wikipedia is bogus

[varwoche]

I regularly encounter links to wikipedia on these forums. Decided to check it out and discovered:

Wikipedia is an online open-content encyclopedia ... Its structure allows any individual with an Internet connection and World Wide Web browser to alter the content found here.

wikipedia

 

[Kopji]

Thanks. Ok guilty, yeah I have an naive streak. I like the Wiki information formatting when it has what I'm looking for. Not automatically "bogus" though, just open source.

 

[Yahweh]

I like Wikipedia because its content covers just about everything. However, I always take everything I read from it with a grain of NaCl. It makes a good source to be exposed to a lot of information.

Behind the scenes of Wikipedia, there are "edit wars". A few pages to keep your eye on include:

Creationism:

The neutrality of this article is disputed.

Scientific Skepticism. This page is routinely being locked due to editors freely changing the page to extremely arrogant skepticism or extremely ignorant mask using the name of skepticism. Take a look at the page history.

 

[walthrup48]

Re Randi's biography page

It might be worth including Randi's UK book 'James Randi: Psychic Investigator' (Boxtree Ltd, 1991, ISBN 1-85283-144-8) in the Bibliography section.

Also, his name is James Randi, not Randall James Hamilton Zwinge (as implied by the first sentence). He changed it by deed poll.

Has anyone here got the power to edit the entry?

 

[Brian the Snail]

Re Randi's biography page

It might be worth including Randi's UK book 'James Randi: Psychic Investigator' (Boxtree Ltd, 1991, ISBN 1-85283-144-8) in the Bibliography section.

Also, his name is James Randi, not Randall James Hamilton Zwinge (as implied by the first sentence). He changed it by deed poll.

Has anyone here got the power to edit the entry?

I think all you have to do to edit the page is to click on the link on the left saying "Edit this page." It might be worth checking out this first though.

As for whether it's bogus or not- actually, I find that for the most part the articles are pretty good and well-balanced, and it's a good source of information. However, I also think it's advisable to be cautious- don't take it as authorative. Use the same critical thinking skills that you would use for any source of information- check for bias and citations, and make sure you double check any information that you're unsure of.

 

[Chupacabras]

FWIW, I am a Wiki. I honestly think this is a very good way to make a contribution to the world, if you feel like it. I have not worked much at it, but I will be rather focusing on my comunity - (city, location, statistics, economy, pictures, history...).

I am very cautious in making changes and try to document them well. ie: both Guadalajara and Monterrey have a tradition of calling themselves as the second largest city in Mexico. A very good mental exercise to try to make a literary balance of that! I feel I can also contribute at correction in translations to a certain extent.

When I have the time, I will give a good try to some articles that are written very thoroughly, but remain obscure, technical and largely unintelligible for the layman. This is my personal greatest aspiration: to find a way of putting things so everyone can understand (yeah, I know, but I'll try!).

As of articles on skepticism, creationism, etc... I may enter the debate one day...

 

[tamiO]

I am reminded of a snippet of a very good article in itself; written by Douglas Adams.

http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html

Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back – like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust – of course you can’t, it’s just people talking – but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV – a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’.

 

[geni]

Their homeopathy article appears to be flawed from both sides.

 

[tamiO]

Their homeopathy article appears to be flawed from both sides.

That will probably inspire someone to supply correct information.

 

[geni]

That will probably inspire someone to supply correct information.

Without getting edited instatly? Tricky. It'd not so much the article is unbalance it's just that the wole thing is writen by people who don't see to know a huge amout about the subject (nothing on miasms not reasuch less than 7 years old contains a whole load taken form a Dana ullman article)