Edits to Wikipedia Pages on Bell, Garner, Diallo Traced to 1 Police Plaza
capitalnewyork.com
capitalnewyork.com
Anyone who has tried to edit a page that's politically contentious, or that anyone cares about, knows that what's written depends almost completely on who has the most time and patience.
It's an easy, obvious means of manipulation by those who have the resources to do it.
There have been numerous studies[1][2][3][4][5][6] which have consistently shown Wikipedia as a reliable source of information. Nobody is suggesting it's 100% accurate, but it's accurate enough that it shouldn't be dismissed as unreliable.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm
[2] http://chnm.gmu.edu/essays-on-history-new-media/essays/?essa...
[3] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
[4] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=978177
[5] http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/93908,wikipedia-uncove...
[6] http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/wikipedia-vs-ency...
Which articles, or which statements in which articles, are reliable and which are unreliable? Which have false statements and which significant ommissions?
The problems is, you don't know which articles or statements you can depend on unless you have expertise in that area.
How is that not true of most sources?
EDIT:s/any/most/
> How is that not true of most sources?
I'm not sure how to take your statement. It clearly is not true of many sources. Some sources have proven expertise (something Wikipedia effectively never has), some have a proven track record of reliability.
Reliability isn't binary, either 100% or nothing (or random). Analogously, all people lie to some degree but clearly some I trust and some I do not.
> on wikipedia you can look behind the curtain and see who is editing
You can't see who it is, just some psuedonyms (possibly muliple ones for same person) and ip addresses. That's why somenone had to trace edits back to the NYPD, and even then we don't know the people. How many other things have we read in Wikipedia written by NYPD employees, for example -- we have no idea!
> ... and see who is editing what and see the discussion leading to what is in the articles ...
That's a lot to ask. Some of the discussions are very long and convoluted, and most are filled with noise (arguments on rules and conduct), and misinformation worse than the article, because the standards for the Talk pages are much lower.
Because it's an incredible resource. It's unfortunate that there isn't an embrace of it in schools so that we can teach kids from an early age how to use it properly.
For instance, don't use it as a primary source. Evaluate the "talk" pages and history. Consider the controversiality of the subject.
That's a serious question; if there is a better alternative I'd like to know about it.
Which sources are you talking about?
Newspapers may have an edge up, but are less convenient than wikipedia. They are also pretty bad at providing concise overviews for somebody who hasn't been following the story since the beginning. This is particularly true when you're looking something up months or years after it happened.
For certain issues (and probably this particular one, to be fair) newspapers like the New York Times will often have a webpage dedicated to giving an overview of the entire series of events, but that only gets done in a select few cases.
Wikipedia is certainly flawed, but what do you suggest I use instead? Unless you have some actual suggestions, then your complaint isn't really useful. I already know that wikipedia is flawed.
> They are also pretty bad at providing concise overviews for somebody who hasn't been following the story since the beginning
I strongly agree and would go further: The Times pages you cite are inadequate to the task. They are stuck in the print media past. They should be updating their own public knowledge base; I think it would generate quite a bit of traffic on its own, and they could link to it from each relevant article to provide context (and save a few redundant paragraphs of writing in each story). Also, the way many reporters write, unaware of key developments, history, or issues, they could use it internally. I'd much rather read the Washington Post's knowledge base page on ISIS than Wikipedia's, for example.
> what do you suggest I use instead? Unless you have some actual suggestions, then your complaint isn't really useful. I already know that wikipedia is flawed.
It may be so flawed as to be useless, at least for any situation where accurate information is valuable to you. A lack of accurate information does not make false information a useful alternative. I do think Wikipedia is good for the links and references.
By the way, for everything but current events and pop culture, Encyclopedia Britannica is excellent. Concise, authored by actual experts, and usually well-written.
"In matters of science the authority of thousands is not worth the humble reasoning of one single person." - Galileo (maybe apocryphal)
Except when they contain serious errors and omissions, and which articles are those? Nobody knows, except someone already expert in that area.
For example, I would have no idea there were problems in these mathematics articles:
http://wikipediocracy.com/2013/10/20/elementary-mathematics-...
It took joining and partaking in the creation of a "politically contentious" article when I realized just how organized, blatant and scary these propaganda efforts are. You have it easier when you are a crackpot, than when you play by the rules and source all facts, because then you force them to earn their pay using more drastic measures. Yet, I can recommend this revelation to everyone.
See also another scuffle which relates to these current wiki-astroturfing campaigns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology_editing_o...
Also remember that Wikipedia is in a lot of countries. Some of those countries have governments and companies which are more blatant or forceful dealing with unpleasant information in the open than say, an American company. It is also easier for those editors to form cliques.
Resources for obtaining special-purpose knowledge have just about been washed up in favor of skimming Wikipedia's generalities, which may foster incomplete or incorrect understanding of complex topics, in turn leading to memes that people regurgitate in other contexts.
In this way Wikipedia has the potential of becoming Minitrue. I've pondered on the implications of systemically planting subtle factual distortions in tens of thousands of articles over periods of time, but since you hear about some edit war or pompous bureaucrat imposing their agenda every other day, it might already be happening in a less dramatic fashion.
My site, Newslines, is an attempt to build a new archive without Wikipedia's biases. You may be interested in this analysis: http://newslines.org/blog/wikipedias-13-deadly-sins/
By the way, get your shit together NYPD. Use a VPN next time you fascist dinosaurs.
I don't see any basis in your statement in your post or in reality. AFAIK Britannica has been owned by Americans for over a century. It's propagandists include Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Lord Kelvin, T.E. Lawrence, Douglas McArthur, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, etc.
Would you rather read Einstein's article on Space-Time or the one by random members of the public?
What would you suggest as an alternative?
Those are good secondary sources. Tertiary sources like Wikipedia aggregate information from and references to secondary sources. They aren't really substitutes for each other, in either direction.
Best result is "The Militarization of the Police in the U.S.: Year In Review 2014", which mentions Eric Garner in passing.
[Citation Needed]
What is the basis of this fact? Yes, there is bias everywhere, but it's not at all binary, 0 or 100% bias. Everyone has violence in them, but they won't all kill you.
I mean, is this good enough? http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/opinion/the-news-we-kept-t...
The media is one of the faultiest institutions in history. It suffers from biases pulling it in every direction, not the least of which is the bias to protect "access", as the story I linked illustrates.
Point being, the idea that it's easy to find sources of information which are more reliable than wikipedia mostly rests on a false idea of how faulty, biased, incomplete, and in some cases outright corrupt every other source of information tends to be.