On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 9:36 AM, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
Be careful with that "obvious" word...
Hi Magnus,
Things have been busy of late, and I never had time to properly respond to this blog post of yours. (For anyone else who has forgotten, this was the discussion about vast swathes of Wikidata lacking reliable references, as discussed in [1].)
You say, "the impression I get from Andreas’ text is that, while Wikipedia has some issues, references are basically OK, whereas they are essentially non-existent in Wikidata." In your piece, you then go on to compare the referencing density of Wikidata content to that of Wikipedia content, finding that Wikidata, even now, doesn't do at all badly compared to Wikipedia.
You present it as a sort of sibling rivalry: if Wikipedia doesn't do any better herself, why does she complain about her sister Wikidata? I recall Denny and Gerard making similar arguments.
In doing so, you miss the core point of the criticism. My point is that Wikipedia's *referencing standards are okay*, and that *those* are what Wikidata should be assessed against.
Wikidata and Wikipedia have very different purposes: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia to be read; Wikidata is a database. No one reads a database. The whole purpose of a database is to have its content multiplied and surfaced elsewhere. Therefore it is even more essential that its content stand on solid ground.
If you want to measure Wikidata against something else, you should measure it against the sources that open knowledge currently relies on, i.e. the quality standards underlying WP:V, WP:RS and so on, especially if Wikidata will also be used as a source in Wikipedias.
My argument has never been that Wikipedia content is good, and Wikidata content is rubbish. The quality of Wikipedia's content is extremely variable. Sometimes it's alarmingly unstable, and you see Wikipedia "truth" shifting from one extreme to the other (example: [2]). Sometimes it's manipulated (example: [3]). Wikipedia contains *a lot* of rubbish, alongside some undeniably good content.
It's for that reason that I view it with dismay when Wikidata makes wholesale imports "from Wikipedia", without so much as traceability to a specific article and article revision, and a check whether the information taken from Wikipedia was accurately sourced there.
At the Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group, we recently discussed the use of Wikipedia as a source for legal decisions.[4] On a human level, it's perfectly normal and understandable for Wikimedians to feel validated, to feel pride whenever a court makes such use of Wikipedia. But in my view, one of the core tasks of the Wikimedia community should be to *discourage* such use, and teach the legal profession Wikipedia literacy. This includes at its most basic level not putting any faith into any statement in Wikipedia *per se*, but instead checking and assessing its sourcing on each and every occasion, and referencing the source instead. We all know that complete nonsense can survive for a long time in Wikipedia, even in highly trafficked articles.
Andreas
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-02/Op-ed [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Klee-Irwin.gif [3] http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogus-busi... [4] https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/969531789761319/
On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 1:56 PM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Magnus Manske < magnusmanske@googlemail.com> wrote:
What you hear is "Wikidata is unreliable" (compared to the respective Wikipedia; proof, anyone? Please, show me proof; silence or anecdotes
don't
count)
Any non-trivial content you want to add to Wikipedia today has to fulfil one basic criterion: that the content be traceable to a professionally published source.
Most Wikidata content fails that criterion.[1] It's blooming obvious that Wikidata is "unreliable" according to Wikipedia's definition of a
"reliable
source", isn't it?[2]
[1] https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/stats.php [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:SPS _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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