The Shrine

Any of you guys heard about this "wiki washing" before? Kinda destroys the point, doesn't it?

Long URLs suck!

Well, they are free to edit by anyone, I guess you can't really do anything about it

Of course people Wiki-wash. Senators' offices been getting caught doing it. At least, however, you can check the history. People frequently do reverts, edit wars go on, quite the drama.

It's still a good resource. You have to be fairly clever to Wiki-wash well, because someone originally posted that paragraph that you're scrubbing out, and is fairly likely to check back to see what happens to it. Some of the more zealous editors on there will emit piercing shrieks if a comma goes out of joint the wrong way.

So, garbage can get put in there, but frequently it will get taken out, too. And the history always bears it out.

Still about the only stable anarchic system available on the Internet.

Alright, Sine edited my URL! I forgot to thank him for making sure that the horizontal bar doesn't appear on the browser (which would have made reading all of the other messages a pain in the ass).

You're welcome.

So now we're imping too?

I just think it's funny that you're making a big deal out of it.

SineSwiper wrote:I just think it's funny that you're making a big deal out of it.

I'm pointing it out more than making a big deal of it. Notice that I haven't really replied that much?

Getting back on topic, here's some other articles about the edits:

New York Times edits (LGF; with right-wing bias of course)
Slashdot article about the deal, with stuff about Diebold
Fox News caught making less obvious and more sneaky edits

Like I said, too bad but no one can do anything about it. They have just as much right as we do to edit. Completely destroys the idea of Wikipedia, so I hope the watchdog groups continuously use and update programs like this to keep an eye on this crap and at least make it public that's what's going on. Then it's up to the public to determine whether or not they'll tolerate it.

Judging from the response here, I'd say the level of caring will be fairly minimal.

Zeus wrote:Like I said, too bad but no one can do anything about it. They have just as much right as we do to edit. Completely destroys the idea of Wikipedia, so I hope the watchdog groups continuously use and update programs like this to keep an eye on this crap and at least make it public that's what's going on. Then it's up to the public to determine whether or not they'll tolerate it.

Judging from the response here, I'd say the level of caring will be fairly minimal.

if the idea behind wikipedia is that anyone out there can edit it.....how does someone.....anyone editing it destroy the idea of a place that anyone can edit.

Chris Hansbrough wrote:

Zeus wrote:Like I said, too bad but no one can do anything about it. They have just as much right as we do to edit. Completely destroys the idea of Wikipedia, so I hope the watchdog groups continuously use and update programs like this to keep an eye on this crap and at least make it public that's what's going on. Then it's up to the public to determine whether or not they'll tolerate it.

Judging from the response here, I'd say the level of caring will be fairly minimal.

if the idea behind wikipedia is that anyone out there can edit it.....how does someone.....anyone editing it destroy the idea of a place that anyone can edit.

The idea of Wikipedia is the collection of knowledge from all sources into a database open to the public for information purposes. It's essentially self-policed and minimizes bias, which is a big problem in educational publications; no subjectivity involved. Now, you can never truly have unbiased information since your very view of life is biased, but when you have the whole world ready to fix what you write, you're gonna have to write it in such a way and provide evidence in such a way as to stand up to scrunity.

Companies, politicians, organized groups, or any other person with an agenda altering or editing out facts, whether complimentary or not, destroys the entire point of Wikipedia. Sure, the way it's set up you expect the problem to be corrected (as we're seeing now with these Wiki tracking programs) but during the transition period, you're still gonna have very biased articles or portions thereof.

Well, tools like this actually help in the fight for valid information. I'm sure now that every news organization is taking shit from each other about their own edits (Fox rats out CNN, CNN rats out Fox and NYT, etc.), they likely have employees watching the tool and mandates to not make any bullshit changes like that again.

Remember, this isn't a new problem. This is discovery of an old problem. Discovery is the first step towards solving a problem.

Zeus wrote:

Chris Hansbrough wrote:

Zeus wrote:Like I said, too bad but no one can do anything about it. They have just as much right as we do to edit. Completely destroys the idea of Wikipedia, so I hope the watchdog groups continuously use and update programs like this to keep an eye on this crap and at least make it public that's what's going on. Then it's up to the public to determine whether or not they'll tolerate it.

Judging from the response here, I'd say the level of caring will be fairly minimal.

if the idea behind wikipedia is that anyone out there can edit it.....how does someone.....anyone editing it destroy the idea of a place that anyone can edit.

The idea of Wikipedia is the collection of knowledge from all sources into a database open to the public for information purposes. It's essentially self-policed and minimizes bias, which is a big problem in educational publications; no subjectivity involved. Now, you can never truly have unbiased information since your very view of life is biased, but when you have the whole world ready to fix what you write, you're gonna have to write it in such a way and provide evidence in such a way as to stand up to scrunity.

Companies, politicians, organized groups, or any other person with an agenda altering or editing out facts, whether complimentary or not, destroys the entire point of Wikipedia. Sure, the way it's set up you expect the problem to be corrected (as we're seeing now with these Wiki tracking programs) but during the transition period, you're still gonna have very biased articles or portions thereof.

Wiki-washing is bad, but human nature is what it is. Compared to the self-aggrandizing scrubbery in corporate press releases, I'm just absolutely, humbly thankful that at least Wiki has an inalterable (relatively speaking) edit history. I'd love it if Wikipedia could be absolutely unflappable on fact all the time, but that is 1000% impossible. At least this system has auditability, and even more can be updated in realtime - if someone paid off an encyclopedia editor back in the day to make some privileged edits, that was it, and there was nothing you could do about it.

Seriously, most wiki-washers just end up getting themselves in trouble anyway. It's not really that bright, because Wikipedia is home to a lot of frothing data addicts who love almost nothing better than to point out Wiki-washing and related items. In the end, it's more likely to get you an addendum on your article that you tried to Wiki-wash than anything else!

I mostly use Wikipedia for looking up things that are often in text books, or for quick data-sheet style fact checking. The coverage of Computer Science topics is quite impressive, and generally better than the textbooks I have lying around; the entry on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-black_tree">Red-black Trees</a> is a good example. These are the sort of topics where I expect convergence.

I don't use Wikipedia to look up current events or contentious social and political issues. (Well, sometimes I do, but only to look through the discussion page, which is often entertaining. The discussion page for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Evolu ... olution</a> is particularly amusing; it's so long it has to be archived by month and year.) But I wouldn't use a traditional encyclopedia for that either. While sometimes Wikipedia is appropriate as an only source (like when I'm implementing a data structure I haven't implemented in years, and I want a good reference), in general, it's just a good starting point.

Kupek wrote:But I wouldn't use a traditional encyclopedia for that either. While sometimes Wikipedia is appropriate as an only source (like when I'm implementing a data structure I haven't implemented in years, and I want a good reference), in general, it's just a good starting point.

Everybody says this like it's a bad thing. The fact of the matter is that all encyclopedias are starting points. It would be idiotic for a kid to do a book report based on a single entry in an encyclopedia book, but many do.

A library (or what is now called "The Internet") is host to many books on many subjects. Usually when you research, you jump to a bunch of different sources and basically write a summary on all of those sources.

Traditional encyclopedias are still victims of misinformation, like Zeus said. At least with an "open source" version of one, everybody can correct that misinformation, at the cost of an added element of potential vandalism (which is easily corrected by the reader themselves).

Uh, isn't that what I said?

EA having fun with Wikipedia

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/48482

Kupek wrote:Uh, isn't that what I said?

Errr...no. I don't understand. What you said was different than what I said.

Eric wrote:EA having fun with Wikipedia

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/48482

An extension of my original URL. Motherless fucks, all of them

Zeus wrote:Any of you guys heard about this "wiki washing" before? Kinda destroys the point, doesn't it?

Long URLs suck!

Well, they are free to edit by anyone, I guess you can't really do anything about it

Wikipedia was meant to be open for anyone to modify. And that often includes people whom you may not agree with.

Zeus wrote:

Eric wrote:EA having fun with Wikipedia

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/48482

An extension of my original URL. Motherless fucks, all of them

This kind of stuff has been going on throughout history. You don't actually believe that history stuff you spent so much time studying in school is the Truth of God do you?

BTW, this topic reminds me of this old Penny Arcade comic.

Ishamael wrote:

Zeus wrote:

Eric wrote:EA having fun with Wikipedia

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/48482

An extension of my original URL. Motherless fucks, all of them

This kind of stuff has been going on throughout history. You don't actually believe that history stuff you spent so much time studying in school is the Truth of God do you?

Not at all. That's why I like Wikipedia. It's policed by EVERYONE not just a couple of people making a book. Bias is very minimized that way.

With these Wiki-scanners, it'll get back to that soon too. You're gonna have watch groups on this shit, there already is. It'll just be a constant monitoring now. It's just sad it has to be that way, that was the point of my original post