Then that's the problem. If Wikipedia cannot be trusted, then what is it? What are people (some are very dedicated people) contributing to? If people looking for information are being told that they cannot trust any information they see on wikipedia, then what purpose does it have?
One conversation I'd like to have is "What are expertise and scholarship and why are they important in a free society?"
A small sidetrack. Some months ago, I read "Telling Lies About Hitler", an account of the David Irving libel trial, written by Richard Evans, a noted historian who was one of the expert witnesses used in the trial.
The point of the trial for most was about whether the Holocaust of the Jews actually occurred and why do some people cast doubt upon it? For Richard Evans, the real point was about the historical record, the role of scholarship and expertise, the need for review.
In David Irving was a person of no academic record conducting detailed and painstaking work into the history of the Third Reich. He produced reams of new information and data that no-one else had come across and made lots of money and notoriety based upon the claims he made upon those records made in thick book after thick book. He even called it "Real History" and described himself as a "Real Historian".
Now, for Evans, the questions were not about Irving's academic prowess, but about scholarship and accuracy. Did his claims derive solely from a dispassionate reading entirely of source materials as he claimed? Evans pointed out that historians often made errors of judgment when examining source documents, especially if they were inexperienced or writing to a particular conclusion.
The key part for me, was expert review: Irving would have none of it. All of his works were for public publication, and none were academically previewed. Some were reviewed after the fact, but publicity and notoriety drowned out the reasoned arguments of a few scholars and most historians simply ignored his political statements and his books while praising his research skills. Irving regarded himself as above expert review and had no formal training in scholarship.
Now back to Wikipedia. Once again we have no expert preview. Once again Wikipedia publishes to the public only (and instantly!). Once again the expertise of people in various subjects is drowned out by publicity and notoriety. Even more incredibly we are told that it is the responsibility of the
subject to ensure accuracy and fairness, not the writer or writers or even the publisher which proclaims itself to be merely a channel with only a minimal reactive filter.
There needs to be a debate about this. The principles of any free society depends upon the truthfulness of knowledge on which its citizens are informed, and its polticians instructed via the ballot box. If Wikipedia is not it, then what is it?
Looking at the Skepticwiki, I read the article of the fallacy of Equivocation:
Equivocation is an informal
logical fallacy where a participant uses a word in two different senses during the same argument in such a way as to create confusion.
This is a fallacy because words have multiple meanings that may be unrelated.
Now it appears to me that Wikipedia uses equivocation in the way it describes itself as "free". There are several senses of the word: one is "available for anyone to read", another is "costs no money to use". But Wikipedia, I think, equivocates those two meanings with another sense of the word "free", which is subtely used by people advocating open source software:
"Free from influence from corporate or large financial institutions, political interference by vested interests or proprietary control, being instead a common ownership, giving maximum choice to the user or consumer, a beacon of liberty and individualism as well as being non-partisan"
I wonder...
