead, who did a bit of cybersleuthing and reported on Workbench that the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, had altered his own Wikipedia biography. Wired News picked up Mr. Cadenhead's discovery, and a heated debate ensued on Wikipedia discussion boards.

According to Mr. Cadenhead's interpretation, Mr. Wales made the changes to play down the role of his former editor, Larry Sanger, by deleting references to him as a co-founder. When other volunteer editors undid his edits, Mr. Wales repeated them twice.

Log In: Insider Editing at Wikipedia
Google Reference to NYT Article

Wikipedia needs some retooling, IMHO, if it is to increase and/or produce a vivid impression of crediability.





seekerof

Wiki went head to head against Brittanica, and came up, IIRC, just a nose ahead. Brittanica is not a source that would ever be questioned by teachers or scholars, and yet Wiki gets crap from everyone and their mother.

It's nonsense and it's gotta end now. Only a complete boob would rely entirely on Wiki for their information, and I think that's been said a couple of times, so I'm just echoing that sentiment. However, Wiki provides an enormously valuable service, and this world isn't smart enough to be so picky about where they get their information from.

Respect the Wiki!

So sayeth I!

Ah, yet another reliable entry from Wikipedia (I've edited, but wiki didn't). Say someone wants to know what 'N Sync is...

"NSYNC is a queer@ss band that makes sh*tty music and sucks big black fuzzy ****"

en.wikipedia.org...'N_Sync

Oh that wiki, wonderful unbiased source of 'information' I can see why Britannica had to yield.

[edit on 9-10-2007 by saint4God]

one should be discerning with any souce, whether published and referenced, or not.

cross reference everything. multiple times over. whether its books or websites.

wiki is just like ANY other source of information: User Discretion Required.

information should remain democratic in the direct sense. i say power to wiki, i think they're onto a fantastic thing.

I've found Wikipedia to be an invaluable source of information and ideas. Just browsing the site for hours at a time can bring one to some very interesting pages. But at the same time, it's always a good idea to take what you read with a grain of salt. The same 'reliability issues' can be found anywhere on the web featuring user-driven content.

[edit on 9-10-2007 by Monger]

Well, the good news is Wiki has since corrected they're information on NSync, however they're still playing badmiton around important things such as facts.

Obama's Wikipedia Page Distances President From Wright and Ayers

What a tangled Web Wikipedia users can weave.

Critics noted over the weekend that President Obama's page on the free online encyclopedia had been edited to remove any mention of his links to former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, and to allow only a brief citation of his connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — though pages for Ayers and Wright are heavily peppered with references to the president, including subsections on both pages that detail their past affiliations with him.

March 9: The 'scrubbing' of critical mentions was briefly noted in Obama's Wikipedia page Monday, but the entry has since been removed.

continued at www.foxnews.com...

Mr. Wales said that leaders of Wikipedia have considered putting together a fact sheet that professors could give out to students explaining what Wikipedia is and that it is not always a definitive source. “It is pretty good, but you have to be careful with it,” he said. “It’s good enough knowledge, depending on what your purpose is.”

In an interview, Mr. Wales said that Wikipedia is ideal for many uses. If you are reading a novel that mentions the Battle of the Bulge, for instance, you could use Wikipedia to get a quick basic overview of the historical event to understand the context. But students writing a paper about the battle should hit the history books.

- chronicle.com...