From: Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl
This is part of a wider trend towards "reliability" at the cost of "usefulness". By deleting uncontroversial but unsourced statements and articles, of course we increase Wikipedia's reliability, because a part of this unsourced information is not true. But most of that deleted material is true, and useful for the reader of that article.
The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1064. The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1065. The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1067....
Applying reductio ad absurdam, and cribbing from the Kurd Lasswitz story "The Universal Library," we can maximize the "usefulness" of Wikipedia by having a computer generate every possible combination of English words and submitting it as an article.
This procedure will guarantee that Wikipedia contains _every_ possible item of true information, and thus be more "useful" than any other encyclopedia.
It will, of course, also contain every possible erroneous and misleading item of information, but no matter. We can, if we wish, solve that problem by having the computer tagging every sentence as needing a citation, and by supplying an appropriate disclaimer.
Readers, can, of course, always distinguish the accurate article by consulting the convenient [[List of accurate articles]], which this universal Wikipedia is guaranteed to contain, if, of course, they can figure out which of the googol or so articles entitled [[List of accurate articles]] is actually the real list of accurate articles.
No, a mix of accurate and inaccurate information is not very "useful."
It is like Lewis Carroll's clock that does not run at all and is thus right twice a day. Such a lock is not very useful because there is no way to tell _when_ it is right.
The "law of recycling" states that the value per pound of a mixture of recycled material is equal to the value per pound of the least valuable material in the mixture. To at least a first approximation, the value of Wikipedia is set by the value of the least accurate material in Wikipedia.
That's why we have {{source needed}} templates. To get someone to verify some piece of information is actually true. I agree deleting unsourced information is harsh but if no one can vouch for it after a certain amount of time, including the creator, exactly why should be take their word that is true. A mere 5 minutes of editing can increase BOTH usefulness and reliability.
And to tell you the truth, I don't think unreliable info is useful to begin with.
Mgm
On 1/14/07, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
From: Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl
This is part of a wider trend towards "reliability" at the cost of "usefulness". By deleting uncontroversial but unsourced statements and articles, of course we increase Wikipedia's reliability, because a part of this unsourced information is not true. But most of that deleted material is true, and useful for the reader of that article.
The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1064. The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1065. The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1067....
Applying reductio ad absurdam, and cribbing from the Kurd Lasswitz story "The Universal Library," we can maximize the "usefulness" of Wikipedia by having a computer generate every possible combination of English words and submitting it as an article.
This procedure will guarantee that Wikipedia contains _every_ possible item of true information, and thus be more "useful" than any other encyclopedia.
It will, of course, also contain every possible erroneous and misleading item of information, but no matter. We can, if we wish, solve that problem by having the computer tagging every sentence as needing a citation, and by supplying an appropriate disclaimer.
Readers, can, of course, always distinguish the accurate article by consulting the convenient [[List of accurate articles]], which this universal Wikipedia is guaranteed to contain, if, of course, they can figure out which of the googol or so articles entitled [[List of accurate articles]] is actually the real list of accurate articles.
No, a mix of accurate and inaccurate information is not very "useful."
It is like Lewis Carroll's clock that does not run at all and is thus right twice a day. Such a lock is not very useful because there is no way to tell _when_ it is right.
The "law of recycling" states that the value per pound of a mixture of recycled material is equal to the value per pound of the least valuable material in the mixture. To at least a first approximation, the value of Wikipedia is set by the value of the least accurate material in Wikipedia.
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On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 21:57:22 +0100, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
And to tell you the truth, I don't think unreliable info is useful to begin with.
Precisely. If you want unreliable info, uncyclopaedia has much which is authoritatively unreliable.
Guy (JzG)
On Sun, 14 Jan 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
And to tell you the truth, I don't think unreliable info is useful to begin with.
Precisely. If you want unreliable info, uncyclopaedia has much which is authoritatively unreliable.
This ignores the fact that reliability is a continuum. People are not really saying "we'd rather have a lot of articles that are unreliable instead of 10% as many articles which are reliable". They're saying "we'd rather have a lot of articles instead of 10% of articles which are *somewhat more* reliable". Unsourced material is less reliable than sourced material, but it's not so much less reliable that its reliability may as well be zero.
It's a tradeoff between reliability and usefulness. And even if we *don't* allow unsourced articles, we still must make that tradeoff. Allowing unsourced articles just pushes over a tradeoff that we are already making anyway.