If true, oh crap:
From: [New York Times business editor] Larry Ingrassia To: [Business staff] Subject: wiki-whatdia?
Colleagues,
You probably saw Kit Seelye's smart Week-in-Review story about inaccurate information in Wikipedia. In case you didn't, please take a look. Since the story ran, she has received a number of e-mail messages about other inaccurate information on Wikipedia. We shouldn't be using it to check any information that goes into the newspaper.
Larry
From: http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=10748
-- mav
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
If true, oh crap:
From: [New York Times business editor] Larry Ingrassia To: [Business staff] Subject: wiki-whatdia?
Colleagues,
You probably saw Kit Seelye's smart Week-in-Review story about inaccurate information in Wikipedia. In case you didn't, please take a look. Since the story ran, she has received a number of e-mail messages about other inaccurate information on Wikipedia. We shouldn't be using it to check any information that goes into the newspaper.
Larry
You mean the "Paper of Record" has been using WP to check their facts? Don't they realize how frequently we use *them* as a source? Shades of the Cheney/Miller echo chamber, geez...
Stan
--- Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
You mean the "Paper of Record" has been using WP to check their facts? Don't they realize how frequently we use *them* as a source? Shades of the Cheney/Miller echo chamber, geez...
Very, very good point. We should work up a page that lists all their big errors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times#Recent_controversies is a good start.
-- mav
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So true. Jayson Blair, anyone? And how many other errors/omissions/biases on the NYT could we list if we tried?
James
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mayer Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 10:00 PM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] NYT to forbid use of Wikipedia as a reference?
--- Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
You mean the "Paper of Record" has been using WP to check their facts? Don't they realize how frequently we use *them* as a source? Shades of the Cheney/Miller echo chamber, geez...
Very, very good point. We should work up a page that lists all their big errors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times#Recent_controversies is a good start.
-- mav
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This is not a cut-and-dried issue, and we should treat it with respect.
Say you're tasked with quickly determining if a fact is true. You decide to find at least two reputable sources mentioning the fact -- and moreover, you look briefly at each of their references, if any. You're under deadline; so shaving 5 minutes off your search time a dozen times a day is helpful.
Wikipedia offers a fast way to snag one of these sources. But is it reputable enough to count? Or is it only useful as a portal to its own references -- where you'll have to scour each one to see if it contains the specific morsel of data you were searching for[1]?
In theory, for some highly-edited articles, it /is/ reputable enough to count, as are other encyclopedias or reporters -- that is, it serves as confirmation that one or two reasonably-informed people did basic background/literature checks and found something to be true. Of course primary/secondary sources are far better still than these two classes of information.
In practice, WP *gives the visual impression* that all articles are comparably reputable. As such, it is problematic to include it alongside the World Book as a tertiary source usable as "one of two" sources verifying a claim. Every active editor knows that not all articles -- not even all finished-looking articles -- are equally reliable. Most of us have our own reflexive "can I trust this revision" routines - scanning for format quirks, or signs that a true style-guide expert has been here, checking the talk page, checking the recent history. We must find better ways to float this information up to the casual user.
SJ
[1] NB: if we fix our referencing system, this will no longer be true.
On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
If true, oh crap:
From: [New York Times business editor] Larry Ingrassia To: [Business staff] Subject: wiki-whatdia?
Colleagues,
You probably saw Kit Seelye's smart Week-in-Review story about inaccurate information in Wikipedia. In case you didn't, please take a look. Since the story ran, she has received a number of e-mail messages about other inaccurate information on Wikipedia. We shouldn't be using it to check any information that goes into the newspaper.
Larry
From: http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=10748
-- mav
Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- ++SJ
On 12/8/05, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
This is not a cut-and-dried issue, and we should treat it with respect.
Say you're tasked with quickly determining if a fact is true. You decide to find at least two reputable sources mentioning the fact -- and moreover, you look briefly at each of their references, if any. You're under deadline; so shaving 5 minutes off your search time a dozen times a day is helpful.
Wikipedia offers a fast way to snag one of these sources. But is it reputable enough to count? Or is it only useful as a portal to its own references -- where you'll have to scour each one to see if it contains the specific morsel of data you were searching for[1]?
And what if Wikipedia got the information from your first source? No, I don't think this is ever a good thing to do. It might work most of the time, but it's not a good idea.
In theory, for some highly-edited articles, it /is/ reputable enough to count, as are other encyclopedias or reporters -- that is, it serves as confirmation that one or two reasonably-informed people did basic background/literature checks and found something to be true. Of course primary/secondary sources are far better still than these two classes of information.
It works at least some of the time, but I wouldn't say that makes it reputable. Our reputation is that we'll allow anyone to publish anything without even verifying the identity of that person, let alone verifying the information. We're not reputable by any stretch of the imagination.
If you want to start digging into the history and seeing how long a fact has been there, and this fact is somehow prominent enough that it probably would have been caught...well, by the time you do that you might as well have just used a better source.
In practice, WP *gives the visual impression* that all articles are comparably reputable. As such, it is problematic to include it alongside the World Book as a tertiary source usable as "one of two" sources verifying a claim.
The World Book wouldn't be *as* problematic, since at least that is fact checked before being published, but I still don't see how you can count an encyclopedia as one of two sources unless you know what the source was that encyclopedia used (since it might be the same source).
Every active editor knows that not all articles -- not even all finished-looking articles -- are equally reliable. Most of us have our own reflexive "can I trust this revision" routines - scanning for format quirks, or signs that a true style-guide expert has been here, checking the talk page, checking the recent history. We must find better ways to float this information up to the casual user.
SJ
[1] NB: if we fix our referencing system, this will no longer be true.
I'm not sure that it's a *must*, because I think Wikipedia serves an important niche even without fact-checked information. I think it's acceptable to let someone else worry about this, someone who's willing to stand behind the encyclopedia as a *publisher*, not just a service provider. But it would be nice to offer a trusted revision for a lot of articles if not all of them.
I think that it's most important that whatever is done is done without disturbing the process we have in place now.
On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
If true, oh crap:
From: [New York Times business editor] Larry Ingrassia To: [Business staff] Subject: wiki-whatdia?
Colleagues,
You probably saw Kit Seelye's smart Week-in-Review story about inaccurate information in Wikipedia. In case you didn't, please take a look. Since the story ran, she has received a number of e-mail messages about other inaccurate information on Wikipedia. We shouldn't be using it to check any information that goes into the newspaper.
Larry
From: http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=10748
-- mav
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-- ++SJ _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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