[WikiEN-l] oopsie-- mainstream journalists trust Wikipedia again

[Ray Saintonge]

Steve Summit wrote:
> Spotted by Lars Eighner on alt.usage.english:
>
> <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/wikipedia_obituary_cut_and_paste/>
>
> (Summary: Ronnie Hazlehurst dies, obituarists copy false fact
> from his Wikipedia article.)
I have replied to them with the following:

I write as a person who has participated in Wikipedia for more than five 
years.

I'm glad that the article points the finger in the right place: 
journalists who don't check their sources.  Wikipedians themselves tell 
school kids to seek independent support for what they use from 
Wikipedia.  Teachers who dwell upon Wikipedia's inaccuracies, often to 
the extent of blocking its use entirely, miss an opportunity for 
teaching kids to question anything that they read from whatever source.  
That will be an absolutely vital lesson for children growing up in a 
time when access to information is unbridled, and the most convincing 
presentations are often from people with a vested interest.

Journalists should have learned better a long time ago.  Wikipedia would 
be very happy if those journalists notified Wikipedia to say that some 
detail is mistaken; someone would investigate and most often the problem 
would soon be solved.  Instead they whine that Wikipedia is wrong, 
rather than accepting their own responsibility in the matter.  
Wikipedia's capacity for self-correction probably results in its being 
more often correct than many, many other sources, either printed or 
online.  Those who view this as changing history also need to remember 
that an archive of those changes remains fully available.  If newspapers 
publicly retract an error it cannot happen in the same issue as the 
error; it will likely appear a few days later.  Some years later, a 
historian will look at the original article, and use it, completely 
oblivious of the retraction.  A readily linked archive of changes and 
retractions reflects a much higher level of accountability.

Errors on Wikipedia will continue to arise with great regularity, and, 
regrettably, many will not be found until there is another incident like 
the present one.  Unfortunately such an incident tends to magnify 
inaccuracies out of proportion to their frequency.  They take on the 
inevitable nature of Cúchulainn being served a meal of dog-meat.

Someone in the  responses to the article quite fairly cited "It's 
clearly not true, but it's now been in several reliable and verifiable 
sources, and under Wikipedia rules it makes no difference whether it's 
true or not" from the article's talk page.  It's Wikipedia's paradox.  
Without it the inaccuracies would be much worse, and Wikipedia would be 
full of bizarre physics and urban legends.  It seems that some 
Wikipedian brains have the same gear shift as some journalist brains.  A 
good driver will know that his vehicle comes specially equipped with 
gear positions for mountainous terrain.  A poor driver will just damage 
his own vehicle.  Rules do that to us.  Daleks and Vogons are very 
certain of their mission in life; doubt is inimical to belief, even when 
that belief is blatantly stupid.  Reliable and verifiable sources become 
virtual teddy-bears that we can hug when we want to go to sleep; they 
will protect us from the ghosts of doubt.