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

[Ray Saintonge]

Zoney wrote:
> Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not completely off the hook. The incidence of
> errors in the project, and ability of anyone to add anything (which will not
> necessarily be picked up by others, despite what ultra-wiki-faith
> evangelists would have you believe) *is* a major issue.
>   
You're making a mountain out of a molehill.  Sure, we need to accept 
responsibility for what goes on, but it's also important to recognize 
the inevitability of a certain level of this stuff.  Every time one of 
these small errors comes to light there are a few hand-wringers  willing 
to panic as though the end of the universe were imminent.   What you 
seem to forget is that the ability of anyone to add anything has been 
one of the important features that has gotten us where we are to-day.  
The benefit of that has far exceeded the prevalence of these errors.
> Look at it another way. People say, well, you shouldn't just rely on
> Wikipedia if you are looking for a proper reference, go and find the source
> material after looking at the Wikipedia article. 
As indeed they should.
> So, even if we accept this
> in the context of someone doing research, what about the casual browser?
> They aren't going to go look up the sources. And yet even subconciously they
> are going to remember anything non-controversial or plausible that they read
> on Wikipedia as fact.
>   
Yes. So...? "Buyer beware" applies just as much to Wikipedia as to 
anything else. I had never heard of Ronnie Hazlehurst before this 
incident, but suppose that I had visited the erroneous article as a 
casual  browser.  Would I have focused on the error as much as on 
anything else in the article?  How much would I be likely to remember 
anything there at all?  Are you saying that you can click on "Random 
article" and remember whatever that brings up?  And where is the casual 
reader going with that random knowledge?  Can we try to be at least a 
little realistic?
> We really really need to take Wikipedia's spreading of disinformation very
> seriously. One cannot get away with solely blaming those who source
> information from Wikipedia.
>   
"Spreading of disinformation" suggests a wilful act.  Most of us are 
quite happy to correct any errors that we do find.  At the same time we 
cannot allow ourselves to be stifled by perfectionism.  It's not about 
our "getting away" with anything.  It's also not about "blaming" 
anybody.  In this case professionals at six different media 
establishments copied the same error that was made by a gang of 
amateurs. It makes me smile smugly; I don't need to blame anybody.  It's 
incumbent on all of us to exercise critical thinking.
> At least, if we really want Wikipedia to be an encyclopaedia rather than a
> factoid lucky-dip. Yes an encyclopaedia isn't a reliable first hand source
> for research, but it should be generally quite accurate nevertheless. The
> mistakes Britannica makes are actually worth the hoo-hah people make over
> them. It's very bad for an information source, even an informal one not for
> use in research, to have errors creeping into it. People read encyclopaedia
> articles for facts, not "maybe facts - I guess I'll check each fact".
If the "fact" is important to what you are doing, by all means check 
it.  Nobody is promoting the inclusion of errors in Wikipedia.  Yes, we 
want to avoid errors, but not at all costs.  I believe that we should 
start putting more emphasis on the good things about Wikipedia, and not 
stressing over the occasional error.

Ec