I'm sorry, but if you don't think that the assertion that someone was involved in both the JFK and the RFK assassination is not some sort of lunatic fringe claim that at least deserves some sort of cursory verification, then I don't think the suggestion that you should not be editing an encyclopedia is all that outrageous.
The articles that get a lot of Wiki attention are great, but on the fringes we take too much on faith and too much slips through the cracks. Collectively, we need to develop more of a critical eye and letting these sorts of things can be slipped through without acting upon them is, as we have already seen, going to cause lasting harm to the usefulness, reliability, and public image of this project.
In the end, it does not matter if this error was "obvious" or not, though it clearly was. However you define obvious, it is a definition that needs to include this sort of claim, otherwise new pages patrol will be an exercise in uselessness and futility.
Delirium delirium at hackish.org:
This was not (except in retrospect) obvious to me either, because I am not an expert in the Kennedy assassination. I have a vague recollection that it took a long time to come up with the official determination of what happened, so for all I know there may have been hundreds of suspects in the earlier stages of the investigation, and I do not know offhand all their names, or whether Mr. Seigenthaler was one of them.
Quite frankly, if you have nothing better to do than insult Wikipedians and tell us we are not fit to participate in your project, I should think we need new leadership.
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Rob wrote:
I'm sorry, but if you don't think that the assertion that someone was involved in both the JFK and the RFK assassination is not some sort of lunatic fringe claim that at least deserves some sort of cursory verification, then I don't think the suggestion that you should not be editing an encyclopedia is all that outrageous.
Heh, I guarantee you that I could create a ichthyological whopper, pun intended, with pictures and citations from some of the rarer books in my personal library, and it will slip right by you, plus everyone else who doesn't happen to have those books to check. I bet I could even get it into the day's DYK!
But if you don't know enough to evaluate, say, the plausibility of an article about the popular home aquarium fish Melanocetus, I'm not going to take that as evidence you should not be editing the encyclopedia; it just means that no one person can know enough to be able to make accurate quick judgments on each new article. We need better teamwork, not just individual prowess.
Come to think of it, why didn't *you* personally catch the bogus Seigenthaler article? Seems like it should be right in one of your areas of special knowledge, right? And don't you RC patrol?
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Rob wrote:
I'm sorry, but if you don't think that the assertion that someone was involved in both the JFK and the RFK assassination is not some sort of lunatic fringe claim that at least deserves some sort of cursory verification, then I don't think the suggestion that you should not be editing an encyclopedia is all that outrageous.
Heh, I guarantee you that I could create a ichthyological whopper, pun intended, with pictures and citations from some of the rarer books in my personal library, and it will slip right by you, plus everyone else who doesn't happen to have those books to check. I bet I could even get it into the day's DYK!
Never underestimate the power of a bibliomaniac with a point to prove. :-)
Ec
On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, Stan Shebs wrote:
Heh, I guarantee you that I could create a ichthyological whopper, pun intended, with pictures and citations from some of the rarer books in my personal library, and it will slip right by you, plus everyone else who doesn't happen to have those books to check. I bet I could even get it into the day's DYK!
But if you don't know enough to evaluate, say, the plausibility of an article about the popular home aquarium fish Melanocetus, I'm not going to take that as evidence you should not be editing the encyclopedia; it just means that no one person can know enough to be able to make accurate quick judgments on each new article. We need better teamwork, not just individual prowess.
One tool that I'm a little surprised that isn't used more often is to check whether any links exist to a supicious article. While this property is not entirely foolproof (a prankster can insert links either before or immediately after creating the article), this lack of reference to relevant articles will convince me to at least flag the article until I can find a way to conclusively prove its validity -- or arguable importance.
Of course, this leads to the question if an article cannot be found by a casual reader then why should we care. Or maybe the Seigenthaler incident has already answered that.
Geoff
Geoff Burling wrote:
On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, Stan Shebs wrote:
Heh, I guarantee you that I could create a ichthyological whopper, pun intended, with pictures and citations from some of the rarer books in my personal library, and it will slip right by you, plus everyone else who doesn't happen to have those books to check. I bet I could even get it into the day's DYK!
But if you don't know enough to evaluate, say, the plausibility of an article about the popular home aquarium fish Melanocetus, I'm not going to take that as evidence you should not be editing the encyclopedia; it just means that no one person can know enough to be able to make accurate quick judgments on each new article. We need better teamwork, not just individual prowess.
One tool that I'm a little surprised that isn't used more often is to check whether any links exist to a supicious article. While this property is not entirely foolproof (a prankster can insert links either before or immediately after creating the article), this lack of reference to relevant articles will convince me to at least flag the article until I can find a way to conclusively prove its validity -- or arguable importance.
Of course, this leads to the question if an article cannot be found by a casual reader then why should we care. Or maybe the Seigenthaler incident has already answered that.
When there are no links to an article, the subject is more likely to find the article than anybody else. - He'll put his name in the searchbox just to see if he's listed. Why can't that kind of low llevel vanity exist in high places?
Ec
On 12/16/05, Rob gamaliel8@yahoo.com wrote:
I'm sorry, but if you don't think that the assertion that someone was involved in both the JFK and the RFK assassination is not some sort of lunatic fringe claim that at least deserves some sort of cursory verification, then I don't think the suggestion that you should not be editing an encyclopedia is all that outrageous.
To be honest, if you asked me a month ago whether or not RFK was assassinated, I'd have told you I wasn't sure. Now that I think about it, I guess that fact was mentioned in Forrest Gump.
I guess I shouldn't be editing Wikipedia. If I see a spelling error, I'll just leave it. If someone writes about the POOP equation in a physics article, I'll just treat it like any other crappy article I see on the Internet. When I take a picture of the [[Borgata]] or [[Philadephia]] or [[Pittsburgh]] or a [[wye appliance]], I'll keep it to myself. I won't bother tagging hundreds of images with their copyright tags. Seriously, Jimbo. Unless you take back what you said (or someone replaces you), I won't make any more edits in the Wikipedia article namespace. Can I still participate on the talk pages, or is maybe that too much for me too?
I'm an accountant, not an historian. My degree is in Computer Science. I fully admit to stupidity when it comes to historical facts.
Anthony