Today, writes Adam Svanell long and interesting about Wikipedia in Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. However, there are parts of his reasoning into question. He has tried to write an article about himself on Wikipedia and then seasoned it with errors, to see what happens. Disconcerted enough Svanell happened not very much: "After hearing about all of Wikipedia's control panels, I can not understand that no one discovers my vandalism," he writes.
But surely that is not particularly surprising. Of course, not all faults are detected immediately after editing. It would mean that all the items passed through a filter, a proper control panel went through every single edit made. Many errors are detected immediately, especially if it's very popular articles. However, some errors will remain until someone actually read the article.
To insert an error in a Wikipedia article that is of little interest to the public is like sneaking into a private book on a library shelf - it can be before it is detected.
I also think it is a pity that Svanell at all do not mention the source critical aspect. Wikipedia always has to be read with a source critical eye, always check the "show history" for an article that you think retrieve data from. Will all the facts in the article from a single writer, not specified any source - well, then you should first double check elsewhere. If the article is provided with a startling facts in the last hours or days - well, then you should also be careful to use just this fact. The rest of the Wikipedia article, maybe you can rely more on, and especially in cases where there is a frequently edited article, that is about a subject that is of major public interest.
Wikipedia is a fantastic source of knowledge - and for many, perhaps the only - and then it is important that every time discussing Wikipedia also explain how you actually have to read Wikipedia. Source Critical.
Please also read an excellent blog post about Wikipedia by Kristina Alexanderson
Update: Also read the blog post by Lennart Guldbrandsson (the respondent in the Svenska Dagbladet's article) wrote about the article - that Adam Svanell in turn responds
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That is correct, especially how it should be compared with the media he uses.
A newspaper. Where a journalist can find just about anything, an editor who happens to be hungover miss a lot of nonsense, the editor stressed last hour before the press. Boom, you have a false ring out of a bunch of people's mailboxes, and no one has the chance to fix it except a pathetic "we make here was" the day after.
I think that reading critically is as important in traditional newspapers on wikipedia!
Moreover, it is not just Wikipedia that should be read critically, but also newspapers, including the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. If you get audited all the items an ordinary day in such SvD would find at least a couple dozen errors. From the misspelled name, wrong year to more serious factual errors as incorrect citations of the interviewees and other sources. But it all already knew? :-)
Well, the problem is not when someone throw in an obvious hoax claim in a popular article, that Charles suffered from flat feet and dyslexia set or that Anna Anka is the daughter of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is much worse when people, in a desire to screw the article after some personal opinion, throw in a highly charged worded text (without using the formal false statements) and backart it up with quotes and evidence from a highly non-representative sources. Example: to write about Swedish foreign policy and take all the evidence from Stefan Hedlund, Ulf Nilsson and Per Ahlmark. When someone then tries to manners in the text defends himself the first "but it says so! These people are knowledgeable ocbnh their quotes are accurate, however, you are just subjective and politically correct - or a fool! "
Whoever writes the WP and throwing in rough hip, exaggerated descriptions or hiking lies could very rarely anything worse than that at long last get the account closed for a week. If you as an expert writes in the NE and the know tell us that Hitler danced a sort of jumping dance when he saw the French sign the capitulation in 1940, you will be hanged by your colleagues, but no danger of any real discomfort in real life on WP, so you can keep on and conjure or pursue misleading synpounkter indefinitely, especially if one is more about the matter. Certainly there are good articles on WP, but Wikipedia's view on how to achieve tillförliliga texts are hopelessly naive, both for the WIDE-MESHED and key illogical. I would never trust a WP-text for example, the historical course of events or a living person, beyond pure facts, but to check it is said in the library is - and where's a uppslagsvekr really pointless. Who wants an encyclopedia that only works as a fish pond?
The errors and leading descriptions that are sometimes quoted from NE or Britannica is pin-sized compared to what you find in a lot of articles on Wikipedia - particularly the Swedish, but also the English. Swedish WP is alllmänt told a joke, it is beneath contempt.
"If the article is provided with some startling facts in the last hours or days - well, then you should also be careful to use this particular facts"
Outright lies or tillhöftade claims may remain much longer than that. The article on Bkörn Borg in English WP stood there for a couple of * years * to Borg at the end of her tennis career, in 1980, had been severely depressed and physically and mentally run in the bottom. The source of it was some sensation-rate journalist who has written many years later - hell knows if his article had also been interpreted by the person who threw it on WP. There were also suggestions that the Borg would have been suicidal at the time, maybe a drug addict (probably an echo of the events in Milan in 1990, although there is little evidence that there was no suicide attempt then either). Bjorn Borg's a pretty famous person, but do you think anyone bothered to check the data? Nope.
And to get through a log of hundreds of edits for at see what was on hand earlier is of course impossible if, in a reasonable time, want of reliable information on a subject where one is not knowledgeable. People throwing in large text chunks, emphasizes the colors of - or just doodle - hey game. Your impression that it is enough to koilla recent changes based of course on a belief that the internal legal process works and that the article almost always gets better with tiden.Men about it instead subjected to a continuous trench warfare ochoupphörliga waves of vandalism?
Robin and solvency: Please read the interviewee's own comments on
Magnus: You point to the very important things and I can not but agree with the danger of references to non-objective or highly colored sources. In such cases it is very important to also highlight quotes from people with opposing views, to show that there is a controversy on the subject. The truth of certain substances is almost impossible to get objective, so when you get to leave to the reader to assess the various sources of reliability. Wikipedia should be that way to be objective reporting rather than an encyclopedia with some sort of one hundred percent truth.
I just controversial topics, it is sufficient not forget to check "show history", as you rightly point out. But what I want to say is that reading of Wikipedia requires infinitely more source critical thinking than just reading a text and take it for truth. "View History" is a feature that should be used more often than many readers do.
Frequently uippslagsverk with width, such as NE and Britannica, strives to articles must be factually correct and fair, but, as far as possible, understandable even for non-professionals. I mean they have not grasped the WP, or: the core of their employees and internal editorial bureaucracy does not see the problem.
Today there are, in English WP anyway, and those who throw in inflated and exaggerated text chunks of almost anything, as cutting and pasting from the tabloids and editorial pages and remove accurate statements when they stand in the way of their own broad brushes and piling up lots of quotes to support their own political beliefs. On the other hand, you have some who are knowledgeable (but maybe still is very run-in position: scientists are often stubborn and short stung) and who want to absolutely everything must have a citation, an evidence of a "good source". These latter individuals may be knowledgeable, but they are often unwilling to provide a readable and engaging story - they beat with a penchant down anyone who tries to * summarize * the meaning of twenty different evidence or professional recognition step with your own deliberate formulations - and shouts "But then, exactly, is it not in one of the best bvöckerna, fool!", and lumps them together with the pure agenda writers.
Perhaps it is the absence of a popular education tradition in the United States at work here, American academics (although enwp is worldwide, most active editor, British or North Americans) have relatively rarely been doing with popular science, and has an advanced degree in a subject, you are probably very prone the spring with it. The result is in all cases, items that are almost illegible and where the non-expert can not distinguish what is important - or reliable.
I sometimes edit some in English WP, more rarely, in Swedish, but avoid topics that are clearly controversial. The past two years, it is clearly in English WP to a "hyperdeletionistisk" riktniing have strengthened their positions, they are aggressive and doktrionära and has a strong position as moderators and admins (which therefore can adjudicate in disputes between members). They see WP's rules on verifiability and clamp against synthesizing utdagor as a book of the law, arguing that just all statements that do not have a citation from one or more "good sources" should be removed immediately, even if the claim is entirely uncontroversial and probably true. That's a model that is borrowed from physics, where in principle all allegations and inferences the researcher should be explicit. In most non-science is not so, there are lots of claims that need to be made in an article such as history that can be impossible to find a written evidence of that particular form, because they are so obvious. Try to find an evidence that "most Europeans use when they write by hand, a simpler form of the letters lowercase a and g and derived forms of these than is used in the press"! Or because "it runs very few steam locomotives in reguiljär liner (not museum tracks) on the railways in the Western world now." The result of course is that people really stand, there is no one who wants to spend time to produce a readable and familiar text about such as Dante or the Kalmar Union of the late steps into some touchy bungler and erases half, transforms text into an unreadable and pointless soup and season it with some sneering lines to you about "original research" or "so it is not in my books."
Magnus: Thank you for these insights into how it looks on the English Wikipedia! I had no idea about this development. Very interesting examples. Personally, I was a little småaktiv in Swedish Wikipedia for a few years ago, so I do not really know how it works right now. My most important position in the whole discussion is that so many use the information / knowledge on Wikipedia, so it is important to know how to relate to it.
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