On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 11:37 PM, Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
5.People need to able to trust all data in WikiData,
otherwise they just
wont use it because as Wikidata expands the same PR firms, interest groups
which have seen so many of WP issues will gravitate to the easier to
manipulate WikiData
I think the potential problem here is far worse: people *will use* the
data, because their lack of trustworthiness, as amply described in the
Wikidata disclaimer[1], is no longer visible when they're displayed as
"fact" by dominant search engines.
Google is already committed to Wikidata. Wikidata is in part a Google
project. This means information placed in Wikidata may in time have the
potential to reach an audience of billions – a far greater audience than
Wikipedia has.
People already blindly copy falsehoods from Wikipedia today, because
important caveats (like checking the sourcing to assess the reliability of
a Wikipedia article) are widely ignored. As a result, circular references
and citogenesis have become a significant problem for Wikipedia.
People are far more likely still to copy blindly from Google. It's circular
referencing on steroids.
The way things are headed, manipulations in Wikidata that enter the Google
Knowledge Graph, Bing Satori, etc. could end up having far greater leverage
than any Wikipedia manipulation has ever had. In the worst-case scenario –
depending on how much search engines will come to rely on Wikidata – an
edit war won by anonymous players in an obscure corner of Wikidata might
literally redefine truth for the English-speaking internet.
Is this really a good thing? Are checks and balances in place to prevent
this from happening?
Lets build something based on the lessons learnt on
Wikipedia over the last
15 years rather than duplicate those missteps
That seems like good advice to me. The online world's information
infrastructure shouldn't be built on sand.
[1]
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:General_disclaimer – highlights:
"Wikidata cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here.
[...] No formal peer review[:] Wikidata does not have an executive editor
or editorial board that vets content before it is published. Our active
community of editors uses tools such as the Special:Recentchanges and
Special:Newpages feeds to monitor new and changing content. However,
Wikidata is not uniformly peer reviewed; while readers may correct errors
or engage in casual peer review, they have no legal duty to do so and thus
all information read here is without any implied warranty of fitness for
any purpose or use whatsoever. None of the contributors, sponsors,
administrators or anyone else connected with Wikidata in any way whatsoever
can be responsible for the appearance of any inaccurate or libelous
information or for your use of the information contained in or linked from
these web pages [...] neither is anyone at Wikidata responsible should
someone change, edit, modify or remove any information that you may post on
Wikidata or any of its associated projects."