Talk:Reliability of Wikipedia/Archive 1

[1] (Nov 2008) containing large quotes of carl hewitt's knol writings and stances. The article is being used in part (due to these edits) as a forum for reposting Hewitt's complaints. Also this: [2] (above).

There's a likely possibility that this may be inserted by Hewitt himself, a user who has had issues including sock-puppetry and has consistently tried to edit for self-promotional purposes. Either way it needs more eyeballs and probably cleanup. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 17:04, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• I've removed all of the hearsay, based upon nothing more than an involved party's partial quotations of private correspondence with an opponent. Uncle G (talk) 23:53, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

The Observer quotations about Professor Hewitt are libelous and should be removed.--67.169.48.162 (talk) 23:44, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Are they not true? --Tango (talk) 22:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Professor Hewitt says not at Corruption of Wikipedia on Google Knol.--67.180.249.167 (talk) 00:04, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

It's astonishing beyond belief that in this article, above all others, we have such poor sourcing, and writing, but then I suppose that's politics for you. As a result of the immediately above thread, I have removed two sections from the article which would be unacceptable even in an article about a cartoon character. Sorry, but not only are we an encyclopedia, we are a responsible encyclopedia. Of anyone has issue with this, edit-warring will not be acceptable. A

I think there should be a definition of what it means for an online encyclopedia to be "reliable". In this case, isn't it just a synonym for "accuracy"? Am I missing something here? Dastle (talk) 23:07, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

There was a recent Wikipedia hoax that lead to several newspapers using false quotes. Has anyone else heard about this? --Ixfd64 (talk) 20:17, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Here are some external links, which are related to the reliability of Wikipedia.

• Main Page - WikiTrust
• Main Page - The UCSC Wikipedia Trust Project
• YouTube - How (Much) to Trust Wikipedia (time: 53:39)
• Home Page - Luca de Alfaro
• Luca de Alfaro - personal home page ‎(Luca)‎
  

--Wavelength (talk) 18:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Anyone who watches this page, and believes that there are problems that have structurl causes and thus may be helped with structural reform, please come to this new project: WP:Areas for Reform Slrubenstein | Talk 01:00, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Reference #26 just shows an error on the page. Could somebody find another link in that website? Perhaps the page moved?

Yes, the link is still broken Ottawahitech (talk) 16:55, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Fixed using the miracle of the

Wayback Machine. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs}

) 02:50, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I my grad school, you got an automatic "F" if you used Wikipedia as a source. Any other schools that have this policy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.160.23.2 (talk) 18:19, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes. See discussion at Wikipedia:Academic_use. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 10:33, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

There is no doubt Wikipedia is reliable. Legions of dutiful and inexperienced editors who know just enough to be dangerous lord upon legions of inexperienced authors who regularly mis-report material facts about any variety of topics. It's reliable in that this will go on ad infinitum. However, the ACCURACY of factual information in articles is still seriously in question and any study which calls upon itself to demonstrate accuracy is absurd. How many of you would be willing to ride on an airplane built with tools or using navigation equipment calibrated using itself as the standard?68.225.12.144 (talk) 15:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

No, it's generally reliable only if you read a B-class article or better. The C-class and stub classes are not guaranteed to be anything like true in certain topics, the religion and many philosophy articles is the unreliable underground of Wikipedia. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 16:57, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Section "Expert opinion", subsection "Academia" has a table listing the number of Wikipedia citations in Elsevier's ScienceDirect database. I think this is a very good way of showing the growing acceptance of Wikipedia by academics, but there are two problems. First of all, the link to the search results (footnote) is broken. Second, it's not clear to me at all how (using which search parameters) the numbers were obtained. I tried to reproduce the search results using the search string "wikipedia.org/wiki". For the year 2009, for example, I get 533 hits if I search just the References sections of articles, and I get 820 hits if I search the whole articles. I didn't manage to get the 614 hits that are listed in the table for 2009. When the table is remade, all search parameters (search string, search parts of articles etc.) should be stated in the footnote, otherwise it will remain mysterious how the numbers were obtained. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.62.3.251 (talk) 12:55, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I find that the english wikipedia has a pro serbian slant to it on the issue of kosovo. it is not reliable for facts. Most of the facts about the names of the places in albanian have been removed. there is a constant unbalanced editing going on. Everything on kosovo needs checking, it is very annoying. James Michael DuPont (talk) 07:56, 7 December 2010 (UTC).

The last paragraph under Reliability_of_Wikipedia#False_biographical_information is:

Wikipedia considers vandalism "the insertion of false and misleading information in bad faith".[citation needed] The Wikipedia page "Researching with Wikipedia" states:

Wikipedia's radical openness means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state: for example, it could be in the middle of a large edit or it could have been recently vandalized. While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, Wikipedia is certainly more subject to subtle vandalism than a typical reference work.

This paragraph does seem to fit in this context. I suspect that it's a copy/paste error. It should probably be somewhere else, but it's not obvious to me where. Alternatively, reworded slightly to mention bio info. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:06, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

This paragraph is not part of the content I've copied over from Criticism of Wikipedia. I might take a look at this later, but the paragraph is related to the section, which is about a specific type of false information. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:10, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Per this revert diff of The

It is not self-published. The article by Nicholas Stix was published by AR that also promote it on its frontpage. The source is also not questionable. What part of the sentence is questionable for you? AR is one of the leading representants of racialist and white nationalists point of view and information is not presented like fact but fact about AR´s opinion. --Dezidor (talk) 18:44, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Geez, all the times I've been accused of antisemitism for use as a reference some relatively innocuous lefty anti-Zionist publication - or for once posting a link to a mainstream article now only available on some alleged Holocaust denial site which I used without paying sufficient attention - and then had nasty explanations thrown in my face like "Racist (or racialist)/antisemitic/bigoted sites aren't WP:RS!!" -- I'm just amazed that no one has challenged this. I'm not going to debate it with you since I'm asking the question myself now. If no neutral editor explains it in 24 hours, I will bring it to WP:RSN because I just feel like there's some double standard being applied, or someone isn't paying attention.

As for the gender bias stuff, there's a lot more older and new criticism on all that I'm researching so can rewrite with better description of who said what by tonight or tomorrow morning. First draft less than perfect, but a start. CarolMooreDC (talk) 16:44, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

It's a reliable source for the opinion of AR. It's attributed to AR. Of course its not a reliable source for any kind of fact (except maybe the page number), but as an attributed opinion its fine from a

WP:UNDUE. From an international point of view, when I read "American Renaissance" my gut reaction is "who? what?", so I have serious doubts. --Stephan Schulz (talk

) 17:24, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, let me quote all of

Wikipedia:RS#Questionable_sources

, esp since only the self-published was addressed:

Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, or promotional in nature, or which rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources are generally unsuitable for citing contentious claims about third parties, which includes claims against institutions, persons living or dead, as well as more ill-defined entities. The proper uses of a questionable source are very limited.

The last two sentences are operative ones. Let's face it articles on organizations or publications with far more mainstream WP:RS than American Renaissance magazine have been deleted. (Like my former DC peace group.) I can only speculate why the "antiracism" faction hasn't tried to. (Not that I in anyway support the threats of violence that closed down the conference by the way.) So I guess I'm getting an opinion together after all. CarolMooreDC (talk) 20:09, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The only argument against American Renaissance is

Frankly, only reason I haven't gone to WP:RS yet is this might be about the only article where American Renaissance's opinion on 3rd parties would be allowed to be used because it is a criticism of Wikipedia itself. However, since I don't think I'll get sufficient NPOV editors here, I'll go to WP:RSN Monday and see if that might possibly be the reason it has survived so long. CarolMooreDC (talk) 02:23, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Minlesa: No,

WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not the only argument against it. Firstly it is a valid question whether it is a reliable source (however for the opinion of the organisation it is probably valid), secondly, and even more relevant, is the question of undue weight. To my mind the answer to the last question is clearly: yes, it is definitely undue weight to include the opinion of a fringe American magazine here. --Saddhiyama (talk

) 08:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

FYI: Editors discussing that source should know that Wikipedia has an extensive history with Nicholas Stix, who likely made numerous self-promotional edits to the project, including posting a biography and adding lots of links to his blogs, in addition to engaging in widespread incivility.[3]   Will Beback  talk  10:38, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

An example of his criticism of Wikipedia while still an active editor:

• [Wikipedia] is a false flag operation designed to spread leftwing lies among readers who know nothing of your agenda, while at the same time suckering real encyclopedists into it and seeking to waste their time and exhaust their energy, and stalk, censor, and intimidate them. In other words, it's a mirror of the humanities and social sciences in today’s university.[4]

Make of that what you will.   Will Beback  talk  10:55, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

@Saddhiyama: One short sence is obviously not UNDUE. This is UNDUE but it contains opinion that some group of editors really likes so they revert it again and again. It looks that articles about liberal bias are truthful. --Dezidor (talk) 12:19, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Any coverage of a truly fringe POV is undue. Even one short sentence in the biography on

WP:FRINGE.   Will Beback  talk

  12:36, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

But AR is well known pro-white group that cooperate with notable people like: American_Renaissance_(magazine)#Notable_contributors_and_speakers (some of them are university professors or notable writers) not fringe group. That´s why it can´t be UNDUE. --Dezidor (talk) 12:56, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Fringe POVs can be held by well-known and notable groups or individuals. David Icke, to use my earlier example.   Will Beback  talk  13:00, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Why do you call AR "fringe"? Just because you DONTLIKE their position. --Dezidor (talk) 13:03, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I call David Icke fringe because his ideas are not shared by reputable sources. I kind of like the idea of Queen Elizabeth being a reptile. ;)   Will Beback  talk  13:09, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

And AR ideas are shared by reputable sources such as professors (Rushton, Levin, Gottfried, Lynn...), authors and politians. Yes, they are in minority now, but are obviously not "fringe". --Dezidor (talk) 13:17, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The issue here is not AR's views on race and intelligence. The question here is the Stix article about Wikipedia published by AR. Have you seen similar views espoused by reputable sources?   Will Beback  talk  13:24, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The issue here is AR's views on race and and way how Wikipedia present this issue. They conclude that it has strong liberal bias. It is not just Stix because they promote that article at frontpage for long time. Tim Anderson, a senior lecturer in political economy at the University of Sydney, conclude that Wikipedia has an American and corporate bias and he has one paragraph in this article. AR statement is just one sentence in paragraph where many sources claim a liberal bias of Wikipedia, and the issue of race is just one piece next to the global warming, abortion, immigration etc.--Dezidor (talk) 13:51, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

• I think the issue is is AmRen mag a WP:RS for opinion about 3rd parties, which I doubt the community would support. [http://amren.com/features/200807wikipedia.html This page] says AmRen mag published Nicholas Stix article and his blog seems to confirm he might have permitted its use. However, given questions Will Beback brought up on AmRen talk page, I guess better evidence might be necessary.
• I think it possibly would be ok to have a section on "fringe group" criticisms since there are so many such groups, if enough of them commented on Wikipeda. Then we only would have to argue over whether The Final Call, Bitch (magazine), Front Page Magazine, Libertarian Party News, etc. were fringe enough or not for that section. However, just having one such source sticking out so noticeably there is vs. WP:RS not to mention WP:UNDUE.
• FYI, thanks for reminding I meant to put a WP:BLP tag on the list of Am Ren contributors since under WP:BLP you would have to provide a link proving those individuals had written for the publication, be it a link to the article or a link to a list of articles the magazine says it has published at the top of the section. (And I've done this a number of times over the years, often cleaning out nonsourced individuals in controversial claims.) I see only one has a ref. Otherwise there's no way of knowing if there is an error or if some vandal stuck something in there.
• Also note, if Am Ren ends up being quoted as a credible source in as many mainstream publications as SPLC, it might also become more reputable here. Of course, many Wikipedia ditors also question SPLC's financial and other motives, as well as its research, in some of its reports. CarolMooreDC (talk) 13:44, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Fyi, just put this up here: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#American_Renaissance_.28magazine.29 CarolMooreDC (talk) 12:54, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, Mr. Beback. I deleted the entry last time. Do you want to volunteer this time or do we need more consensus? (I did put a notice on a relevant Wikiproject but not sure how active it is.) CarolMooreDC (talk) 00:09, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

This strikes me as not so much a RS issue as a weight and notability issue. Clearly the publication is a reliable source for its own views. Whether that view is notable enough to merit inclusion in an article would seem to be to depend on whether any other unrelated, reliable secondary sources reported AR's views on the matter. The answer appears to be "no". In many, if not most, of the instances of criticism cited in this section, an independent reliable secondary source is reporting on the criticism. Those sources are making the determination that the particular criticism or the particular critic is notable enough to merit reportage. Unless this article is intended to simply be a list of every bit of published criticism of Wikipedia regardless of source (and I can see a perfectly valid argument for that approach) I would not think that the views of this publication are notable enough to merit inclusion in the article. I would suggest that, if the direction of the article is not to simply be a list, that the same criteria be applied to the other sources being cited as well.

Fladrif (talk

) 20:47, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

At this diff at the WP:RS Noticeboard Will Beback presented a bunch of WP:RS calling American Renaissance an extremist group.

Wikipedia:RS#Questionable_sources says we don't use references that "include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist". So I'd say the matter is settled. CarolMooreDC (talk

) 22:54, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the cult accusation fits better in the

Community of Wikipedia article. I'm not sure that I agree about merging the Wikiscanner info into the current "Conflicts involving Wikipedia policy makers" section. The article is divided into assessments and incidents. The Wikiscanner stuff in general seems broad enough that it does not belong in the incidents section. -- JTSchreiber (talk

) 05:20, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I tracked down the material removal to this edit by FT2, who stated that the removal was needed per

WP:BLP. At the moment, I don't have an opinion about that, so I'll let the two of you discuss it. -- JTSchreiber (talk

) 04:57, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

As Conrothmas pointed out, this article, especially its introduction, is cherry picking studies and fails to properly address criticism of Wikipedia's reliability, merely showing support of Wikipedia's reliability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ummonk (talk • contribs) 05:46, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

The article contains a number of examples in the Notable incidents section describing how incorrect, even deliberately dishonest material existed on Wikipedia for a period of time. It acknowledges that this is difficult to totally prevent. So it's not "merely showing support". What else would you like to see? HiLo48 (talk) 06:00, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the lead section (introduction) is overly positive and needs to be made more neutral per NPOV. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 23:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

For it to be cherry picked, what other studies are there that show the converse? If there are other studies, then I want them in the article, but i'm not away of any. In the absence of any others, the article would be balanced, if these are the only ones.Rememberway (talk) 23:14, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

In the "Comparison of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias for accuracy, breadth, and depth in historical articles" section above, there's one study which is somewhat less flattering to Wikipedia. Any opinion on that study? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I noticed my tag was removed. I will add studies such as the study above when I get the time. Until then please do not remove the tag without first fixing the article. Ummonk (talk) 22:35, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

As Rememberway said. I track this article and if I come across significant studies or views I take account of them in the article. Since 2007 mainstream academic studies, papers and coverage have almost entirely come to the same conclusion. Between 2005 and 2011 coverage has become gradually more and more similar, and less skeptical - the routine comments are that Wikipedia is surprisingly accurate, can be used for a first step, is reasonably reliable, but omissions and poor readability are still issues and errors and vandalism can occasionally happen. Todays latest paper is yet another saying exactly the same, but in politics rather than science.

If there is significant missing information please do list it - it will get a careful review. But a POV tag does not mean the mainstream views weren't as expected. Unless there is considerable coverage missed, the article is fundamentally, balanced. However as requested leaving the tag on in case it misses a significant number of contrary academic studies or significant views, or some aspect is unbalanced. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 10:39, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe the studies done have made the cherry picking by selecting a few articles of say A-class or better, while me myself know of quite a few really trashy articles here and there. The perceived POV is not a

neutrality issue per Wikipedia policies, but rather by the editor's gut feeling, I think. And of course I agree – probably that's one of the most important reasons why I'm still here. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³

!) 05:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

By the way: the Encyclopedia Britannica vitriolic attack on the Nature survey should mostly be compared to the sometimes (a few times) very hot debates going on on the talk pages. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 07:17, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I just found out that there is an Article feedback tool only because I was prompted by it as I was reading a page. It is getting wider use as of May 9, 2011. This article does not mention that tool, or other tools Wikipedia may be working on to rate/assess or improve reliability. Are there other tools like that in the works? A section on that specific tool and those types of project would be a good idea. History2007 (talk) 21:14, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

In this edit [5], History2007 restrictied the scope of the article to the English language content of Wikipedia. History2007 thought that there was "nothing about French, Italian, Chinese Wki etc. in article". This is not quite true. While the vast majority of the article is about the English language content, there are facts about content in other languages. I found the following examples:

• In the "Comparative studies" section, two studies of German language content are described.
• In the "Tools for testing the reliability of articles" section, one sentence states that Wiki-Watch can be used to analyze German language content.
• In the "False biographical information" section, one incident is described for Wikipedia’s French language content.

The article is now inconsistent. The options I see are:

• Remove the qualification in the first sentence limiting the article to English language content.
• Remove the content dealing with languages other than English from this article. In this case, it would be best to rename the article to make it clear that the article is limited to English language content.

I prefer the first option, but will wait for others' opinions before making a change. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:04, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but you had to fish to find those examples. And still there is nothing about Chinese, Italian, Portuguese or other Wikipedias. The mentions of the other languages are just token references. And that actually brings about an interesting point. What does Wikipedia mean in general? I the early days the English version was the key item, and it still remains so. But now there is a wealth of content elsewhere - specially on local topics such as cities, buildings, artists etc. I was going to discuss "cross-language" consistency later, so for now let us just refer to what the article does.

The best way will probably be to say at the top that this article "primarily" refers to English-Wiki - because that is what it does. So there is need for clarifying what Wikipedia means. As far as I can see (and as far as I know) the Japanese Wikipedia has not been tested. Now, does it have accurate info? Who knows? Does it have valuable info? In some cases, probably.

And we should remember that the other Wikis are no longer isolated islands, because people do look up info in them and add to the English language Wiki. So the reliability of those will affect the English Wikipedia through reliability osmosis. And that does not mean a reduction in reliability, but can also enhance it. In the area of art history, life of artists etc. the other Wikis have pretty good information - but I have not compared what they say about physics.

The long and short of it is that the other Wikis will not be forever ignored, because they have useful info on many topics, at times more info than the English version. The eventual very interesting topic will be to wait until someone does a "cross-wiki" study, information osmosis analysis, etc., then we will see. The eventual goal will be to have harmony between the top 10 Wikis - they can certainly benefit from each other. History2007 (talk) 06:56, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone know how those numbers were obtained? I tried to replicate them so I could update the table but I just can't get the values for the years 2003-2009 to match up. If this isn't resolved, the table should be deleted or remade with defined search paramaters and reproducable results. The current situation is simply unacceptable.--U5K0 (talk) 15:29, 7 June 2011 (UTC)