Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial(papers.ssrn.com)
papers.ssrn.com
Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3039505
66 comments
This certainly is annoying. Many years ago when I first found Wikipedia, I would sometimes just type in my notes from some university classes. It was kind of a garbled mess, but every time it just took a couple days and someone had edited it, turning into a decent article.
These days even much higher quality content will be deleted. For something to be accepted now it needs to be like something written by a professional writer and follow all kinds of guidelines for style, citations and much more immediately. Nobody fixes issues anymore, if there's any issues or something is not very well written it will be deleted immediately.
These days even much higher quality content will be deleted. For something to be accepted now it needs to be like something written by a professional writer and follow all kinds of guidelines for style, citations and much more immediately. Nobody fixes issues anymore, if there's any issues or something is not very well written it will be deleted immediately.
> I would sometimes just type in my notes from some university classes
The time is ripe for something like Knol to be re-introduced.
Even before Knol, we had something like this, and they were called personal websites. People would use them to document their passions (or anything, really) and you could find them on Google. People are probably so addicted to centralization and services, though, and Google's approach to ranking so overwhelmingly works against that style now, that it's probably unworkable to argue for relying on that again.
The time is ripe for something like Knol to be re-introduced.
Even before Knol, we had something like this, and they were called personal websites. People would use them to document their passions (or anything, really) and you could find them on Google. People are probably so addicted to centralization and services, though, and Google's approach to ranking so overwhelmingly works against that style now, that it's probably unworkable to argue for relying on that again.
> For something to be accepted now it needs to be like something written by a professional writer [...]
Actually it is mostly selected by person rather than content or style. Mostly evidenced by the fact that accepted edits are mostly done by the same people. This is at least true for the German Wikipedia, but I have no doubt that the English one isn't any different.
Actually it is mostly selected by person rather than content or style. Mostly evidenced by the fact that accepted edits are mostly done by the same people. This is at least true for the German Wikipedia, but I have no doubt that the English one isn't any different.
There must be more to the story than that. I've made many edits and I don't recall any being deleted. Maybe they didn't follow the rules.
From that short description I'm pretty sure it's related to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin...
In short, Wikipedia tries to discourage writing about yourself, which also applies to doing so through a representative.
In short, Wikipedia tries to discourage writing about yourself, which also applies to doing so through a representative.
There are three major reasons why those get deleted.
1: Intent matters and advocacy is not permitted on Wikipedia. A lot of people don't like this rule or think it can be ignored if they don't demand payment for it.
2: You can't editing Wikipedia to bring awareness of something while at the same time fulfill the notability requirements. The top 50 academics are important for their fields, and can also be completely unknown for the rest of the world. As an example, people in sport, music and cinema are much more common to have an Wikipedia article about them then academics. This does not mean academics are less important to society, but it does reflect notability.
3: As others has marked, writing a article about yourself or by a representative is heavily discouraged. This runs in the same vein as advocacy.
1: Intent matters and advocacy is not permitted on Wikipedia. A lot of people don't like this rule or think it can be ignored if they don't demand payment for it.
2: You can't editing Wikipedia to bring awareness of something while at the same time fulfill the notability requirements. The top 50 academics are important for their fields, and can also be completely unknown for the rest of the world. As an example, people in sport, music and cinema are much more common to have an Wikipedia article about them then academics. This does not mean academics are less important to society, but it does reflect notability.
3: As others has marked, writing a article about yourself or by a representative is heavily discouraged. This runs in the same vein as advocacy.
It's interesting to think that the event of these scientists doing these edits is probably morale enough for its own entry.
Yes, and events like that can have enduring notability given enough third-party coverage.
In this specific case I tried to search for the article/event, but neither of the search engine gave me any results, to the point where I now would like a source from gscott about that story.
In this specific case I tried to search for the article/event, but neither of the search engine gave me any results, to the point where I now would like a source from gscott about that story.
It matches my experience.
I can update pages about some topics (e.g. backup, tape drives, backup products) and nothing gets deleted or changed. But there are others where everything I update gets reverted with a comment like "reverted good faith edit from ____"
I can update pages about some topics (e.g. backup, tape drives, backup products) and nothing gets deleted or changed. But there are others where everything I update gets reverted with a comment like "reverted good faith edit from ____"
This might be a case of the Law of triviality[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
I think the expected reaction to having your good faith edits reverted is to reconsider whether it's an improvement to the article, and if it is, reapply it and potentially start a discussion on the talk page. If they keep reverting, they'll eventually get blocked from doing so.
Happens an awful lot with "off message" edits that run counter to the political bias of the general Wiki editor demographic.
Apparently editors identifying as a woman get rolled back far more often then men. This issue also effects some pages more than others. Corporate pages are often maintained by marketing companies that will monitor for changes that they perceive to be negative for their client. On the other hand changes to more technical topic tend to go unchallenged.
> Apparently editors identifying as a woman get rolled back far more often then men.
I'm not a scientist, however, this sounds like it could be a legitimate study. If it is, what is the control group? 50 men doing the same?
I'm not a scientist, however, this sounds like it could be a legitimate study. If it is, what is the control group? 50 men doing the same?
Don't be lazy.
The actually data, as given in the study, is that the first 1 edit has a 2% higher rate of reverting than males, with each further edit a decreased revert rate to the point where female users are less likely to be reverted than male users once they hit their 16th edit.
The statement that "Apparently editors identifying as a woman get rolled back far more often then men" and the actually research result is quite far from each other.
The actually data, as given in the study, is that the first 1 edit has a 2% higher rate of reverting than males, with each further edit a decreased revert rate to the point where female users are less likely to be reverted than male users once they hit their 16th edit.
The statement that "Apparently editors identifying as a woman get rolled back far more often then men" and the actually research result is quite far from each other.
I don't trust this source. The article is on a website with a well-known gender bias[1].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia
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MediaWiki (the software running wikipedia) has this queuing feature already, it's called pending changes (edits from IPs/new users require review before going live): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes
It is often used in non-english Wikipedias as default for all articles, on enwiki however only a very limited number of articles are protected in this way.
However review guidelines usually don't ask for a check of correctness, but against spam and other obviously inappropriate content.
It is often used in non-english Wikipedias as default for all articles, on enwiki however only a very limited number of articles are protected in this way.
However review guidelines usually don't ask for a check of correctness, but against spam and other obviously inappropriate content.
Would you mind giving links to these pages? Especially links to the specific edits which were reverted? This would set you apart from all the other people who complain about Wikipedia; as a rule, no links or specifics are given.
OP (and others in this thread) might not want to reveal their IP address or their Wikipedia username.
Or they might secretly be a dog. If someone complains about edits in Wikipedia, a site where all edits are publicly recorded for all time, I want to see links, or some very good reason for not providing any.
Another idea for Wikipedia 2.0 is make the basic unit a "statement" rather than an "article". When Google Knol came out and called a Knol a unit of knowledge, I was excited that this was what they were going for, but sadly it was not to be. Now that we have GPT-3 like technology, it wouldn't be hard to generate generally readable prose from a database of statements. Each statement can be verified independently from each other, and can appear in multiple articles.
E.g.
E.g.
[Christopher Columbus]
is a person
is italian
is an explorer, navigator
birth 1451/08/25 - 1451/10/31
death 1506/05/20
is known for the exploration of the AmericasThat is the exact idea behind Abstract Wikipedia (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia), the idea of which is to automatically generate prose from structured data in Wikidata (https://www.wikidata.org). You can already do a lot of cool stuff with Wikidata today
That's great! The wikidata UI could be more compact though.
See also the World Wide Graph <https://graph.global> by Mek from OpenLibrary/archive.org. It's more informal than Wikidata and has looser requirements. (Pretty sure Mek wants it to embody something closer to the original "sum of all human knowledge" spirit that was bandied about in relation to Wikipedia in its early days. Heed the privacy implications of this, however! <https://graph.5apps.com/LP/streamline/?id=660>)
I ran into the bugs in the default web-based client available from the graph.global homepage, though, and I'm not especially fond of the opinionated choices it makes about overriding browser-native behavior for dealing with navigation.
I made an attempt back in November at beginning to implement an alternative frontend for it. I have an "instance" (if you can call it that) running at <https://graph.5apps.com/LP/streamline/>, but right now you can only use it for read-only access to w2g. I will eventually fix this to allow graph changes, too, because my original motivation also included how cumbersome I noticed it was when entering new triples and linking together existing entities. I haven't worked out the right interaction for that yet. See this recent note <https://hypothes.is/a/RdwnFLRlEeu1mD-tdfIKCQ> about adding a command-line interface to w2g.
Granted, it has similar whitespace problems as your criticism of Wikidata. An even more streamlined version that is tailored to be accessed from the terminal is, I think, more in line with what you'd probably like to see.
I ran into the bugs in the default web-based client available from the graph.global homepage, though, and I'm not especially fond of the opinionated choices it makes about overriding browser-native behavior for dealing with navigation.
I made an attempt back in November at beginning to implement an alternative frontend for it. I have an "instance" (if you can call it that) running at <https://graph.5apps.com/LP/streamline/>, but right now you can only use it for read-only access to w2g. I will eventually fix this to allow graph changes, too, because my original motivation also included how cumbersome I noticed it was when entering new triples and linking together existing entities. I haven't worked out the right interaction for that yet. See this recent note <https://hypothes.is/a/RdwnFLRlEeu1mD-tdfIKCQ> about adding a command-line interface to w2g.
Granted, it has similar whitespace problems as your criticism of Wikidata. An even more streamlined version that is tailored to be accessed from the terminal is, I think, more in line with what you'd probably like to see.
> Now that we have GPT-3 like technology, it wouldn't be hard to generate generally readable prose from a database of statements
Which database of statements is this?
More, it might be easy to generate readable text, but accurate, correct text is a wholly different matter.
Which database of statements is this?
More, it might be easy to generate readable text, but accurate, correct text is a wholly different matter.
> Some years ago there was an NPR story on women in academia and how one decided to get together 50 top female academics in their fields and update Wikipedia in their subject matter that they hold PHD's in and work at Universities teaching about. Waste of time, all deleted.
This sounds strange. Few years ago, when I was still in academia, I used to make small contributions to Wikipedia articles in my field (theoretical physics) and even smaller contributions to all sorts or articles (like fixing grammatical errors or adding "source needed" -tags). I checked my Wikipedia history now and none of my edits were ever reverted.
What I sometimes see on Wikipedia is details of some new and obscure, sometimes even controversial research in a general overview article. It's probably the researchers themselves advertising their own research and trying to make it look more important. Sometimes this is probably even done in good faith. I wonder if this is what happened to the women in your story
This sounds strange. Few years ago, when I was still in academia, I used to make small contributions to Wikipedia articles in my field (theoretical physics) and even smaller contributions to all sorts or articles (like fixing grammatical errors or adding "source needed" -tags). I checked my Wikipedia history now and none of my edits were ever reverted.
What I sometimes see on Wikipedia is details of some new and obscure, sometimes even controversial research in a general overview article. It's probably the researchers themselves advertising their own research and trying to make it look more important. Sometimes this is probably even done in good faith. I wonder if this is what happened to the women in your story
> Some years ago there was an NPR story on women in academia and how one decided to get together 50 top female academics in their fields and update Wikipedia in their subject matter that they hold PHD's in and work at Universities teaching about. Waste of time, all deleted.
[citation needed]
Can't find the NPR article based on your description.
[citation needed]
Can't find the NPR article based on your description.
I'm me 3 on that citation. I'd love to read more on this and see what happened.
> A Wikipedia 2.0 is needed... one where edits are put into a queue rather then having someone come in ten minutes later and delete your edit simply because it is live immediately.
This is how some language versions of Wikipedia work, for example the German Wikipedia. Edits by new editors or IP-addresses are not live immediately but are put into a special review state for a more experienced editor to confirm the change. The English language version only uses this for a subset of pages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes
This is how some language versions of Wikipedia work, for example the German Wikipedia. Edits by new editors or IP-addresses are not live immediately but are put into a special review state for a more experienced editor to confirm the change. The English language version only uses this for a subset of pages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes
Maybe we need to create a "factopedia", with strict process for verification of facts, to avoid bias at Wikipedia.
It’s been tried, more or less:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizendium
However, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizendium
However, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I'm thinking about something different: a site, where everyone can publish a fact or a statement, arguments that supports or contradicts the fact, and a process with goal to make fact proven or falsified. (Sorry for my English).
Fact: Earth is flat.
Pros: Earth is flat, it's obvious. [direct evidence]
Cons: Fact: [Picture of the Earth from the space] shows that Earth is round.
Fact: Picture of the Earth from the space
Not saying that’s not got its place, but most people want to look something up and get the facts.
Personally I prefer if Wikipedia just says “earth is a sphere” and links citations, than makes me wade through a bunch of bullshit and evaluate it all for myself.
Personally I prefer if Wikipedia just says “earth is a sphere” and links citations, than makes me wade through a bunch of bullshit and evaluate it all for myself.
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[deleted]
It has gone downhill badly in the last few years. Anything with a political angle has a hard left bias. Many articles just look like smear pieces.
> In the months after uploading it, an average new Wikipedia article in Chemistry is read tens of thousands of times and causes changes to hundreds of related scientific journal articles. ... Patterns in these changes suggest that Wikipedia articles are used as review articles ... we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations.
> we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations.
Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. In university I quickly learned that the best assignment hack was to harvest Wikipedia references.
Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. In university I quickly learned that the best assignment hack was to harvest Wikipedia references.
> we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations.
I also found very casual evidence that some people abuse the shit out of it for self-promotion (which is hardly surprising).
I also found very casual evidence that some people abuse the shit out of it for self-promotion (which is hardly surprising).
I've seen blog posts, news articles, forum comments, and YouTube videos based on my Wikipedia edits. Always gratifying to know that my work is being read.
I find it unfortunate that the academic discussions I witness tend towards "Wikipedia bad" rather than a more nuanced understanding. Some aspects of Wikipedia are great, and academia still has a lot to learn from web technologies.
> I find it unfortunate that the academic discussions I witness tend towards “Wikipedia bad” rather than a more nuanced understanding.
Academia has always viewed tertiary sources as bad for academia (they might be fine for popular use outside of academia, but even as a gateway to useful primary/secondary sources in academia they are poor by comparison to proper research catalogs.)
> Some aspects of Wikipedia are great, and academia still has a lot to learn from web technologies.
Some aspects of Wikipedia are great, but Wikipedia doesn’t (by fairly explicit choice of mission) do anything to alter any of the reasons why tertiary sources aren’t any good for academia. Academia may have something to learn about technology, and maybe even Wiki technology, but that still far from having any use of Wikipedia as a product.
Academia has always viewed tertiary sources as bad for academia (they might be fine for popular use outside of academia, but even as a gateway to useful primary/secondary sources in academia they are poor by comparison to proper research catalogs.)
> Some aspects of Wikipedia are great, and academia still has a lot to learn from web technologies.
Some aspects of Wikipedia are great, but Wikipedia doesn’t (by fairly explicit choice of mission) do anything to alter any of the reasons why tertiary sources aren’t any good for academia. Academia may have something to learn about technology, and maybe even Wiki technology, but that still far from having any use of Wikipedia as a product.
According to the paper we're discussing, Wikipedia clearly has a measurable effect on science, so either these researchers did their statistics wrong, or you know something they don't. ;-)
I had really hoped that wikis would have been used more often for science. The wiki process seems to align pretty well with the process of scientific publication and peer review.
Wikipedia didn't go this road, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lost_functionalities...
But it seems others apparently did! https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_User_Group
I had really hoped that wikis would have been used more often for science. The wiki process seems to align pretty well with the process of scientific publication and peer review.
Wikipedia didn't go this road, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lost_functionalities...
But it seems others apparently did! https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_User_Group
> According to the paper we're discussing, Wikipedia clearly has a measurable effect on science, so either these researchers did their statistics wrong, or you know something they don't. ;-)
“Has a measurable impact on science” and “is part of a category of things to which academia aa a whole has a negative response” are not, even approximately, mutually exclusive so, no, the dichotomy you try to draw is quite false.
“Has a measurable impact on science” and “is part of a category of things to which academia aa a whole has a negative response” are not, even approximately, mutually exclusive so, no, the dichotomy you try to draw is quite false.
I do agree that tertiary sources are what they are (upsides and downsides)
I was mostly responding to "but that still far from having any use of Wikipedia as a product" ; which I think might be overstating your case just a little.
I was mostly responding to "but that still far from having any use of Wikipedia as a product" ; which I think might be overstating your case just a little.
> I find it unfortunate that the academic discussions I witness tend towards "Wikipedia bad" rather than a more nuanced understanding. Some aspects of Wikipedia are great, and academia still has a lot to learn from web technologies.
No Wikipedia is bad, it has become a subtle but effective political propaganda tool that reflects only a certain point of view, it is not a encyclopedia by the definition of the word. It takes stances on wedge issues by the sole fact that it eliminates any sources its editors do not agree with. When you only source assertions from a tiny number of sources you know only reflect your point of view then you are badly biased.
https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
The author is Wikipedia's co-founder, so he knows what he is talking about.
No Wikipedia is bad, it has become a subtle but effective political propaganda tool that reflects only a certain point of view, it is not a encyclopedia by the definition of the word. It takes stances on wedge issues by the sole fact that it eliminates any sources its editors do not agree with. When you only source assertions from a tiny number of sources you know only reflect your point of view then you are badly biased.
https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
The author is Wikipedia's co-founder, so he knows what he is talking about.
I'm not sure what happened to Larry Sanger; he went off the rails someplace. :-/ I seem to recall it was fairly hard to get hold of him even back in 2005-ish.
At any rate, en.wikipedia is a bit funny. Many language versions of Wikipedia are particular to just one country, or at best/worst a couple of countries. They also tend to have biases associated with those countries and cultures.
The English Wikipedia, on the other hand, is edited by people around the world. So the intrinsic bias (or lack thereof) is at world-scale.
Since on world-scale looking in the USA is quite conservative these days; looking out you'd expect Americans to feel that the world (and thus the English Wikipedia) has a progressive bias.
At any rate, en.wikipedia is a bit funny. Many language versions of Wikipedia are particular to just one country, or at best/worst a couple of countries. They also tend to have biases associated with those countries and cultures.
The English Wikipedia, on the other hand, is edited by people around the world. So the intrinsic bias (or lack thereof) is at world-scale.
Since on world-scale looking in the USA is quite conservative these days; looking out you'd expect Americans to feel that the world (and thus the English Wikipedia) has a progressive bias.
that article is SEVERELY biased to the right.
> Or to take an up-to-the-minute issue, the LGBT adoption article includes several talking points in favor of LGBT adoption rights, but omits any arguments against.
What if we replace LGBT "rights" with Jewish Rights during the Holocaust.
It'd go something like: just because "liberals" think Jews deserve to live, and we should all have equal rights, that maybe we should also have a fair "view" or balanced "insight" into Hitler's side of the argument, so people can choose for themselves whether they want to be racist or genocidal or not. Tolerance isn't for everyone, we should be tolerant of those not tolerant of anybody who isn't white, no? SMH.
It's an encyclopedia, facts should matter, if you're peeved that liberal facts are often more true or accurate than those based on crapola like the bible or oil-industry-endorsed climate change studies, or Presidential decrees that Bleach cures Covid-19, then honestly you should probably just stick to your facebook echo chambers, and please stay away from public platforms and politics in general.
I saw a meme once about the right trolling itself where they basically said -- GUYS stop showing statistics and studies they're all against us. Yes, they are, not because they're fabricated but because the conservative worldview is extremely warped and often just insane.
I mean 86% of flat-earthers are conservative. The majority of people who believe in bigfoot, also conservative. Only 32% of conservatives believe in evolution and there's probably a HUGE percent that believe the world was created 8k years ago by God (factually impossible).
Sure, Wikipedia should strive for FACTUAL neutrality, but not when facts are from a dogmatic source like the bible, it could still show those "facts" as it were as an "opinion" by Christian Seminologists, for example, however the majority of historians and archaelogists find flaws see: <insert page> etc...
Most articles I've ever read have been pretty darn good, I haven't seen much in way of not-neutral, but then I think neutrality doesn't mean allowing bigots free reign either.
> Or to take an up-to-the-minute issue, the LGBT adoption article includes several talking points in favor of LGBT adoption rights, but omits any arguments against.
What if we replace LGBT "rights" with Jewish Rights during the Holocaust.
It'd go something like: just because "liberals" think Jews deserve to live, and we should all have equal rights, that maybe we should also have a fair "view" or balanced "insight" into Hitler's side of the argument, so people can choose for themselves whether they want to be racist or genocidal or not. Tolerance isn't for everyone, we should be tolerant of those not tolerant of anybody who isn't white, no? SMH.
It's an encyclopedia, facts should matter, if you're peeved that liberal facts are often more true or accurate than those based on crapola like the bible or oil-industry-endorsed climate change studies, or Presidential decrees that Bleach cures Covid-19, then honestly you should probably just stick to your facebook echo chambers, and please stay away from public platforms and politics in general.
I saw a meme once about the right trolling itself where they basically said -- GUYS stop showing statistics and studies they're all against us. Yes, they are, not because they're fabricated but because the conservative worldview is extremely warped and often just insane.
I mean 86% of flat-earthers are conservative. The majority of people who believe in bigfoot, also conservative. Only 32% of conservatives believe in evolution and there's probably a HUGE percent that believe the world was created 8k years ago by God (factually impossible).
Sure, Wikipedia should strive for FACTUAL neutrality, but not when facts are from a dogmatic source like the bible, it could still show those "facts" as it were as an "opinion" by Christian Seminologists, for example, however the majority of historians and archaelogists find flaws see: <insert page> etc...
Most articles I've ever read have been pretty darn good, I haven't seen much in way of not-neutral, but then I think neutrality doesn't mean allowing bigots free reign either.
I agree with you about LGBT adoption, because most of the things people feared didn't actually happen when gay people started adopting in more liberal countries.
That said, I don't think it's fair to compare that particular debate (which was genuinely an unknown phenomenon at the time, and erring on the side of LGBT parents could have caused thousands of children to suffer if liberal-minded peoples' assumptions turned out to be wrong) to a literal genocide (which, even if the Jews turned out to be part of a secret cabal who controlled the banks, undermined the German war effort during WW1 and denied promising young upstarts opportunities at art college, would still be clearly immoral).
That said, I don't think it's fair to compare that particular debate (which was genuinely an unknown phenomenon at the time, and erring on the side of LGBT parents could have caused thousands of children to suffer if liberal-minded peoples' assumptions turned out to be wrong) to a literal genocide (which, even if the Jews turned out to be part of a secret cabal who controlled the banks, undermined the German war effort during WW1 and denied promising young upstarts opportunities at art college, would still be clearly immoral).
> It takes stances on wedge issues by the sole fact that it eliminates any sources its editors do not agree with.||
> > The global warming and MMR vaccine articles are examples; I hardly need to dive into these pages, since it is quite enough to say that they endorse definite positions that scientific minorities reject.
I do not think either of these are examples of bias in Wikipedia. Especially for the MMR article, I am aware of no scientific minority that would take issue with the article. Both articles mention the existence of controversy about the topics. I think it would be hard to provide any unbiased information about actual wedge topics if this counts as biased.
I am not going to make any claim that Wikipedia is not biased, but I do not think it is possible for any encyclopedia to be unbiased to Larry Sanger's ideals without being decidedly leaning to the right.
> > The global warming and MMR vaccine articles are examples; I hardly need to dive into these pages, since it is quite enough to say that they endorse definite positions that scientific minorities reject.
I do not think either of these are examples of bias in Wikipedia. Especially for the MMR article, I am aware of no scientific minority that would take issue with the article. Both articles mention the existence of controversy about the topics. I think it would be hard to provide any unbiased information about actual wedge topics if this counts as biased.
I am not going to make any claim that Wikipedia is not biased, but I do not think it is possible for any encyclopedia to be unbiased to Larry Sanger's ideals without being decidedly leaning to the right.
There is too much damn scientific articles because we optimized system for publishing output, and the best journals are expensive, so I am not surprised people are turning to human-indexing system (in this case Wikipedia) to make sense of it all.
I am not a scientist, but I do read articles that are referenced from Wikipedia occasionally.
I am not a scientist, but I do read articles that are referenced from Wikipedia occasionally.
Science needs review articles which can be a) updated b) peer reviewed c) attributed to the authorship
Wikipedia solves a but isn't great for b or c.
Wikipedia solves a but isn't great for b or c.
Academia has responded to (a) with the "living review" [0]. It's a step in the right direction, I guess, but I can't help feeling that it's gatekeeping, and fails to be as dynamic as it might.
Efforts such as TRIP database [1] are also operating in this domain, trying to bring computational solutions to dusty old academic processes.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_review
[1] https://www.tripdatabase.com/
Efforts such as TRIP database [1] are also operating in this domain, trying to bring computational solutions to dusty old academic processes.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_review
[1] https://www.tripdatabase.com/
Building something like this was kind of the idea of Scholarpedia [1], founded by Eugene M. Izhikevich (theoretical neuroscientist). The articles are reviews written by experts in the field, peer-reviewed, and supposed to be updated over time. Most articles happen to be in neuroscience and related fields, but that was more an accident and not by design.
Unfortunately, the project has never really taken off, and only few new articles have been added over the past few years. And of course, just as I am writing this comment, I realize that [2] now redirects to some domain squatter and is blacklisted by my DNS server...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarpedia
[2] https://scholarpedia.org/
Unfortunately, the project has never really taken off, and only few new articles have been added over the past few years. And of course, just as I am writing this comment, I realize that [2] now redirects to some domain squatter and is blacklisted by my DNS server...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarpedia
[2] https://scholarpedia.org/
> [2] now redirects to some domain squatter and is blacklisted by my DNS server...
I hope this is temporary, I found Scholarpedia very useful for certain scientific topics where Wikipedia didn't go into quite enough detail.
I hope this is temporary, I found Scholarpedia very useful for certain scientific topics where Wikipedia didn't go into quite enough detail.
Absolutely agree - but most good quality WP articles will include a range of references to primary literature that helps with b and c!
[deleted]
See also: Wikipedia matters, Hinnosaar et al 2019.
http://www.marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatters.pdf
> randomization of edits to foreign languages’ Wikipedia entries about an obscure Spanish city increases tourism to the city from those foreign countries by 9%
> randomization of edits to foreign languages’ Wikipedia entries about an obscure Spanish city increases tourism to the city from those foreign countries by 9%
The newest fad in Wikipedia is adding multiple quotes in each article. Then articles are not concise anymore, but full of "X said" irrelevant garbage.
I think that often this is self promotion.
Ive seen articles where there is a short text and 5 long quotes - that could be summed up with 2 or 3 sentences. Now try yo clean this up without an edit war...
I think that often this is self promotion.
Ive seen articles where there is a short text and 5 long quotes - that could be summed up with 2 or 3 sentences. Now try yo clean this up without an edit war...
That could be one of 2 or 3 things. Can you link an example or 2?
Concerning the self promotion - I will unfortunately not provide you the link, because that would lead to you learning the name of my Wikipedia account. For your information: I tried to remove the quotes - by making 3 concise sentences. At this time I see that someone already added back - but this time the whole bulk of the text (so again not keeping it short). The bulk of the text is explaining who are the quoted people. It starts with a famous professor from university X, who said Y.
Then there are two "randoms" quoted with their full titles and positions (they are not professors, but random PHDs from Y) - who are probably trying to self promote, since they have an opinion on something - that got quoted on Wikipedia.
As for the trend about adding quotes to articles. This partially depends on taste - what each person likes, or dislikes. In my opinion there is a lot of value when an encyclopedia entry is concise synthesis of relevant information - so generally no quotes, just inline text. I dont care that X said this, Y said that, Z said something else - with full quotes. This can be rewritten to be concise with quotes in footnotes. I also dont care about barely relevant stories - that make the articles longer and full of worthless trivia.
Here is an example of some random article that I found some time ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_beetle
[disclaimer: I never edited it, just stumbled upon it]
The article is about ground beetles, yet it has:
1) a "story" consisting of a long quote how Charles Darwin was hit in his eye by a bombardier beetle and it hurt. Multiple sentences of fluff
2) Even later, is an even more nonsensical quote, which sounds like some sort of fan service related to Darwin: "No poet ever felt more delight at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing in Stephen's Illustrations of British Insects the magic words, "captured by C. Darwin, "
I have nothing against Charles Darwin, but how is his eye story relevant to an article about ground beetles? Shouldnt the article text focus on well... nettles and then simply have a "fun fact" section at the end, that would say: Charles Darwin got once hit in his eye by a beetle?
Unfortunately with the current trend of adding such quotes it is really difficult to remove them. I dont even bother to try - someone will immediately revert this, because such quotes supposedly make the articles more fun (for 12 year olds?).
More and more articles are full of such fluff. I have nothing against having a "fun fact" section, but seriously, quotes inside bulk of articles are such a waste of time.
As for the trend about adding quotes to articles. This partially depends on taste - what each person likes, or dislikes. In my opinion there is a lot of value when an encyclopedia entry is concise synthesis of relevant information - so generally no quotes, just inline text. I dont care that X said this, Y said that, Z said something else - with full quotes. This can be rewritten to be concise with quotes in footnotes. I also dont care about barely relevant stories - that make the articles longer and full of worthless trivia.
Here is an example of some random article that I found some time ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_beetle
[disclaimer: I never edited it, just stumbled upon it]
The article is about ground beetles, yet it has:
1) a "story" consisting of a long quote how Charles Darwin was hit in his eye by a bombardier beetle and it hurt. Multiple sentences of fluff
2) Even later, is an even more nonsensical quote, which sounds like some sort of fan service related to Darwin: "No poet ever felt more delight at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing in Stephen's Illustrations of British Insects the magic words, "captured by C. Darwin, "
I have nothing against Charles Darwin, but how is his eye story relevant to an article about ground beetles? Shouldnt the article text focus on well... nettles and then simply have a "fun fact" section at the end, that would say: Charles Darwin got once hit in his eye by a beetle?
Unfortunately with the current trend of adding such quotes it is really difficult to remove them. I dont even bother to try - someone will immediately revert this, because such quotes supposedly make the articles more fun (for 12 year olds?).
More and more articles are full of such fluff. I have nothing against having a "fun fact" section, but seriously, quotes inside bulk of articles are such a waste of time.
Personally, I like Wikipedia, for its "direct" and "succinct" information, BUT every single time I read an article, I have to remember to NOT fall in the Dunning-Kruger effect, reference has some irony, as it is IMHO not at all hypothetical:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
or, alternatively, that I am not instead suffering of the (fictional) Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
so I do check the Wikipedia page for something I already know about, find the outdated (or plainly wrong, or both) info in order to not fall in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
or, alternatively, that I am not instead suffering of the (fictional) Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
so I do check the Wikipedia page for something I already know about, find the outdated (or plainly wrong, or both) info in order to not fall in it.
A Wikipedia 2.0 is needed... one where edits are put into a queue rather then having someone come in ten minutes later and delete your edit simply because it is live immediately.
Some years ago there was an NPR story on women in academia and how one decided to get together 50 top female academics in their fields and update Wikipedia in their subject matter that they hold PHD's in and work at Universities teaching about. Waste of time, all deleted.
Wikipedia is great but its emphasis is on deletion. A new Wikipedia needs to be made with an emphasis on addition and depth.