Encyclopædia Britannica competing with Wikipedia?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

Which is a good thing since you need some evidence showing that the person is not lying about the birth date or that the birth certificate is not faked.

But the point is that "popularity" is a really bad measure of whether or not to include something in an encyclopaedia. Shouldn't accuracy be the prime consideration?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by taustin

What you get is that on controversial topics, or topics on which recent research has refuted long held wisdom, Wikipedia can't be updated even though it is provably wrong.

Here

Fascinating article - thanks for posting the link to it.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But the point is that "popularity" is a really bad measure of whether or not to include something in an encyclopaedia. Shouldn't accuracy be the prime consideration?

But how do you get accuracy. The principles Wikipedia have has scaleable accuracy as the goal.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by tompe

Which is a good thing since you need some evidence showing that the person is not lying about the birth date or that the birth certificate is not faked.

Even if you do, it's still not allowed. If you have a video of the birth, testimony under oath that it's the same person from the doctor, the parents, and from law enforcement who compared the foot print on the birth certificate to the person standing in from of them, it's still not allowed because Wikipedia doesn't allow the use of primary sources as citations.

You've set a standard so high that nothing can meet it.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But the point is that "popularity" is a really bad measure of whether or not to include something in an encyclopaedia. Shouldn't accuracy be the prime consideration?

That depends on what it is an encyclopedia of. Wikipedia, by their own published policy, is an encyclopedia of public opinion on what the facts are. And that's fine, really, so long as you don't mistake for an encyclopedia of what the facts actually are.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Fascinating article - thanks for posting the link to it.

Note that it is one side of the story, and one written by someone who was, apparently, fairly pissed off. But he's correct on what Wikipedia's published policies are (and links to them, as I recall).

Originally Posted by tompe

But how do you get accuracy. The principles Wikipedia have has scaleable accuracy as the goal.

You get accuracy by learned review. Which costs money and effort, beyond what Wikipedia is willing to apply. They want to be as credible a source as, say, Encyclopedia Britannica, but without having to actually do the work to produce that credibility. So they take the lazy way, and hold opinion polls on what facts people want to believe.

And what is scalable accuracy, anyway? A system which can start off being complete bs, but later scaled up to only being 50% bs, and later on, eventually, to 10% bs? Is that really what you mean? (Note: It may well be what they mean.)

[tompe]

Originally Posted by taustin

That depends on what it is an encyclopedia of. Wikipedia, by their own published policy, is an encyclopedia of public opinion on what the facts are. And that's fine, really, so long as you don't mistake for an encyclopedia of what the facts actually are.



Note that it is one side of the story, and one written by someone who was, apparently, fairly pissed off. But he's correct on what Wikipedia's published policies are (and links to them, as I recall).



You get accuracy by learned review. Which costs money and effort, beyond what Wikipedia is willing to apply. They want to be as credible a source as, say, Encyclopedia Britannica, but without having to actually do the work to produce that credibility. So they take the lazy way, and hold opinion polls on what facts people want to believe.

And what is scalable accuracy, anyway? A system which can start off being complete bs, but later scaled up to only being 50% bs, and later on, eventually, to 10% bs? Is that really what you mean? (Note: It may well be what they mean.)

It is scalable because anybody can contribute. You do not have to be an expert.

And learned review also leads to inaccuracies. Didn't the empirical study show that there was little difference in accuracy between wikipedia and Britannica?

[Phogg]

How did this thread get so long without this being posted?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by taustin

Even if you do, it's still not allowed. If you have a video of the birth, testimony under oath that it's the same person from the doctor, the parents, and from law enforcement who compared the foot print on the birth certificate to the person standing in from of them, it's still not allowed because Wikipedia doesn't allow the use of primary sources as citations.

As a matter of interest, Harry Houdini once complained to the Encyclopaedia Britannica for stating, in their article about him, that he had been born in Budapest, rather than Wisconsin, as he claimed to have been. They produced a copy of his birth certificate to prove that they were right. I guess that in Wikipedia you can be whatever you can persuade the masses that you are.

[murg]

Originally Posted by taustin

One policy says that primary sources are not allowed a references. The reasons are understandable, but there's a price for that particular "solution." It's a policy to address problems with edit wars on controversial subjects, that ignores the problems it causes.

There was a short bit in The Newsroom where they deliberately blogged something specifically so that one of the reporters could correct a Wikipedia article on him/herself.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by tompe

It is scalable because anybody can contribute. You do not have to be an expert.

Or have any idea what you're talking about.

Originally Posted by tompe

And learned review also leads to inaccuracies. Didn't the empirical study show that there was little difference in accuracy between wikipedia and Britannica?

Again, it depends on what it's an encyclopedia of. Wikipedia does not claim to be the same kind of encyclopedia as Britannica. The latter is devoted to accurately reporting facts. The former is - by their own published policy - devoted to reporting common public opinion on what facts should be.

They do not do the same thing, nor do they try to.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by HarryT

As a matter of interest, Harry Houdini once complained to the Encyclopaedia Britannica for stating, in their article about him, that he had been born in Budapest, rather than Wisconsin, as he claimed to have been. They produced a copy of his birth certificate to prove that they were right.

If the bio that the History Channel did on Houdini was accurate (heh), he had some help from the CIA on that.

Originally Posted by HarryT

I guess that in Wikipedia you can be whatever you can persuade the masses that you are.

That is their published policy, actually.

[Shades]

Originally Posted by taustin

Again, it depends on what it's an encyclopedia of. Wikipedia does not claim to be the same kind of encyclopedia as Britannica. The latter is devoted to accurately reporting facts. The former is - by their own published policy - devoted to reporting common public opinion on what facts should be.

They do not do the same thing, nor do they try to.

Yet they were proven to be almost identical in accuracy. So if Britannica is so focused on facts, why is it that they are as inaccurate as Wikipedia?

I'm sorry taustin, but where are these published policies about "persuading the masses" and "public opinion on what the facts are"? I bounced around a few seemingly relevant policies, and the closest thing I could find this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipe...ade_up_one_day

The tone of the article is open to interpretation. Your interpretation is certainly one of them. On the other hand, the whole page feels like a thought experiment. It basically outlines the no original research policy and the conflict of interest policy, then goes over what it would take to get your own work published. Hypothetically.

Look, I'm not going to say that Wikipedia's policies are perfect. Yet I suspect that Britannica's policies pretty much have the same outcome. That is to say, no original research and everything has to be verifiable. I suspect that Wikipedia is leery of primary sources because of that. Primary resources may be good for supporting a statement of fact. Yet, taken alone, they are also strong indicators or original research. Also, while an individual primary source my be verifiable and accurate (e.g. census data) the interpretation of that source may not be verifiable (e.g. there may be contradictory data).

Even though secondary sources don't solve those problems, they do address them. A good secondary source will take multiple primary sources into consideration, would have undergone some academic discourse as to the interpretation of those primary sources, and will be independent of conflicts of interest.

Return to that article by Timothy Messer-Kruse for a moment. At first he tried modifying the article based upon original research. The records were verifiable (i.e. the court records), the interpretation was not. Even a peer review article should not be taken as a verification of the interpretation. It was, as the "keeper" noted, a minority view. More important, peer review may only suggest that the research is sound. Peer review does does not suggest that it is an accepted interpretation. Yet Messer-Kruse went even further to create problems: he used his own article as a source. That is a clear conflict of interest.

Messer-Kruse effectively outlined what an encyclopedia, any encyclopedia, is not: they are not venues for academic discourse. They attempt to take accepted knowledge as it currently stands, and presents a summary of that knowledge. Accepted knowledge is always a "popular opinion" and is not always correct. That is true even if you limit your definition of popular opinion to the popular opinion of experts.

Part of the problem is that the development and the correction of knowledge is a time consuming thing. First you have to collect evidence. Then you have to have some sort of discourse on the evidence, primarily relating to its interpretation. After that, you have to wait for it to become accepted. That last part is the most difficult to accept, but it does have an upside. If we made anything into a fact based upon the evidence of the moment, we would end up chasing after a bunch of wildly incorrect theories based upon weak evidence.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by Shades

Yet they were proven to be almost identical in accuracy. So if Britannica is so focused on facts, why is it that they are as inaccurate as Wikipedia?

You assume that the comparison is meaningful. Apples and lemurs are identical in their ability to drive cars, but that doesn't make apples mammals or lemurs fruit.

Using Wikipedia for a purpose they publicly state they are not for is not a good idea, IMO.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

I'm sorry taustin, but where are these published policies about "persuading the masses" and "public opinion on what the facts are"?

I posted a link to the account of the guy doing research on the Haymarket Riot. He quotes the policy, but more important, he quotes responses from Wikipedia admins stating that yes, that's their policy, and that's what they want it to be. He's not entirely impartial, but he supports his interpretation pretty well.

Wikipedia does not allow the use of primary sources. That makes it something other than a repository for state of the art facts.