[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

[Ray Saintonge]

Tom Cadden wrote:

>Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote: 
>
>Ray Saintonge  wrote: Puddl Duk wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>I just now returned from an 8 hour seminar wherein we were repeatedly
>>>informed that free, non-governmental information on the internet is
>>>dubious at best, and should be avoided for anything other than
>>>commercial or general knowledge queries. Instead, the online
>>>university  database was praised (it includes a subscription to
>>>britannica, btw ;)
>>>
>>>Jack (Sam Spade
>>>   
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Get used to it. As long as we have no validation/review/vetting/rating
>>mechanism we will always be in various stages of dubiousness.
>>
>>    
>>
>Yes and no, but that's gradually being worked out.
>
>But we are a long way off from adequate in terms of proper control of articles. I came across one edit that had been sitting in an article for a month. The article had been edited numerous times but no-one had spotted the clanger. I happen to know a bit about the topic and realised immediately it was a totally made up bit of vandalism.
> 
> Among stuff surviving in articles which I came across lately were
> * a made up papal encyclical
> * a claim that Diana Princess of Wales believed that her husband was a shape-shifting lizard from outer space
> * a non-existing Irish government department
> 
> How could any academic remind a site that allows stuff like that sit there, unchallenged in articles for long periods of time? I recently wrote an article for an Irish newspaper about a topic I had seen on Wikipedia. The article was fascinating but to be on the safe side I decided to double check it. 90% was A1. But there were 4 monster errors, all added in month ago but never checked. I hope that no kid in using that article for an essay quoted any of the errors. For every five good articles there is a dud in WP. And within each good article there seems to be dud facts. In a host of areas we are scarily far off encyclopædia standard. 
>
> Another example: tonight I wrote an article on the Royal Assent in the Irish Free State. I know a lot about the topic and have read the major books on the crown and the Free State. Everything in there is verifiable and anyone who knows the facts will see it is 100% kosher. But how many others on WP would know about the topic? I could have sneaked in made-up facts and who would know? 
>
Checking facts is much more difficult and time consuming than initially 
writing an article.  It's quite common for people to muddle what they 
really know with what they imagine that they know.  Effective editing 
requires a questioning mind, and an ability to spot errors which even 
experts can miss.  In the example  that you wrote, my first impulse 
would be to question an apparent contradiction in term between "Royal 
Assent" and "Irish Free State". There may be a perfectly valid reason, 
but a good editor should at least ask the question.

Ec